Hacker News Reader

Comment by Shenglong | Hacker News Reader

That's a completely illogical conclusion to make. Whether it is true or not, blocking a page does not imply admission of guilt. If the article was complete bullshit, they still would have blocked it.

B (Admission of guilt) -> A (Truth) is not the same as A -> B.

View on HN

It's not iron-clad proof that the contents of the article are truthful.

However, if the contents were not truthful, I think you would also expect the Chinese government to forcefully deny them. There is no mention of a denial in the referenced Times article...at least as of yet.

Therefore, I think the blocking of the Times can be taken as a reasonable indicator that the Chinese government wants to hide embarrassing information.

Is that really such a stretch?

The Chinese government is unlikely to deny claims about sensitive personal issues like this. This is especially the case if the public sentiment (both inside and outside of China) is considered. When people expect something to be true, denials can be perceived as lies and they will make things worse (for the parties being accused). The worse part is, more people will know it and more people will believe in the article.

Yes, it is a stretch, and that stretch actually has a well-established name: strawman.

No, it is not a logically sound argument, and is not proof. But in this world of imperfect information, sometimes you have to infer certain facts simply based on action and reaction. Also, truth (or fact) in such articles is very seldom a 1 or 0, there are many shades of it, many sides of the story. it's like there are a million other little letters between A -> B, sometimes its a guestimate where is falls on the scale. Another thing to remember, even articles appearing in the NYT are written by humans, who aware of it or not, write with some pre-bias, or with an intent.

I will admit that my reply was a little snarky. But I will tend to presume bodies that engage in widespread censorship are guilty.

Of censorship, sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com