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Notes -
Why Cross-Examination Is So Damn Great
There's an obvious solace within the written medium. You get to carve out a space safe from constraints and take as much as you need to fully express yourself. Words are neat! I mean, just look at the torrential avalanche I regularly shit out just on my own.
But still, I don't want people to forget about the benefits to real-time adversarial conversations, benefits which cannot be as easily replicated with writing. I recently wrote (ahem) about how humans have this nasty aversion to admitting error. You'll rarely ever get someone willing to outright say "I am a liar" and the roomy comfort that we all love so much about text also provides bad faith actors the ability to build up elaborate defensive ramparts in peace. Nevertheless, even in instances where a smoking gun confession is missing, I cite to a few examples to outline how you can still construct a damning indictment using only a few minor inference hops:
Of course, this gets way easier to accomplish in a real-time confrontation. Chalk it up to the stereotype but yes, I fucking love cross-examination and I want to explain why. Lessons From The Screenplay had a fantastic video analyzing the climactic cross-examination from the movie A Few Good Men while using the vocabulary normally reserved to discuss physical duels. The story's hook is watching the military lawyer protagonist (Kaffee) figure out how he can elicit an outright confession from a notoriously disciplined and experienced commander (Jessep) using only the 'weapons' found within a courtroom. The primary elegance of cross-examination as a weapon stems from the fact that, when done successfully, you can fabricate a solid cage for your opponents using only their own words as ingredients. Kaffee does exactly this by asking questions that appear superficially innocent but, when joined together, weld into a formidable trap Jessep is unable to escape.
I want to highlight a few other recent examples, running the gamut across the political spectrum. My aim here is not to ignite a debate about the specific issue that happens to be discussed (though a toe dip is inevitable) but rather to comment on the rhetorical maneuvers at play and see what lessons we can impart. And a strong word of caution is warranted here: It's true that some this veers dangerously close to mind-reading, which is obviously prone to confirmation bias and erroneous conclusions. With that in mind my goal is to ensure that any conclusion I reach is both solidly grounded within the available evidence and appropriately qualified (with any alternative explanations highlighted). I think the utility is worth the risk of error, and the harm can be mitigated by a commitment to acknowledging one's own mistakes.
First up is Nathan Robinson interviewing Christopher Rufo, specifically the part where they discuss whether the Founding Fathers were racist hypocrites — extolling the virtues of liberty while also owning slaves:
So Rufo finds himself in a bit of a pickle. He's fully aware that he can't say "Thomas Jefferson, the man who believed blacks were inferior and held 130 of them in bondage, was not a racist" with a straight face. But simultaneously he also expends a lot of acrobatic energy trying to dodge answering a straightforward question. The italicized portion of his statement above explains why. Although Rufo has made his career as a stalwart opponent of Critical Race Theory (however you define it) he reveals that he might accept one of its core tropes — that the United States is indelibly and irredeemably tainted by its original sin of racism. Notice that Robinson did not ask "Should we discredit Jefferson's work in advancing equality?" he simply asked if Jefferson was racist. But Rufo looks past Robinson's question and sees the warning beacons coming up on the horizon, and so he charges forward in an effort to preemptively maintain a defensive line on ideas he suspects would next be attacked.
According to his own words, Rufo divulges that he thinks racism is potentially grounds to have your accomplishments discredited. If you accept that framework then it makes sense why he would expend so much energy avoiding admitting that Jefferson was racist; the fear is that this concession would cause the rest of his favored structure to crumble. It's not likely we would've gotten this admission in writing; he had to be cornered by his own statements in real-time for this to slip.
