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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:
and this:
and this:
and then there's this:
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:
except that Watson's views were even more corrosive to modern civil society than Brian's. The more you know, as they say...
This is a well-crafted piece, let's break it down:
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.
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
So, previously, in response to justawoman, I wrote that there's a distinct stage in the decline of forums where their dynamic becomes increasingly dominated by people coming in to argue with "the forum", which they see as an amorphous outgroup blob. The paradigmatic example to me is all the incels (not in the lib sense, actual incels) going to 4chan's /fit/ to argue with /fit/izens about how self-improvement is impossible and nobody will ever get laid except Chad. It may be true that, in certain respects - perhaps on particular issues, perhaps in response to particular arguments, or perhaps, perhaps often, in response to obviously bad posts which cloak themselves in those issues and arguments - themotte can summon a hornet's nest. This is bad. It is bad to poke the hornet's nest, bad to summon the hornets, bad to be a hornet. If you do this, you are degrading the space and the community. Even though many people come here and see what they want to see, themotte is not a monolithic rightoid hiveblob, but to troll it as if it is a monolithic rightoid hiveblob is to summon that hiveblob out of the future as an entirely natural defense mechanism. If you like this dynamic in a community, I invite you to move on, and instead visit the beautiful imageboard of /pol/, where anyone can play 128D dramatard chess with whatever outgroupblob they choose to envision.
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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...
To be fair
And
Are the same thing. The artist might not be able to articulate why they like the elements, but they have an excellent eye for what looks good, it's what makes them an artist. So they make shit that looks good to them, and then everyone else goes "holy fuck this looks great, how?" and then break it down
Applying this example to here. You write things that you think are interesting and expressive. Your honest views are interesting, and incidentally what you find interesting is also excellent The Motte chum in the water.
Please keep sharing your interesting ideas, I very much like them
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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.
Thank you, Dean, I appreciate your thoroughness. It's a surprising pleasure to have a post analyzed and explicated like this.
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And yet at no point does Bartender even attempt to criticise Count's point. That's the issue. The top-level post is, essentially, arguing that James Watson was a kook - someone who held not merely weird or unusual views, but views that are essentially bigoted, judging entire people because of inherited characteristics that do not reliably cluster with the traits he ostensibly cared about.
Bartender cedes this entire issue. Bartender accuses Count of trolling or baiting, and argues that Count's various points are carefully chosen to provoke the Motte. But at no point does Bartender defend Watson, or argue that the points Count chose should not be relevant to a judgement of him, or that the points Count chose are out of context and unrepresentative, or try anything else similar. The closest Bartender comes to an actual argument is suggesting that the comparison between Watson and Josephson is ill-chosen, but since that comparison is not necessary for Count's criticism of Watson to land, it hardly suffices as much of a rebuttal.
I don't think the top-level post here is great. I think Count would benefit from doing more work to explicitly stitch together an argument. Count's post ought to link those quotes together into a worldview, show more compelling evidence as to the general worldview that Watson held, and then indicate why that worldview is wrong. I'll even grant that there's a bit of consensus-building in the top-level post, which is against Motte rules, though I also think that Bartender and some of those around him are trying to consensus-build in the other direction.
But just as an argument? Count puts forward at least the sketch of an argument against James Watson's character. Bartender does not engage with that argument in favour of accusing Count of trolling. Well, that's as may be. But it means that the argument around Watson slips past. Bartender is arguing about Count, but he is not arguing with Count.
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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?
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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.
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