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by Darrengineer 1506 days ago
I think the parent was abundantly clear here: > I am not sure if the US could already be classified as a low-trust society (probably not yet), but a strong negative trend is definitely present. I'm not sure where your interpretation is coming from, but if it was a misreading of parent's comment then I think your downvote could be happily reversed.
1 comments
throwaway894345 1506 days ago
That quote demonstrates enumeration fallacy (using examples to argue that the US ranks lower without any context about the countries against which the US is ranked).

Moreover:

> [The US's classification as a high-trust society] might have been true 10 years ago, but now (just from the wiki examples): ...

This seems to unambiguously argue that the US is not a high-trust society. With the additional context of your quote "not sure if the US could be classified as a low trust society...", it's possible that the parent is contradicting himself or that he's arguing that the US is certainly not high-trust, but middling or lower. Thus the parent is either unclear (contradiction) or he's arguing by enumeration. Even if there is some alternative interpretation, this very debate suffices to prove unclarity.

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luciusdomitius 1506 days ago
Well. In all honesty, I should have written "definetly not yet" instead of "probably not yet". But I see it from my own perspective as someone who grew up in Bulgaria and spent his adult life in the Czech Republic. Neither country is considered an example for the world (understandably lol), but in both, current US state of affairs would be considered extremely worrying. For example in both countries we have a multi-party system, so the average Bulgarian/Czech doesn't hate half the supreme court justices as it is in the US, but 8/9. Yet I don't think that harrassing them at their homes would be an acceptable behavior no matter the case.

So, I made this statement based on low national self-esteem. Later on I compared in my head current US with places such as Lebanon and Venezuela and realised that it is still doing pretty well, even though the strong downwards trend simply cannot be denied. So yeah.

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throwaway894345 1506 days ago
Fair enough. This clarification earned you an upvote. :)
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