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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.
Just so I know I have this straight.
5 months ago @motteposting wrote a post about Cassidy Hutchinson's claim that Trump tried to hijack the presidential limousine and drive it to the Capitol. The post is explicitly using Occam's razor to provide an alternative hypothesis to @Rov_Scam's theory that it was a devious trap, and suggests instead that Hutchinson was simply making it up out of TDS (for the record, I don't consider @Rov_Scam's hypothesis implausible at all.)
Then 3 days ago @motteposting wrote a post about the Biden laptop scandal in reply to you providing evidence in support of his conclusion that Biden was complicit in Hunter's influence peddling. After @motteposting doesn't buy the idea that the lack of records of a secret deal with a Chinese company proves he wasn't involved, you then wrote a post 'mirroring' the post he wrote 5 months ago about a totally different thing 'as a
socialexperiment'.And now you have published your findings, in the form of a top level post primarily continuing the argument you were having last week that you have apparently changed your belief about.
This post smacks of desperation. Yes, as has been pointed out, you gave the right signs and followed the rituals of the motte, but even so it still reads like you are calling out @motteposting and you decorated it with the trappings of this place's values.
While there are a lot of things that make me think it reads that way (like how it doesn't read like any other 'I've updated my mistaken beliefs' post I've ever read, and the way nobody used it to talk about biases and instead everybody used it to talk more about the Biden laptop scandal) the primary one is simple - you didn't need @motteposting.
Examining biases and how they influence credulity would be a great topic for discussion, and if you wanted to talk about bias and credulity, it would have been simple. All you would have to do is - instead of using @motteposting's post - use your own posts. It's not easy to spot our own biases, but it isn't impossible either. You just needed to apply the same scrutiny you applied to @motteposting's logic to your own thoughts.
Why do you think Hutchinson's claim is plausible when it is based on hearsay about hearsay? What exactly about these two events do you think is similar aside from the use of unsubstantiated evidence? Why would you present the lack of written proof of the back room deal as evidence it didn't happen when you know they tried to make sure there was no written proof of their back room deals? Most importantly - if you really agree that nepotism is bad, and a really bad look for a president, then why do you find the Biden laptop scandal uncompelling? And have you really updated your belief if you think Bobulinski was telling the truth but otherwise maintain the exact same position you did before?
Any of these would have been suitable on-ramps to a discussion about bias and credulity, and you wouldn't have to write a top level post putting another user on the spot the way you did. Which, to be clear, I don't have a problem with in general - I admire good trolling for what it is and does, and in fact two years ago I would have wasted some money buying you reddit gold for this post, because as a troll it is a work of art. But I have come to understand what zorba and the team are going for (I think) and I appreciate the motte for what it is. And I think top level call outs, or things that look so much like top level call outs as to be no different, will destroy the motte, because nobody else is going to do it with this much finesse. So here I am, calling you out.
If I had to summarize my post it would be "I started to suspect that motteposting was potentially arguing in bad faith or being inconsistent, so I laid a trap to see how he'd react to his own argument. Despite what I emotionally desired, motteposting demonstrated commendable consistency, although there were a few questions at the fringe. In the course of the discussion, he also changed my mind about something. The end."
I don't know what this means, what exactly do you find suspicious?
I think I understand the general pushback against focusing too much on a single user's actions but I believe it was appropriate here because it's difficult to discuss these topics in the abstract. And I'm not at all opposed to examining my own biases, but I have to admit that I have blindspots like everyone else. I like to think that I'm sufficiently scrutinizing but that's going to reek of "we've investigated ourselves and concluded we did nothing wrong."
I'll answer your questions in turn:
There's two parts here, Hutchinson's claim of what she heard, and whether what she heard actually happened. On what she heard, Hutchinson to me came across as credible because she doesn't appear to have either a motive or a history of lying. She described the events with sufficient detail, and named every person that was privy to the conversation. She provided this testimony under oath and was annoyed at being subpoenaed. As falsification, if Hutchinson wanted to lie and make up something damning about Trump to get back at him or whatever, the far easier thing for her to have done would be to talk about a scenario that did not involve her listening in on a conversation with 3 other people (who are available to refute what she said). If I was playing the role of Lying Hutchinson, I would've conjured up something salacious that only Trump would be in the position of denying (e.g. sexual harassment).
