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Comment by alspacka | Hacker News Reader

11 people were arrested on weapons charges at the Alberta blockade (handguns and body armor) and one person was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder for trying to run over police with his tractor

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That says a lot if that's what a violent protest looks like in Canada when the "peaceful" ones in the US involve millions of dollars in property damage and numerous injuries or deaths.

Well yeah, it's not like we lost a hockey game or anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_rio...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Vancouver_Stanley_Cup_rio...

Strangest to me there is actually the realisation that 'loo' being a mainly British word (I knew that), over there they're not called 'portaloos'. ('Porta-potties'!)

(Further, both trademarks. Or at least were.)

While we're on the subject of the fallacy of relative privation, you'll surely acknowledge that the closure of the Ambassador Bridge for a week is a couple orders of magnitude worse than the 2020 protests. After all, the appropriate measure of a protest is dollars lost, and hundreds of millions of dollars of goods cross the bridge every day.

Not really that fallacy - no claim was made that it wasn't a problem. If anything, it's a musing on how media bias may affect how things are portrayed. Specifically with calling something violent. If violence is the adjective we are examining, the loss (or delay) of revenue from the protest would not fit in this model.

I am curious though, are goods not being rerouted?

Absolutely that fallacy. You're holding the 2020 BLM protests up as being far worse. In fact, you've quantified just how bad they were, as a means of demonstrating that these protests are not as bad. The fallacy is not the claim that this isn't a problem, but that its not nearly as bad as this other problem, and therefore not worthy of the reaction.

Many of the large auto manufacturers shutdown production lines in response to the bridge closure. Delayed revenue is lost revenue.

"Fallacy of relative privation (also known as "appeal to worse problems" or "not as bad as") – dismissing an argument or complaint due to what are perceived to be more important problems."

I have not dismissed the issue. Do you have a source to back up your claim? Also, can you quote where I say this protest is not an issue or not worthy of being addressed?

Again, this was mostly about bias in reporting.

"Delayed revenue is lost revenue."

Here's a fallacy - false equivalent. Delaying revenue does not mean that revenue is lost. Demand and orders do not cease to exist simply because production temporarily halts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

@giantg2

The fallacy is claiming that one is not as bad because the other exists. You seem to be defending your comments from absolute privation. I refer to the first comment I replied to,

>That says a lot if that's what a violent protest looks like in Canada when the "peaceful" ones in the US involve millions of dollars in property damage and numerous injuries or deaths.

Isn't pedantry fun?

Perhaps you read that with a different meaning than it was written with. As I've repeatedly said, it's about the bias in reporting. You seem to not be accepting this. Might I remind you that one of the guidelines of this site is to interpret comments charitably.

You misinterpreted my comment and attacked it as being a fallacy. I explained myself and you attacked further, in the process stating a fallacy of your own. Now you are calling this pedantry. Yet you have not responded to the majority of my comments.

Why would I not correct you when you are saying that I'm saying things I'm not?

According to Wikipedia there was up to $2b in insured damages and 25 deaths during the 2020 riots. Now regarding the bridge closure; there will be costs for delays and those will be substantial, but it's not like they just throw $400m of goods in the river because the border is closed.

Where do you see $2 billion? Wikipedia seems to clearly state $500 million

    $550 million in Minneapolis–Saint Paul (May 26–June 6, 2020)[5]
    $1–2 billion in insured damages in the United States (May 26–June 8, 2020)[6]

https://www.axios.com/riots-cost-property-damage-276c9bcc-a4... https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-foundation-raising-2...

That's still a considerably small number of people considering the protesters number in the tens of thousands

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