I am going to now praise Tim Pool of all people. A few months ago he invited Lance/TheSerfsTV to his livestream to be grilled on a range of topics. On the abortion question, some of the more enthusiastic pro-choice activists have staked their position on legalizing elective abortion not just at the "viability" line (~22 weeks) but up until the millisecond the fetus exists the birth canal. Lance affirms this is his position, claiming that the mother should always maintain full and absolute autonomy over what happens with the pregnancy. But as the real-time discussion evinced, it's not clear if he actually believes this:
Such a spectacular reveal would not have made it through the cognitive filters had it not taken place in real time. If someone's position is that a pregnant woman can do whatever she wants with her body, up to and including terminating the life of the fetus, it logically follows that such an expansive authority would also include less fatal harms. But as Lance discloses in the moment, he doesn't believe that a pregnant woman has the right to take meth and so he offers a justification that is on its own eminently reasonable, but only after it's too late does he realize the self-inflicted rhetorical leg sweep he tripped into.
The rest of the conversation gets bogged down on the legality of certain drugs but to Lance's credit, he does eventually bite the bullet and concede that although he may not agree with the decision he still believes a pregnant woman has the right to take heroin. The eventual consistency is commendable, but the fact that he so reflexively resorted to the commanding ethos of "do not intentionally kill a child" should call into question how much he really believes in the "absolute dominion of the mother" position he insisted upon.
Lastly is our old friend Meghan Murphy again. I already wrote extensively about the numerous logical fallacies deployed in her conversation with Aella on the ethics of the sex industry. Murphy also discussed the same topic with professional debate bro Destiny and he describes the fundamental issue after she had walked out in frustration:
That's a fair question! If someone says they don't like X because of reasons A/B/C, and you get rid of A/B/C but they still don't like X, then it inevitably follows they have other reasons for disliking X they're not divulging. What Destiny has outlined here is an effective method to uncovering pretextual justifications — the false reasons someone provides as a bid to keep the true reasons hidden (likely because they're too unpalatable or unpersuasive to say out loud).
Destiny spends an agonizing amount of time trying to get Murphy to explain what her precise objections to the sex industry are and gets nowhere, and their final exchange illustrates why. They're discussing one of Murphy's argument that the sex trade is unethical because of women's particular vulnerability during penetrative sex:
Take note of the italicized responses; that kind of evasion is not a generally pervasive reaction for Murphy. She speaks for a living and within other moments in this debate and elsewhere, Murphy has demonstrated a clear ability to confidently answers questions with immediacy and relevancy. It can't be just a coincidence when acrobatics are prompted only by these vexing questions.
Murphy's responses make a lot more sense if you assume that her true objections to the sex industry are really borne out of an aesthetic or disgust aversion, and specifically only when men are the patrons. Murphy is evidently aware that this argument can't be spoken out loud because it's likely too vacant to be generally persuasive, so she instead cycles through a rolodex of pretextual (read: fake) arguments that she's willing to unhesitantly discard whenever they risk becoming a liability to her core thesis. That's why she dodges the male prostitute hypothetical to instead reiterate her dislike of men paying women for sex. That's why she laughs off the female client hypothetical as implausible instead of grappling with its implications.
I'm comfortable accusing Murphy of dishonesty here because her acrobatic evasions are selectively deployed in response to concrete threats to her position, rather than the result of random chance.
It's unfortunate that human beings sometimes lie, and it's too bad that they also refuse to admit mistakes. Such is life. Given the examples I outlined above, some generalizable heuristics is to be suspicious of anyone who refuses to answer straightforward questions (in writing or otherwise), or who refuses to engage in anything but the most sympathetic of conversations. A lot of our contentious interactions have and continue to migrate over towards asynchronous text exchanges, but hopefully I've made a case for why talking is still cool. Also I host The Bailey podcast and I'm always delighted to talk to people I vehemently disagree with, so reach out if you want to butt heads!
As a parting bonus, here's the journalist Beth Rigby interviewing Iain Anderson, chair of the LGBT organization Stonewall. It's quite the bloodbath.
