What really gets my goat is the pretense that these small factual errors are inconsequential. In a hit piece of the sort she published, the narrative is constructed by making a large number of seemingly innocent factual errors and exaggerations. And once the narrative is presented, people act like you're a pedant for pointing them out, when the aggregate of all these errors is essential to her narrative.
For how bad this example is, Shoe is the tip of the iceberg. There is an overwhelming amount of slop on youtube. Channels like Second Thought are entire media outfits dedicated to creating propaganda/spreading false information. There's hundreds or even thousands of these channels.
It's honestly such a huge problem, which seems potentially unfixable, and which has had and will have actual consequences on elections. Like, the vast majority of online commentators and politics adjacent media personalities have adopted this populist style, and it seems very difficult to convince people of its stupidity, given that, for anyone who's sipped the Kool-aid, 'real world coalition' members (to steal BB's phrase) vibe terribly.
I would zoom in further into the truth claims in this case as opposed to making larger statements. Shoe on head is a populist in this case, and is lying. The youtuber Second Thought who I brought up, is a group of video producers who specialize in spreading misinformation.
They are both populist, sure, but more importantly they are wrong.
We can of course come up with counter examples and counter counter examples, but at least on this specific example - these people are wrong on the facts.
Should we zoom in on the specific truth claims or not?
If Yes:
Shoe's original video claimed that USAID funded propaganda and left-wing cultural imperialism at home and abroad. That claim is true, even though Shoe got some of the details wrong and she should correct them.
Bentham's Bulldog wanted to zoom out from that specific claim about propaganda and cultural imperialism, in order to talk about the good things USAID has done as well.
If No:
Some people want to zoom out from Shoe's claim about USAID's propaganda and cultural imperialism and talk about the reliability of "populist" media in general.
That's fine with me, but then let's talk about the reliability of mainstream media as well.
I don't think this talk about "zooming out" is quite right: we're evaluating whether or not it's good to eliminate USAID; if that's what we're arguing about then BB insisting on bringing in the good that USAID does isn't "zooming out"--it's exactly the level we should be talking about. The problem isn't that Sh0e made some true and some false claims about imperialism but BB wants to zoom out to talk about good stuff; it's that Sh0e made some true and some false claims about imperialism *in order to argue against the continuation of USAID*; to the extent that her claims are false, that undermines her claims, but *separately* even her true claims aren't enough to make her case without setting beside them the true claims about the good USAID has done because that's still relevant to the argument she's making even if everything she says is true, and it's still dishonest to not bring that up and to continue to ignore it after it's pointed out *given the argument she's making*.
BB wasn't just saying that USAID should be preserved, he was making a larger point about the credibility of "alternative media". That's why the title of the article is about Shoeonhead, not "USAID Should Be Preserved Because It Does Some Good Things"
You're just wrong about this. Populism is low status and the mainstream media is high status.
People have always had negativity bias. Populist media is growing in popularity now because elite opinion-makers keep discrediting themselves, such as when they claimed that breaking lockdown to protest for George Floyd would not spread COVID.
Low-status things can be "cool" and "sexy". Rebellious behaviour is low-status. Rebellious behaviour is seen as cool. Rebelling against your parents is cool. Rebelling against society and becoming emo/goth/hippie/whatever was cool. Joining the cool kids back in the 90s and listening to this thing called "Rap Music" was cool. Drugs are "cool" (though, they can be both low- and high-status). Going to nightclubs and getting wasted is cool.
Populism makes the average Joe feel like Socrates and like he's an action movie character in the Matrix who's figured it all out and has some deeper wisdom about the world than his peers. Yet is blind to the fact that his peers are increasingly believing the same "I am 14 and this is deep" stuff because it _sounds_ profound.
What does status have to do with it? Low status things often have more intuitive appeal, particularly to people who aren't high status, which is most people.
Ofc negativity bias has always been a thing, I don't know why that matters. I didn't propose that negativity bias was the cause of the introduction of populist rhetoric, merely that it explains its appeal. Which do you think played a larger role in the mainstreaming of populism---Trump running in 2016, or some woke CNN pundit saying something stupid? Pundits have always said stupid things, so I think the former explanation is much better.
I'm pretty sure the growth of populist media long predates 2020, and surely is more related to technological change than anything else.
