I had ChatGPT debunk a meme, not too bad! This meme was so terrible I awarded it the worst meme of the year last year. So naturally, it continues to resurface and plague us. If you’re feeling lazy, have ChatGPT shoulder the burden 😂
Btw, here was my debunking of the meme for reference:
▪️Like Dr. Fauci himself, this meme equivocates the word science with scientists, which are two completely different concepts. Science is a methodology, which if properly followed qua the scientific method, is a valid way for humans to gain knowledge about the world.
▪️A scientist, meanwhile, may or may not be following the scientific method correctly. They may have biases or different contexts which cause them to see the world differently, or place more importance on certain issues.
▪️While scientists might change their mind when new information becomes available, science doesn’t, it’s just a tool we use to understand the world. It would be like saying the alphabet or eye glasses learned more.
▪️Which is why scientists often vigorously disagree with each other, not just about science, but about its application. The science on Covid is just one aspect of making a decision on closing schools or imposing vaccine mandates. As is the science on climate change on energy policy.
▪️There are countless factors outside the realm of science, like law and individual rights, which are often more important. All too often, "the science" makes disastrous public policy decisions, which is why it should be rightly questioned.
▪️This meme showed the blind allegiance people had to “science” this year, which in practice meant not the rigorous adherence to the scientific method, but backing the orthodoxy that the mainstream outlets and government had. By elevating the latter, it destroys the former.
▪️The left keeps using this meme but they don’t actually believe it. If you believe SNAP subsidizes companies to pay below a “living wage” this implies that if you take food stamps away they would suddenly pay a higher, “living” wage. So why not get rid of food stamps, then?!
▪️Except they know, and everyone knows, this isn’t true. Wages are set by supply and demand, not some mythical “living wage” metric. Absent food stamps there would actually be downward, not upward, pressure on wages, because the reality is food stamps subsidize the poor to not work as much as they might otherwise need to.
▪️Without SNAP, some low income people would need to work more hours to make ends meet, increasing the availability of low-skilled labor and lowering wages (all else being equal).
▪️Plus, we all know the left loves and supports food stamps. Which means, by this meme’s logic, they love to subsidize corporate profits. But they don’t really, they just think this ...
▪️Wait, this is the guy libertarians and the new right rave about being a great historian?! This sounds like a clueless meme from The Other 98%, except they wouldn’t add in the bizarre defense of feudal lords. Feudalism didn’t deprive peasants of their livelihoods for abstract goals? This is total fantasy.
▪️Amazon employs 1.55M, so this is less than 2% of their workforce, although these cuts will be to corporate, which employs 350k, so 8.5% of that. The CEO says there is an excess of bureaucracy at Amazon, and AI can automate certain repetitive tasks. Also, much of the cuts will be to HR, which is expected shrink by 15%, yay. Managers and HR are peasants now?
▪️I don’t know the inner workings of Amazon, and neither does Darryl, but this seems to be normal management practice to keep a company efficient and competitive. Given the immense size of Amazon the numbers look large, but far bigger shakeups happen all the time in the private sector. Apparently, under the new ...
▪️This statistic is just made up. The reality is that there hasn’t been a real study on this since 2013, when Pew did a poll. They found that Democrats were actually more than twice as likely as Republicans to report ever using food stamps (22% vs 10%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/
▪️Obviously, those percentages could have changed over the past decade, but it’s very likely that Dems still receive more SNAP benefits. Certainly, without an actual study or poll the claim should be thrown out, as it wildly contradicts a previous study.
▪️The meme probably comes from a 2024 analysis by Social Explorer, which found that 78.7% of US counties with the largest increase in SNAP since 2010 voted for Trump in 2020. But that tells us nothing about the actual number of Republicans (or Democrats) who are receiving benefits, just county-wide trends.
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