I'm Sorry, You're Wrong

All of our conversations are informed by context. We shouldn't allow ourselves to be guided by emotions without being informed by facts. Let's chat about how context, even on the internet, is important for us to make informed decisions.

If I said you were racist, would I be right? Or if you said that you weren't racist, would you be right? Who gets to make that choice?

Apologies for the poor sound quality.

America is polarized, but is it the most polarized it has ever been? I look at America's polarized history and see how we compare.

Whataboutism, the usage of "what about..." statements in your arguments, is a weak fallacy to defend your stance, no matter how strong it feels. While understanding this fallacy is pretty straightforward, I go into a few examples and some reasons why you shouldn't rely on this device to support your arguments.

On March 16, a gunman killed 6 Asian women. Why do Asian lives matter all of a sudden? Why haven't we cared much about them until now?

Taylor Lorenz tweeted her online struggles on Twitter, and Tucker Carlson took issue with that.  And the New York Times took issue with Tucker's response.  I try to dig into the information and see which side has a stronger argument.

It's a mistake we all make. We've all overgeneralized. We've said that all Republicans think one way, all Democrats act another way. But that's almost never true. So, in this episode, I chat about the fallacy of overgeneralization and the ways we may have used it to classify a group of people unfairly.

Is COVID-19 a hoax? Can you trust government officials and scientists about what they say about this virus? I chat about the numbers and facts known about the virus to-date, and compare COVID-19 to other viruses to see what we can determine from the data.

On Feb. 22, 2021, the US Supreme court decided that they would not review two cases regarding the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. I spend a little time discussing this decision with a little context from a previous case that was also thrown out, the Texas Attorney General's challenge to the certification of votes from 4 states.

You're ambitious.  You have goals.  So why aren't you achieving them?  What can you do to make yourself more motivated?