the original post, featuring a preamble added later to clarify that he’s not a Trump fan but he still believes Trump is neither a racist himself nor an associate of racist activists, and will not take down the post till that changes.
Trump’s racist thing du jour: telling four nonwhite Congresswomen to go back to their “broken and crime infested” countries. Three of them were born and raised in the US.
a fresh summary of points you might consider if you were seriously trying to resolve this question (more, more, more)
solid proof that Alexander’s own example of an Actual Racist, former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, is also actually not a racist. according to the standard “you can’t be a racist unless you say you’re a racist” test
if this is how you calibrate your witch-meter then it should be no surprise when your fanclub is a coven
To be fair, three of them were born in a racist, broken, crime-infested country.
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Might be my computer but the archive.fo links don’t work.
Scott Alexander would never actually admit any fault on this. At best he’ll quietly edit the original article to make it appear more guarded. He’s done this to old articles before.
ok what the fuck, you didn’t even link to my two greatest “You Are Still Crying Wolf” hits
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8zliwe/the_sneerer_enters_the_den_of_rationalists/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8vswlt/you_are_still_crying_wolf_has_been_updated/e1pzkey/
supplementary material:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/8vswlt/you_are_still_crying_wolf_has_been_updated/e1q0qf0/
He even admits as much in the latest Open Thread.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/14/ot132-open-shed/
I kind of thought Scott had a point when he originally wrote that, but c’mon. After Charlottesville and “many sides, many sides” it was undeniable that Trump was knowingly emboldening & cozying up to white supremacists. After yesterday’s remarks, it’s undeniable that the dude has some pretty fucked-up racist ideas himself.
And actually you can turn Scott’s “small numbers” argument right back on him. On LGBT issues and reproductive rights, you can argue Trump has made a cynical alliance with evangelicals (of whom there are a few dozen million). On white nationalism… why the hell would he fake being into that to win the support of a hundred thousand crazies? Why would he keep carrying water for them unless he actually thinks these guys are a-OK?
This was the very post that turned me from a SSC’er to a sneerer. It’s gotten even worse with age and Scott doubling down on it!
This “you’re still crying wolf” post is what made me give up on making fun of the rationalist folks directly. The main rationalist I know is of the open-borders libertarian variety and posted something that was basically like “closed borders are racist.” I took the opportunity to fuck with him and simply posted “you’re crying wolf” with a link.
I figured he’d recognize that he was trying to thread the tiniest needle in the world and agree that we could call things racist. I was planning to use this for future mockery of him, but instead he doubled down on the post and I opted not to talk to him further. I don’t know if he stopped reading halfway down because all he did was echo back the first half of the piece: Obama drone striked people! Trump might be racist - I don’t know, who can say? There’s no advocacy here, just intellectual Turing tests (yes, this is an actual phrase he used repeatedly about adopting rationalist beliefs that were contrary to mainstream ones).
He didn’t bother to explain how his posts conformed with Scott’s post, especially the “Stop…” section, or how he did not fail this intellectual Turing test. He actually just straight up defended the piece. I left him with Scott’s apt words:
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