This article was bad enough that the comments on the blog and
subreddit are openly
sneering at him over it:
Based on this essay, Scott seems to operating under Fairy Truth
rules, where it’s fine to be as misleading as you like so long as each
of your individual sentences has some possible interpretation which is
technically true, (e.g. you’re allowed to say “Your brother did not die
by my hand” if you kicked him to death).
that description of Fairy Truth is how rationalists have *long* operated, and has long been Scoot's fans' standard justification for his strings of blatant dog whistles
I wonder whether the frequent deployment of motte and bailey is down
to accidentally arguing yourself out of your original position while
being pathologically incapable of admitting it.
"Black magic is real! Hillary is a literal demon from hell! Frogs! I actually looked better in the second image!" - Alex Jones
I see no problems with the above - Scottstar.
The frogs thing actually had some loose basis in fact, though. It was a disaster for frog scientists, because whenever they taked about their work, people would recognize the idea from Alex Jones clips they'd seen and think the scientists were quacks. Hilariously, Alex Jones has in turn criticized David Ike for discrediting legitimate issues (issues like black magic, I guess. Jones' idea of legitimate is pretty idiosyncratic.) by tying them in to his lizard people theory.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/#:\~:text=Working%20with%20the%20African%20clawed,and%20male%20(testes)%20gonads.
[Lol](https://old.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/zwzhbd/slatescott_is_even_getting_lazy_about_justifying/j1yld4d/) I know, I talked about the frog things and linking it to this shit while ignoring context before.
E: in a way what Scott is doing here is something he actually argued against re free speech and inviting all the crazy rightwingers to college campuses, destroying the commons. But guess the free speech commons are more important to him than science.
The exchange with bakkot in the comments is
eye-opening. In his eyes, InfoWars saying “the president’s birth
certificate is a hoax” isn’t a lie, because they’re stating a conclusion
that they came to through reasoning and it’s, I guess, not their fault
if that reasoning is flawed? What a disingenuous prick.
I can’t link directly to the comment thread, but you can search for
this text:
Disagree. They’re stating their conclusion and the evidence
that
led to their conclusion. Their conclusion is wrong, but not a lie
or
“them making things up”, just an incorrect inference.
Gonna make a prediction here, because if you read Scott's comments on this thread (I couldn't stop!) he's leaning *heavily* into the "InfoWars seem like good people who maybe believe their own bullshit" narrative. For instance, in response to "We know Alex Jones is a liar because he admitted it under oath" he replies:
>What do you think of the claim that Alex Jones admitted he waslying about Sandy Hook because he was under lots of financial and legalpressure to do so?
I'm not going to reply on the thread, because that'd be giving him more subscribers, but the obvious answer is: in that case he'd be lying under oath, dipshit.
Anyway, Scott is going to bat **hard** for InfoWars specifically, which makes me think he's trying to carve himself out a slice of that pie and is testing the waters here. I imagine he gets more subscribers the more he leans into his identity as "the respectable face of reprehensible politics" and is probably weighing how many subscribers he stands to lose vs. gain if he goes further and tries to position himself as "InfoWars for intellectuals".
EDIT FOR ACTUAL PREDICTION: I expect to see at least one thinly-veiled "InfoWars is good, actually" article on Scott's site within the next three months.
I argued that, although the media is often deceptive and misleading,
it very rarely makes up facts. Instead, it focuses on the (true) facts
it wants you to think about, and ignores other true facts that
contradict them or add context.
Is this Scott telling on himself?
One very basic point: the headline, and in fact every other point
made in the story, is technically true, in the sense that Senator Rand
Paul did claim this.
I know this isn't a NSFW post but something about rationalist style writing always rubs me wrong. The style shouldn't exist naturally. Who on Earth, besides conservative think tankers, goes nearly their entire article before daring to make their full point?
What is Scott even arguing? He's not saying that you *can't* distinguish truth from falsehoods, he's confident that the Obama birth certificate is authentic due to his "priors" (he's correct because he's correct?). He also seems' to be claiming that no news is made with purposeful bias, a claim which I don't think is correct or can be proven, and I'm not reading more of his rambly articles to see how he supports that belief. We're supposed to keep his bespoke "I'm not like other internet bloggers" ideas in mind for...some reason, but even if he were correct I don't see how this changes anything about fact checking debate because the strawman he's attacking doesn't really exist.
The best you can do with this blog post is continue to have the same arguments about online fact checking, but now you can beat off to the nuance porn in your head? What a waste of time.
> I know this isn’t a NSFW post but something about rationalist style writing always rubs me wrong. The style shouldn’t exist naturally. Who on Earth, besides conservative think tankers, goes nearly their entire article before daring to make their full point?
Dying wizards
Elizabeth Sandifer's article on Siskind's style is still relevant:
https://en.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/lo6g1g/the_beigeness_or_how_to_kill_people_with_bad/
I think the general goal of his writing style is that he's trying to make people who won't agree with him stop reading out of confusion and boredom before they find out what he's even trying to say. It makes it harder to criticize his positions because figuring out what they are is such a slog, but his fans will happily follow the laborious winding path.
Jesus, this is bad.
On the subject of election lies, Scott picks a statistical claim by Rand Paul instead of the literally hundreds of stories about bussing votes in or dead people voting that have zero evidence for them. How the fuck are these guys so bad a basic epistemology?
Alex Jones strikes me as the kind of person who doesn't distinguish different factual claims by them being true or untrue as much as whether or not it gets him attention.
“ Meth is one helluva drug” - Alex Jones, according to an inside source, who has worked with Mr.Jones for several years at Infowars, who wishes to remain anonymous.
This article was bad enough that the comments on the blog and subreddit are openly sneering at him over it:
Just delightful!
I wonder whether the frequent deployment of motte and bailey is down to accidentally arguing yourself out of your original position while being pathologically incapable of admitting it.
[deleted]
The exchange with bakkot in the comments is eye-opening. In his eyes, InfoWars saying “the president’s birth certificate is a hoax” isn’t a lie, because they’re stating a conclusion that they came to through reasoning and it’s, I guess, not their fault if that reasoning is flawed? What a disingenuous prick.
I can’t link directly to the comment thread, but you can search for this text:
Is this Scott telling on himself?
…he can’t be serious??
the post
Erm, does he not realize that infowars just lies? It really is that simple with them, they make shit up all the time.
Infowars very consciously makes stuff up on a routine basis
Scott and Bailey is a good show actually and it should be kept away from ratbros.
His argument returns null. Any exception handling for that?