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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20432 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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RIP James Watson

And so we lose one of the 20th Century pioneers of DNA research. He made it to a nice and comfortable 97 so at least he got to live a full life. His contributions were undeniable but we are all aware of what happened to him in his later years when his awards and honours got stripped because he talked to liberally about HBD. Back then I interpreted all this as yet another example of "Woke gone mad" left wingers who couldn't attack the argument so decided the best shot was to attack the man himself.

Other than the HBD stuff I thought he was a perfectly normal retired scientist, a bit wacky maybe but that's almost obligatory if you have a Nobel prize.

However I have very recently (in the last hour after news of his passing broke) learned that there's more to the sorts of things that Watson said than merely "respectable" HBD. For example there's this quote:

“Most men in bio are short because they can’t get women, but because you’re tall I know you’re genuinely interested in bio”

and this:

“Women at Oxford and Cambridge are better than Harvard and Yale because they know their job is to look pretty and get a rich husband”

and this:

“There is a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges.. that’s why you have Latin lovers”

and then there's this:

“Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them”

This new knowledge has made me reevaluate my views on him. Now my new provisional views on him are that he clusters with Brian Josephson: academically brilliant but kooky in the head:

In the early 1970s, Josephson took up Transcendental Meditation and turned his attention to issues outside the boundaries of mainstream science. He set up the Mind–Matter Unification Project at Cavendish to explore the idea of intelligence in nature, the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness, and the synthesis of science and Eastern mysticism, broadly known as quantum mysticism.[6] He has expressed support for topics such as parapsychology, water memory and cold fusion, which has made him a focus of criticism from fellow scientists

except that Watson's views were even more corrosive to modern civil society than Brian's. The more you know, as they say...

  • -18

“Most men in bio are short because they can’t get women, but because you’re tall I know you’re genuinely interested in bio”

I'm struggling to parse this somewhat. Does he mean short men go into biology because they think they'll have an easier time dating in a female-heavy field? (Incidentally, clicking the link for this statement statement directs the user to a "this page doesn’t exist" page on X)

That’s it exactly. Most STEM fields are extremely male-dominated, but Biology is (or was ten years ago) over 60% female.

The only source for MOST of those statements is a big long list of stuff that Watson supposedly said. Watson was known to be based, so I wouldn't be surprised if he said some or all of them. But without a real source, it's quite possible some of them are fabricated or modified.

Guy born a hundred years ago had fallen off the fashionable language of the cutting edge of academic groupthink?

Famous scientist also a bit of a crank and believed in various wobbly theories at the edge of respectability in their time?

Got cancelled for political reasons?

We talking about Newton, Galileo, Socrates?

You pay high-functioning autists to push forward science and then complain when they occasionally say awkward stuff. Insane. Isn't Google in the midst of trying to get rid of some 2 billion dollar AI researcher for the same thing.

The google AI guy didn't even say "awkward" stuff, he just replied to a company chat about trans activism with pretty standard views of "no such thing".

Awkward for highly liberal environments, normal for normal places, run of the mill for conservative places, and just the air we breath as of 15 years ago.

“Most men in bio are short because they can’t get women, but because you’re tall I know you’re genuinely interested in bio”

Odd, as I'm not sure biology is known as a high-paying field that draws in short men (surely that would be finance or something) but not objectionable.

“Women at Oxford and Cambridge are better than Harvard and Yale because they know their job is to look pretty and get a rich husband”

If a woman finds herself surrounded by very intelligent, conscientious men, she'd be crazy to not try and marry one of them. I'm not the first person to realise this.

“There is a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges.. that’s why you have Latin lovers”

Definitely true. The link between vitamin D and testosterone is well-established.

“Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you’re not going to hire them”

Seems like a poor choice as a hiring manager. Why not take advantage of anti-fat prejudice and get talented fatties at a steal? But still not an earth-shattering revelation.

Odd, as I'm not sure biology is known as a high-paying field that draws in short men (surely that would be finance or something) but not objectionable.

I imagine the view there is "well, bio is full of women because the ladies, bless their little fluffy heads, aren't smart enough for real science like chemistry and physics, so a short guy will have a better chance there" mixed in with some "and since men are smarter than women, a guy in bio will hit the top of the profession, tenure, prizes, etc. faster and easier than competing against men in other disciplines".

Why not take advantage of anti-fat prejudice and get talented fatties at a steal?

