Comment by ashkankiani
13 hours ago
Why link to a number, which means roughly nothing, instead of the specific details on the countries you're trying to compare? I have no idea how to break down or make my own assessment of what 0.83 or 0.18 means. Does that 0.83 for the US include all of the people being shipped off without due process to El Salvador, or do they count that as part of El Salvador's Human Right Index?
People like to bring up the Uyghurs immediately, but never really have the same smoke for the US. Also, do we include the prison population in human rights? Do we include access to healthcare? What about systems perpetuating poverty like lack of access to public transportation?
To pre-emptively be clear on my stance or potential bias, I stand by no country in the world. I was born in Iran, and my parents left when I was young to the US because they believed in the American Dream. The irony being that the dominos of why they left were initiated by the US and UK. And long before Trump was elected, but certainly immediately afterwards, I decided to leave the US once I had the means. (Also because of the lack of public transit, the $100k medical bills after an accident, being punched by a homeless person, and having my possessions stolen repeatedly and the cops giving me a :shrug:). I moved to Japan, where I experienced blatant racism for the first time. I moved to Hong Kong (and tbh no real complaints so far), but I am technically subject to the freedom of speech constraints on China.
I have no allegiance to any country or specific people. My allegiance is to all living beings.
Sorry but you're arguing against a reputable institution here.
I'm not arguing against a reputable institution, I'm arguing against using that reputation + their final number alone without going through the process to verify the methodology myself, which you didn't link to. You only showed the conclusion, which to all of us, should mean very little until we look into how that number was arrived at.
And I don't care if they're reputable, I will look at the methodology and make my own conclusion either way. Appeals to authority are not a substitute for critical thinking.
We're not talking about a few % difference here. If you want to look into it then fine, but you have to come up with some really good evidence if you think you can debunk anything here.
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Yes! By all means, let us appeal to authority and use institutions' reputations to shut down any discussion, rather than thinking about what these figures actually mean, what criteria they're based on, or how well they reflect reality.
edit: wording
An institution mostly funded by the governments it happens to rank highly, and the open society foundation that's owned by George Soros, a man who's been obsessed with overthrowing China's government since the 80s. https://www.v-dem.net/about/funders/
They're not arguing against the institution. They're arguing against the metric .
Yeah but the metric was invented by that reputable organization and given the enormous difference it's not worth any discussion unless they come up with something good in which case they should probably publish about it.
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They are arguing for you using your brain instead of tethering it to a number.
No he's arguing against your arguments and winning.
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