I also think arguing this thing about high status vs low status is kind of beside the point; low status things still have lots of popular appeal, which is what I take Muhammad Wang to be arguing. If I say "Marvel superhero slop is sexy and appeals to the lowest common denominator" as an argument for why Marvel movies are popular, arguing that Marvel is low-status doesn't seem like it's really addressing the point. Something can be popular and appeal to various biases even while being low status
Every faux-centrist always tries to play the "I'm no expert, I just did an oopsie" game when they explicitly lie or make an egregious error, while at the same time going around media parades pretending to be experts. It's so obvious they're just shilling for one side.
There are a lot of good people in that part of twitter but there are a lot of resentment-driven ideologies, idiots, and grifters too. Someone needs to sort the sheep from the goats. You're doing God's work bulldog!
OOC: what part of twitter are you referring to? In my head shoe is solidly in the Bernie-MAGA populist quadrant which I rank fairly low as far as parts of twitter go.
Good question. I thought there was a time, maybe 2021, when she got within the right wing of the part of twitter self identifying as tpot, is that not right?
Yes, ultimately the problem with al media is that there is no accountability whatsoever, someone can make a deeply misleading content that spread misinfo to millions of people and when they get called out they can either pretend to be mere entertainers, mere japers, or just disregard you completely. But there is nothing entertaining about the fact that these guys are often the only source of news many people have
you should check out simon lairds "criticism" of the points you made, i find them to be quite unconvincing, and he seems to me to repeat many talking points shoe makes regarding something being "still true" even though their heavily biased language shows that its anything but that
Note on that article: he claims it would be good to overthrow the Cuban government (which I agree with in principle), but also states "there’s good reason to be worried when our government engages in shadowy activities to indoctrinate the masses and overthrow non-ideologically-aligned governments," seemingly in reference to the Kazakhstan stuff. Which is ridiculous, because we were never going to overthrow Kazakhstan, nor Cuba for that matter. a lot of the article also just relies on the assertion that combatting misinformation is propaganda and therefore bad. Online people just seem to think foreign policy doesn't matter and the US doesn't have strategic interests---so stupid!
i also found it quite weird when he claimed that all state funded media is propaganda in the comments to me without knowing the difference between organsiations and information
The fact that a purported “libertarian/national conservative” would write an article in support of a purported leftist arguing in support of communist Cuba really speaks to how mind-rotted the current political landscape is. Also speaks to how the modern isolationist right has directly inherited most of its foreign policy ideas from the Cold War era far left.
It's crazy how far rightists/leftists will just say things. These people probably don't know the name of the president of Kazakhstan, know nothing about anything that's happened in Kazakhstan over the last five years, probably only know about the country from Borat, but feel confident in assessing USAID's strategy there because 'imperialism' and 'propaganda.' It's absolutely ridiculous
To be fair, some of the semi-lying comes from the epistemic angle of "the purpose of a system is what it does," which would tell us that if USAID funding goes towards a child sex ring accidentally, then we can argue truthfully that USAID funded a child sex ring. This could be considered a failure of USAID and the idea of the model itself; hapless funding to orphanages will be directed accidentally to child sex rings. If this is considered as evidence the problem is statistically high enough, it could be considered as evidence that this aid is more utilitarian ineffective in finality than opportunity cost would allow us, and it could be considered negligent or intentional to continue.
Combined with ShoeHead's assertion that she wouldn't talk about the good things they do, this could be considered a truthful criticism of USAID.
A lot of pundits talk this way naturally, which has to be understood. I don't think it's actually a very honest way to make assertions or teach people things. It's part of the workaround to drive up intense libels in a political context while attempting to not technically lie. But it does exist, and it needs to be seen for its partial validity and intentional ambiguity.
"To be fair, some of the semi-lying comes from the epistemic angle of "the purpose of a system is what it does," which would tell us that if USAID funding goes towards a child sex ring accidentally, then we can argue truthfully that USAID funded a child sex ring"
Sure, but then the fact that she ignores the good things USAID has done is even more damning: if we're evaluating USAID on the basis of "the purpose of a system is what it does" we should, y'know, look at what it does, not just a grievance-driven selected sample of what it does. But then we might conclude something like, "the purpose of USAID is to prevent tens of millions of people dying in Africa" which doesn't make it sound like such a bad thing.
