Happy Birthday Elon Twitter
We're almost at the one-year anniversary of Elon Musk taking over Twitter X. How have your predictions fared? I'll answer below.
ymeskhout
8mo ago
Ohio Republicans' Inexplicable & Baffling Abortion Blunder
I support expansive abortion access purely as a matter of practical considerations because of how legal prohibitions encourage horrific black market alternatives. I part ways with the pro-choice crowd when they respond to a difficult morality question with flippant dismissal. So at least from that standpoint, I sympathize with the earnest pro-life crowd because they're helplessly witnessing what is (by their definitions) a massive genocide made worse by the fact that it's legally-sanctioned.
So if you're in that unenviable position, what are your options? The major practical problem is that abortion restrictions have been and continue to be extremely politically unpopular. The Dobbs decision generated a lot of what basically amounted to legislative reshuffling at the state level. Some states had trigger laws banning abortions, that awakened from their long slumber only for courts, legislatures, or voter referendums to strike them back down to sleep.
Ohio's law banning abortions when a fetus heartbeat could be detected (typically occurs within 6-7 weeks of pregnancy) was struck down by a court last year, and so currently abortions there are legal up until "viability" (typically understood to be 22 weeks). On top of that, a referendum was set to be voted on this upcoming November election which would solidly enshrine abortion access within the Ohio state constitution (worth noting that this is the only referendum on the ballot). Given where public opinion is at on this issue, the amendment is virtually guaranteed to be approved by voters. What can you do to stop this train?
Ohio Republicans responded in a very bizarre and inexplicable manner (part of a pattern it seems). Apparently aware that the November referendum was going to be a shoe-in, they organized a whole special election in August as a preemptive maneuver to increase various thresholds for constitutional amendments, including raising the passing percentage from 50% to a 60% supermajority. That measure failed in the special election held yesterday, with 57% of voters against it.
Where to start? First, asking voters to vote against themselves was always going to be a challenge, and Elizabeth Nolan Brown notes the rhetoric supporters of Issue 1 had to resort to:
One talking point has been that it protects the Ohio Constitution from out-of-state interests. (For instance: "At its core, it's about keeping out-of-state special interest groups from buying their way into our constitution," Protect Women Ohio Press Secretary Amy Natoce told Fox News.) Another has been that it signals trust in elected officials to safeguard citizen interests, rather than letting a random majority of voters decide what's best. (The current simple-majority rule for amending the state constitution "sends the message that if you don't like what the legislature is doing, you can just put it on the ballot, and soon the constitution will be thousands of pages long and be completely meaningless," Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, told Politico in a prime example of this tack.)
Some of the TV ads the supporters ran were so incoherent. I don't know how representative this particular example is but the 30-second spot avoids saying anything at all about abortion and instead argues that voting yes on Issue 1 would somehow...protect kids from trans drag queens in schools? The fuck? I guess they knew that "vote yes on Issue 1 to keep abortion restricted" wasn't going to be a winning message so this tangent was the only option.
Even if somehow Issue 1 had anything to do with gender identity indoctrination in schools or whatever (if anyone can explain this please do!) it bears repeating that the only referendum on the ballot in November was about enshrining abortion access. Voters are dumb but they're not that dumb.
Just this last January Ohio Republicans passed HB 458 which eliminated almost all August special elections, but then they insisted on passing another law walking that back specifically to make sure Issue 1 got its very own election. The gambit apparently was to help its chances by leveraging low voter turnout in special elections. This too is baffling, because the timing gimmick very likely energized the "Democrats' highly educated neurotic base" as my boy Yglesias so eloquently put it. Also, the type of voter that is willing to show up to a special election is not going to be the type that is inclined to wrest control away!
None of these decisions made any sense. By investing into a preemptive referendum to raise the threshold, they loudly advertised they knew their issue was going to lose in November. By carving out an exception for an August election, they demonstrated they knew they couldn't win unless they act like a Turkish ice cream man with voters. By conspicuously avoiding talking about abortion, they're acknowledging their policy position's unpopularity.
I'm again acknowledging that the pro-life crowd faces an unenviable challenge in advocating for their position, and clearly their attempts at persuasion over the last several decades have not been panning out. But who actually thought the blatant gimmickry described above was actually going to work? All it did was showcase how weak they must be if the only tool in their arsenal was comically inept subterfuge.
ymeskhout
1yr ago
You might recall that an adjunct professor was let go from Hamline University after a Muslim student complained about a depiction of the prophet Muhammad shown in class. The immediate responses were not terribly surprising to me. Given past incidents, I assumed that college administrators would have an interest towards affirming the student's complaint, no matter how unreasonable it was. This panned out, with the university president issuing a very bizarre statement where she presented non-sequiturs like:
To suggest that the university does not respect academic freedom is absurd on its face. Hamline is a liberal arts institution, the oldest in Minnesota, the first to admit women, and now led by a woman of color. To deny the precepts upon which academic freedom is based would be to undermine our foundational principles.
What do the demographics of the university president have to do with academic freedom? Fuck if I know.
Similarly, I also assumed that non-profit organizations would have an interest to bolster their profile by seizing upon the incident. This too panned out, with the local Minnesota Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter condemning the professor as Islamophobic. The local chapter's executive director even dismissed the fact that the professor went out of her way to add a content warning and said "In reality a trigger warning is an indication that you are going to do harm."
Since then, things have changed. First, the national CAIR organization felt the need to step in and rebuke the local chapter, and issued a (tepid) defense of the scorned professor. Then, Hamline University faculty just voted overwhelmingly (71-12) to ask the president to step down. For a defense of freedom of expression, the statement they issued is (at least on its face) pretty good.
Both of these developments surprised me, and it made me wonder whether this is a sign of a potential turning point on the topic of suppressed freedom of expression on campus.
ymeskhout
1yr ago
Fascinating article on the apparent controversy of naming a telescope after James Webb, former head of NASA throughout the 60s (content warning: NYT).
Broadly speaking, Webb is accused of anti-gay bigotry. There does not appear to be any dispute that the US government, as part of investigating federal employees who were suspected of being Communists during the red scare, also fired employees accused of being gay (estimated to be around 5k-10k total over 20 years). The origin of tying the accusation directly to Webb appears to have been borne out of a misreading:
But as the telescope neared completion, criticism flared. In 2015, Matthew Francis, a science journalist, wrote an article for Forbes titled “The Problem With Naming Observatories for Bigots.” He wrote that Mr. Webb led the anti-gay purge at the State Department and that he had testified of his contempt for gay people. He credited Dr. Prescod-Weinstein with tipping him off, and she in turn tweeted his article and attacked Mr. Webb as a “homophobe.” Those claims rested on misidentification and that portion of Mr. Francis’ article has been deleted without notice to the reader. Mr. Francis declined an interview. As Dr. Oluseyi discovered and NASA’s report confirmed, it was not Mr. Webb but a different State Department official who oversaw the purge and spoke disparagingly of gay Americans.
So someone made a claim and someone else looked into that claim and conclusively found the evidence lacking. Research isn't easy and it's reasonable to expect some mistakes, and I find nothing embarrassing or humiliating about just admitting error. But instead of just conceding their belief rested on a faulty premise, the Webb-is-a-bigot crew refused to let go of their favored conclusion and went searching for other reasons why they were right all along.
In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order that essentially barred gay Americans from federal employment. It applied to all federal agencies and remained in effect throughout the 1960s, when Mr. Webb led NASA. In 1963, police arrested a NASA budget analyst, Clifford Norton, in an anti-gay sting in Washington. He was forced out of his job. Critics say Mr. Webb stood silent. Mr. Odom’s report for NASA, however, found no evidence Mr. Webb knew of this case in an agency of many thousands. In any event, he would have had no good option, said James Kirchick, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. “It is unimaginable that a high-level functionary would have stepped in and blocked a broad federal law that applied to every agency,” he said.
And of course, people tried to come up with other reasons why a telescope should not be named after Webb:
Sarah Tuttle, an astrophysicist at the University of Washington, characterizes the question of whether Mr. Webb was a homophobe as unanswerable and a distraction. The point, she said, is that the bar should be set higher. Previous telescopes were named after physicists and astronomers — Edwin Hubble and Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Why not name in that tradition? “This controversy should restart the discussion about why on earth this telescope is named after him,” said Jason Wright, a Penn State astrophysicist who signed the critics’ petition.
Things got especially dark for Oluseyi, the guy who fact-checked the original claim. First they claimed his fact-check was an ill-disguised attempt to justify historical homophobia, then rumors spread around academia of some sexual harassment and mishandling federal funds. And so on.
So that story is entertaining on its own right, but it's also an interesting examination of the best ways to respond when someone points out an error of yours. Speaking for myself as someone who jumps at the opportunity to self-label as an egotistical narcissist, it seems like adopting a regular habit of admitting mistakes is plainly self-serving. It's almost a cheat code for how well it can bolster one's credibility, and I don't understand why it's not more common.
The basic contours of being motivated to save face are obvious enough, sure, but the part that continues to be absolutely bewildering to me is that dogged stubbornness only makes you look worse! I'm guessing there must be some other benefit here (assuming, of course, people who refuse to admit error are behaving remotely rationally) but I can't understand it.
ymeskhout
1yr ago
Back in the 2020's polarizing summer of rage, there was a moment of outrage that was uncharacteristically unifying: The Smithsonian's "White Culture" infographic.
As I wrote at the time, the lessons imparted by this purportedly "anti-racist" infographic are virtually indistinguishable from what real life white supremacists would argue. The List immediately offended everyone and the Smithsonian quickly walked back, claiming it was misunderstood.
Fast forward to a few days ago when Ryan Grim published an exclusive interview with Tema Okun, the original creator of The List, claiming that everyone got it "all wrong." If the goal was to get me to click well it fucking worked because I listened to the entire podcast episode and...I have no idea in what way Okun's work was at all misinterpreted or otherwise gotten "wrong".
Let's start at the beginning. I previously tried to track down The List's origin but gave up after I only found xeroxed pamphlets. Turns out that Okun wrote The List in a fit of frustration, without any research whatsoever:
I went to a meeting and it was a very frustrating and horrible meeting. And I came home and I sat in front of the computer. And the article literally came through me onto the computer. It was not researched. I didn't sit down and deliberate. It just came through me. And I've never had that experience with my writing, before or since.
So she just pulled this out of thin air, but notice what she considers as validation that she was onto something (emphasis mine):
The tragic relevance of the list was reinforced a few years later when I was co-facilitating a workshop at a national conference of progressive attorneys and law students. We asked participants to work in small groups, looking for ways in which these characteristics show up in their personal and organizational lives. Asked to report, one young student spoke for her group, sharing that the list represents all the characteristics taught by law schools as essential to success in the profession. And that's exactly the point -- our institutions not only value these characteristics, they to some extent require them and constantly reproduce them in order to benefit from them, which is why they are so prevalent in our culture and institutions.
The burning question on my mind throughout, a curiosity Grim apparently does not share, is what makes any of this part of "white" culture? They finally try to address a concrete example, sort of, when they discuss how "urgency" as a value of "white culture" is lampooned. Grim sets the stage by citing examples of how The List is weaponized by bad actors seeking an excuse to shirk at work (e.g. "deadlines are white culture"). But as proof that urgency is a value of white culture, Okun cites a non-sequitur story about how some lawyers at a legal nonprofit got distracted from a anti-racist workshop to address an activist's arrest. The conceit on display here is jaw dropping, Okun is literally complaining about an emergency interrupting* her own anti-racist workshop*:
And when we as facilitators tried to say: Can we take a pause, and just sit down together and figure out what we're going to do in a way that meets this dynamic that we've just been talking about? The answer was: No, we don't have time, we can't possibly do that, we don't have time, no, no, no.
