> Indeed your commentary consists entirely of snarky side tangents

I informed you that you are describing a model. And asked you a question about it, which you did not answer.

You are presenting your uncharitable take as representative of my stance, and then knocking it down with ease.

Might the same be happening with China in discussions in Western media (mainstream, social, etc)?

How could "worseness" of various platforms and these two countries even be calculated in a reasonably objective, unbiased manner? Is such a thing even possible?

I explained the part of my model that actually exists quite explicitly. Perhaps you are making unwarranted assumptions about my assumptions? (Two can play the snarky pseudo-Socratic question game)

Perhaps I am, and I would very much like to know what those are if you don't mind sharing.

But for clarity: do you believe your performance here to be error free?

Oh, you can make smug insinuations about how I'm misunderstanding you, but you expect me to be fully explicit. I've said all I'm going to.

Your dependence on rhetoric and presenting speculation as fact is unsurprising.

If the mind is like muscles and needs exercise to become stronger, this culturally normal approach may not be to our long term advantage.

...says the guy who refused to make an actual argument on the original topic.

Here you are correct.

Making a counter-assertion of fact is not a requirement. In fact, making claims of fact when one lacks the expertise is generally a poor idea, though it is extremely popular.

If you are so smart, why can you not answer simple questions about your facts?

Possibly related:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41840390

I already tried answering your initial question about my reasoning, and you responded with meandering snark. Now you pretend I'm the unreasonable one for not treating any of your other "questions" seriously. If you wanted a real discussion, you could have said something of interest at that point, maybe made an actual claim about cultural influence or prioritizing problems in the social media landscape or somesuch, even just a hypothetical idea. But you've shown you don't actually want to exchange ideas, you just want to feel clever and righteous.

Here is an idea: your thinking is to some degree based on heuristic predictions, which are a consequence of millions of years of biological and cultural evolution, and it is possible to notice when a human is engaging in such behavior.

More speculatively: I think there may be a way to get someone to transcend their cultural conditioning and admit when they slipped up in this manner, something that inevitably happens to all of us.