No, because she explicitly stated that she wasn't addressing good things they did. Which she is allowed to do for the sake of argument. End of discussion.
If you're evaluating a system "based on what it does", and you ignore everything good that it does, stipulating in advance that that's what you're doing just means you're being transparent about how pointless the exercise is.
"Exercise makes me feel tired and sore; it does other things too, but I'm not talking about the good things it does. This is evidence that exercise is ineffective by utilitarian lights."
No one should think this is a good argument, or contributes anything of value to an understanding of the benefits of exercise.
What really gets my goat is the pretense that these small factual errors are inconsequential. In a hit piece of the sort she published, the narrative is constructed by making a large number of seemingly innocent factual errors and exaggerations. And once the narrative is presented, people act like you're a pedant for pointing them out, when the aggregate of all these errors is essential to her narrative.
For how bad this example is, Shoe is the tip of the iceberg. There is an overwhelming amount of slop on youtube. Channels like Second Thought are entire media outfits dedicated to creating propaganda/spreading false information. There's hundreds or even thousands of these channels.
It's honestly such a huge problem, which seems potentially unfixable, and which has had and will have actual consequences on elections. Like, the vast majority of online commentators and politics adjacent media personalities have adopted this populist style, and it seems very difficult to convince people of its stupidity, given that, for anyone who's sipped the Kool-aid, 'real world coalition' members (to steal BB's phrase) vibe terribly.
The reason that "real world coalition" members vibe terribly is that they lie all the time.
They don't actually live in the real world.
I would zoom in further into the truth claims in this case as opposed to making larger statements. Shoe on head is a populist in this case, and is lying. The youtuber Second Thought who I brought up, is a group of video producers who specialize in spreading misinformation.
They are both populist, sure, but more importantly they are wrong.
We can of course come up with counter examples and counter counter examples, but at least on this specific example - these people are wrong on the facts.
Should we zoom in on the specific truth claims or not?
If Yes:
Shoe's original video claimed that USAID funded propaganda and left-wing cultural imperialism at home and abroad. That claim is true, even though Shoe got some of the details wrong and she should correct them.
Bentham's Bulldog wanted to zoom out from that specific claim about propaganda and cultural imperialism, in order to talk about the good things USAID has done as well.
If No:
Some people want to zoom out from Shoe's claim about USAID's propaganda and cultural imperialism and talk about the reliability of "populist" media in general.
That's fine with me, but then let's talk about the reliability of mainstream media as well.
John Oliver is no more reliable than Shoeonhead.
I don't think this talk about "zooming out" is quite right: we're evaluating whether or not it's good to eliminate USAID; if that's what we're arguing about then BB insisting on bringing in the good that USAID does isn't "zooming out"--it's exactly the level we should be talking about. The problem isn't that Sh0e made some true and some false claims about imperialism but BB wants to zoom out to talk about good stuff; it's that Sh0e made some true and some false claims about imperialism *in order to argue against the continuation of USAID*; to the extent that her claims are false, that undermines her claims, but *separately* even her true claims aren't enough to make her case without setting beside them the true claims about the good USAID has done because that's still relevant to the argument she's making even if everything she says is true, and it's still dishonest to not bring that up and to continue to ignore it after it's pointed out *given the argument she's making*.
BB wasn't just saying that USAID should be preserved, he was making a larger point about the credibility of "alternative media". That's why the title of the article is about Shoeonhead, not "USAID Should Be Preserved Because It Does Some Good Things"
No, it's because populist messaging is sexy and appeals to negativity bias.
You're just wrong about this. Populism is low status and the mainstream media is high status.
People have always had negativity bias. Populist media is growing in popularity now because elite opinion-makers keep discrediting themselves, such as when they claimed that breaking lockdown to protest for George Floyd would not spread COVID.
Low-status things can be "cool" and "sexy". Rebellious behaviour is low-status. Rebellious behaviour is seen as cool. Rebelling against your parents is cool. Rebelling against society and becoming emo/goth/hippie/whatever was cool. Joining the cool kids back in the 90s and listening to this thing called "Rap Music" was cool. Drugs are "cool" (though, they can be both low- and high-status). Going to nightclubs and getting wasted is cool.