So in the middle of a workshop meant to help and support them to deal with the ways in which their culture was perpetuating racism, they were unable to stop. And that's what I mean by There's just the sense that things are so urgent, we can't possibly pause for anything. So we lose the ability to pause for anything. And people get run over in that situation. And it just keeps things in place.
I don't know if I'm stating the obvious here, but nothing about this tells us that "urgency" is bad per se, let alone how any of it is a value of "white culture" specifically. It seems at least possible that the activist's arrest was more important than her training, even from the narrow perspective of "perpetuating racism", but Okun appears incapable of entertaining that idea.
Ryan Grim is not someone I would have recognized as wary of critiquing leftist shibboleths, but I have no explanation for the uncharacteristic lack of pushback he displayed throughout the interview with Tema Okun. If anyone was looking for evidence that the DEI industry is and has been a sham with self-perpetuation as its primary measure of success, Okun's own words are the rotary excavator digging its hole.
ymeskhout
2mo ago
Conspiracy Investigation Done Right
In 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed into the ocean off the coast of Long Island, killing all 230 people on board. After an extensive four-year investigation, the NTSB concluded the explosion was caused by a short circuit ignition within the center fuel tank. Or at least that's the official story.
Now normally when you encounter a disclaiming phrase like that it tends to be a klaxon warning to strap in because you're about to hear some crazy shit about what really happened. I'm not going to argue for some crazy shit though, instead I want to showcase a real-life illustration on how to properly investigate and litigate what otherwise would be dismissed and derided as some crazy shit.
Someone (thanks Jim!) brought to my attention this pending lawsuit that aims to challenge the TWA 800 official narrative.[1] The basic summary you need to know is that, in contrast to the official story, the "alternative" narrative claims the airplane was hit by an SM-2 surface-to-air missile launched by the United States government during a weapons testing exercise. You can read the 38-page lawsuit complaint yourself where they allege:
Defendants [Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, US Government, etc.] negligently, recklessly, or intentionally authorized and conducted the testing of missiles in commercial airspace. As a result of these tests, a missile downed TWA 800 and killed Plaintiffs' decedents.
And humorously enough:
Defendants owed decedents and Plaintiffs a duty not to negligently test missiles in commercial airspace. Defendants breached that duty by negligently testing missiles in commercial airspace.
TO BE CLEAR: I find the overall claim to be extremely implausible based on Bayesian reasoning I'll get to later, but the focus here is less about delving into the specific allegations[2] and more about showcasing how one should go about uncovering a criminal conspiracy that otherwise sounds kooky on its face.
As far as I can tell, the law firm involved has a reputation for serious lawyers doing serious work. The complaint they filed directly addresses many procedural issues that would normally be a hindrance for these types of claims. For example, the major hurdle would be the statute of limitations given that the explosion took place in 1996 but the lawyers cite the fraudulent concealment exception based on some FOIA foot-dragging:
Specifically, key evidence confirming that a missile caused the crash of TWA 800 was hidden from the public and the victims' families for over 25 years. This evidence was only recently unearthed by Dr. Tom Stalcup in his hard-fought FOIA litigation, which has now been pending for over ten years....Before April 15, 2021, the Plaintiffs were not aware of, or on notice of, the information that forms the basis of this complaint, nor have the Plaintiffs had any reasonable opportunity discover their injury, its cause, and the link between the two.
The legal system relies on attorneys as an (imperfect) screening mechanism to separate valid claims from the torrential garbage. Before an attorney can rouse a court into examining a claim, Rule 11 requires them to affirm that the attorney has made reasonable efforts to investigate it themselves to make sure they're not just re-shoveling whatever bullshit their client dropped on their lap. The lawsuit offers specific allegations about which government agencies were involved in the cover-up, when the cover-up took place, and how it took place. A sample:
The FBI essentially froze the NTSB out of the investigation. The FBI removed all copies (original and duplicates) of Navy radar tapes from the Navy, placing them out of the NTSB's reach, and refused to allow the NTSB to conduct eyewitness interviews or review the FBI's records that indicated the true cause of the TWA 800 crash...the CIA concocted materials to discredit eyewitnesses who could confirm that TWA 800 had been downed by some kind of projectile. These materials included a video and animation that was displayed during a nationally-televised FBI press conference that attempted to reconcile the eyewitness testimony that the plane was struck by a projectile with the U.S. Government's official position that the crash was caused by a defect in the plane's center fuel tank.
They even pontificate on what might have prompted a rush towards testing live warheads over a populated area:
The Aegis System's radar also needed improvement in its ability to operate close to shore and to properly integrate into existing systems...These serious flaws could result in a missile striking an unintended target...Instead of waiting five years for ships to be properly constructed with the SPY-ID(V) [an advanced radar system] so that testing could be conducted far from congested air corridors and at established test ranges, the SPY-ID(V) was tested on an expedited basis in and around the CSEDS in New Jersey, in a highly congested area.
And they managed to track down evidence of missile testing right around the time and place of interest:
An electrician on the roof of a nearby Long Island hospital was filming the sunrise and captured the second missile witnessed by the Coastguardsman on his VHS camera [five days before TWA 800 went down]...on November 16, 1996, almost precisely where TWA 800 went down off Long Island, a Pakistani Airlines pilot reported to Air Traffic Control that a "rocket" rose in front of him and continued rising above his altitude.
I've only picked a sample, there's a lot more details in the complaint. In contrast to the persistent and arguably intentional vagueness found in many disdained conspiracy theories, I'm genuinely impressed by how comprehensive the lawsuit's claims are regarding who/how/why. They explain exactly which organizations are involved in the cover-up and the evidence behind that belief, which missile system brought the plane down and the evidence behind that, specific reasons for why live warhead testing took place in a busy air traffic corridor, and explanations for why it took so long to uncover all this.
If (again, arguendo) TWA Flight 800 was indeed brought down by reckless missile testing involving a live warhead and this was covered-up by the government, then the way this lawsuit is conducted is the best opportunity for legal redress. The legal system has serious and persistent deficiencies with its inability to offer all petitioners the relief they're owed, but certain rules and expectations it has developed over time are worthy of replication.
As a foil, the strengths of how the TWA 800 complaints are presented become more obvious when it's contrasted against another lawsuit whose deficiencies resulted in Rule 11 sanctions for the lawyers that filed it. In 2020, two Colorado attorneys filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of all registered voters in the country, and sought $160 billion in punitive damages, alleging the election was stolen from Trump.[3] Their 84-page complaint (plus a dozen affidavits) alleges that a wide roster of defendants (Dominion, Facebook, various state governors, and "1 to 10,000" as-of-yet unidentified co-conspirators) engaged in unspecified-but-definitely illegal conduct. For example, here's what one of the supporting affidavits claimed:
After much research and contemplation, it has come to my attention that the 2020 general election, and probably many more, have been compromised by a number of persons, including a corporation in the United States called Dominion Voting Machines, Inc., and others, such as, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan; and other individuals acting as governors and secretaries of state, including, Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger of Georgia, and Gretchen Whitmer and Jocelyn Bensen from Michigan.
Contrast this "research and contemplation" with the straightforward allegation of "The Navy and various defense contractors caused an airline explosion by deciding to test live warheads in a highly-populated area". The magistrate who ordered sanctions against the Colorado attorneys noted their conspicuous aversion to investigation:
It appears that Plaintiffs' counsel's process for formulating the factual allegations in this lawsuit was to compile all the allegations from all the lawsuits and media reports relating to alleged election fraud (and only the ones asserting fraud, not the ones refuting fraud), put it in one massive complaint, then file it and 'see what happens.'...Material, including affidavits, from other lawsuits was accepted at face value, with no apparent critical assessment. Mr. Fielder says he watched videos and listened to talk show interviews with some of the experts involved. He also says relied on his own many years' experience as a lawyer to "connect the dots."
Pro-tip: don't decide to file a lawsuit after listening to a podcast.
Back to the TWA 800 case, the central claim involving the US accidentally shooting down a passenger airline isn't impossible because it happened once in 1988 with Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 people on board. What's least plausible of all with TWA 800 is how the military, the defense contractors, and the law enforcement agencies involved managed a successful cover-up over so many people over such a long period of time.
There's an oft-utilized but facile heuristic that claims that if there was a cover-up, then someone would've leaked it, and so therefore no leak = no cover-up. This is unreliable because there plenty of government cover-ups that were successful, at least for a while. The Tuskegee Syphilis study went on for 40 years until an AP story in 1972. Operation Mockingbird, MKUltra, and COINTELPRO all took place in the 1950s but weren't exposed until the 1970s. Project SUNSHINE which involved collecting body parts from dead children to study radioactive fallout started in 1953, didn't become publicly known until 1956, and the full extent wasn't fully exposed until the 1990s.
However, the common elements with these schemes is that they all involved either a small number of conspirators, or had victims that no one really gave a shit about. None of this is reflected in Flight 800, its 230 dead, and the multiple entities implicated.
The incentive behind the cover-up doesn't make much sense either, because anyone helping with the cover-up has no way of knowing ahead of time whether it will remain under wraps, especially if perpetual silence relies on the cooperation of hundreds or thousands of people. You only need one leak and if the whole thing blows open, no one wants to be left holding the proverbial gun while everyone is pointing fingers at each other. Anyone at the decision fulcrum faces an obvious pay-off from defection that needs a serious countervailing cooperation pay-off to convince them into shouldering that level of culpability.
The lawsuit allegations also rely heavily on eyewitness testimony (though with some video corroboration), which is particularly unreliable and prone to suggestion when it involves widely publicized events like an airline crash. Lay witnesses who lack the appropriate specialized training and background are vulnerable to misinterpreting what they see or hear.
Implausible is still not the same as impossible, and crazier shit has happened before. If there's any validity to these wild claims at all, this lawsuit tees up a stellar attempt at uncovering the truth.
[1] I've long had an aversion to describing anything as a 'conspiracy theory' because it's often wielded as a discussion-terminating cudgel. Once the label is affixed, the very notion of scrutinizing, investigating, or grappling with the underlying claims is dismissed as a waste of time.
[2] The Flight 800 Wikipedia page has lots more of the technical details if you're so inclined.
[3] The two lawyers, Gary Fielder and Ernest Walker, were acting on their own and had no connection to Donald Trump or his campaign.
Much of the criminal justice systems operates on an assumption (or rather, an aspiration) that prosecutors and law enforcement should be trusted to carry out their duties honestly. While I don't believe this assumption is worth much, it's the reality we live in given the limited avenues for redress available. For one, prosecutors and judges have absolute immunity for misconduct, and law enforcement has qualified immunity for misconduct (which, practically speaking is basically absolute immunity with a few extra steps Edit: as @Gdanning mentions here, I significantly overstated the equivalence here). If you get fucked over by any of them, tough luck. Two, law enforcement has a close working relationship with prosecutors, and most judges are former prosecutors. Because of how the adversarial system is structured, there's a systemic bias against ruling in favor of defendants' (read: criminal's) rights. This is especially a problem when you consider that literally the only source of search and seizure precedent comes by definition from criminals asking a court to ignore damning evidence because it was illegally seized.
I just described a system where the levers of power are held by a fairly cloistered group of people, and it all skews heavily on the side against the meek defendant. There are indeed some attempts to artificially inject fairness into the system. Because civil lawsuits are assumed (not always reasonably) to involve two opposing parties on roughly equivalent footing, the evidentiary standard there is preponderance, which is basically 50% plus one. But for criminal trials, where it's the full weight of the government bearing down on a single person, it's beyond a reasonable doubt, which is basically you better goddamn be real fucking sure. Another difference pertinent for this post is what would be referred to as Brady obligations, where prosecutors are obligated to turn over every evidence which might be helpful to the defendant (who, unlike a civil litigant, has no equivalent obligation to the other side).
