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 -
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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