I agree on your main point but I don’t agree with your characterization of Rufo’s argument. Rufo is trying to elevate the conversation to a deeper level of substance, and Robinson refuses to break from the realm of connotation. Being a racist is bad because being a racist is immoral, and Rufo is disputing the immorality of the founding fathers by reminding Robinson that the consensus at the time of Jefferson was that Blacks were inferior. We judge people morally based on whether they did morally better than expected in their conditions or milieu. We shouldn’t, for instance, declare MLK Jr evil on the whole just because he was a supporter of conversion therapy. If we held to a milieu-controlled standard we would have to declare that there is no moral man left, because we all fall short of perfection. How bad is it that we buy vanity products from companies that abuse workers? Or that we pollute the earth? Why would future generations find this forgivable, rather than the purchasing of already-enslaved people from an undeveloped part of the world during a time period where slavery was normalized and historically ubiquitous?
So I don’t think Rufo let anything slip. He explained his position not badly for the time allotted. Robinson is using lawyerly tricks to make Rufo look suspect to the ears of an untrained audience by refusing to charitably entertain Rufo’s nuance. And also, Rufo doesn’t believe that immorality (true racism) should never be cancellable. Rufo believes that the standard of cancellation is too low. It’s not as if Rufo is trying to rehabilitate Adolf Hitler or Mosley or someone who was genuinely more racist than their time period without ever having produced some balancing commensurate good to society. Good examples of what I mean by the latter are John Lennon (wife beater), Wagner, and Kanye West. We don’t cancel them because their good on the whole far outweighs their bad on the whole. I think this is genuinely how people see moral judgment in practice, rather than a less nuanced rules-based morality.
Re: prostitution, perhaps a general rule is that it’s much more difficult to argue against someone who has committed themselves to a general rule. Destiny can say “women should do what they want with their bodies if not harming others”, and then the opponent has to scour through psychological sciences and moral philosophy and the anecdota of history to adequately present the view that prostitution is bad for the sum good of society. Consider how much harder it is to argue against gambling than for it. To argue against gambling you have to have an understanding of addiction, genetic proclivities to addiction, the data on who gambles, and the adaptability of human happiness. To argue for gambling you just say “people should be allowed to do what they want unless harming someone”.
Whether that was the point that Robinson was intending to make eventually, I don't know. But the premise for why they got into this topic was fairly limited based on Robinson's first question:
To repeat another comment I just made: I didn't point this out but it adds another explanation for why Rufo is so motivated to avoid conceding the "Jefferson was a racist" position, because then it would necessarily follow that "maybe some CRT advocates might have a point". Now, normally this shouldn't be such a cataclysmic event but it is for Rufo because he's an activist who has seen a significant rise in his national profile precisely from speaking in absolutes like this. He can't deploy nuance and so it has to be all-out total war and CRT advocates are not just wrong, but wrong about everything.
I mean, it seems obvious to me that you are simply correct here. The founding fathers were by and large racists. America was in fact founded on something reasonably described as white supremacy. The CRT people, speaking strictly about those historical facts, have a point. Rufo won't admit that fact because it badly undermines his position.
What, in your view, is Rufo's position, strictly speaking?
I note that a lot of people here seem very reluctant to draw the above conclusions. Why do you suppose that is?
That's the error. Even if the founding fathers were white supremacists, they were much more other things, and those other things were what the country was founded on. To say "America was founded on white supremacy" is to imply that its foundation is composed mostly of white supremacist ideals.
This must be that nuance @ymeskhout was talking about. You try and sell that line to the public, tell me how it goes.
I disagree.
There's a socio-political token "racism", and there's a socio-political token "Thomas Jefferson", and the idea the Blues are positing is that there's better common ground available burning the "Thomas Jefferson" token and coordinating our cooperation around the "racism" token. The idea you're positing is that you can keep them from burning the "Thomas Jefferson" token by pointing out what an absolutely terrible idea it is. But the Scorpion's response is going to be "lol, LMAO", and at this point you really should know that and have planned accordingly.