For the most part, verifying that a prosecutor has met their Brady obligations is near-impossible. Prosecutors are considered part of law enforcement, and they naturally have access to an entire universe of information which the other side will never see (for example, details about ongoing investigations which would tip off the subjects if it was revealed prematurely) so whether or not they've turned over every Brady material is an exercise in trust. I have to trust that the prosecutors aren't lying, and that they reviewed all the evidence they have and made a fair assessment on whether or not it's exculpatory. This is why virtually every Brady scandal involves exculpatory evidence that came to light accidentally. A fuck-up, in other words.
And oh man was there ever a fuck-up.
This happened this week during the jury trial of Ethan Nordean, a Proud Boys leader charged with seditious conspiracy stemming from his actions in January 6th. I haven't followed his case at all, but his defense attorney just filed this banger of a notice regarding the testimony of FBI agent Nicole Miller. As a government witness, Miller has an obligation to turn over any written statements she made regarding the subject of her testimony (this is known as a Jencks obligation). FBI agents use an instant messaging system called Lync, and Miller handed over a spreadsheet with 25 rows of Lync messages. Miller testified that this was her entire Jencks obligations, and she denied withholding any messages about Nordean's conspiracy charges, denied withholding any messages about whether anyone listened in on attorney-client calls, and denied withholding any messages about whether any reports (dear heavens) were falsified. And so forth. Miller just said no, absolutely not, no way.
Normally this is where the story would end, except Nordean's attorney revealed that the spreadsheet Miller had sent contained about a thousand hidden Excel rows, many of which absolutely one hundred percent directly contradicted Miller's testimony. For example, there were messages about:
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An agent asking Miller to edit a confidential informant report to remove mentioning the agent was present
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An agent reviewing attorney-client communication about trial strategy
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Agents openly expressing doubt about a Proud Boys leader's involvement in a conspiracy
And so on.
I'm certainly excited to see how Miller tries to get out of this vise. My assumption is that the prosecutor will dismiss charges against Nordean in a feeble attempt to make this go away (or a judge can do it for them, which is what happened with the Bundy ranchers).
It's certainly fucking funny that an FBI agent tried hiding Excel rows thinking they were deleted (this is known as the peek-a-boo fallacy). More seriously, FBI agents are acting this brazenly even though they're well aware how much public scrutiny is directed towards J6 cases. I think one can reasonably assume they'd have even fewer scruples in cases involving defendants no one gives a shit about.
Some jurisdictions (starting with North Carolina in 2004) have what's called an open-file discovery rule where everything in the case file (no matter how banal) is provided to the defendant by default. Tucker Carlson got access to and released footage of Jacob Chansley (aka QAnon shaman who was sentenced to 41 months in prison) calmly walking inside the capitol, which appears to contradict his charging documents. More relevantly, Chansley's attorney apparently never got that footage before. I assume the government will now argue that the footage they kept hidden wasn't that exculpatory but really, that should always be up to the defense attorney to decide.
Of course, even if open-file became the norm, law enforcement will get wise not to put incriminating statements on paper (hot tip: when doing FOIA requests, pay attention to any email or text that asks to speak on the phone about a sensitive subject). So beyond open-file discovery, I'd also keep riding my other cute little hobby horses and argue this is another reason to jettison qualified/absolute immunity. Anyone disagree?
ymeskhout
3mo ago
MonoPoly Restricted Trust
Two months ago (an eternity in podcasting, I know) I was on the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast to discuss polyamory with Aella and Eneasz, both of whom are hella fucking poly.[1] I favor monogamy without moral objection to polyamory, yet its appeal eludes me. Given the caliber of my interlocutors, I walked away feeling uncharacteristically frustrated with our conversation, largely because I think we lack a shared understanding of each other's vocabulary.
This post is a belated attempt to remedy the miscommunication, and not one that necessarily requires listening to the episode first (though it helps of course). I address the definition of polyamory, how we talk about 'restrictions' in relationships, and where trust comes from.
Return of the Antipodes
We started by rehashing my ongoing disagreement with Aella and her idiosyncratic definition of 'polyamory'. While this definition offers a new perspective, it's important to consider how it aligns with the broader understanding of polyamory and its impact on communication:
The definition of 'polyamorous' that I find cleanest, for me, is not forbidding your partner from having extra-relationship intimacy. It doesn't matter if they're acting on it or not, it doesn't matter if you don't feel like banging anybody else, as long as your partner could go have sex/love someone else if they wanted, then to me, that's polyamory.
I previously addressed why I really don't like this 'antipodal' re-definition, in contrast to the straightforward and commonly-accepted "the practice of or desire for multiple concurrent romantic/sexual relationships" understanding.[2] Aella has subsequently stated that her position is best expressed as a 2D chart, which nullifies a lot of my criticism. If you had to compress the spectrum down to just one, Aella favors the 'restriction' axis as more fitting while also acknowledging that some information is lost in the process. I agree that a chart allows for more nuance, but disagree with re-defining polyamory to focus away from the 'interested in many' axis for multiple reasons:
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The risk of confusion by the re-definition is very high
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The information conveyed by the re-definition is very low
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The 'restrictions-on-partner' framing can get incoherent
It's totally fine to use words with semantic ambiguity (e.g. light, right, match) when their meaning is clear enough in context (e.g. "You made the right choice by striking a match in the dim light"); and it's totally fine for Aella to want to express a perspective that doesn't align with mainstream understanding of polyamory. But it's really confusing to use a word with an obscure interpretation that forks away from its pre-existing common understanding. Consider the outrage if a politician ran on a platform of "green infrastructure" only to deliver oil refineries painted green. Sure, the election promise wasn't technically false, but the confusion is significant and foreseeable enough to deem it intentional.
The re-definition could be justified if it had compelling benefits, yet it ends up conveying less information. If someone said "I'm a vegetarian" everyone would interpret this as describing their personal abstention from eating meat. But if this person privately redefined 'vegetarian' to mean they're okay with others not eating meat, it shifts the emphasis from a direct expression of one's own attributes to an indirect reactive stance regarding others' choices, leading to a conversation that feels needlessly convoluted. It certainly can be relevant to know what the vegetarian will tolerate, but that's rarely ever the most relevant information. Similarly, if someone hitting on me tells me they're poly, my first thought would be "they have a desire for multiple relationships" and definitely not "if we were in a relationship, and if I had a desire for multiple relationships, this person is willing to tolerate me pursuing these relationships". What purpose could this circuitousness possibly serve?
It's trivial to conjure examples of how the 'restrictions-on-partner' framing devolves into incoherency. One man has a harem relationship with 50 women who he forbids them from seeing anyone else, while they're fine with him sleeping with whomever (If you're following along on the chart, he would be on the top left while they would be on the bottom right). The women are all considered "poly" according to Aella's 'restrictions' re-definition, but the man is not. If he wanted to expand the harem, seeking out "poly" women to add to the roster would be unnecessarily frustrating for everyone involved, because it's just not how people use the term.
One of Aella's objections to focusing on the traditional 'wanting multiple relationships' axis is that it isn't distinctive enough, since almost everyone has some semblance of that desire. This is true but flattens far too much. Her survey data is the gold standard here, and it does show mild interest in banging others among the monogamous.
There's a meaningful difference between an errant desire to bend the barista over the counter, and playing calendar tetris with a dozen of your secondaries, such that it doesn't make sense to cleave "want to pursue extracurricular intimacy" into a neat yes/no binary. There's no dividing line under the classic mono/poly definition, it's a gradient spectrum ranging from "fleeting thought" to "overriding purpose in life". Aella has written about how the 'restrictions' axis also falls along a spectrum (poly couples often have rules on condom use, emotional boundaries, or not fucking your partner's dad) which means it's not immune from her own criticism.
Overall I have a very high opinion of Aella's integrity and have no reason to believe she's intentionally duplicitous, but the re-definition appears motivated by propaganda purposes. She's very transparent about believing polyamory to be the more virtuous path in contrast to monogamy (as is her right!), and it's often useful to use language to influence social dictate, but no one has to agree with accepting terminology with baked-in beliefs. Remember how protestors against the Dakota Access Pipeline insisted they be referred to as 'water protectors'? Given the negative connotations attached to promiscuity (which, as a former slut myself, I neither share nor endorse) there appears to be an aversion to advertising 'polyamory' too much under the "wanting multiple partners" framing. Instead, it's marketed under the much more palatable "not wanting to restrict others" framing.
However, the same accusations of wielding definitions as an ideological cudgel could be fairly levied against me. She rightly pointed out that our primary concern should be the accuracy of the definition, rather than focusing excessively on avoiding ideologically charged framing.[3] When I was asked if polyamory did indeed place fewer "restrictions" on people, I said yes but as I'll expand upon in the next section, I'm retracting my answer because I don't believe we have the same understanding of the term "restriction". Otherwise I agree with prioritizing accuracy; I don't care what specific words we use so long as they're useful at conveying information to others.
The ultimate question for vocabulary choices should always be "Am I reasonably certain that my listener has the same understanding of this word that I do?" Based on the multiple reasons I outlined, the focus on 'restrictions' is too confusing and too ambiguous to pass this test.
I Want You to Want Me
Let's marinate into whether 'restrictions' is the best way to cleave the mono/poly dichotomy. Consider two scenarios:
-
You are cordially invited to contribute to a vegetarian-only potluck.
-
You are subject to criminal penalties under the Peter Singer world regime if you consume any sustenance of animal progeny.
The two pictures are not the same. Both, technically, describe 'restrictions', but this again flattens far too much under a single banner. The aforementioned "don't fuck my dad" rule used by poly couples is also a 'restriction', but it would be absurd if that's enough to void their polyamorous certification.
When Jonah Hill asked his then-girlfriend surfer Sarah Brady not to post bathing suit photos, he framed it as expressing his relationship "boundaries". Oh but isn't that just what a controlling abuser would say to whitewash his yoke? There's no bright line rule here, you can't delineate between "boundaries" and "abusive control" without having to conjure up an array of debatable and interpretative factors.
I was once in a monogamous relationship where my partner then expressed a strong desire to date other people. I had no desire to get in her way or otherwise be a hindrance, so I said "Ok!" and promptly broke up with her. I didn't tell her what she wasn't allowed to do, instead I unambiguously expressed my own interest in not wanting to be in a relationship with someone who has an active desire to fuck other people. Would skipping out on a vegetarian-only potluck because you're tired of quinoa count as a 'restriction' imposed upon the host? Under a very strict literal reading, sort-of-yes, but it's an incoherent use of the term that confuses more than clarifies.
The poly brigade's retort about how everyone wants to fuck other people doesn't fly. Granting that this desire widely exists, it does so on a spectrum of intensity. I've often found myself swept up by the nascent intoxication of a new situationship where the thought of pausing for a define-the-relationship talk seemed almost alien. My Tinder matches would be left fallow and rotting on the vine, because why bother? I want my partner to have the same overriding desire for me; not for them to reluctantly forgo others because of my say so. If I had to utter that kind of proclamation, it's probably too coercive.
When the county clerk stamped my marriage license recently, my touch neurons did not suddenly get cryptographically locked to only respond to my wife's DNA. I'm not pursuing hot people not because I somehow lost the ability to notice them, and I'm not fucking anyone else not because my wife forbids me, but because I just don't care to. My wife certainly could double-explicitly prohibit me from doing so, but that would be the equivalent of her forbidding me from taking up fly-fishing.