Regarding the claims about the steering wheel lunging incident, it seems plausible to me. Trump does not strike me as someone with good temperament control, especially in private away from the cameras. There was testimony from other people that corroborated how thrilled he was about what his supporters were doing on J6, and how much he wanted to be in the thick of it. The other testimony also established how surprised his security detail was when he declared during his speech that he was going to walk down to the capitol, because they had not prepared anything like that. Two secret service agents claimed to contradict Hutchinson's ultimate lunging claim and apparently said they were willing to testify back in June, but they haven't materialized. All that leads me to think it makes sense that Trump really wanted to go to the capitol, that his security detail said no, and that he's impulsive enough to act out the way he did.
At the time I wrote it, the parallels were kind of basic and mostly along the lines of "This person we know little about made a claim with no real corroborating evidence, should we believe them?" I realized after that there was a lot more corroborating evidence from Bobulinski I didn't know about (motteposting's first reply to me didn't mention any of it).
The lack of written proof wouldn't necessarily settle the issue on its own, but my operating assumption is that a deal like this would leave a paper trail of some kind, and all we had were very vague terse lines about "H holding 10 for the big guy." I did not know about their insistence not to discuss the deal in writing until I saw the Gilliar text messages after, and also Hunter saying somewhere that Joe Biden prefers talking on the phone. That is a compelling explanation for why the paper trail I was looking for and expecting would not exist.
Because they've had access to so much of Hunter's files for so long, my assumption is that the CEFC deal is is the most damning thing they could nail on Joe Biden (since that's the real goal). But the CEFC deal was only talked about and never happened. I also find 2rafa's idea that Hunter was largely talking a big game about his dad's involvement to generate clout to make a lot of sense given the lack of solid detail of Joe Biden's involvement. Even with their insistence not to discuss the deal in writing, I know from experience that people fuck up and break security protocol, and I still would expect some sort of corroborating evidence that Hunter was funneling money to his dad (e.g. "can't smoke crack 2nite, gotta wire $ to dad" or something). What we're left with is that "Joe Biden was at least contemplated to receive a cut of a deal that fell through" which seems like a dud.
The other dimension is considering the baseline. I was happy that Biden won the election, but only because it meant Trump lost. Biden is kind of boring which I do find refreshing, but as a libertarian I'm struggling to think of any of his policies that I actually support, and I'll never forgive him for his role in vastly expanding the carceral state. As a person, although he seems to have calmed down in recent years, his habit of sniffing girls/women's hair was really bizarre, and I'm still inclined to believe Tara Reade's accusation that he tried to force himself on her.
Which is why it almost feels unfair, akin to beating a dead horse, to even mention the Trump family nepotism, because it's so wildly and flagrantly out of proportion. Trump hires his own family as White House advisors, doesn't release his finances, doesn't put anything in a blind trust, openly invites foreign dignitaries to stay in his hotels, neither he nor his family stop from using his name to secure deals across the world, and etc etc. The comparison here is comically unfair. I expect a certain level of corruption from politicians (and I find things like Clinton's ridiculous $500k speaking engagement fees and government officials retiring into cushy "consulting" gigs to all be deplorable) but I'm never going to see "zero" so I'll settle for "way less than the other guy".
I didn't know about Bobulinski until motteposting mentioned him. When I initially looked at his claims I saw some things that didn't add up and concluded that he might be twisting the truth for his own clout. Later examining other evidence I wasn't aware of changed my mind and I revised my conclusion to Bobulinski most likely telling the truth. I'm not sure what you mean by "exact same position". If you're talking about Joe Biden's involvement, see the previous answer.
I genuinely really appreciate you taking me to task on the above topic. Answering your questions prompted me to seriously reflect on my position, and I really wish more people did that to me.
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