Well see, it works like this:
The point of politics is to own the libs.
Trump owned more libs than any other candidate.
Therefore, Trump was the most qualified candidate.
(Alternatively: the point of politics is to wage the Culture War and Trump waged more Culture War).
This post (and the replies) are a perfect microcosm of what’s wrong
with rationalism. We’ve got:
The rationalist obsession with betting.
Identifying as a “leftist” even though you believe that nominating
any woman at all could never happen on the merits of that
woman.
An entire thread worth of people arguing about what odds OP should
give instead of ever mentioning how sexist their position is. One of the
objections to OP’s position include “it could just be that women vote
for women because ingroup bias”. Literally no one in the entire thread
calls the idea that all women are less qualified sexist.
The idea that progressives supporting women is just being “wrapped up
in their own shallow virtue”.
It's also pretty much just virtue signalling, since you can make bets on any prediction market. Like, I've bet on predictit before, it isn't exactly hard. But instead our valiant hero wants to challenge leftoids to a 1v1 betting match. Also if he wins the bet it's evidence for his hypothesis (???), thanks Bayes.
Still tho - great case study of how the tools of 'rationalists' are so often just ways for them to reinforce their existing perceptions, regardless of any disconnection from reality.
>One of the objections to OP's position include "it could just be that women vote for women because ingroup bias". Literally no one in the entire thread calls the idea that all women are less qualified sexist.
>
>The idea that progressives supporting women is just being "wrapped up in their own shallow virtue".
If a true meritocracy is a function of the results from skills, what is the purpose in basing someone's qualifications on a biological characteristic that person can't control, which is way more removed from directly measuring the results from skills? The way they want to measure skill reminds me of this Quora answer from [programmer Gayle Laakmann McDowell](https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-great-engineers-dont-wear-designer-jeans):
>Not only was his statement ridiculous and wrong, but it's also sexist, possibly heteronormative, and contradictory. Look at his full statement:
>
>"*You shouldn’t judge people by the stylishness of their clothing*; quality people often do not have quality clothing. Which leads to a general observation: Great engineers don’t wear designer jeans. So if you’re interviewing an engineer, look at *his jeans*. There are always exceptions, of course. But it’s a surprisingly good heuristic."
>
>First, he starts off saying that you shouldn't judge people by their clothing. But then he goes on to say precisely how you *should* do that. Contradictory.
>
>Second, by saying "his jeans," he's assumed the great engineers are male. Sexist.
>
>Third, he's failed to consider cultural / background differences by assuming that designer jeans imply prioritizing fashion above coding. This is ridiculous on several levels:
>
>\- There's no tradeoff one needs to make. Caring about fashion doesn't mean that you can't care about good code.
>
>\- There are reasons to wear designer jeans that aren't about fashion. I wear "designer jeans," but I do not care about designer labels *at all*. Why do I wear designer jeans then? Because they're the only ones that fit. I'm tall and designer jeans are made longer.
>
>\- He fails to realize that some people live in a world where fashion *actually matters* more. For example, fashion tends to matter more for women; they're judged more on their appearance and fashion sense. This might also apply to gay men.
>
>I've heard many people's "heuristics" on identifying great engineers; none of them (including much more reasonable things, like school name and GPA) have been shown to work at all. But the type of *jeans* someone wears is the way to identify talent? I'll believe that when I see some real, solid evidence.
>
>Stephen Cohen was basically saying that great engineers only come in the stereotypical socially awkward, geeky male form. Hopefully we all know that that's far from true.
> An entire thread worth of people arguing about what odds OP should give instead of ever mentioning how sexist their position is. .... Literally no one in the entire thread calls the idea that all women are less qualified sexist.
Working class shill mentioned the inherent sexism 2.5 hours before you posted this.
Within the rules of the betting (put your money where your mouth is) framework the odds are very important. If the poster is so certain then they should offer good odds. If they aren’t so certain, and offering good odds, then the post should be removed for waging the culture war, as to the rules of the sub.
They said it might not be abandoning meritocracy, but they're unwilling to call it sexism. That's troubling coming from a community that has no difficulty repeatedly calling jokes about white people racism.
That's what happens when entertaining bad faith dialogue is considered part of opening one's mind to unusual ideas (i.e. being contrarian for its own sake) as opposed to an example of the [Paradox of Tolerance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance). There's nothing to learn from extending tolerance to anyone debating your personhood.
A poster
points out that Republicans have only ever nominated white males,
and even the Democrats have only twice nominated a candidate who was
only either white or male, so claiming the Democrats are the enemies of
meritocracy for possibly nominating another woman seems bizarre. This is
the entirety of the response from the OP:
Terrible interpretation. I’d make a bet that you’re a conflict
theorist if I could.