I wonder if there's a lack of imagination from both camps. I've had several casual dating periods, so I have some insight into the thrill and excitement of rotating through flings like a flipbook. But when I see my poly friends juggling a stable cadre of full-blown secondary relationships in addition to their primary, I feel vicarious exhaustion. I admit it, the energy devoted seems so excessive that I wonder how much of it is performative, motivated by the desire to showcase their apparent enlightenment,[4] or maybe it's to ensure they have enough board game partners. On the flip side, I wonder if they believe my assertions that I'm not interested in pursuing others to be genuine, or whether they assume I've been browbeaten by the dominating cultural narrative into accepting my imaginary handcuffs.
To be fair, the prevalence of cheating is very strong evidence that monos (especially men) are indeed dishonest about their desires for extra-relationship fucking, either because they're lying to themselves, or because they're willing to abandon this desire as a practical concession to finding a partner in a monogamy-dominated landscape. Honesty is good, and so I would heartily recommend polyamory to anyone who (for whatever reason) is irresistibly drawn towards breaking their exclusivity pledges. All this is also a strong indicator that polyamory is socially disfavored, so this potentially justifies using deliberate vocabulary re-framing as a balancing counter-force.
What is Trust? Baby Don't Hurt Me
Moving from the semantics of polyamory to its practical implications, let's delve into the pivotal roles of trust and jealousy in these relationships. The foundational problem we have to deal with here is humans' persistent proclivity towards lying, which remains because of how often it's personally advantageous to do so. Naturally, humans also developed a countervailing proclivity for detecting and dissuading dishonesty as a safeguard. It's impractical to live ensconced within an intractable and perpetual barrier of suspicion, so we have measures to let our guard down selectively.
Ideally we build trust over time through shared experiences and history, but there's also potential "trust shortcuts" such as costly signals and commitment rituals.[5] Basically, any actions that someone is unlikely to undertake unless they were genuinely committed count. In the context of romantic relationships, these can range from the extravagant (atrociously expensive weddings) to the mundane (introducing a new girlfriend to your friends). Though far from infallible, shortcuts retain some usefulness because the traditional method of building trust can be unreasonably and agonizingly slow.[6]
This nicely segues into the role of jealousy. It's considered a negative and disdainful emotion, and fair to say that the polyamorous are particularly proud of the cultural technology they've developed for dealing with it, but I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing here. If Alice sees her boyfriend Bob talking to Cindy and feels [negative emotion] in response, it could be a result of pure resentment (Alice hates seeing Bob receive attention from other women) or it could be a reasonable response to a lack of security and assurance (read: lack of trust). The problem is both variants (call them resentful vs rational) get shoved into the same "jealousy" laundry hamper without efforts to distinguish the two, and what would otherwise be a reasonable emotional response gets dirtied by proximity.
Consider another example with polyamorous couple Doug and Emma. They've been each other's primary partners for years and have mutually disclosed social security numbers. One day Emma jets off to Europe with a new fling without telling Doug, who only finds out about this through her LinkedIn updates. Upon her return she continues exhibiting increasingly detached behavior, spending less time with Doug and cancelling plans at the last minute with irreverent excuses, all while reassuring him he remains her top priority in life. Doug is no spring chicken and deploys an arsenal of polyamory tools as remedy (open communication, compersion seances, and even a meticulous line chart of their decreasing time together) but nothing works. Emma continues to reaffirm how important he is to her via garbled late-night texts, and Doug continues to feel [negative emotion].
Would anyone dispute Doug has valid reasons for trusting Emma less? Yes, she says he's a priority, but her actions indicate otherwise. He has ample reasons to believe Emma is gasp lying. Maybe she's not, perhaps this is all just a misunderstanding with an imminent denouement. But if Emma was indeed lying, what can be done to maintain the relationship? After such a grievous betrayal, it wouldn't be tenable for Doug to carry on as usual, nor would it be practical to proactively commit to the uncertainty of rebuilding trust via the traditional slow-burn accumulation. Only trust shortcuts --- within the grand lineage of romantic serenades perhaps --- are likely to be viable options here, if anything.
I never expected any of the above to be a point of contention, but it was! Again, humans routinely lie, especially about sex and relationships. Emma could have been lying to Doug about her commitment to their relationship just to stall for time until she meets an upgraded Doug replacement. Poly relationships commonly organize around having a primary partner, and even relationship anarchists necessarily express a hierarchy through the inescapable constraints of the attention economy, all of which are potential opportunities for trust to erode. Around 25 mins mark, I asked my poly interlocutors how to ensure someone isn't lying to you, their responses were a variant of "just trust them bro". Ok, but how? The point here is that trust cannot appear out of thin air, it has to come from somewhere,and this is true regardless if it's a polyamorous or monogamous relationship!
This is another area in particular where I worry that a polyamorous framing saturated with righteousness could lead one astray. If you've inculcated your lifestyle as inherently virtuous because "jealousy" is either non-existent or adequately contained, there's a risk of aligning all suspicion (not matter how reasonable) as inherently sinful or indicative of moral failing. Sometimes it's good to distrust.
We should use words that other people know the meaning of. We should avoid creating unnecessary ambiguity by flattening distinct phenomena under the same banner. Prioritizing clarity is particular important when dealing with something as complex as human relationships, whether polyamorous or monogamous.
Now, let's play some board games.
[1] Throwback to 2020 where I also discussed polyamory with Aella on episode 12 of The Bailey podcast.
[2] If you only trust our future robot overlord, here's also what chatGPT said: "It's fair to say that the definition of polyamory you provided is not widely accepted in its entirety. Polyamory, as commonly understood, involves more than just not forbidding extra-relationship intimacy. It typically includes aspects of ethical, open, and consensual engagement in romantic or sexual relationships with multiple partners. The definition you've provided focuses primarily on the aspect of non-restriction, which is a part of polyamory but doesn't encompass its full scope."
[3] At the 16mins mark, Aella said "I think the question should not be 'Are we trying to avoid virtuous framing?' but rather 'Is this accurate? Are poly people in fact placing fewer restrictions on their partners?'"
[4] I've also previously written in Cuckoldry as Status Jockeying about concerns with the way polyamory is framed socially, and how that might discourage transparency about one's desires.
[5] I take responsibility for contributing to the confusion with how I discussed 'costly signals' in relationships. The classic example of a costly signal is the peacock's extravagant tail, a reliable indicator of overall fitness precisely because it's so gratuitously expensive to maintain. When I described 'commitment rituals' as 'costly' on the podcast, I meant it in the sense that they impose social costs. Public declarations like pledge ceremonies and weddings "work" not because they physically prevent the oath-takers from subsequently breaking their commitments, rather the aspiration here is the pomp and circumstance of the ritual comes laden with sufficient social pressure to encourage ongoing compliance.
[6] The galaxy-brain take here is to tally up all the "trust shortcuts" we grudgingly rely upon on a daily basis and imagine how you'd cope without them: online product reviews, uniformed police officers, food safety inspection grades on restaurant windows, bank logos on ATMs, and on and on. The point is not that these shortcuts are infallible, they can and are indeed frequently exploited, but that's not enough to throw them all away.
ymeskhout
11d ago
The Happy Birthday Question
in which I write about HBD
The Rogue Fishermen
Back in my early public defender days, one of the niche misdemeanors I'd be periodically appointed to was for unlawful fishing. Typically the offense took place at a beach, involving someone harvesting dozens and dozens of shellfish beyond the allowable amount while a Fish & Wildlife officer hides in the trees with binoculars meticulously counting how many individual clams went into what particular bag. Out of the dozen or so cases I've handled, every single defendant —100%— was a Cambodian man.
Since the general population is not 100% Cambodian (let alone Cambodian men), a class of criminal defendants that is exclusively Cambodian is an undeniable example of a disparate outcome. We're missing a ton of vocabulary precision on this issue, so please bear with me but when I say race, I'm using it broadly to include ethnicity and basically any related phenotype. And when I say racial discrimination, I'm using it to mean discrimination based on race itself rather than discrimination on a collateral trait that may end up with a racial correlation.
Now if you want to pull a Kendi here, the only explanation for racial disparate outcomes is racial discrimination. This is always patently facile logic because 1) it doesn't do the work[1] in ruling out alternative explanations and 2) often requires accepting some questionable premises. For unlawful fishing you have to first assume that members of every race breaking fishing laws at exactly the same rate [citation needed], but racist officers use their binoculars not just to count clams but to ascertain who to single out for arrest. Or maybe it's racist prosecutors writing up indictments who scan through the police reports and dump any with non-Cambodian names into the wastebasket. Or maybe a combination of both.
I cannot accept the "because racism" conclusion unless I see strong evidence supporting the above premises, and because I haven't seen this evidence, I have no reason to accept the conclusion. See how easy it was? But if I reject this proposed explanation, does that mean I have my own explanation for the disparity? Nope! And crucially, I don't need one. Some of the contraband shellfish quantities involved seem way too high for just personal consumption, and so we wondered if the motivation was selling their haul to some less-than-scrutinizing restaurants. Maybe word spread among the Cambodian community that this was an easy scheme with lagging enforcement. Maybe they lacked the cultural understanding that a government would ever be interested in stopping you from picking up natural bounty off the ground. Or maybe individuals within the O-M122 haplogroup carried a particular genetic mutation which made them unable to resist the siren song of free clams on the beach.
I can't imagine anyone would ever endorse that last explanation, it's deliberately absurdist. The point stands; I don't need to hitch my wagon to any particular alternative explanation to reject the "because of racism" one, all I need to reject a theory is its own lack of supporting evidence.
Genetic Destiny
Genetics are extremely consequential. Our chromosomes hold an unyielding and elaborate blueprint that govern not just an overwhelming of who we are, but also of who our lineage could be eons into the future. Humans certainly exhibit a remarkable adaptability across a dizzying spectrum of environments and circumstances, and our infinitely more malleable cultural memetic evolution deserves credit for turbocharging our advancement beyond the confines of our languorous flesh and blood. But this demonstrable flexibility can never refute the harsh unyielding control our DNA commands over certain domains. If your assembly instructions includes a third copy of chromosome 21, you will have Down syndrome and, however much we might wish otherwise, no amount of nurture will ever reverse that nature. Such is life.
Just like any other organism subject to natural selection, humans exhibit differences from each other on a multitude of heritable traits. Evolution cannot occur without variability after all, and sometimes you end up with agglomerated clusters. For example, the sickle cell gene is highly prevalent among populations from Sub-Saharan Africa because it provided a protective advantage against malaria, which just so happens to be best transmitted by mosquitos, which just so happens to favor tropical regions, which just so happens to advantage higher melanin levels for UV protection in humans. Through this complex chain of coincidental correlations, you end up with the fact that having black skin is highly predictive of sickle cell anemia risk.
That humans exhibit physical differences, across both short and long timescales (whether lactose tolerance within 10 thousand years or bipedalism across 4 million years), is tediously and trivially true. But there's absolutely no reason to believe that the same natural selection process that created such physical diversity would somehow treat mental traits as untouchable. Or as they say, evolution is not relegated to only from the neck down.
The Pretextual Charade
Acknowledging the undeniable reality that humans exhibit biological diversity is the weakest and least controversial definition of what is euphemistically called human biological diversity, or HBD for short. There's nothing ever wrong — neither in principle nor in practice — with studying the kaleidoscope that is the human genome and documenting any apparent patterns. The problem is that the HBD label attracts roughly two different camps of devotees with wildly divergent aims.