Because fat people are stupid. If they were smart, they would not be fat. It is easy not to be fat, so if you are fat, it is because you are too stupid, lazy and greedy not to be fat. Everyone knows this!

Because fat people are stupid. If they were smart, they would not be fat. It is easy not to be fat, so if you are fat, it is because you are too stupid, lazy and greedy not to be fat. Everyone knows this!

I assume this is a joke, because if not then something has been making us real stupid since the 1970s.

As a fat person myself, I've had the "it's easy to be thin" and "fatness is a moral failing" lines quoted at me, so part a joke, part the weariness of being judged as Watson allegedly judged fat interviewees.

As someone founded a fin-tech company, I highly recommend the biology route. It is Saturday, and I am at the office and will be stuck here until the evening. Unlike the stereotype of finance people as old money aesthetic, my view is more autistic nerds doing the actual work combined with sales people who barely work i finance or understand the products. Someone considering biology is probably not going into those sales jobs.

The more technical sides of finance are almost all men and women on dating apps don't really understand or appreciate your job title anyways. You are far more likely to meet high quality women in a biology lab. Proximity is the most important factor and finance is not it.

You are far more likely to meet high quality women in a biology lab

Endorsed. Quant finance is sub 10% women and even the women we do have are very much not "tradwife" types.

This new knowledge has made me reevaluate my views on him.

That he wasn't just an incredible scientist, but he was also based?

water memory

Is it bad that this is the only one that really seems disqualifying to me?

I was curious enough about this to look up Josephson's water memory views, and I found this letter to a critical editor:

Molecular memory

Sir: Lionel MD gram’s account of Jacques Benveniste’s research (“The memory of molecules", 19 March) failed to make it clear that the experiment discussed, where a biological signal is recorded, transmitted over the Internet, and applied to water elsewhere to regenerate the biological effects of the source, is not just an idea but rather an experiment that has already been carried out, with impressive results (see Benveniste’s web pages at ioimo.digibio.com).

We invited him to describe his work at our weekly colloquium to learn more about the research, which seems both scientifically interesting and potentially of considerable practical importance - while the results claimed may seem surprising, the Cavendish Laboratory has been host to many surprising discoveries during the 125 years of its existence, and the controversial nature of the claims was not seen as good cause to follow the herd and veto his making a presentation.

In regard to the Nature condemnation of 1988, my conclusion at that time was that its authors had made an insufficient case for its headline claim “High- dilution experiments a delusion”, and nothing since has led me to see the frequent denunciations of the work as anything other than the hysteria that frequently accompanies claims that challenge the orthodox point of view.

The manifestations of scientific prejudice, well documented by Michel Schiff in the book The Memory of Water, can be extraordinary; another reason why we felt it important to invite Dr Benveniste to talk at our colloquium and be able to present his results to scientists in an uncensored form. I am grateful to The Independent for following on with its article.

Professor BRIAN JOSEPHSON Cavendish Laboratory Department of Physics University of Cambridge

Maybe crank curious, not an outright crank himself?

Most men in bio are short because they can’t get women, but because you’re tall I know you’re genuinely interested in bio

What, concretely, bothers you about this? (Are you a height-challenged guy?)

Is it that he seems to hold a belief that shorter guys compensate for a lack of height by choosing scientific occupations? I'm not sure about this, but I'm almost curious enough to pull NLSY data on height and major to find out.

Or is it that you object to the idea that occupational groups show differences in their anthropometric measurements at all? If so, these are very well-attested in the literature: managers, professionals, and especially politicians are all taller than average.

Or is it just that he's not treating possible discrimination in a very somber, serious tone? If so, whenever Obama dies, will you be posting here about how he made fun of Buttigieg and said he could never become President because he's too short?

Is it that he seems to hold a belief that shorter guys compensate for a lack of height by choosing scientific occupations? I'm not sure about this, but I'm almost curious enough to pull NLSY data on height and major to find out.

Sometimes I’ve wondered if this stuff happens on some kind of unconscious level people aren’t entirely aware of. A lot of socially awkward people for instance find their way into reclusive activities and hobbies often because they don’t integrate well with others and are not invited to participate in a lot of outgoing activities. It’s not a coincidence that geeks and nerds all tend to ‘look’ a certain way physiologically and find their place in the same setting and occupied by the same hobbies. “Are you into computers because you can’t socialize or are you incapable of socializing because you’re into computers?”