The error is acting as though there's a conversation worth having with Blues about "racism" at all, that this is some sort of misunderstanding and a little more nuance (man, I love this word!) will sort it out. Thomas Jefferson was a racist and a slaveowner; why deny it? Because you value the Constitution? Because you think there's a nation here with a rich history that might be a little tarnished, but it's still worth saving? Sure. Sure! If you still believe that, you go give it your very best try. Rufo is, certainly, which is why he's embarrassing himself on camera, trying to deny obvious historical truths in a vain attempt to defend the foundations of liberal ideology, because he knows the nuance you're pitching, no matter how truthful, is as good as slitting his own throat. His answer looks kinda not-great to people who watch the video and can follow the arguments, which is essentially no one. Your way, that clip would be the most famous thing he ever said, permanently.
From a strategic perspective, sure, but as far as the actual truth goes, America wasn't founded on white supremacy any more than it was founded on bloodletting. From a strategic perspective, in a debate you just go for the most slimy manipulative deceitful things you can say that will get your opponent into an inconvenient bind. I responded to your object level statement:
with my own object-level statement, which is that they actually don't have a point.
At the founding, America's legal, social and political systems allowed black people to be owned as property, and the first immigration act specifically discriminated in favor of white people. Several of the founding fathers owned slaves; most of them appeared to hold views on race that would certainly mark them as central examples of white supremacists in our own time.
How is a group of white supremacists intentionally building a new legal system that enshrines white supremacy into law not "founded on white supremacy"?
You can say they were "much more other things". Much more how? It seems to me that this is a statement of subjective value, and there is no obvious reason to expect others to share it. A murderer likely spends a very small percentage of his time killing people, and yet we find that small percentage of killing the most salient aspect of his character. It does not seem obviously unreasonable to take the same approach with slavers.
To say accurately what the US was founded on, we should look at what the system was like before independence was declared and why they declared independence and fought a war against the most powerful army of the time for it.
The founders wrote the Declaration of Independence to proclaim their reasons for claiming it. It's published, you can go read it here. You'll see that it says nothing at all about slavery or race - it's all about civil rights, taxes, and various details about how the government works. Those were their beefs with the British system, not anything about slavery or race.
Indeed, it would be pretty weird for anything like that to be in there, considering that slavery and racism were near-universally approved of in those days. The British certainly had no problem with it at the time, and neither did any of the other colonizing powers. A claim that America was "founded on white supremacy" would only be accurate if the primary reason for declaring independence was that the British demanded that they tolerate colored people and they were sufficiently opposed to that to make war based upon it.
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Absent further information my best guess is that it's the defensive version of Arguments As Soldiers. The concern is that a concession on any ground, no matter how trivial, will threaten to collapse the entire front. Assuming I'm describing the dynamics here accurately, I find the fear very puzzling because it's so easily remedied by just a tiny bit of nuance. I also have to admit I start suspecting insecurity at play here regarding how strong one's convictions are, with the coping mechanism being latching onto as many arguments as possible (no matter how bad some might be).
So what would a more nuanced reply look like? More importantly from a socio-political perspective, what would you expect the response from Robinson and the Blue public at large to such a nuanced reply to be?
I mean, the assumption you're working from here seems to be that Ruso is a radical who's painted himself into a corner by refusing to concede any ground, no matter how small. It seems obvious to me that you're correct about him painting himself into a corner, but the part I think you miss is that he's not a radical, and in fact he is doing his very best to keep the peace, including by standing up for obvious lies.
There's a socio-political token "racism", and there's a socio-political token "Thomas Jefferson", and it seems to me that the idea the 1619 people are offering, and Robinson is endorsing, is that we'll reach common ground and a path forward by burning the "Thomas Jefferson" token and coordinating around the "racism" token, which they coincidentally maintain absolute, unquestionable control over and have abused daily for longer than any of us have been alive. You seem to be positing that we don't have to burn it, maybe just singe it a bit, and to your credit there's a lot of people in this thread laying out "nuanced" takes. One notes that they're offering them here, in a pseudonymous backwater of the internet that's been successively purged from like five other places by the very forces their nuance presumes won't object to claims that maybe White Supremacy isn't actually the worst thing ever.