One camp is best exemplified by my old economics professor and friend Bryan Caplan. Caplan is a principled libertarian and an earnest academic who believes that IQ is highly heritable and enormously consequential, beliefs that I myself hold just as fervently. Setting aside how amorphous and arbitrary racial categories are, I also believe there's likely some relationship between certain racial groups and average [insert your favorite cognitive trait].[2] The other camp is best described by Caplan himself:
In my experience, if a stranger brings up low IQ in Africa, there's about a 50/50 chance he casually transitions to forced sterilization or mass murder of hundreds of millions of human beings as an intriguing response.
Go down deep enough the HBD rabbit hole and you'll easily encounter extended mythology about how members of the white race on average are genetically predisposed towards everything from being on time to meetings, to democracy. Start with an arbitrarily-designated geographic line that is putatively about female nuptiality, but also more-or-less fits your list of favored European stock (sorry Ireland) and there's no shortage of just-so stories that you can assemble by spotting associations through Vaseline-smeared spectacles.[3]
But let's assume the truth of the most extreme version of the above: white people on average are better on every relevant conceivable metric that is conducive to a thriving society. Now what? The fixation on group averages rather than individual merit remains baffling.
Consider how the average male is undeniably significantly stronger than the average female. But while sex is indeed highly predictive of physical strength, it isn't determinative and inevitably some females will be stronger than some males. If you were screening for a job that required the ability to lift 100lbs, screening for "men only" would for sure be better than picking candidates at random, but it also means turning down the female powerlifter and ending up with a guy with cerebral palsy.
The closest I've come to encountering a coherent proposal from "group average aficionados" is on immigration policy, generally taking the form of blanket/severe prohibitions against immigrants from countries with low average IQ (or whatever). But if IQ is of such vital importance, why not just test for it directly rather than relying on a crude circuitous heuristic? I took an IQ test myself and scored extremely high,[4] so what do you gain by overlooking that in favor of the purported average of ~37 million people? The biggest practical point in favor of testing IQ directly is that while it no doubt remains politically unpopular within certain circles, there's no universe where "let's just ban countries with low average IQ" isn't even more unpopular. Setting that aside, could the blanket prohibition option potentially be justified on cost concerns? The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) is the most widely used IQ test and costs around $100-$400 and takes 2 hours to administer. Meanwhile, the cheapest and most straightforward legal immigration pathway to the US is the K-1 Fiancé visa, which costs $675 just to submit an application. So I've seen nothing to substantiate this cost excuse.
Anytime anyone insists on a low-resolution filter when it has no conceivable benefits compared to a high-resolution filter, you can conclude an unspoken motivation is at play. HBD offers a convenient mantle to don for any bog standard textbook racists looking for pretextual (read: fake) justification to hide what is fundamentally an aesthetic disgust they're too timid to be honest about.
The Omnipresent Allergy
If racial group averages shouldn't ever be used as the basis for policies, can raising their salience serve any other purpose? Nathan Cofnas is another "IQ realist" who openly acknowledges HBD's tarnished association:[5]
Most self-identified "race realists" are not actually realists, but below-average-intelligence JQ (Jewish Question) obsessives whose beliefs have little to do with science. Virtually every genuine scholar of race is one or (at most) two degrees of separation removed from deranged crackpots and neo-Nazis, which makes it difficult for intellectually responsible outsiders to know whom to listen to.
Despite that, Cofnas argues the race & IQ chorus needs to be amplified because he thinks it's the only way to refute the Blank Slate ideology that has been the foundation of "because racism" progressive ideology. Dickie Hanania — definitely no stranger to the HBD arena — pointed out several problems with Cofnas's mission which I echo completely, but I'll add an even bigger hurdle: Progressives are already viciously allergic to accepting the conclusions that naturally flow from their own worldview. I'll explain.
If you accept the institutional racism framework, various downstream effects must inevitably follow. If you believe that black mothers are systematically denied adequate prenatal medical care (because of doctors' unreceptiveness to complaints from black patients, geographic disparities in healthcare facility locations, implicit bias in medical training, and general economic barriers to accessing care) then wouldn't you expect this racism to cause problems? If you believe that black families are disproportionally impacted by environmental racism (because polluting industrial facilities and toxic waste dumps are predominantly located near black neighborhoods due to historical zoning and discriminatory policies) then same question, wouldn't you expect this racism to cause problems?
I don't know about you guys but in my naive understanding of the world, I would fully expect pollution and poor medical care to Cause Bad Things™️, including any number of lifelong intellectual disabilities and behavioral disorders. You would think that acknowledging the problems that your proposed policy would solve would be the easiest thing in the world, but progressives consistently exhibit a very bizarre combination of presenting racial minorities as both uniquely victimized and materially unaffected. Freddie deBoer observed the same dynamic on the other side with affirmative action:
Lately though I am confused about how progressive people talk about affirmative action. It's come to be considered offensive to say that affirmative action recipients have enjoyed a material advantage, as doing so delegitimizes their successes and implies that they would not succeed without special consideration.
The question is, if affirmative action programs don't provide a material advantage to minority applicants... what do they do? The entire premise and purpose of affirmative action is to provide a material advantage to minority applicants. What could it mean to say that an affirmative action program does not provide benefits to minority applicants? If they don't do so, they don't exist. This stance is not just self-defeating, it's self-erasing.
If institutional racism doesn't create any material disadvantages to minorities...what does it do? If you can't get progressives to admit that the thing they hate the most causes problems, in what world would you think they'll be more receptive to messengers uncomfortably associated with reviving the Fourth Reich?
IQ is real, genetics matter, and progressives are not going to be reasoned out of an ideology they didn't reason into. The way to jettison the Blank Slate fallacy isn't to dust off the racial group averages stats that are pretextually obsessed about by bona fide racists. Theories that lack evidence should die for exactly that, lacking evidence. To the extent there is a taboo against asking the "because racism" crowd to show receipts, break it.
[1] How ironic.
[2] I even hold the rare honor of literally having been physically assaulted by a particularly deranged heckler in public, who was furious that I expressed this belief in response to a question. Those who know know.
[3] The "woke" identarian left makes identical claims but uses an oppression framework as the scaffolding rather than genetics, and is the other side of the exact same coin.
[4] Ok in fairness it was a Buzzfeed quiz and the result I got was Jasmine, but we all can read between the lines and know what it really meant.
[5] Cofnas is still a soft collectivist about racial affinity, writing in the same piece: "That does not mean that I advocate colorblindness or multiculturalism, or say that race is politically irrelevant. A race is like an extended family (although you'll probably be disappointed if you expect your racial brethren to treat you that way), and it's natural to care about the fate of your people. Our physical and psychological nature reflects our racial heritage, and for partly biological reasons we may feel a connection to our cultural traditions."
ymeskhout
1yr ago
One of the nefarious stratagems the Democratic Party engaged in this election was to intentionally boost and generously fund far-right Republican candidates over their more moderate opponents in the Republican primaries. This potentially risky gambit was intended to allow Democratic candidates to coast to an easy victory by knocking out the moderate Republican option from the general election. This strategy was not just an after-thought, as the Dems put in a ton of resources into the effort. In Maryland for example, the Dems spent $1.2 million on Dan Cox's campaign, more than twice the money the candidate raised at that point. I thought then and still think this is dishonorable and contemptible behavior, but from a pure power play perspective, I concede it was a sound tactical decision. All six Republican candidates (3 governors, 1 senator, 2 house) targeted by this play lost the general election, five of them by double-digit margins.
It's important to emphasize that the Dems didn't force Republicans to do anything. All they did was dangle the candidate's Republican bona fides with "oh no it sure would be terrible if this person that loves Trump and still thinks the election was stolen ends up being the nominee oh no" and voters agreed with them. Given how much of a resounding success this was for the Dems, I anticipate we'll see it again in the future.
If so, can the GOP do anything to immunize itself from this effort? Should it even try to? Also, two can play at this game but is this strategy something the GOP can successfully levy? Dems have no shortage of total crazies (as Libs of TikTok can demonstrate) after all. What would that look like and what are some candidates that come to mind?
ymeskhout
1yr ago
Because he wasn't supposed to be vetting them. Somehow he managed to insert himself into the process, against the wishes of Elon, and began slow walking and obfuscating access to the documents Elon wanted the journalist to have.
This doesn't make sense, Jim Baker has been the Deputy General Counsel and Vice President of Legal for Twitter since June 2020, he's absolutely supposed to vet records that will be released to an outside party. That's basically foundational to his job as general counsel for a company. Some of the things a general counsel would want to review are relatively banal (e.g. employee SSN) and others would be making sure that a disclosure doesn't violate an NDA, disclose trade secrets, or otherwise runs afoul of the overbearing National Security Letter gag orders.
The point of a legal department is to protect a company from legal liability, and releasing these files without any lawyer reviewing the disclosures would have been an idiotic move. So unless Musk specifically asked to release the files without involving legal, it's presumed that the legal department would do its job. That Taibbi seems surprised by this makes me think he doesn't understand what a general counsel's job is.
Musk claims that Baker's explanations were "unconvincing" but why should we take him at his word? He could easily tell us what the reasons are. I think it's plausible that Jim Baker would at least have a strong motive to conceal things that would impugn the FBI which is his previous employer, but motive is not the same thing as commission. If Baker did indeed conceal things from the reveal, then Musk can just tell us. If Baker did indeed have unconvincing reasons for being involved, then Must can just tell us. The fact that he's light on the details makes me think Musk's reasons for firing him may have been more personal than anything else.
you have regularly sought to use specific cases as a broader disproof to concerns or condemnations or malbehavior of the 2020 elections as unfounded/unjustified/'very poor quality in general'
I think if there's a bunch of specific cases that turn out to be unfounded, then it's justified to presumptively downgrade the broader claim only as a heuristic. I don't believe I've ever used a specific election fraud case to disprove the broader election fraud claim, but if I did then I disavow it now because that's not a valid argument. This would be akin to saying "Michael Richards never killed someone" as a way to establish that no Seinfeld cast member has ever killed someone.
You likewise have a pattern of then later referring to those selectively narrow motte-arguments in serve of more expansive baileys, such as claiming no substantive or well-founded issues were raised in previous iterations, or otherwise minimizing the existence or legitimacy of counter-positions, generally expressed by claimed befuddlement on how people could believe a broader topic despite numerous presentations to you.
Can you cite a specific example of my evasion/obstinance? To assist you, I have every single one of my reddit motte posts archived in this google spreadsheet.
Then there's the point that someone claiming they are not making an argument is not the same as not making the argument. Arguments do not have to be explicitly made to be made- this is the purpose of metaphor, as well as allusion, or comparison, and especially insinuation, which are techniques you have used in previous iterations of your reoccurring hobby horse pasting and examples can be found here.
Can you cite a specific example of an allusion or insinuation that you believe I've made in a surreptitious manner? If explicitly disavowing an argument is insufficient for you, is there anything I can say that could possibly militate against the mind-reading? I'm often accused of holding positions I either never made or explicitly disavowed, and at some point I have to conclude that the reason people fabricate and refute arguments I've never made is borne out of frustration at apparently being unable to respond what I actually said. This post from @HlynkaCG remains the best example of this bizarre trend, where he's either lying about or hallucinating something I've never come close to saying.
As such, it remains appropriately helpful for anyone wishing to contest the background argument to ignore the bailey, which is raised to defend the motte.
Sure, I have an admitted interest in the overall 2020 election claims. If I made a post that aimed to claim that all of those were bullshit, then obviously pushing back on that is fair game. The reason I included that disclaimer was explicitly to avoid Gish galloping or similar distractions when discussing specifics. The scenario I have in mind is someone who believes that the 2020 election was stolen comes across the TTV claims I've made, but is frustrated because they realize they can't substantively rebut them. They're reluctant to admit that out loud, because they see arguments as soldiers and believe that conceding TTV to be liars will further erode their overall claims about the 2020 elections. Accordingly, their only viable response is evasion; doing everything possible to avoid discussing TTV directly, and instead preemptively changing to a different subject they believe to be more defensible.
