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Notes -
Some not-bare links, words, and a Scott watch.
1 a. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing
First, a Scott post on Biden, debate, and a personal accounting of The Big Reveal. The curtain drawn across the stage to lay bare Biden's cognitive decline for the world to see. This is the common framing and narrative, anyway. He writes:
He then suggests Biden drops out, dropping Kamala as well, and throwing in some "purple-state Governor". Like Scott, this seems rather late in the game to me. There is still plenty of time to the election, as I'm sure the Biden loyalists are also telling themselves, so anything can happen. Who knows, maybe Biden gets a war? Wars are good for incumbents.
1 b. https://eigenrobot.substack.com/p/come-on-man
Eigenrobot, Twitter poaster extraordinaire, has some good thoughts looking at the same theme, but with regards to the media. He lays some groundwork with articles speaking of Biden's potential decline as an elderly gentleman some dating back to 2017.
Finishing with something that's been mentioned here many times:
Biden is old! This reaction with CNN anchors exclaiming, "how could the Whitehouse aides forsake us" is funny. Journalists have gotten worse at their jobs, that's how. There was space and time to talk about Biden's age and its potential impact it may have on the election. All well within the Overton window, even. Some journalists did write about it-- even those in Respectable Publications. That this idea was pushed into right-wing meme territory is an apparent, notable, visible failure for journalists. Not only do they feel lied to, they feel inadequate that they allowed themselves to be lied to. An outrage!
I listened to this Q&A with Scott and Nate Silver at the allegedly controversial Manifest conference that happened in June. There's some interesting tidbits in there if you're interested in prediction markets, Nate Silver+election models, AI risk, and so on. Perhaps not anything new for your ears that these two haven't written about.
The time stamp shows Scott answering a question about AI and how that may play into the risk of future wars. He first says that wars between great powers have a good chance of going nuclear and that is bad. However you want to define "good chance", fine. Then he goes on to say how it is his impression that "often [wars between great powers happen because] everybody was trying to do brinksmanship and made a mistake".
Scott is answering questions off the cuff in an informal, impromptu format. He's not some foreign policy wonk and neither am I. Brinkmanship is a thing. Some conflicts may escalate to unwanted, outright hostilities due to brinkmanship, political grandstanding, or get accidentally'd into full blown war. My impression is that escalation is usually not a mistake, though. Ukraine is not some exception as Scott suggests.
Escalation can be a proactive, reactive, or provocative measure to induce war. Escalation can be seen as a deterrent by one side, then used as a provocation to the other, sure, but I don't think it's fair to call these things mistakes. They are realities. Over stepping, going a little to far, these things can happen between states as they do people. Maybe he means a war that led to nuclear exchange would be considered a mistake. Which is probably true if it happens.
It's easy to see why the left didn't catch onto Biden's age problem sooner: negative partisanship. Intense polarization clouds everybody's eyes and means neither side is really looking at the evidence in an unbiased way. The Right has been banging the "Biden is senile" drum for a long time now, long before it was persuasive to people outside the conservative information bubble. They'd post something like Biden flubbing numbers or stuttering as "irrefutable proof" that he had dementia, despite Biden having issues with those for his entire political career. When the evidence actually started getting more persuasive, it was still easy enough to ignore since the people most interested in it had been crying wolf for years. Some on the left saw it sooner, but most only really started believing it once it was impossible to deny during the debate.
Of course the Right is going to take a victory lap, but it's pretty silly to see them do this while also ignoring Trump's own cognitive decline. It's nowhere near as advanced as Biden's is, but compare his most recent debate performance to his debates in 2016 and its clear that his brain is slowing down as well. I'd peg the Trump of today roughly where Biden was 4 years ago, i.e. not terrible, but there are definitely worrying signs. He's always had a meandering speaking style, but it's gotten noticeably worse over time. There's funny stuff too, like Trump challenging Biden to a cognitive test while in the next breath forgetting the name of his own doctor. Trump is only 3 years younger than Biden and would be older than Biden is today when he would leave the White House.
When people on the right encounter this opinion, they mirror what the Left's reaction has been for years and say that not only is it utterly ludicrous to think this, but that it's so ridiculous that the person saying it must be a liar engaging in bad faith.
