Does it?
Only one side is forbidding people to look at things for themselves. It seems better epistemological practice to suspect this side more
Only one side is forbidding people to look at things for themselves. It seems better epistemological practice to suspect this side more
I’m open to your sources, since you’re so convinced of your side being the one deserving of trust.
This is cheap. To say "we shouldn't blindly trust this side" doesn't mean "we should blindly trust that side" at all. It just means we shouldn't blindly trust this side. It may well be that we shouldn't trust either side, because both have reasons to lie.
When both sides claim opposing things, that's pretty unlikely. My point is that to jump from "don't just blindly trust A" to claiming the person meant to say "blindly trust B" is a cheap shot. It's "so you're saying [insert something they absolutely didn't say]" and it's a meme mocking the person that does it for a reason.
Stepping into snark is also a very bad sign. If you find yourself typing things like "since you're so convinced" into comment boxes, please step away from HN until it subsides.
The problem with victim's accounts is twofold. First, there are many accounts, and what gets quoted are folks telling the stories of terror, not the ones who fled for eg religious reasons.
Second, when it comes to China, there's a metric ton of fake news everywhere you look. You look into a story about communist government destroying a church, and later it turns out the church was actually a church-owned commercial building raised without a permit. You read about concentration camps, and only after going through few hundreds pages you realize they are more like western juvenile detention centers. And so on, and so on.
Thus, we shouldn't blindly trust either of sides; there's way too much politically-motivated misreporting involved.
Regarding the sources you did provide, the articles you cited themselves are ambiguous about the factual, provable nature of your claims. More sources are required to make any kind of argument. Please pick a couple more sources, even ones from the Wikipedia article, or I’ll continue seeing your comments as not in good faith. If you can’t point at sources, I can’t just take your word for it. Neither one of us likely was present for these events, and anecdotes don’t get us anywhere we haven’t already been in this discussion.
In short, sources or why bother?
You are the interlocutor making claims that need proof; namely you take a stance and then demand others justify their own stance if it differs from your own.
I’ve asked repeatedly for you to link just one primary source for your claims. We’re all still waiting?
In any case - cool, if you are not advocating one side’s position as absolute and unquestionable truth, then the sources I’ve provided give the plural you pretty good idea how it looks like from the other side, as well as views in between. All is well then.