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I ran a little experiment this week. Deep within a thread from last week @motteposting and I were discussing the Hunter Biden laptop story. The quick context necessary here is that some emails discussing a deal with the Chinese company CEFC mentioned "the big guy" getting a 10% cut of the deal. I already think it's obvious that Hunter Biden was getting sweetheart board of directors positions and other highly lucrative financial opportunities almost entirely because of who his father is. But the theory here is that it wasn't just Hunter cashing in on his name, but that Joe Biden was explicitly contemplated as receiving kickbacks from these kinds of deals.
[For the record I agree that exploiting one's own political positions for monetary gain is not good. Even if nothing untoward actually happens, it's still a really bad look for the son of a president to be involved in deals and investments, especially with foreign governments where the influence-peddling concern would be at its apex.]
The evidence that motteposting presented that Joe Biden is indeed the "big guy" is that one of the people involved in negotiating the CEFC deal, Tony Bobulinski, personally confirmed that fact. I hadn't heard of Bobulinski before and didn't know why I should believe what he said. You can click through the thread for the details but I highlighted a few reasons why I would be skeptical of Bobulinski, but none of it was really a smoking gun. If you were to ask me to describe my actual belief it would be "Bobulinski's claim is certainly plausible but this other stuff kind of contradicts him so overall I'm skeptical but leaning towards not believing him." Motteposting was definitely not as skeptical as I was, and I found it curious that he (sorry if I misgendered you) appeared primed to believe Bobulinski in ways that seemed highly credulous.
This reminded me of another instance where someone's credibility was being evaluated as a result of a bombastic claim they made. Think back to six months ago, when Cassidy Hutchinson was in the news. For those who don't remember, Cassidy is the White House aide who gave the bombshell testimony about Trump lunging at the wheel of his Secret Service vehicle and at an agent when he was told he wasn't going to the capitol on January 6th. Everyone here knows I really don't like Trump so theoretically I would be primed to believe something that paints him in an embarrassing light. But similar to Bobulinski, I never heard of Cassidy before and don't know who she is but my opinion of her claims regarding the steering wheel incident hasn't changed: it cuts against her that she's relying on hearsay within hearsay ("someone told me someone else said this happened") but she at least names every level of the hearsay. Immediately after her testimony came out, multiple news outfits cited an anonymous source close to the Secret Service that two agents were prepared to testify that the lunging incident never happened. As far as I can tell these agents never came forward publicly but maybe that's still in the works. Similar to Bobulinski above, if you were to ask me to describe my belief it would be "Cassidy's claim is tenuously supported but is neither implausible nor substantially contradicted, so I would lean towards believing her but wouldn't bet the farm."
So back to the thread about Bobulinski, instead of writing my own position about him transparently, I wrote this instead:
If any of this comes across as weirdly stilted, I was intentionally trying to mirror what motteposting writing about Cassidy Hutchinson:
My suspicion was that motteposting was primed to believe Bobulinski and not believe Cassidy solely because he liked one conclusion but not the other. Obviously the two scenarios are not precisely comparable 1:1 but I think they have enough clear parallels for this to be an instructive exercise. If I'm being fully honest, the scenario I would find the most emotionally satisfying and personally motivated towards pulling off would be where motteposting blunders haplessly into my trap and exposes himself as a complete hypocritical partisan about the standards of credibility he applies. I must admit that I did not get that, and I'll specifically give credit for things he did that were commendable.
The first thing motteposting hones in on is that Cassidy has a motive to lie. The evidence he cites is entirely just this:
So an anonymous source told CNN that Cassidy was supposed to have a job at a Mar-a-Lago but didn't, and now she's still unemployed. Based on this alone motteposting comfortably claims that Cassidy's testimony is "her revenge tour". I can see how being passed up for a job might make someone bitter, but it seems highly implausible that's enough to motivate someone into a public scorched earth campaign of defamation (and this didn't come out until later but the Daily Caller obtained text messages where Cassidy expresses annoyance at being subpoenaed to testify).
In contrast, Bobulinski claims Hunter Biden "defrauded" him of $5 million, which seems a much sharper indication of personal animus. To motteposting's credit he at least gives a concession of this point with "Maybe so. That's something to take into account." and "I agree that his motive for revenge means what he says should be taken with a grain of salt." But why is this not enough to conclude "This is Bobulinski's revenge tour" in the same way he concluded about Cassidy?
The second thing mentioned is that Cassidy's audience (J6 committee) is motivated to accept her lies because their TV ratings suck. That's a plausible explanation but it seems to apply at least as much to cable news pundits who rely on a content pipeline constantly running for their living. But unlike with Cassidy, motteposting does not appear to think audience credulity is a salient point in Bobulinsky's case.
I think motteposting made some good points about the structure of the CEFC deal. The fact that Hunter Biden was getting double the shares (20%) compared to his partners is compelling evidence he was going to hold it for someone else. If that's the surreptitious structure, then it makes sense for Joe Biden's name not to be on the agreement itself. There's good reasons to not believe Gilliar's denial that Joe Biden was involved, since there are text messages where he tells Bobulinski not to talk about Joe Biden's involvement except in face-to-face. Bobulinski also appears to be cooperating with the FBI and I agree that raises his credibility. Overall, motteposting did a good job convincing me that Bobulinski is telling the truth and that Joe Biden was at least contemplated to receive a cut of a deal that fell through. I updated my belief to "I have questions about some details but Bobulinski is probably telling the truth."
It still seems that motteposting was unusually primed to denounce Cassidy as a vindictive liar on a revenge tour. I think it's helpful to investigate to what extent our biases motivate us towards credulity and away from skepticism when presented with conclusions we already favor. If you ever suspect me of doing that, you should call me out.
He didn't conclude that, read his post again. He explicitly calls this a "hypothesis".
To your broader point though, of course our biases will inform how much credibility we give someone. To some extent I think this is actually mathematically correct. If someone tells me they went outside and saw a bird I'll believe them without question, if they tell me they went outside and saw an alien I'll start looking for reasons why they might be lying or mistaken. This is in line with bayesian reasoning because my prior probability for someone seeing a bird is much higher than my prior for them lying about seeing a bird whereas the opposite of true for aliens.
The place where it gets tricky is when we start adjusting our credence not based upon how likely the claim is but instead based upon how much we want it to be true. There are things I don't want to be true that are unfortunately still quite likely and things I want to be true that are very unlikely. It's tempting but mathematically invalid to interpret evidence in line with my desires rather than my unbiased assessments.
To the extent that post was a pure hypothesis, this is a fair point. But I also assume that if he's posting a hypothesis it's because he finds it at least somewhat persuasive which is why I framed my mirror attempt as "one possible explanation" and asked if he found any of what I wrote convincing. The idea was to see how motteposting reacts to motteposting's hypothesis.
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