Edit: I'm mindful that we've discussed many of these same issues a year ago almost to the day. I appreciate that you've tempered your accusations somewhat, and I nevertheless would be eager for specifics to support your claims.
Edit: Merrick Garland timeline, and MAGA grandma below
I really appreciate the specifics in your response! I'll go point by point first, from the standpoint of how unusually Ray Epps was treated:
Factor 1: Epps encouraged others to enter the Capitol
It's true that Epps 1) repeatedly encouraged others to go into the Capitol "peacefully" (whatever that means) and 2) did not enter the Capitol himself. Moreover, he's captured on video trying to calm protestors down. I agree #1 is a negative factor for sentencing, but would you agree that #2 is a positive factor for sentencing? I don't know if the two factors exactly cancel each other out but it's fairly routine for the legal system to have drastically lowered penalties for criminals who change their mind at the last minute.
Besides that, both Alex Jones (though he did say "We are peaceful" and "we need to not have the confrontation with the police") and Nick Fuentes ("Keep moving towards the Capitol! It appears we are taking the Capitol!") encouraged others to march towards the Capitol but did not enter themselves, and unlike Epps neither of them were charged with any crimes.
Because far more prominent individuals who encouraged others to go to the Capitol and were not even charged, while Epps was charged with misdemeanors, this particular factor does not indicate that Epps was treated unusually. What do you think I'm missing?
Factor 2: FBI's most wanted
It's true that Epps was put on an FBI "Seeking Information" list as Photograph #16. He still shows up on Twitter, but no longer on the official list, but lots of other photos have also been taken down from that list (they're numbered sequentially so if you start at the beginning you'll see it goes 1, 2, 5, 9, 13, etc). I don't understand how this is indicative of unusual treatment if the FBI is removing dozens (hundreds?) of other photos.
Regarding the timing of charges, it's true that Epps wasn't charged until a mere 3 days after Merrick Garland was asked about him. [Edit: I hadn't looked closely when I posted this, but Merrick Garland was asked about Ray Epps by Thomas Massie on 9/20/23 and charges against Ray Epps were actually filed two days prior on 9/18/23. Epps appeared virtually in court on the 20th to plead guilty, which heavily indicates the plea was negotiated a couple of months prior]. The timing could be more than just a coincidence, but in what direction? You could argue that Epps was treated unusually harshly if you compare his conduct to Jones and Fuentes (who have not been charged) but you're arguing the opposite and I don't understand how.
Factor 3: Undercharged relative to others
It's true it's difficult to draw a direct comparison about conduct regarding what the "baseline charge" should be, but you're begging the question by saying Epps was undercharged "relative to other major J6 figures". Regarding his specific conduct (and not the attention he's garnered) why should Epps be considered a major figure to begin with? To conduct any comparison it would be helpful if you can identify an illustrative example of a J6 defendant who acted similarly to Ray Epps but was charged/sentenced much more harshly.
Factor 4: Victim of Conspiracies
This is a recursive argument. The judge at his sentencing said "While many defendants have been vilified in a way unique to Jan. 6, you seem to be the first to have suffered for what you didn't do". I don't deny that's a unique situation, but to establish that Epps was treated uniquely generously you need a baseline to compare against. I don't know the grandma you're referring to [Edit: Found what I think is the grandma, who entered the capitol and got 2 months in jail], so all I have to compare against is the fact that Epps avoided jail just like 37% of other convicted J6 defendants.
Maybe if we had a hypothetical Ray Epps Two who was the subject of similarly intense conspiracy theories but whose sentencing judge did not acknowledge his suffering then you could argue that Ray Epps One was treated unusually generously, but if it's not reflected in sentencing why would that matter?
Factor 5: Epps' suit against Fox News
I don't understand any of this. Why is the suit shameless? How could the DOJ possibly stop Epps from suing Fox News? Even if somehow they charged him with triple-digit felonies, he would still be able to sue (almost a quarter of federal lawsuits are filed by prisoners!). This is a baffling point.
TL;DR
- Other people also encouraged others to go to the Capitol and never even got charged
- Other people were also put on the FBI "Seeking Information" list and later removed
- To argue he was undercharged, you need to provide a comparable example
- I fail to see the relevance of a judge acknowledging Epp's unique status as a victim of conspiracy theories
- DOJ cannot "allow" Epps to sue Fox News
Given...certain recent events, there might be a renewed interest in discussing what redress (if any) we might have when a prosecutor misbehaves. Billy Binion of Reason Magazine tackled one of my favorite hobby horses in a highly recommended feature article: Absolute Immunity Puts Prosecutors Above the Law
I've written about the problem of having government officials with no accountability, from the standpoint of Seattle officials deleting evidence and within the context of the doomed over-prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse. Nobody voluntarily seeks accountability when they don't have to, and so there's nothing surprising about the state, with its purported monopoly on violence, choosing to shield one of their viceroys. If you have any interest in fixing this oversight, one of the problems you'll encounter (as I wrote in the APAB post) is how selective the outrage is. Except for the principled civil libertarians screaming into the void, no one else cares about a leopard's diet until the moment the first layer of facial epidermis is being torn off.
Let's set the scene by highlighting Binion's main example:
When a storm flooded Baton Rouge in 2016, Priscilla Lefebure took shelter with her cousin and her cousin's husband, Barrett Boeker, an assistant warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. During her stay at her cousin's house on the prison grounds, Lefebure later reported, Boeker raped her twice—first in front of a mirror so she would have to watch, and again days later with a foreign object.
Lefebure's allegations led to a yearslong court battle—not against her accused rapist but against District Attorney Samuel C. D'Aquilla, who seemed determined to make sure that Boeker was never indicted. As the chief prosecutor for West Feliciana Parish, which includes Angola, D'Aquilla sabotaged the case before it began.
When a grand jury considered Lefebure's charges, D'Aquilla declined to present the results of a medical exam that found bruises, redness, and irritation on Lefebure's legs, arms, and cervix. Instead, he offered a police report with his own handwritten notes, which aimed to highlight discrepancies in her story. D'Aquilla opted not to call as witnesses the two investigators on the case, the nurse who took Lefebure's rape kit, or the coroner who stored it. And he refused to meet or speak with Lefebure at all, telling local news outlets he was "uncomfortable" doing so.
After that fiasco, Lefebure sued Samuel D'Aquilla in federal court, saying Boeker falsely claimed his encounters with her were consensual and sought D'Aquilla's assistance in blocking rape charges. According to the lawsuit, D'Aquilla was happy to help. Lefebure accused D'Aquilla of violating her rights to equal protection and due process by deliberately crippling her case against Boeker.
Lefebure's lawsuit against D'Aquilla bounced around for several years before getting denied on the theory that as a prosecutor, D'Aquilla enjoyed absolute legal immunity. If you want to get away with raping someone, it's a boon to have friends in high places that can pull some levers for you. Even better if this friend can get caught pulling levers and nevertheless retain absolute legal immunity for pulling said levers.
Absolute immunity is exactly what it says on the tin, it's absolute. Even though the federal law §1983 allows a lawsuit against "every person", the courts over the years responded with a litany of "well it doesn't really mean that":
The Supreme Court announced the doctrine of absolute immunity for prosecutors in the 1976 case Imbler v. Pachtman. The Court ruled that a man who had spent years in prison could not sue a prosecutor who allegedly withheld evidence that ultimately exonerated him. The justices approvingly quoted a sentiment that Learned Hand expressed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in 1949: "It has been thought better to leave unredressed the wrongs done by dishonest officers than to subject those who try to do their duty to the constant dread of retaliation."
I have to admit there is a kernel of reasonableness within this doctrine. Attorneys can be subject to discipline by their licensing authority if it receives a complaint, and probably to nobody's surprise the two fields of law that combined generate almost half of all bar complaints are criminal law and family law (the latter is toxic for its own reasons). I've said before that my clients have almost always done the thing they're accused of, but if you take some of my more sociopathic convicts at their word, it's everyone else's fault. Of course. The only reason they got convicted is because their lawyer sucked, or the judge was biased, or the prosecutor was evil, or whatever. And so on. People sitting in prison have nothing to do, which is why almost a quarter of all federal lawsuits are filed pro se by prisoners. Bar complaints follow a similar pattern.
As a public defender, it's not a matter of if you'll get a bar complaint, but rather when and I've already had a couple myself. Theoretically, it would be dreadful to have to deal with the spectre of retaliation from unhappy defendants that Learned Hand warned about, but all my complaints were summarily dismissed without my input. There is so much garbage shoveled in by bored inmates that a fatigue miasma sets in over the entire disciplinary field. Almost nobody involves takes anything seriously, including potentially some of the meritorious ones. There goes yet another one whining about their rights being violated, sure.
When federal judge Richard Posner retired from the bench in 2017, he cited serious concerns with the deplorable way his fellow judges treated pro se lawsuits. It's that fatigue again, and according to Posner the judges came up with as many roadblocks and technicalities to ensure the definition of a line to be the shortest distance between a pro se lawsuit and the recycling bin. True to his word, he did set up an organization to offer free legal counseling to pro se litigants, only to quickly shut it down after they were drowning with overwhelming demand.
You can see an illustration of how the assembly line shredder plays out in this case out of Louisiana. In the middle of a misdemeanor trial, the judge granted a "mistrial" to help the prosecutor come back with felony charges. This is as crystal clear a textbook violation of the double jeopardy clause as you can get, but every single state appellate judge (who are also protected by absolute immunity) just kept rubber stamping 'DENIED' without providing any explanation. This defendant was lucky enough to actually have a lawyer handle his appeal and he eventually won after sitting in prison for only 840 days. On paper, 28 USC §1657 states that criminal conviction appeals must be expedited. In reality, fuck you. The federal judges on this appeal took their sweet time, and apparently saw nothing wrong with dealing with civil matters first. It's yet another criminal complaining about his rights. Ho-hum.
The reasons SCOTUS outlined in Imbler v. Pachtman in favor of giving prosecutors absolute immunity was a generalized concern that if prosecutors had to worry about personal liability, they might avoid presenting relevant evidence as a pre-emptive precaution. Further, judges dealing with post-conviction appeals might have their focus "blurred by even the subconscious knowledge that a post-trial decision in favor of the accused might result in the prosecutor's being called upon to respond in damages for his error or mistaken judgment". If the way bar complaints and pro se petitions are treated today is any indication, it's not obvious to me that any floodgates would open here. The system already knows how to use a garbage can.
It's also not clear that the purported justification even matters here when the doctrine is blatantly self-serving. You can't sue judges and prosecutors for misconduct because fuck you that's why. Maybe the other reason this doctrine remains is that it's a Faustian bargain. Similar to the justifications for Qualified Immunity, occasionally putting our blindfolds on when an emissary of the sovereign commits a sin is just the price we pay for our undisturbed slumber. Our legal system promises equal treatment under the law, at least on paper. If we can't be selective about allowing only the Right People to pursue legal vindication against our esteemed pillars of the courtroom, it might potentially be used to help actual criminals. And we can't have that, can we?
ymeskhout
2mo ago
Assuming arguendo that voting fraud is possible because there aren't enough safeguards, I don't see how that gets us to 1) fraud did not cancel itself out and instead favored a particular candidate then to 2) the one-sided fraud was significant enough to affect results 3) the fraud remained undetected despite significant efforts to uncover it.