Or it’s the same reason guys with big dongs find their way into pornography while guys with small dongs tend to become serial killers and ride motorcycles. This kind of self slotting of people into categories rarely happens through conscious and deliberate decision making. It’s some kind of social pattern that I haven’t deciphered yet but it’s a lot like when they gave testosterone to liberals how they instantly became republicans. Thankfully I’m not just right-wing but I’m far right-wing.

ride motorcycles

Any evidence for this?

It’s pretty hard to see.

It’s not a coincidence that geeks and nerds all tend to ‘look’ a certain way physiologically

Do they?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dean

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Pike

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser

In the case of nerds specifically, I think the simplest explanation is that they are high-systemisers who are fascinated by abstract systems with complex (yet consistent and legible) rules. The world of interpersonal relationships with its frustratingly arbitrary and definitely inconsistent ("lookin' good, Susan") ruleset is confusing and scary for them.

If you're an intelligent high-systemiser, this means pursuing a career in physics or computer science; if you're not particularly intelligent, you instead get into D&D, MtG or trainspotting.

This meta of mining disparate, single-sentences from the history of someone's life is so annoying in every context. "Look at these sentences the person said!" It's a post-2020 phenomenon and it's extremely annoying, but that's probably why you posted it.

It's a post-2020 phenomenon

This was happening in 2016 and I only picked 2016 because I didn't feel confident saying ~2013

Can you perhaps expound more about why you think these quotes, if even true, are bad? They seem like jokes with a solid grain of truth in them.

I'm not the OP, but I believe as an ubermensch who was a leading authority on genetics he had a moral responsibility to not casually sling such inflammatory shit that would carry the weight of genetic condemnation. He had a right to his shitposting, but the world is correct to complain that this shitposting is undignified.

a moral responsibility to not casually sling such inflammatory shit

Nah, fuck off with that. We're talking about like six sentences of random jokes from across a guy's entire life, and at least four of them are complete and total nothingburgers. Maybe everyone else has a moral responsibility to not be a motherfucking baby about it.

He is not saying this stuff in the comfort of his home with his friends and being secretly recorded and outed. He has said much of it in interviews with journalists.

It is beneath the dignity of the academy for its members to use that opportunity to crack racist (and sexist) jokes, Especially if one is a world famous geneticist.

This list is incredibly paltry compared to a list of naughty things my family and I have said in the last week. As the result of one of these tedious "look at what no-no words this bad man said" fishing expeditions, one with a public figure's entire lifetime to muck-rake, it's positively pathetic in how anodyne it actually is.

As for the academy, it's been so thoroughly disgraced at this point that concerns about its dignity are beneath comment.

As for the academy, it's been so thoroughly disgraced at this point that concerns about its dignity are beneath comment.

In this house we believe in holding intellectuals accountable for both going full retard on wokeness and for bigoted JAQing off.

naughty things my family and I have said in the last week

Do you not see the difference between you and your family engaging in bar talk in relative privacy and The Most Decorated Science Man saying this during interviews with the press?

Not really. This kind of thing just seems really trifling across the board, and we'd be better off if nobody cared. You can't even articulate a reason to care other than the long since dead "dignity of the academy."

Other geneticists have a right to not want to be associated with that. In the same way if someone in my friend group says some extremely inflammatory shit in a public place, now I’m complicit in his statement and actions and condemned by association. It doesn’t matter if you share the same sentiment or not at that point and it may very well be stupid and ridiculous, but it’s easy to understand why people don’t want the spotlight and attention on them. Whether in my personal or professional life I’m not someone who’s out to antagonize others intentionally and would prefer not to fight battles I don’t have to.

Other geneticists have a right to not want to be associated with that.

Naa, they can fuck right off, if for no other reason than because Watson was the big dog. He didn't have an obligation to shut his mouth because his less-talented successors found him embarrassing or something.

He didn't have an obligation to shut his mouth but the rest of the scientific community wasn't obligated to let this guy who fits right in with shitposting Twitter edgelords represent them.

Charles Murray's dignity he does not have.

And in the end Watson was the one crying like a bitch that his reputation was ruined.

Our society should have great men and and if they want to be recognized as great men they should behave more on the Bertrand Russell or Richard Feynman end of the scale than the Andrew Tate or Dan Bilzerian end.

He didn't have an obligation to shut his mouth because his less-talented successors found him embarrassing or something.

