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[–] -4 points 1 year ago (25 children)

1 843 701 US prison population

1 686 108 China prison population

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago* (18 children)

    The trick is to always assume "China is lying about its internal statistics" and inflate whatever number they give by an arbitrary large percentage. 1.7M is obviously an under-count because the CCP is always lying about everything.

    Also, you can do some broad brush "Everyone in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, North Korea, and Taiwan are prisoners of the Chinese state, so actually that's over 60M people" napkin math to make the numbers look better.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (14 children)

    I think this is a good rule of thumb in general. When statistics agree with my preconceived notions, I consider them trustworthy, and if not, I assume that reality lines up with what I expect. For example, the referendum in held in the Baltics about leaving the USSR ended in favor of leaving, which I think is a good example of a trustworthy statistic. But the subsequent referendum in the remaining members ended in favor of staying in the USSR, and I think that's a little suspicious, don't you?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    When statistics agree with my preconceived notions, I consider them trustworthy, and if not, I assume that reality lines up with what I expect.

    I… thought you were being sarcastic. This is an obvious and severe flaw to have in one’s rational thinking.

    prejudice (noun)
    1. The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.
    2. An adverse judgment or opinion formed unfairly or without knowledge of the facts.

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  • [+] 5 points 1 year ago (11 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It's suspicious because it disagrees with my preconceived notions about communism.

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  • [+] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    See now there you've made a crucial error. You're recommending a book which, while it has some criticism of the specifics of how the USSR implemented socialism, on the whole it's quite positive about the idea of establishing a dictatorship of the proletariat in general. Obviously that disagrees with my preconceived notion that humans are greedy, and that therefore capitalism is good, so I would never read a source that contradicts this, because I would have to dismiss most of it outright. And that's just a hassle.

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  • [+] 6 points 1 year ago* (2 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Look, it's like the scientific method, right? You start with a theory, and then you gather a bunch of data, and the stuff that agrees with your theory you keep, and the stuff that doesn't you either dismiss outright, or you rationalize. I feel like I really can't make my position any more obvious than that.

    I appreciate your patience and your continued efforts to educate folks on this website, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree here.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    How can I say this in .ml-ese? Hmmm, try asking the folks who actually lived in those places.

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  • [+] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)
  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I wasn't born in the Soviet union, but I have asked lots of more older people, all were negative, the best thing they said was that they built schools... and those were mostly the ones they destroyed, and have you noticed a pattern in .ml users which support what the Soviet union most if not all of them didn't experience it or live in a place where it was you just glaze china, Russia and etc.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    I've asked many people who were born in the USSR, and I think about half of them feel that the shit we’ve had since then is way worse.

    It wasn't perfect by any means, but I think we should have improved it with reforms instead of splitting into poor countries and giving all the power to oligarchs.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    What country maybe it is a local thing?

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    No, Occupied China doesn’t control DPRK or ROC

    If we play that game we can’t trust American numbers either so the whole conversation becomes pointless

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    On its own that's misleading, you should be using the per capita stats.

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  • [+] -12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Per capita is misleading, it over represents low populations and under represents high populations

    When you use it, it makes Canadian cities appear more violent than American cities as an example

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  • [+] 13 points 1 year ago* (2 children)
  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yes, I can read the graphic and my own post

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