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For a more concrete criticism, the goal of getting a more combative Scott Alexander would be to get someone who was smart and interested in the truth to not flinch from the truth. That's the problem with Hanania. He isn't.
This weekend's example is this quote:
I'm sure there's some exceptionally technical read where Pinker's actual quote wasn't strictly lying; I'm sure this student exists, and their AI tool might even be more than an Excel spreadsheet with Copilot use. But ignore for now the unsolvable question of whether the sentiment analysis was calibrated correctly, or whether the 150 courses focusing on woke bullshit might not be the best use of literally thousands of dollars of student debt.
You know, I know, and Hanania knows that not every single bit of left-wing propaganda marks that out in sharpie on its forehead. Pinker is not very clear what "about a third of these had a discernible leftward tilt" is referring to, and whether it's the 5000 courses for the Arts and Sciences (aka 1600+!), or just the 3 or 6% of 'woke'-topic courses (which would be, bluntly, a lie; you can leaf through the course catalogue and find more than 50 course that obviously lean left). It's not even an accurate summary of what Pinker said, and it's certainly not interested in examining what Pinker actually spelled out rather than what Hanania wishes were the case.
Ok, well, 'public intellectual plays game-of-telephone to munge data, doesn't bring any skepticism to dubious claims', yeah, we've all seen it. But there's another half of the tweet, and it's the sort of writing Darwin would put out.
Does the conservative movement want to abolish the intellect? Well, Hanania wants that to be his thesis; why bother engaging with anything else!
Or for another example, from Will DEI Make Airplanes Fall Out Of The Sky, where Hanania quotes a Spirit Airlines exec saying:
I've got complex feelings about the 1500 hour rule, but this is a commercial exec making claims in his commercial interests, not a factual analysis, and those claims are not actually true. No airline would accept a pilot with that sort of experience -- and most would consider significant balloon experience a demerit -- but even if you're trying to Well Akshully about the strict terms of the 1500 hour rule, it includes 75 hours of instrument flight time that you can't get in a hot air balloon by definition (IVR-certified lighter-than-aircraft count as 'airships'). More critically, flying big jets into New York and Chicago are not the career an airline pilot will be entering, and a large portion of new ATPs come to the exam with recent experience with stuff that is like the regionals that their career will actually start with in a big airline.
Even when he has claims that could have defensible versions, he does this sorta thing. A certain class and theme of paranoid is becoming accepted on the conservative sphere? Maybe, though you have to draw a bit of a post-hoc description. "Unfortunately, Gribbles are more upset about the approval of life-saving vaccines than any other [ed: emphasis added] aspect of the pandemic response, showing that podcasts and a community of paranoid individuals all doing their own research is not an acceptable replacement for medical experts." I betcha I can name something they care more about! There's another (paywalled) bit that, and it's kinda hilarious how aggressively he avoids mentioning the then-current scandals about late Biden pardons.
He does it even when it's stupid, pointless, meaningless shit.
It's the same reason that Yglesias and Matthews are so appalling. It's not that they're wrong; it's that the sounds coming from their mouth are nothing more than noises they think most likely to persuade some portion of their readers. I had the same criticism back when he was aiming this at the left, and I've bashed right-wing writers here and elsewhere for doing the same thing, I'm certainly not going to find it more appealing because he's aimed at the other direction today.
I appreciate the attempt. I guess we just disagree on the charitability threshold, specifically the distinction between being wrong and lying. Of course I agree that the woke problem is not limited to 3% of Harvard’s output, but being wrong on this, and making a few flippant tweets, does not make hanania a bad faith actor.
And “Avoiding mentioning” is not a crime sufficient to establish mens rea. I also think Darwin should have been treated more charitably, so there you go.
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