This is about as dishonest as the “Biden is as sharp as a tack” argument.
No, Republicans were attacking Biden for stuttering or flubbing numbers. It was qualitatively different and much worse. This is just repeating a bad talking point.
Yes Trump is old. So is Bernie, Buffet, and Grassley. They are all very much with it. On the other hand, McConnell or Biden are younger than some of those guys but clearly worse. Is there a risk that Trump falls off a cliff? Sure. But he is much better than Biden was four years ago.
Accusing somebody of "dishonesty" because they have a different viewpoint than yours doesn't really add much besides vitriol to the conversation. It's heat without extra light.
Republican age accusations against Biden ran the gamut from the reasonable to the absurd. Scott discussed some of the sillier ones in his article like how Biden was some sort of meat-puppet jacked up on every stimulant in DC. A lot of the dumber ones were either irony-poisoned, or coming from the QAnon bent, so I did the courtesy of not including those as it felt like a strawman. If you have an article that summarizes the right-leaning age arguments against Biden, then that would be valuable to add to the conversation.
Sure, people age at different rates, but the priors are that octogenarians and late-septuagenarians are really old no matter what. Maybe he'll make it to Grassley's age, but there's a much better chance he'll have a steep decline at some point. The decline has already started, it's just a question of when the floor falls out.
Accusing someone of being dishonest when they are being dishonest is an important way to ensure the conversation remains honest. You are being dishonest by trying to turn a story about Biden into one about Trump when they obviously aren’t the same. Classic case of deflection.
And Scott is quite full of shit here. His judgement was so bad that it wasn’t until the debate that he realized Biden was suffering from strong mental decline. In fact, Scott has been going downhill for a long time (basically since he was doxxed). He isn’t an authority.
Finally I don’t need to cite an article. It’s been obvious for a long time to any honest observer that Biden is suffering from a pretty bad case of mental decline. The debate just laid it clear for the world in a way that couldn’t be massaged away. Biden hasn’t been well for awhile and the people who need to own that are the people who’ve denied it — people like you and Scott. We shouldn’t be hearing from you “what about Trump.” We should be hearing from you “how did I get this so wrong.”
So you're not backing off the claim that I'm being "dishonest" here then. Please elaborate, what exactly do you mean by it? I've already said in multiple places that Biden is obviously worse than Trump in terms of age. Why isn't this enough? What would I have to do in your eyes to be having an "honest" conversation?
Some source (even a basic one!) would be helpful in evaluating how Biden's perceived mental decline in 2020 is being compared to Trump's potential mental decline today. You say it's obvious, but for people who disagree with you it might not be so obvious that Trump is far more robust than Biden was 4 years ago.
I’m saying you’re dishonest because you aren’t asking the right questions ie how did I get this so wrong.
And there are many clips. General observations. Heck compare the debates between 2024 and 2020. Trump doesn’t need to sometimes close his eyes to try to really remember what he wanted to say.
How would "not asking the right questions" be considered "dishonesty"? It seems like we're using very different definitions of that word.
In terms of clips, Trump has plenty of them himself. Like when he forgot the name of his doctor. Or how he keeps confusing Biden for Obama, then in the same speech he confuses Hillary for Obama. Or when he confused Orban as the leader of Turkey. Or when he confused Jeb Bush for W. Bush. These are the obvious examples. I'd say the best example was his performance in the debate vs Biden. Aging affects people differently, and while Trump can maintain a confidence cadence in his voice, his meandering speaking style has gotten noticeably worse (as I said above previously).
Of course you'll retort that these don't really prove much. Forgetting individual facts is something politicians do often, and while the rate at which Trump is doing so is increasing, as of now it's hard to say this is more than just a "warning sign". But of course, the same could be said of Biden in 2020.
I don’t think all of those things are mistakes. For example, it is a common belief amongst the right that Obama is really running the Biden admin behind the scenes.
Also Trump always meandered. But he had a train of thought that he always got back to.
He can also have an unscripted hour long pod cast fairly easily. See the all in podcast.
Finally, yes I think when your priors are destroyed in front of the nation resorting to what aboutism” suggests you aren’t truth seeking.
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