Quote:
Originally Posted by flamesfever
My mistake. I should have used my analogy with the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel to demonstrate who you should trust the most and why.
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Which would still serve no purpose, because the question of who to trust “most” isn’t a question anyone is asking, it’s whether either deserves the benefit of the doubt, which should be evaluated independently of the other.
Saying things like “I know who I would trust” is a fallacy, it creates the perception of a choice that doesn’t actually have to be made. If the Israeli government and Hamas release competing statements, all you’re doing is absolving yourself of the need to think critically if you say “well Hamas is less trustworthy, so I will trust the government and take their version as fact.” We’ve seen plenty of evidence that both engage in manipulation and both share unverified or false information, so the correct response isn’t to determine who is more trustworthy and pick one, it’s to evaluate the statements independently. Otherwise you’re just going to end up believing everything the Israeli government says, and you’ll get more truth that way than if you believed everything Hamas says, but you’ll still be lied to and manipulated along the way.
Which is why it’s a strawman to argue against the position of both being “equally” trustworthy as a response to the position that both are untrustworthy. If someone wanted to actually make an honest argument against the Israeli government being untrustworthy, they would just do that, and people could respond, but they don’t because that’s a more difficult argument to make than the argument against the government and Hamas being “equally” untrustworthy, which is lazy and unintellectual.