If someone just wants to argue that fraud is possible, I'll take whatever I can get, but I'm looking for the strongest possible claims.
ymeskhout
1yr ago
Affirmative Action or Transparency, Pick One.
In the hierarchy of court systems, lower-level courts (typically referred to as trial courts or district courts) handle the dirty work of sifting through an ass-load of witness testimonies, pretrial hearings, exhibit litigation, etc. across what can amount to months or even decades of lawfights. For context, one of my felony criminal trials took about 4 days of testimony and generated about 1000 pages in transcripts. A civil trial with well-heeled and sophisticated litigants is going to kill way more trees.
Normally, appellate courts (such as SCOTUS) don't want to concern themselves with the nitty gritty detail of what exactly was said at every hearing of every trial. Generally speaking, appellate courts will only deal with questions of law rather than of facts, so if they're going to get anything at all, appellate courts want a tidy streamlined package of only the bare minimum information they'd need to answer the limited questions in front of them.
Public trials are one of the bedrocks of the American legal system. Even if you're not directly involved, the presumption for any legal case is one of transparency and the exceptions are limited. During a trial, jurors are expected to come to a decision based solely on what was admitted into evidence in front of them, and so whenever the parties have to discuss whether the jurors are allowed to see anything, this naturally has to be done outside of the presence of the jury (known as a "sidebar"). Keeping the jury out of the loop is routine, but lasts only until their job is done, and sidebar conversations are absolutely still part of the open record.
The only other shroud used by the court system is sealing. The most common applications, such as redacting bank account information or social security numbers, are banal and trivial to justify. At least on paper, if a court is going to seal anything, it must make a determination that there is an "overriding interest" requiring secrecy that trumps the presumption of openness. But in practice, parties routinely ask the court to seal either dockets, and sometimes even ask to seal the motions to seal (Eugene Volokh has done heroic work on this front, watching dockets across the country like a hawk and regularly filing successful motions to unseal).
The big affirmative action case before SCOTUS at the moment involves a lawsuit against Harvard for anti-Asian discrimination. SCOTUS made the unusual step of requesting everything from the trial court. The only reason this would happen is if SCOTUS has a reason to think they're not seeing the full picture, and at least in this case it seems like the trial judge has indeed been trying to hide some skeletons. Jeannie Suk, a Harvard law professor, has been watching this case with interest and noticed that the transcripts for the multiple sidebars were automatically sealed by the judge. Suk wrote about her efforts to pry open this sealed vault and what she found hidden inside.
What was Judge Burroughs trying to hide? I eventually obtained the joke memo and the surrounding e-mails, and what I read didn’t strike me as having been worth the fight to keep them secret. But the fight itself showed that both Harvard and the court expect the public to operate on trust that their decisions are not biased—an expectation that is all the more troubling as the Supreme Court’s likely ban on using race in admissions will drive the consideration of race further underground.
William Fitzsimmons began working in Harvard admissions more than fifty years ago and has been the dean of admissions and financial aid since 1986. The federal official who wrote the joke memo, Thomas Hibino, worked at the Boston location of the Office for Civil Rights, eventually serving as the regional director; he retired in 2014. Earlier in his career, he had worked at the Japanese American Citizens League. After Hibino oversaw the federal investigation into Harvard’s alleged discrimination against Asian American applicants, decades ago, he and Fitzsimmons became friends, and by 2012 their exchanges included banter about lunch dates and running races together, and teasing when one opted to sleep in. But the relationship wasn’t all palling around, because Hibino was still at the federal agency regulating Harvard. In April of 2013, he wrote to Fitzsimmons, “Regarding the impact of legacy on Asian American applicants, what proportion of AA applicants are legacies and what proportion of white applicants are legacies? Of course I’m happy to talk about this if necessary!” More than anything, the e-mails reveal the coziness of the federal regulator toward the regulated entity.
On November 30, 2012, amid a friendly back-and-forth about lunch plans, Hibino e-mailed Fitzsimmons an attachment that he described as “really hilarious if I do say so myself!” Hibino explained, “I did it for the amusement of our team, and of course, you guys”—presumably Harvard admissions officers—“are the only others who can appreciate the humor.” The joke memo had been written on Harvard admissions-office stationery, during the earlier investigation. It was purportedly from an associate director of admissions and parodied the admissions officer downplaying an Asian American applicant’s achievements. The memo denigrated “José,” who was “the sole support of his family of 14 since his father, a Filipino farm worker, got run over by a tractor,” saying, “It can’t be that difficult on his part-time job as a senior cancer researcher.” It continued, “While he was California’s Class AAA Player of the Year,” with an offer from the Rams, “we just don’t need a 132 pound defensive lineman,” apparently referring to a slight Asian male physique. “I have to discount the Nobel Peace Prize he received. . . . After all, they gave one to Martin Luther King, too. No doubt just another example of giving preference to minorities.” The memo dismissed the fictional applicant as “just another AA CJer.” That was Harvard admissions shorthand for an Asian American applicant who intends to study biology and become a doctor, according to the trial transcript.
Like Suk, I can't think of any possible justification to keep something like this hidden under seal. In a case about racial discrimination against Asians, it seems patently absurd to claim how Harvard officials and federal regulators pally around and openly mock Asians is somehow not relevant to the issue. It seems plain to me that the judge chose to hide it because it's embarrassing and inconvenient to Harvard. Anti-Asian bias also came up from education officials in the Thomas Jefferson High School case, where text messages plainly revealed their intent was to reduce the number of Asian students enrolled.
I'm very much against Affirmative Action policies. Although I'm not opposed in principle to remedial measures designed to narrowly target affected groups (although the amounts were pitiful, see Japanese internment compensation), painting entire groups with such a broad brush doesn't work when we have such an incoherent taxonomy of race. Beyond that, although Affirmative Action is often cited as evidence of a "woke pro-minority" institutional bias it seems just as plausible to conclude that privileged white people are hiding behind the "black and hispanic" veil as a way to disguise their motivation to avoid having to compete against Asians for the top spots (I'm open to evidence showing one way or another).
Harvard plainly wants to be able to discriminate on the basis of race. They may offer lofty justifications about why their particular kind of racial discrimination is justified or warranted or morally right, but no one is obligated to accept their statements at face-value. The fact that Harvard (with the help of a federal judge) is working so hard to avoid transparency only makes suspicion that much more warranted as a response to their actions.
ymeskhout
1mo ago
Making fun of stupid people for being stupid is sneering.
Intelligence is not the only relevant axis here. I represented someone who had an IQ of around 60-80 and he was one of my favorite clients ever. He got dinged on a DUI and was super respectful and always on time to our meetings, and I really felt for him when he expressed fear and earnest confusion about why he was in trouble. He was verifiably the least intelligent client I've ever had, but he never lied to me or the cops ("Yes I was drinking tonight sir, I am so sorry sir, I am so sorry sir.") and except for that one case he just carried on his life working as a nighttime janitor.
The clients I laugh about above also lack intelligence but to a lesser degree that the janitor. What really sets them apart is their dishonesty combined with the baseless confidence that deludes them into thinking they can successfully pull off their cons.
ymeskhout
1yr ago
Another week, another charlatan exposed, this time it's the popular health and fitness influencer known as the Liver King aka Brian Johnson. First, this is what the guy looks like and despite being 45 years old, the dude is obviously fucking ripped as fuck. Basically everyone had openly speculated (most famously Joe Rogan) that the guy was on the juice because it's just not possible to have and maintain a body composition like that without some serious injection help. Johnson has been asked this multiple times and he has always steadfastly denied ever using steroids and even insulted his detractors as narrow-minded idiots who can't dream big. He even put out a fake confession video with "prop" needles stuck to bone marrow and liver where he jokes about revealing his steroid stack, and goes out of his way to say "my camera man found the needles, I don't even know where to get this stuff!". Meanwhile, he continued to rack up millions of followers on social media and he turned that into a very successful "ancestral supplements" business that he bragged was taking in $100 million in yearly revenue.
The bodybuilding youtuber known as More Plates More Dates (who himself openly discusses his past and present steroid use) had an hour video on Johnson where he discusses some leaked emails. The emails were to a bodybuilding consultant from Johnson, and Johnson openly talks about the multiple different steroids he takes, costing about $12,000 a month.
Johnson's immediate response was a little bizarre:
“In a weird way, I’m grateful for the recent events that have shed light on this complicated-as-fuck topic,” Liver King said in a statement to The Daily Beast. He followed up by “humbly requesting” that a mainstream podcast has him on to discuss his lifestyle. “I model, teach and preach a simple, elegant solution called ‘Ancestral Living’—The 9 Ancestral Tenets—so our people no longer have to suffer... so we can collectively express our highest and most dominant form! This is my fight!” he said.
But eventually, he owns up to it and explicitly says "I lied".
Despite the accusations, there doesn't seem to be a dispute that the Liver King eats what he preaches, with the vast majority of his diet being composed of meat, organs, and bone marrow. The supplements he was selling were basically freeze-dried granulated organs, which doesn't actually sound like a bad idea if you hate the taste of liver but still want its nutrients. There's also no doubt that Johnson works out like crazy, putting in what seem like two solid workout sessions a day (Granted, his recovery capacity is obviously assisted by steroid use).
The psychology at play is what is fascinating to me. In the emails, Johnson said he needed help with steroid management because he was planning to be the public face of a supplement company he was hoping would go big, and he was having trouble dealing with fat on his lower back. The fundamentals of his business seem sound, the supplements he was hawking don't seem completely useless, and he's charismatic and enthusiastic enough that he probably would've been ok without steroid use. Maybe it's just cover for his muscle dysmorphia, but he believed maintaining an impossible physique was foundational to his business success. Then he just lied and lied about it when asked, and only admitted when he got caught completely red-handed.
It's wild to me how people can brazenly lie and expect to keep getting away with it. A lot of them do indeed get away with it, at least for a while, and maybe that's just aided by a favorable media environment that they build around themselves. The nerdy scrutinizers that raise suspicions don't usually have that much reach, and MPMD's hour-long video just happened to be shocking and egregious enough to go viral and force a confrontation. Also, I've been vaguely aware of social media influencers, but I don't think I appreciated just how fabulously lucrative being successful on that front can be. I wonder how much the financial incentives encourage this kind of pathological lying.
Also, I don't really understand the relentless drive to pursue millions of dollars in wealth when your life is already great. If I was to fantasize about what I would do with fuck you levels of money, I'd play video games and have sex...which I already do. Maybe I'd travel way more??
Also also, I often wonder if I watch too much youtube, but man this platform still fucking delivers. I love it so much that it's almost embarrassing.
ymeskhout
1mo ago
What's your job by the way? I've dealt with similar scenarios when I volunteered as a low-income tax preparer. I remember one guy who came in with his sister or whatever and who wanted to claim three kids as dependents even though he earned $500 the whole year. His sister earned way more and could plausibly claim all three kids, and we sort of gently and patiently tried to explain to them that there was no net profit to be gained from spreading the kid deductions/credits around. Of course they didn't believe us and concluded we were a barrier to their scheme and left in a puff.
ymeskhout
7mo ago
I understand how distasteful a "free heroin" arrangement would be, from the standpoint that you describe. Ultimately it boils down to a variant of "do you want to be right? or do you want to win?". I don't like property crime. The cost of shoplifting gets shifted onto me the customer. Stores also respond by putting items behind locks, or just shift their inventory to less valuable things. I would like there to be less shoplifting but I don't see a feasible or practical way to get to that point given the continuing prevalence of addicting drugs. Yeah it would suck to see someone contribute nothing to society and just wait around for their regular heroin drop, but that's preferable to me if it means a significant reduction in property crime. We're already spending money on police, prosecutions, higher prices, etc. it's just a matter of how to spend it efficiently.
ymeskhout
1yr ago
Earlier this year, the Indian government asked Twitter and YouTube to take down a documentary critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both complied. Two weeks ago, Twitter also complied with a request from the Indian government to block 122 accounts supposedly critical of India's actions in Punjab.
