this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago (18 children)

There are certainly purposes for which one wants as much of the raw sensor readings as possible. Other than science, evidence for legal proceedings is the only thing that comes to mind, though.

I'm more disturbed by the naive views so many people have of photographic evidence. Can you think of any historical photograph that proves anything?

Really famous in the US: The marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima. It was staged for the cameras, of course. What does it prove?

A more momentous occasion is illustrated by a photograph of Red Army soldiers raising the soviet flag over the Reichstag. The rubble of Berlin in the background gives it more evidentiary value, but it is manipulated. It was not only staged but actually doctored. Smoke was added in the background and an extra watch on a soldier's arm (evidence of robbery) removed.

Closer to now: As you are aware, anti-American operatives are trying to destroy the constitutional order of the republic. After the last election, they claimed to have video evidence of fraud during ballot counting. On one short snippet of video, one sees a woman talking to some people and then, after they leave, pull a box out from under a table. It's quite inconspicuous, but these bad actors invented a story around this video snippet, in which a "suitcase" full of fraudulent ballots is taken out of hiding after observers leave.

As psychologists know, people do not think in strictly rational terms. We do not take in facts and draw logical conclusion. Professional manipulators, such as advertisers, know that we tend to think in "narratives". If a story is compelling, we like to twist neutral snippets of fact into evidence. We see what we believe.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The situations that drive me nuts are the conspiracy idiots who zoom in super hard on some heavily compressed image they pulled off of the web. They then proceed to claim that compression artifacts, optical flares, noise, etc are evidence of whatever crap they are pushing.

Taking things out of context is another issue. It has become painfully common online. I would see it all the time when pushing the "all police are bad!" narrative. They will deliberately edit out the violence that triggered the arrest then make it look like the arrest was unwarranted and overly physical. People will do this with dashcam videos and show road rage but edit out the part where they triggered it with their own aggression.

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 5 points 9 months ago

Ok the one hand, yeah. Actions have consequences. On the other hand, no amount of aggressive driving "deserves" to be responded to in the way some do, and no amount of someone doing something dangerous or illegal justifies police using unnecessary force (or else we wouldn't call it that). Once they've been subdued, it should be done.

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