The thing I don't think you appreciate is that Ruso is a moderate. What he's lying for is conciliation and peace. When the "Thomas Jefferson" token burns, which it absolutely will sooner or later, cooperation isn't going to reorganize around the "racism" token. Cooperation isn't going to happen at all. There is no future where we finally beat Racism and the scores come up and the crime rates normalize, not under anything remotely resembling current conditions and assumptions, and I think if you are honest with yourself, you probably know that. You should know that those unpleasant realities are not the fault of people like me, and that people like me are done being used as a scapegoat for them. Consequently, the racial animosities Robinson and the 1619 people are stirring up are here to stay for at least another generation, and the plan with the highest likelihood of dealing productively with that fact is probably Ruso's. The alternatives all appear to be various routes to, in the parlance of the community, coordinated meanness. Or at least it seems so to me. Maybe your view is different.
I'm comfortable conceding that Jefferson was a racist white supremacist straight-up because I don't give a shit about Jefferson. I don't value him or the Constitution he wrote or the nation he founded, the corpse of which I'm unhappily stuck in. I'm happy to embrace honesty and watch the counterfeit common-ground burn, because nothing I value is founded on it. I'm not counting on Ruso's plan to win, because I already assume that the moderate solutions are dead-ends. But you give the impression that you believe that the common ground is going to keep being there in the future, and I find that odd.
No doubt very similar to the fanfare and adoration the 1619 project received when it ran with a similar premise. There won't be a shortage of dramatic headlines from bad faith actors crowing over how Rufo Admits CRT is RIGHT! I don't deny that.
In the rest of your post, you're making what is essentially a game theory argument for why the defect strategy is justified both morally and strategically. I concede your explanation for why Rufo is lying to be valid and an important point to keep in mind, and it would be inappropriate for me to respond to that with a deontological appeal to honesty. Instead, though I'm not sure what goal Rufo is really pursuing but in the process I assume he's alienating plenty of fence-sitters with this obstinate strategy of refusing to concede banal truths.
The closest parallel I can think of is probably the trans discourse which seems to me to have gone through an obvious vibe shift this year where criticism from non-conservative voices has gotten much less hesitant. I gather at least some of it was probably the result of people tired of having been lied to about obvious topics for so long.
[btw I'm not sure what you mean about Rufo being a radical vs moderate, those terms don't really mean anything to me.]
Well, that doesn't sound so bad. Who cares about headlines? If that's what's at stake, why do people care so much?
...To speak more plainly, yes, that does seem like the likely immediate outcome. The long-term outcome that seems more relevant is that the CRT wins this argument, and we move significantly further from the happy futures.
Say rather I'm pointing out the incentives that currently exist. Specifically, I'm pointing out that moderate positions don't appear to be able to survive in the wild without deception, both of oneself and of others, while honesty leads to the embrace of extremism. I'm not endorsing lying, and in fact I argue that honesty is likely better for everyone involved. I do think it helps to understand why they think the lies are necessary, though.
There was a really good article I read here once talking about what amounted to a truce on race in the 90s-2000s, where white people tacitly agreed that racism was Very Bad, and black people tacitly agreed to stop constantly making accusations of racism, and the idea was that we'd try to fix the problems rather than arguing over who's fault they were. Only, it didn't actually work, because the problems didn't get fixed. Policy Starvation kicked in, and here we are.
Imagine the throttle lever of some vast steam-powered ship, a three-foot steel bar mounted to the floor. Push it forward, the ship speeds up, pull it back, the ship stops. Moderates are the people arguing over whether the best results will be secured by pushing the lever forward or back, or by how much. Extremists are the people who think the best results will come from ripping the lever off its mounting and wielding it as a club. System as a tool for mutual benefit, versus system as a weapon for mutual combat, no?