Okay what about Crick, the person he won the Nobel with, who had a much more accomplished career? He also found him embarrassing. They're not all scrubs complaining that the big swinging dick brought the truth too hard and it hurt their feelings.

He didn't have an obligation to shut his mouth but the rest of the scientific community wasn't obligated to let this guy who fits right in with shitposting Twitter edgelords represent them.

As far as I know he did not claim to speak for the scientific community in the controversial things he said.

Charles Murray's dignity he does not have.

Yeah, see what that got Murray

“There is a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges.. that’s why you have Latin lovers”

There might be something to this. My libido often goes way up if I spend time outside on a hot day, and it's not just because there are many scantily clad women walking around.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8411113/

UVB exposure increases circulating sex-steroid levels in mice and humans
UVB exposure enhances female attractiveness and receptiveness toward males
UVB exposure increases females’ estrus phase, HPG axis hormones, and follicle growth
Skin p53 regulates UVB-induced sexual behavior and ovarian physiological changes

You are putting too much weight on second-hand and third-hand quotes. Even when not outright made-up, such quotes tend to be some mixture of out of context and paraphrased in a way that changes their meaning. This is especially true when the people passing along the quotes strongly disagree with even the things the quoted person has actually said, or when you are concerned about something different from the person passing it along. Even when being honest, people tend to repeat the meaning they heard, not the actual words that were said.

For example, lets say he makes a joke that some people think is offensive, will the people telling this to a reporter and the reporter writing both make it clear in the paraphrase used and the context mentioned that he was joking? If the person repeating it thinks making such jokes is "racist", and furthermore that Watson is a "racist crank" anyway because of his comments regarding the IQ gap, he probably thinks it doesn't matter whether the comment is a joke or not. Whether joking or serious, the comment carries the same meaning: "I am racist". (Similar to this misquote from a now-ex Washington Post reporter, to her the fake Charlie Kirk quote and the real one conveyed the same meaning.) Then you come along looking for whether Watson is "kooky" and suddenly it actually matters a lot whether something is a pet theory he passionately believes in, a speculative hypothesis he entertained for a couple sentences, or an outright joke that he never even seriously suggested. Even without deliberate dishonestly, the witness and the journalist can lossily encode his statements in a way that conveys the information their ideology cares about but drops or distorts the information people with different beliefs care about.

“There is a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges.. that’s why you have Latin lovers”

Hilariously, if you dig into the links, you'll find that one of the reasons Watson said this is, apparently, because of an experiment where injecting melanin directly into men had Viagra-like results.

Your takedown of Watson (...shortly after his death) doesn't ask if any of his kooky views might be true or why he believes them, it just holds them up and says they are bad. Some of them were probably wrong (which, for a scientist, is arguably worse than bad) and some of them were probably insensitive, but aren't you a little bit curious to know more about the effects of melanin on sexual desire?

Sounds to me like he was also a comedian if he really said all that.

This new knowledge has made me reevaluate my views on him.

Positively, right? This sounds like exactly the sort of thing I'd expect to hear from you, just with some slightly different targets.

“Women at Oxford and Cambridge are better than Harvard and Yale because they know their job is to look pretty and get a rich husband”

This makes me think of a post I once read about a woman coming to a conclusion along these lines. She was undergrad at Harvard, studying hard to secure for herself, after another decade of hard work, a life of upper-middle-to-upper class comfort. She described a night where she was thinking about how much further she had to go, and how her gaze sort of panned over to the MBA library, which was full of eligible bachelors 5ish years further along that life path. So she decamped from the undergrad study lounges and started spending that time in the MBA study lounges, where she might have a serendipitous encounter with a handsome shortcut.

This is a well-crafted piece, let's break it down:

