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0 pointsstrangegecko1mo ago0 comments

Hypocrisy would be if the person only points out Chinese authoritarianism without acknowledging problems e.g. in US policy.

Not mentioning US problems every time they criticize CCP problems is not automatically hypocrisy, and this idea basically means you cannot criticize anything without criticizing everything someone considers just as bad or worse at the same time.

Calling a discussion on China hypocritical because it doesn't say "but US worse" is essentially trying to build in whataboutism into every discussion.

It's a symptom of increasing polarization and part of the problem.

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flossly1mo ago

There's US AI and China AI. Those are the two contenders. We are discussing the problems of using the Chinese AI because of the "evil" govt there. The evil at this point clearly is less evil than that of the US govt.

That's the hypocrisy: not seeing the block of wood in the eye of one while complaining about the speck of wood in the eye of the other.

By trying to be less hypocritical we create a more level playing field based on facts, instead of gut-feeling based hatred.

Whatabboutism is, IMHO, used a lot as a way to circumvent having to address the glaring hypocrisy: i see it's used to shut up those to point out hypocrisy.

strangegeckoOP1mo ago

There is also European AI and probably other places.

You may think only those two are relevant, and so every discussion of one party requires discussion of the other. I disagree with that fundamentally.

I'll be honest, I also disagree that one side is "clearly less evil than the other". For me, living in Taiwan and caring about democracy, the risk of Chinese authoritarian expansion and invasion is not a "speck of wood in the eye", frankly I find that framing disrespectful.

But that discussion is entirely beyond the question of hypocrisy. Again, the guy people accuse of hypocrisy said nothing of the sort that indicates that he doesn't see the problems of the US government. He merely didn't talk about them.

This isn't "shutting down talk about hypocrisy".

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