Gasp! Not a conflict theorist! DOUBLEPLUS UNGOOD! THOUGHTCRIME IN
PROGRESS!
Women running in 2018 stand out from their male opponents in a few
important ways. For instance, women this year are more likely than men
to have previous experience as elected officials, especially if they’re
running for higher-profile roles, like governor or senator. Fifty-six
percent of the women who are running for governorships have previous
experience as elected officials, compared with just 37 percent of men
running for governor. In Senate races, the difference is even larger —
80 percent of women running for Senate have previously held elected
office, compared with just 22 percent of men.
> It comes across as "nobody over the age of three says 'poop' when they're swearing, so she's either tidying up her language massively in order to maintain a particular image to sell to her constituents, or she thinks we are going to believe her, neither of which seems to respect the intelligence of the viewers much".
Rationalist A having a perfectly normal descent into a spiral of paranoia.
The fact that a male candidate could be nominated at all shows that
the DNC has abandoned all meritocracy. After all, why would you nominate
someone who is magnitudes more likely to commit murder, rape, and
robbery and is ruled by a chemical that makes them angry, irrational,
and impulsive? Obviously it’s all wrapped up in shallow virtue and
testosterone.
It’s even more funny when you consider a lot of the elements of that
community who kayfabe as Democrats support Andrew Yang, who I’m sure is
a nice dude but has no experience whatsoever.
Yeah, actually the weirdo fascist TrannyPorn0 dude finally admitted, in somewhat Petersonian fashion that it wasn't a "real" truth but a "cultural" truth that "crying wolf" is a thing. The rest just rested on their laurels and decided that I was an idiot for trying to request a mechanism by which "calling Trump a racist" would make "calling a Klansman" a racist untenable.
Honestly these people are so fucking stupid it's unbelievable. Scott Alexander included.
If anybody thinks that calling Donald Trump a racist in spite of his tweeted enjoyment of a fucking Trump Tower taco bowl diminishes the power of the word "racist" they should, on standard SSC principles, be excluded from the fucking gene pool for contributing to the alleged dysgenic effects of letting people with bad opinions contribute to society.
You could have just let me actually post and rebut all the irrational talking points at rSSC instead of banning me and deleting my posts for being too economically left wing. If the mods weren't so biased they would have an easier job.
[deleted]
This post (and the replies) are a perfect microcosm of what’s wrong with rationalism. We’ve got:
The rationalist obsession with betting.
Identifying as a “leftist” even though you believe that nominating any woman at all could never happen on the merits of that woman.
An entire thread worth of people arguing about what odds OP should give instead of ever mentioning how sexist their position is. One of the objections to OP’s position include “it could just be that women vote for women because ingroup bias”. Literally no one in the entire thread calls the idea that all women are less qualified sexist.
The idea that progressives supporting women is just being “wrapped up in their own shallow virtue”.
A poster points out that Republicans have only ever nominated white males, and even the Democrats have only twice nominated a candidate who was only either white or male, so claiming the Democrats are the enemies of meritocracy for possibly nominating another woman seems bizarre. This is the entirety of the response from the OP:
Gasp! Not a conflict theorist! DOUBLEPLUS UNGOOD! THOUGHTCRIME IN PROGRESS!
A surge of women candidates in the mid-terms and young Democrat women leading the anti-Trump energy inside and out of the Democratic Party.
But nooooooo, a woman candidate is an abandonment of meritocracy. /s
EDIT: And for the record, the claim that there’s a lack of experienced women candidates is just false.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-primaries-candidates-demographics/
My favourite was this bonanza in which the rationalists completely fail to recognise that Elizabeth Warren is joking.
Have we checked whether SSCers have actually been aliens all along?
Edit: Another fantastic gem from OP.
The fact that a male candidate could be nominated at all shows that the DNC has abandoned all meritocracy. After all, why would you nominate someone who is magnitudes more likely to commit murder, rape, and robbery and is ruled by a chemical that makes them angry, irrational, and impulsive? Obviously it’s all wrapped up in shallow virtue and testosterone.
Yes, we see what exactly this sort means by “meritocracy”.
It’s even more funny when you consider a lot of the elements of that community who kayfabe as Democrats support Andrew Yang, who I’m sure is a nice dude but has no experience whatsoever.
Still thinking about that time I went into /r/SSC to ask them why they believed in “You are still crying wolf” tbh
They should nominate a man who has a lot of experience like Bob Avakian.