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Scott Alexander is too dumb to distinguish between the sources in a US news article, a right-wing think tank, and a non-partisan think-tank -- so he can't make up this mind! IS this what "independent" voters are? The actually stupid who imagine themselves smarter than 'both sides'? (https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/j9kxl0/my_california_ballot_2020/g8pi6i8/)
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Even better: the author of the blog post on the Heritage Foundation site arguing that predominantly black high schools are just as well funded as predominantly white schools is none other than Jason Richwine – who was later fired from Heritage because of his racist views and ties to white nationalism.

But duh duh duh, Scott doesn’t know any better.

A little further down the thread he muses about how there must be an underlying factor that causes black students performance to be worse than their white peers. But instead of the obvious conclusion "a centuries long history of discrimination that still massively influences peoples lifes today" he wanders of to some related but largely irrelevant point. Leftist positions are so alien to him, they don't even cross his mind when trying to explain social phenomena. > That's a complicated question, but we know that even within single schools there are striking performance differences between the white and black students, so whatever causes those would cause the across-school differences too. > I don't know how much of the gap is explained by within-school vs. between-school factors.
"That's a complicated question" is a total cop out non-answer. Of course it's complicated! Read some fucking history or sociology or whatever.
Not to mention richswine got his PhD at Harvard for a dissertation called “IQ and immigration policy“, in a subject called public policy.
>Jason Richwine

He knows the difference, he’s just using them to show what he thinks is the spectrum of acceptable thought.

The problem is that the mainstream news, as well as the “tax policy center” and everything else connected to Brookings, all have an extremely neoliberal, pro-capitalist, pro-war bias. While the Heritage Foundation is nazis wearing spectacles.

And maybe that is the range of accepted thought in the US. Which is kind of the whole problem – a problem Scott has never seemed particularly interested in. Which is baffling to me. There is a whole world of thought between the left and the centre that gets zero voice in American discourse.

Urban institute and EPI exist too and are to the liberal and further left respectively. Brookings being the one centrist Democrats listen to is an issue, but Progressive caucus and beyond have better thinktanks
But those are 2 against the fleets of right-wing think tanks. And I wouldn't even say Urban is that left wing.
That’s what I said, Urban is liberal-left, EPI is further left because it is the unions’ chosen thinktank As the Democrats become more progressive, there will be a demand for different types of leftward policy and I think more thinktanks will form. Economics departments like those in UMass-Amherst and UMKC are distinctly leftward too, more universities may make departments like those.

The actually stupid who imagine themselves smarter than ‘both sides’?

apparently yes ;)

Hey I posted that here to point and laugh at it
I wasn't serious, it was just a silly reference back to something we sneered at before. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Some people are so open-minded their brains fall out

it’s those enlightened rationalists

they’re “some people”

> Some people are so open-minded their brains fall out This is Scott's motto, whether he knows it or not.

Scott Alexander is too dumb

Yes.

This is a prime example of how rationalists are basically parrots that lack even basic critical thinking skills. This dude is legit willing to just know those citations exist then just drop them all, but unwilling to actually read them and make up his mind. Like, this pretense of neutrality is just so dumb.

Undecided voters are basically Pakleds.