In the Wheel Of Time series the Aei Sedia (a guild of sanctioned magic users) are bound always tell the truth via magical means. This is ostensibly done to convince non-magic users to trust them but in practice it has the opposite effect because due to this binding members of the Aei Sedia often become quite adept at word-games, lies by omission/implication, and using nitpicky technicalities to get around their "limitation". Of course, the normies notice this tendency and naturally come to trust the Aei Sedia even less.
Reading this along with Bounded Distrust I find myself wondering if Scott is being purposely obtuse as a means of currying favor with his ingroup (wealthy bay-area progressives), or genuinely doesn't grasp the above dynamic.
In fact, Scott completely grasps the dynamic you describe. That's the whole point of his post! He says that while media sources aren't technically lying, they still are giving misleading impressions with their work. He isn't at all saying "these media organizations don't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy".
He isn't at all saying "these media organizations don't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy".
Ill admit that i stopped reading at the bottom of part II so if Scott turned it around later thats on me, but "these media organizations experts didn't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy" is pretty much tbe core thesis of Bounded Distrust and this article seemed like it was headed in the same general direction.
It's a bad title (or at least a title that is not aimed at the Motte users -- this post is clearly directed at people who are marginally pro-censorship). I went in thinking that's where Scott was going, but his point is that even Infowars mostly doesn't tell outright lies, and would-be censors' claim that they are merely fighting "truly fake news," rather than differences of opinion is full of shit. That their claims to objectivity are hollow.
This may seem obvious to many people here, but a large portion of Scott's audience (and probably an even larger portion of his peer group) honestly doesn't understand why we don't just ban all the obviously bad people because they're obviously and uncontrovertably bad. He's trying to nudge those people toward free speech without alienating them entirely.
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Notes -
In the Wheel Of Time series the Aei Sedia (a guild of sanctioned magic users) are bound always tell the truth via magical means. This is ostensibly done to convince non-magic users to trust them but in practice it has the opposite effect because due to this binding members of the Aei Sedia often become quite adept at word-games, lies by omission/implication, and using nitpicky technicalities to get around their "limitation". Of course, the normies notice this tendency and naturally come to trust the Aei Sedia even less.
Reading this along with Bounded Distrust I find myself wondering if Scott is being purposely obtuse as a means of currying favor with his ingroup (wealthy bay-area progressives), or genuinely doesn't grasp the above dynamic.
In fact, Scott completely grasps the dynamic you describe. That's the whole point of his post! He says that while media sources aren't technically lying, they still are giving misleading impressions with their work. He isn't at all saying "these media organizations don't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy".
Ill admit that i stopped reading at the bottom of part II so if Scott turned it around later thats on me, but "these
media organizationsexperts didn't outright lie therefore they are trustworthy" is pretty much tbe core thesis of Bounded Distrust and this article seemed like it was headed in the same general direction.It's a bad title (or at least a title that is not aimed at the Motte users -- this post is clearly directed at people who are marginally pro-censorship). I went in thinking that's where Scott was going, but his point is that even Infowars mostly doesn't tell outright lies, and would-be censors' claim that they are merely fighting "truly fake news," rather than differences of opinion is full of shit. That their claims to objectivity are hollow.
This may seem obvious to many people here, but a large portion of Scott's audience (and probably an even larger portion of his peer group) honestly doesn't understand why we don't just ban all the obviously bad people because they're obviously and uncontrovertably bad. He's trying to nudge those people toward free speech without alienating them entirely.
Fair and I suppose that's on me for not reading the whole thing. I should've given him more credit than I did.
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