Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
Inventor of the ideological turing test (Bryan Caplan, occasional intellectual sparring partner of SSC) doesn't understand how vaccines work.
(E: And he is certainly not joking. More: My doctor, and all of you were wrong because I didn't explain myself well (this longer post, while coming closer to a point still sucks. High 'shooting the people who clean phones into space' feeling))
dude got fucking ratioed lol
"Ideological Turing test"?
Not gonna look up what that is, but I'm sure it's debatebro "civility" fetishism.
It is the not totally bad idea that you understand a different perspective if you can reliably write pieces of text in such a way that somebody from that perspective cannot tell you don't hold that ideological position.
It fails pretty quickly when tribalism comes into play (aka do it a few times, conclude 'our side is better at passing this test, so we are better', ideologies being broad and people not always realizing which ideology they really are in/differences in definitions. And other issues like it is just a bit of intellectual masturbation, depending on finding neutral people of that perspective. 'you failed the intellectual turing test so we can ignore your criticism of our side'. 'You would fail an intellectual turing test so we can ignore you'. It being debate bro culture with extra steps. People are not actually interested in the test but use the test as an argument to bash people (you once failed at detecting sarcasm and misattributed a sarcastic joke from a leftwinger to the far right? This shows the entire left fails the intellectual turing test and should not be listened to). etc etc. /rant
Somehow that's even dumber than I thought. Especially given the amount of actual political discourse taking the form of "can you believe the woke left wants to allow doctors to trans your children at the age of 3 months!"
Could some of these people write a compelling pro-trans argument? Probably, given that their exaggerations are absurd, nonsensical , and/or contradictory on their face and that the pro-trans arguments are generally rooted in basic respect for people's autonomy over their own bodies. But that doesn't stop them from lying about what trans people actually want in order to gain political power by stoking the right's identitarian outrage.
Depends on who you mean with 'those people' I think the people of themotte woudl have a lot of trouble writing a pro trans argument for example. Esp as the people in there who are leftwingers (or pretend to be) tend to be anti trans, and there is also a big tendency for them to not understand basic leftwing ideas. That one leftwinger (forgot their name for now they had some number in their name) who kept engaging there, got a few complaints they kept reexplaining the same stuff.
Yeah, if you keep ignoring the explanations and misrepresenting people, they will have to do that. (or quit).
Holy shit he's doubling down
I made the mistake of reading the comments on that substack and I'm beginning to actually feel the raw desperation of these sycophants for someone of "note" to notice them.
This is the genius-level discourse that Bryan Caplan foments in his marketplace of ideas.
the dead mall of ideas
Is he ever going to specify which booster? If he refused Tdap he is a menace to society not because of risk of tetanus but spreading pertussis to the vulnerable.
Still, anyone that took him seriously before this should be embarrassed.
It's really really hard for me to take grown men who make a show of being deathly afraid of a little jab you can barely feel seriously.
Same here. Any kind of jab's a PITA for me, and anything intravenous is some of the worst shit I've ever experienced, but I've gritted my teeth and gotten through them no problem.
I mean, for the doctor it's pretty hard to tell a dude who is "GMU econ prof, NYT bestseller, father of 4, author of Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, Case Against Education, Open Borders, & BBB" apart from any other entitled white guy whose read too much Facebook.
Practically is there much difference?
Woo, complaining about a community note is big Karen energy.