I don't run an international social media company but I imagine there are no obvious choices to make when a government makes a demand and threatens to jail your employees if you don't comply or has police raid your offices. You could close up your offices and not have any employees anywhere in the country, but then you risk having the government retaliate by just blocking access completely, as several countries have already.
Google also dealt with this dilemma in China. In exchange for access to a potential market with 1.3 billion people at the time, Google agreed in 2006 to offer a version of its services that hewed to the CCP's severe censorship requirements. They gave up in 2010 after they found out that several Chinese activists had their Gmail accounts hacked (presumably by the CCP). From a purely financial perspective, it probably would've been in Google's best interests to dutifully continue complying with CCP's censorship regime and just look the other way. That they didn't is commendable from a principled perspective, but it's also not obvious to me whether China's population would have been better off with a hobbled obedient Google versus nothing at all.
Despite the hostility in India, (old) Twitter wasn't a total doormat and did pushback against censorship efforts by suing the Indian government over its takedown law. This lawsuit was something that Musk specifically complained about while he and Twitter were lawfighting about the sale, as stated in the counterclaim he filed:
¶ 181. In 2021, India’s information technology ministry imposed certain rules allowing the government to probe social media posts, demand identifying information, and prosecute companies that refused to comply. While Musk is a proponent of free speech, he believes that moderation on Twitter should “hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates.”
¶ 182. As a result of India’s new rules, recent public reporting suggests that Twitter has faced various investigations by the Indian government, requests to moderate content, and requests to block certain accounts.
¶ 183. India is Twitter’s third largest market, and thus any investigation into Twitter that could lead to suspensions or interruptions of service in that market may constitute an [Material Adverse Effect].
Musk was clearly worried that (old) Twitter was rocking the boat too much in India. Even as a free speech maximalist, I don't see an obvious choice here. There's an obvious tension between standing on principle while also not jeopardizing your wallet at the same time. One has to give, and there's nothing inherently embarrassing about that given the stakes at play.
Fast forward back to the present, in the context of India's recent takedown demands, I wouldn't have an objection if Musk came out with a statement that said "Although we disagree with the demands of the Indian government, we are exploring our legal options but have no choice but to comply in order to avoid jeopardizing access to 1.4 billion people." That's regrettable from a free speech perspective, but what else can you do? But as far as I can tell, Twitter has kept quiet and refused to say anything about its role in facilitating government censorship.
In contrast to the delicate diplomatic game Musk has to play in India, Musk faced no such concerns when speaking about the US government's efforts to take down information it didn't like. Matt Taibbi covered exactly this topic in Twitter Files No. 6, describing how the FBI made several removal requests to Twitter, not all of which were complied with.
Since Musk was the source for the Twitter Files documents, it's reasonable that as the owner of the company he would have a sharp financial interest to be extremely selective about what gets disclosed to journalists. Similarly, since Taibbi was one of the journalists handpicked by Musk to receive such a scoop, Taibbi might have an aversion from criticizing the actions of Musk-owned Twitter too strongly. So when the news about India's removal requests came out two weeks ago, MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan sarcastically tweeted "I'm sure Taibbi is all over this.", referencing the conflict of interest at play. Taibbi responded "Why don’t you invite me on your show to talk about it? Since you’re so absolutely sure of what I’ll say." and Hasan complied.
In terms of how this specific question played out, you can see for yourself at this timestamp. Hasan asks if Taibbi is willing to criticize Musk for complying with the Indian government censorship requests and Taibbi declines, claiming he doesn't know enough about the story to have an opinion. It bears repeating that the whole reason he asked to be invited on Hasan's show was to talk about India's censorship! Not knowing enough to have an opinion is fine, but this apparent gap in Taibbi's knowledge seems rather suspicious. Given his reporting, he clearly has an interest in reporting on the relationship between Twitter and censorious government requests, but apparently his curiosity stops at this particular line?
Taibbi's was clearly not happy with the interview but his follow-up statements kept avoiding the central reason he asked to be interviewed, the censorship by India's government. He pivoted instead to talking about the numerous mistakes MSNBC has made over the years which, sure, ok, but a dodge is still a dodge.
Consider a parallel scenario, involving TikTok employees. It's the easiest own maneuver, but watch how the CEO of TikTok transmogrifies into a human pretzel in front of Congress when asked about Uyghur persecution in China. The same thing happened to TikTok's Head of Public Policy last December, where he kept trying to backflip out of his skin. The evasion in answering the Uyghur question is reasonably interpreted as strong evidence that TikTok executives are afraid of being fired for acknowledging something so verboten by the Chinese state. A clear demonstration of how much control the CCP has over the platform.
So with that in mind, I think the best conclusion one can draw from the evidence above is that Taibbi feels constrained from criticizing Musk because Musk is too valuable a source. That on its own does not negate or render false the Twitter reporting he has already done, but it seems obvious that he's not playing with a free hand. Journalism is especially reliant on credibility and trust because so much of it happens behind curtains. For whatever cannot be corroborated by outside sources, we have to trust that a journalist is engaging in enough due diligence in vetting sources and investigating claims. Taibbi is seriously jeopardizing his credibility here, and I can't see how the pay-off is worth it.
[P.S. While writing this, Taibbi announced that he will leave Twitter after the platform started blocking links to Substack. That fact that he is willing to speak up against Musk/Twitter slightly mitigates my overall criticism of Taibbi's integrity.]
ymeskhout
1yr ago
To sum it up, the claim is that Watergate was a palace coup, where the secret services overthrew the US government, and have kept it under control ever since through influence operations.
Maybe this is already answered by the proponents of this theory, but why didn't Nixon say anything?
I agree with almost everything you said. If we had six hours, I would've started the discussion with "how do you know who is white?". I tried to pin Walt on some answers about "white interest policies" but there were only so many ways I could rephrase a question. I know a white supremacist I've been talking to for years who has been agonizingly obfuscatory on very elementary questions across many years, so I didn't have high hopes for clarity. Edit: It was wrong of me to impugn @WaltBismarck by association, especially through a connection he has explicitly abandoned.
[reposting from last week, now with the permanent URL]
For anyone interested, I did my first livestream where I show my face and everything with Counterpoints, a conservative/centrist in Florida who used to be a cop and is now an internet pundit (and WH40k enthusiast). We talk for about an hour and discussed our contrasting experience within the criminal justice system, domestic violence prosecution, drug policing, and very briefly get into race identitarianism.
Relatedly, Counterpoints made a video about the [history of political YouTube] (HE TOOK IT DOWN FOR SOME REASON) which I thought was very interesting look into a phenomenon I hadn't been exposed to much. It's curious to me why this ever became a thing, and why so many online pundits got their start in video game streaming. When Jesse Singal was interviewed by Destiny, they talked for an hour and a half through these tiny viewports, while unrelated Elden Ring gameplay footage played on center stage throughout.
Anyway, it was a fun experience with a format I had never tried before.
What are the limits of the weak man?
Note: Although this post cites specific real-life examples, the intent of the discussion is intended to be entirely at the meta level.
Scott Alexander's definition is apt to cite:
Also instructive is Bryan Caplan's gradation:
What Caplan is describing as "collective straw manning" seems to be a good scale for weakmanning's range. And lastly, consider also Julian Sanchez's disclaimer:
At least in theory, I think weakmanning should be avoided, but I struggle with how to draw the line exactly. If your goal is to avoid weakmanning, there's at least two axes that you must consider:
All the possible arguments for position X, ranked on a spectrum from least to most defensible.
All the possible arguments for position X, ranked on a spectrum from least to most *representative *of believers in X.
Weakmanning is not much of an issue if you're arguing against a single individual, because they either endorse the particular arguments or not. You can't showcase the error of one's ways by refuting arguments they never held.
But generally we tend to argue over positions endorsed by many different people, where each person may differ with regard to which argument they either advance or prioritize, so what should count as "representative"?
For example, many people believe in the theory of evolution, but some believers do so under the erroneous belief that evolutionary change occurs within an individual organism's lifespan. [I know some smartass in the comments will pipe up about some endangered tropical beetle or whatever does demonstrate "change-within-lifespan" evolutionary changes. Just remember that this is not an object-level discussion.] If you use a crude heuristic and only poll relevant experts (e.g. biology professors) you're not likely to encounter many adherents of the "change-within-lifespan" argument, so this could be a decent filter to narrow your focus on what should count as "representative" for a given position. This is generally an effective tactic, since it helps you avoid prematurely declaring victory at Wrestlemania just because you trounced some toddlers at the playground.
But sometimes you get a crazy position believed by crazy people based on crazy arguments, with a relatively tiny minority within/adjacent to the community of believers aware of the problems and doing the Lord's work coming up with better arguments. InverseFlorida coined the term "sanewashing" to describe how the meaning of "defund the police" (DTP) shifted [TracingWoodgrains described the same dynamic with the gentrification of /r/antiwork. Credit also to him for most of the arborist-themed metaphor in this post.] to something much more neutered and, correspondingly, much more defensible:
Keep in mind that this is not an object-level discussion on the merits of DTP. Assume arguendo that the "sanewashed" arguments are much more defensible than the "crazy" ones they replaced. If someone were to take a position against DTP by arguing against the now obsolete arguments, one of the sanewashers would be technically correct accusing you of weakmanning for daring to bring up that old story again. This fits the literal definition of weakmanning after all.
As Sanchez noted above, for most people for most positions, intuition predates rationality. They stumble around in the dark looking for any sort of foothold, then work backwards to fill in any necessary arguments. Both the sanewashers and the crazies are reliant on the other. Without the sanitization from the hygiene-minded sanewashers, the position would lack the fortification required to avoid erosion; and without the crazy masses delivering the bodies and zeal, the position would fade into irrelevance. The specific ratio may vary, but this dynamic is present in some amount on any given position. You very likely have already experienced the embarrassment that comes from a compatriot, purportedly on your side, making an ass of both of youse with their nonsensical arguments.
If your ultimate goal is truth-seeking, weakmanning will distract you into hacking away at worthless twigs rather than striking at the core. But sometimes the goal isn't seeking truth on the specific position (either because it's irrelevant or otherwise already beyond reasonable dispute) and instead the relevant topic is the collective epistemological dynamics [I dare you to use this phrase at a dinner party without getting kicked out.]. InverseFlorida's insightful analysis would not have been possible without shining a spotlight on the putative crazies — the very definition of weakmanning in other words.
Here's the point, at last. Normally someone holding a belief for the wrong reasons is not enough to negate that belief. But wherever a sanewasher faction appears to be spending considerable efforts cleaning up the mess their crazy neighbors keep leaving behind, it should instigate some suspicion about the belief, at least as a heuristic. Any honest and rational believer needs to grapple for an explanation for how the crazies managed to all be accidentally right despite outfitted — by definition — with erroneous arguments. Such a scenario is so implausible that it commands a curious inquiry about its origin.
It's possible that this inquiry unearths just another fun episode in the collective epistemological dynamics saga; it's also possible the probe ends up exposing a structural flaw with the belief itself. In either circumstances, a weakmanning objection is made in bad faith and intended to obfuscate. Its only purpose is to get you to ignore the inconvenient, the annoying. You should pay no heed to this protest and continue deploying the magnifying glass; don't be afraid to focus the sun's infernal rays into a burning pyre of illumination. Can you think of any reasons not to?
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