Rufo and Robinson are both moderates; they are trying to use the rules-as-written to secure what they consider to be positive, stable outcomes for everyone. They're trying to maintain something that at least roughly resembles what's commonly understood to be the status quo. The reason that last sentence is stacked with so many qualifiers, of course, is because that our common understanding of the status quo is mostly built on lies exactly like the ones you're chiding in your original post. The system (both the academic/educational system they're fighting over here, and our society more generally) runs on selective falsehood. Operating within its constraints consists of selecting which lies one will call out and which one will ignore, and especially on not breaching the very important lies all the serious, responsible people have collectively agreed to never, ever talk about.
Being moderates, both of them are liars: Rufo is lying about the past, claiming that Jefferson wasn't a white supremacist, and Robinson is lying about the present, claiming that Jefferson's white supremacy is at all relevant to the current situation. I'd argue that the significant difference is that Rufo's lie, if carried off, moves us away from serious conflict, while Robinson's lie moves us toward it, but I don't expect that argument to be persuasive to anyone on the other side; of course I'm going to argue that the lie that puts the burden on the other side is "better", while they're going to argue that the lie that puts the burden on my side is better; that's how people are. Of course I think I'm right and they're wrong; doesn't everyone? Charity doesn't solve the problem; it reveals the fact that there is no solution, at least in the general case. Hence blossoming extremism of various flavors, as we realize that compromise is not essential or often even possible, and so become more accepting of its absence. Or alternatively, as we grow disillusioned with the known lies of moderation, and turn to the untested claims of extremists.
Not so! Just insist that Robinson be honest as well, and recognize that selective honesty is not honesty. Or do you think that it is acceptably honest to start the conversation at "Was Jefferson a White Supremacist?", as though this were an isolated trivia question?
Well, take a look at the responses here; the moderate voices are the ones defending Ruso's equivocation, aren't they? "The Truth, at any cost" is not a moderate, fence-sitter ideal; they don't want large-scale upheaval, and most of them would like to bypass the whole question. It seems to me that Ruso's approach is more likely to get them there, were it to work. They could go back to talking about how Racism Is Very Wrong And We Must Fight Against It, and also about how Jefferson was a Great Man Who Founded Our Nation. What could be more moderate and fence-sitting than that?
In any case, how do you differentiate between Ruso losing the uncommitted by being a jerk, versus losing them because he's simply been shouted down? The argument you're making seems to be that nuance would have improved Ruso's actual position, helped him achieve his goals more easily. The space Ruso is operating in is quite large, and there's a lot of people in it. Can you point to some doing a better job that Ruso at what appear to be Ruso's goals? If Ruso is Trump, all sound and fury even at the compromise of the core mission, who's De Santis?
This post explains, with impeccable clarity, a dynamic that is prevalent but elusive to describe. I guess you could group it under the penumbra of kayfabe. I admit that it's a bit naive and colloquially autistic for me to plow through with a whole "akshually, logic" analysis without better acknowledging how much the treaty theatrics are pulling some of the incentives levers out of frame.
What did I say that would make you think I would be in favor of selective honesty? Of course I want him to be honest too. That said, I don't think you're characterizing this exchange fairly. First, that's not how Robinson started the exchange as I already pointed out, it started when Robinson explicitly asked about Rufo's CRT criticism. But assuming Robinson did indeed start the conversation with "Was Jefferson a White Supremacist?" whether or not it would be considered honest would depend on some context. If it was a panel discussion on "The Legacy of the Founding Fathers" then I think it's perfectly fair, if it was in the context of "Is The United States a Force For Good" then I would find it extremely slimy.
This is mostly an empirical question, and I admit I don't have enough evidence to adjudicate. The other high-profile individual operating within the vague "wokeness has gone too far" that could be a contrast is probably Jonathan Haidt, but that answer probably just shows how ignorant I am about this question. A lot of my response would be necessarily leaning upon (potentially delusional) optimism of wanting the 'good guys' to win (read: the honest ones, regardless of partisanship). Rufo is slightly more famous than I am, and fame is a necessary condition for any activist hoping to leave an impact so he's already way ahead and much better positioned to evaluate his decisions. There could be something similar to how the candidates that can win the general are the least likely to win the primary, but that's going to boil down to an empirical question I'm not equipped to handle.
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