  • OP begins with praise of James Watson, that's good ethos, builds rapport.
  • Then there's a little narrative of how he once believed the simple rightoid account of Watson's cancellation, but then [Adam Curtis voice] something strange happened.
  • He links to a long list of quotes on a liberal blog. Now, this is very clever, in that the full list has plenty of quotes many people here will either chuckle at and consider understandable, or outright agree with. Much heat to be generated just from commenters digging in and litigating the quotes.
  • The selected quotes are well-chosen on that criterion, but also to get the attention of particular niches - the manlets, the redpillers, the Peaters. The last one will get at least two mottizens arguing with over exactly which lines it crosses.
  • Now, what you leave out of your writing is as important as what you put in. And see this spot here, where OP deftly leaves out an argument. Now, he could explain his reasoning, why he reevaluated his views on Watson's "respectability", but that would narrow the scope of the comments and keep him defending himself in them. But, as everyone knows, those statements are bad, and I'm sure you all agree that anyone making them must be crazy, that's just consensus.
  • Very clever twist next to replace the argument: OP draws a parallel with mystical kookery of exactly the type that mottizens of rationalist heritage particularly hate. Now, the false equivalency is obvious, there are all kinds of differences you can draw between an HBD guy saying grouchy, inflammatory things about women and minorities, exaggerating theories within regular biology, or making spicy jokes, and a quantum consciousness homeopathy yoga guy, so the weakness of the analogy is particularly great for getting those comments heated up.
  • The parting shot, the cherry on top, is to end by asserting that Watson's views are even worse for "modern civil society". Again, no argument, but none needed, and the use of "modern civil society" calls deftly back to the rightoid-to-enlightenment narrative from the start of the post.

I'll leave it to the gallery to decide if OP simply has natural talent at this, or is a trained and well-polished master baiter, but, from me, kudos.

I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to do this.

As I noted in my last ban for Count (and elaborated upon in subsequent discussion), he's very good at what he does (trolling). In a forum where people are largely acting in good faith, and where assumptions of good faith are both recommended (it's in the rules) and generally believed, he's the best at mimicking the surface traits of fact-based discussion.

Now, we could just warn and ban him with the bare minimum of effort, but that's generally a last resort. So any formal action usually requires a lot of explanation. That can get very tiresome, even burdensome.

And note that this effort isn't for the sake of Count. We know he's a troll, and the only reason he's around is because he contributes just enough to not be clearly net negative. We don't bother with the lengthy explainers for his sake, but we consider them necessary for everyone else, particularly newcomers to our forums, or those who aren't quite as jaded and get confused as to why seemingly innocuous or borderline posts get hit so hard. In a way, Count benefits from the existence of the people he seeks to rile up.

I'll bookmark this, just in case I need a proper analysis of his nonsense that isn't written solely by myself. Thanks again.

Oh come on, I can't believe this, every time I make a top level post we get people going "5 secret and esoteric knowledge reasons why BC is actually trolling even when he says he's sincere" that there's no good response to other than going "no" because with text anyone can make up anything to support their viewpoint and make it sound plausible (see your average literary analysis magazine or Scott's Recent Anti-Christ lecture).

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. - Cardinal Richelieu

I think it only takes a very quick glance at this forum and past moderation activities to realize that us mods have very little in common with the good Cardinal. We warn sparingly, and hand out bans even more so.

As is regrettably necessary, mod decisions usually revolve around matters of opinion, not the kind of objective fact that can be analyzed under a microscope. Yet, the average Mottizen attracts little such censure.

The last time I had to ban you, I even went to the trouble of rewriting your post to demonstrate a version that used inflammatory language to only the minimum extent necessary:

https://www.themotte.org/post/2269/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/348561?context=8#context

So I am confident that it isn't the content, but the user presenting it and the way it's presented that's an issue.

At this point, you have the following options:

  1. Keep doing whatever it is you are doing, till someone less amused by your antics permabans you.

  2. Write something of actual quality to counterbalance things (you are in fact capable of doing this, look at your Alawite writeup, it won an AAQC). Or, if you're going to keep actual intellectual effort at what it is, phrase things in a more neutral manner.

As it is, my stance is that your current post isn't quite bad enough to warrant another ban, but has supersensitized my receptors such that a second offense will definitely result in a ban.

Honestly, I'm not sure any expression of sincerity will make up for past actions. Finding Christ or Allah right at the noose might do good things for your immortal soul, but it'll take a great deal to make us not consider you a bad actor.

I'm not interested in debating your character with you, though I might with other people who genuinely don't understand our stance. What is within your control is your behavior, such that you may delay or deny the looming banhammer.

If you can't? Well, you'll certainly break out of the loop of samsara, for better or worse.

Richelieu could also find treason in six lines written by a traitor, but he didn't feel it was necessary to mention that.

Damn I genuinely learned something from this lmao

Kind of makes me want to shitpost more, there's so much unexplored skill ceiling. You've put me on to some new tech.

Feels like when I first figured out how to wave dash.

Great breakdown. His trolling sometimes gets me, but it's artful enough that I can't truly be mad. And he's pretty witty sometimes.

Trust me, I'm not a leftoid baiting. You'll notice the conspicuous absence of any mentions of Rosalind Franklin in my post, which would be the number 1 point anybody of a left wing persuasion would attempt to make here.

Instead I fully and freely acknowledge that Rosalind Franklin has been massively overrated, the narrative about how Watson and Crick somehow "stole" her work (never mind the fact that it's very unlikely she would even understand the implications of the images she produced, it's very non trivial to go from this to realizing it implies DNA has a double helix structure) is completely discredited and her contributions were nowhere near those of the people who actually got the Nobel prize.

No, I don't think you're a leftoid baiting - mate, I wouldn't have chosen to make that post if I didn't know your posting well.

Plus, mentioning Franklin would be poor baitcraft. You'd get written off as a leftoid and not get nearly as much attention as doing the former rightoid schtick.

Some people here, including yourself, seem to have developed the view that I'm some sort of evil genius who has nothing better to do than spend my free time honing the art of the bait and trying those skills out on the people here like some sort of lab experiment. The truth is a lot more mundane (as life often is): everything I say is certified 100% organic and genuine with no artificial preservatives or colouring.

You may not be an evil genius but inadvertently (or not... OooOoOOOooOo) you're quite good at poking the hornets nest here

I like it, please continue

I feel like one of those famous artists who puts certain elements in his painting because they look good to him there full stop only for art critics 100 years later to write essays on how "the contrast between the bright cerulean blue of the sky and the complementary colour muted orange of the Autumn hilltop is a very clever trick employed by the artist to enhance the strikingness of the image for the viewers eye" etc. etc. going out to 20 pages of "analysis" when such a thought had never even crossed the artist's mind in the first place.

I'm just giving my genuine honest views but some people here choose to interpret that as me playing 6D chess with time travel...

Nah I think you're an asshole but I think you're earnest in your beliefs, which makes you the fun kind of asshole to debate with

This isn't debating, though. Bartender_Venator's post is not debating with BurdensomeCount - it's deflecting by making a post entirely about the person himself. It is a very well-polished deflection, but it is nonetheless a deflection.

I disagree. @Bartender_Venator was doing effective debating, which can be seen for how he maneuvered BurdensomeCount into falling into the same debate trap twice.

The debate-appropriate response to bad faith framing arguments is to note their use rather than engaged in desired debate on the terms set by the accusation. When the initial presenter is approaching with a potential motte and bailey argument when the rhetorical bailey is itself trying to insinuate and argue over a connotation, and thus assume the conclusion that the insinuation is valid basis to start discussion, the appropriate response is to challenge the argument's paradigm in the first place.

Note that Bartender_Venator's breakdownn isn't an ad hominem argument that BurdensomeCount's argument is an invalid troll argument is wrong because he is a shit-stiring troll, repeat troll troll troll. He didn't try and justify a charge of trolling based on past BurdensomeCount troll efforts to establish a pattern of history, or even linking to the rather direct mod analysis on BurdensomeCount's trolling style. Bartender_Venantor is targeting the argument, claiming that argument-level deicisions reveal bad faith, and letting the implications of that argument critique pain BurdensomCount.

Specifically, Bartender shifted the debate from any debate over the characters Count wanted attention provoked towards to a meta-structure review of how BurdensomeCount's argument was structured. He identified and contrasted both obvious and subtle methods that were used to lead the audience to a conclusion or conflict without actually committing BurdensomeCount to making certain arguments. Bartender noted various points where Burdensome could have added elements that would have earned charity/good faith credit (could explain his reasoning), but also notes the implications- and thus potential reasons- for why they are absent. These coincide with argument structure decisions that could, in isolation, have innocuous reasons, but coincidentally happen to have overlapping / reinforcing thematic effects consistent with trolling. While Bardtender does end off with the passive-aggressive accusation by very conspicuously drawing attention to the lack of a personal accusation ('I'll leave it to the gallery'), the core of the argument for why the audience should find that creidble is how a characterization of Count's argument-structure stand on its own as evidence of good or bad faith on Count's part.

Note in turn that BurdensomeCount did not actually contest Bartender's characterization of his argument in any respect.

If Bartender made had made an ad-hominem debate attack, that would have been an easy winning move. If the original original argument structure was sound, or at least defensible, it would have undercut Bartender's critique and any implicit judgement on good faith. Burdensome could have strengthened the foundations of his argument by providing additional justification for suspect design inclusions, he could have added to the foundation by taking Bartender's invitation for elaboration. Burdensome could even asked for audience forgiveness, claimed he was trying to keep his wordcount down, that it might have distracted, or so on.

Instead Count attempted a suspiciously specific deflection of a personal characterization that wasn't made ('I'm not leftoid baiting'), and then tried to change the subject via a rhetorical concession ('Instead I fully and freely acknowledge') to a topic that had nothing to do with the structural analysis of his argument or Bartender's position. This might work in troll-format motte-and-bailey where the bailey is arguing about the subject of nominal discussion, and the motte is falling back to 'well a more reasonable characterization of the topic was this.' But it was also a a transparently plebian attempt to change the topic, even as he couldn't resist not giving an actual denial that he was baiting.

Which, is why the motte-and-bailey retreat failed on its face. Count's intended motte no longer had value because both motte and bailey were now the bailey to Bartender's position- that the argument structure itself was bad faith. Count's attempted fallback still left him within this bailey that Count was more interested in not-making arguments in able to troll a conflict rather than defend a relevant position.

Count made it even easier for Bartender to draw attention to Count's penchant at rheotorical sleights of hand ('I don't think you're a leftoid baiting') and attempts to reframe the argument. Not only does it make Bartender look better at understanding Count's argument than vice versa, as Count didn't dispute Bartender's correction, it also makes Count's subsequent retreat to a persecution defense another validating example of abandoning the previous arguments. In this way, Count not only gave validity to the initial critique, but practically turned it into a prediction.

Which is how Bartender's argument works on multiple levels. He was not only able to describe Count's conduct in mechanical terms that Count didn't dispute, but do so in ways that Count's own nature led him to validate, even after they were explicitly pointed out. Add to it that Count's response also aligns to rather direct style call-outs from months ago, a style which many posters know, and Count comes across less as some sort of genius, evil or otherwise, and more like someone whose predictability is part of the charm they are clearly getting humored for.

I'm glad that someone remembers the time and effort I spent in analyzing Count. Almost seems worth it, though I'm never getting that lunch break back.

That's the rub. High effort trolls like Count demand similarly high effort in specifically litigating their many sins of omission or commission. I would be entirely fine with "haha, very funny, but we know what you're up to" as a ban message, but as I've mentioned here, those who aren't closely following his trajectory tend to be alarmed and request clarification.

I suppose one can draw parallels to reality. Are the police in SF worried about the reaction of fent users, or are they worried about the concerns raised by otherwise perfectly law abiding citizens?

I think you would very much like to believe that's how people see you here, and I can see how you might have read that into my sarcasm. I just think you spend too much time on arrdrama, enjoy shit-stirring for the sake of it (possibly picking your views based on that, I can't say, but would be many such cases), and lower the tone of this otherwise pleasantly autismal establishment.

None of your excerpts of scandalous things he said has degraded my opinion of him: he seems to be a cool bloke. Imagine on all the discoveries we missed out on because cool blokes like him were filtered out of the researcher track by useless know-nothing neo-Lysenkoists who valued political conformity over intelligence and curiosity.

You think "sunlight exposure is the reason behind 'Latin lovers'" is defensible under any reasonable interpretation? Indians must be drowning in pussy where ever they go if that's true.

  • -14

Drowning in pussy, maybe not. But Indian men are not exactly known for their chastity.

I find it genuinely funny that you chose this in particular, since it's imo among the most reasonable quotes. Sun exposure has a well-attested, uncontroversial positive impact on our general mood, it's really not a big jump from there to positive impact on libido in particular. Going from there to stereotypes about different nationalities is certainly uncouth, but, again, pretty straightforward.

Whether it's actually true is another matter, but it really isn't so far out there.

You think "sunlight exposure is the reason behind 'Latin lovers'" is defensible under any reasonable interpretation?

Defensible to whom and in what way? He didn't put this theory in a paper and try to publish it, did he? You can't possibly imagine that people here would give a shit about such a comment unto itself.

If we want to discuss the hypothesis seriously, not necessarily. Is it merely the presence of melanin? Absolute sunlight exposure? Excess exposure to sunlight modulated by level of presence of melanin? Which hypothesis do you want to debate?

They must’ve caught the solar flare unfortunately, if I’m to go by his logic.

The stereotype in Western culture is that Latin men are sexually aggressive or highly passionate, depending on how well they follow Rules 1 and 2. Indians also have a reputation for being sexually aggressive horndogs.

He said sexual urges, not sexual success.

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