Populism makes the average Joe feel like Socrates and like he's an action movie character in the Matrix who's figured it all out and has some deeper wisdom about the world than his peers. Yet is blind to the fact that his peers are increasingly believing the same "I am 14 and this is deep" stuff because it _sounds_ profound.
Well put
Rebellious behavior is high status in mainstream culture (maybe not in some conservative Christian subcultures).
What does status have to do with it? Low status things often have more intuitive appeal, particularly to people who aren't high status, which is most people.
Ofc negativity bias has always been a thing, I don't know why that matters. I didn't propose that negativity bias was the cause of the introduction of populist rhetoric, merely that it explains its appeal. Which do you think played a larger role in the mainstreaming of populism---Trump running in 2016, or some woke CNN pundit saying something stupid? Pundits have always said stupid things, so I think the former explanation is much better.
Stupid CNN pundits were a far bigger factor, because stupidity from the mainstream media is what made a Trump victory possible in the first place.
I'm pretty sure the growth of populist media long predates 2020, and surely is more related to technological change than anything else.
I also think arguing this thing about high status vs low status is kind of beside the point; low status things still have lots of popular appeal, which is what I take Muhammad Wang to be arguing. If I say "Marvel superhero slop is sexy and appeals to the lowest common denominator" as an argument for why Marvel movies are popular, arguing that Marvel is low-status doesn't seem like it's really addressing the point. Something can be popular and appeal to various biases even while being low status
populism is brainrot.
Every faux-centrist always tries to play the "I'm no expert, I just did an oopsie" game when they explicitly lie or make an egregious error, while at the same time going around media parades pretending to be experts. It's so obvious they're just shilling for one side.
There are a lot of good people in that part of twitter but there are a lot of resentment-driven ideologies, idiots, and grifters too. Someone needs to sort the sheep from the goats. You're doing God's work bulldog!
*ideologues
OOC: what part of twitter are you referring to? In my head shoe is solidly in the Bernie-MAGA populist quadrant which I rank fairly low as far as parts of twitter go.
Good question. I thought there was a time, maybe 2021, when she got within the right wing of the part of twitter self identifying as tpot, is that not right?
Not to my knowledge. Though I always liked tpot as a place to escape from politics twitter so I probably have a biased view of it.
Always bizarre watching sober-minded thinkers who appreciate rigor try to interact with deranged polemicists.
Dismal stuff. Here's hoping she sees the error of her ways instead of doubling down. That seems like a likely outcome.
Yes, ultimately the problem with al media is that there is no accountability whatsoever, someone can make a deeply misleading content that spread misinfo to millions of people and when they get called out they can either pretend to be mere entertainers, mere japers, or just disregard you completely. But there is nothing entertaining about the fact that these guys are often the only source of news many people have
you should check out simon lairds "criticism" of the points you made, i find them to be quite unconvincing, and he seems to me to repeat many talking points shoe makes regarding something being "still true" even though their heavily biased language shows that its anything but that
Note on that article: he claims it would be good to overthrow the Cuban government (which I agree with in principle), but also states "there’s good reason to be worried when our government engages in shadowy activities to indoctrinate the masses and overthrow non-ideologically-aligned governments," seemingly in reference to the Kazakhstan stuff. Which is ridiculous, because we were never going to overthrow Kazakhstan, nor Cuba for that matter. a lot of the article also just relies on the assertion that combatting misinformation is propaganda and therefore bad. Online people just seem to think foreign policy doesn't matter and the US doesn't have strategic interests---so stupid!
i also found it quite weird when he claimed that all state funded media is propaganda in the comments to me without knowing the difference between organsiations and information
The fact that a purported “libertarian/national conservative” would write an article in support of a purported leftist arguing in support of communist Cuba really speaks to how mind-rotted the current political landscape is. Also speaks to how the modern isolationist right has directly inherited most of its foreign policy ideas from the Cold War era far left.
It's crazy how far rightists/leftists will just say things. These people probably don't know the name of the president of Kazakhstan, know nothing about anything that's happened in Kazakhstan over the last five years, probably only know about the country from Borat, but feel confident in assessing USAID's strategy there because 'imperialism' and 'propaganda.' It's absolutely ridiculous
To be fair, some of the semi-lying comes from the epistemic angle of "the purpose of a system is what it does," which would tell us that if USAID funding goes towards a child sex ring accidentally, then we can argue truthfully that USAID funded a child sex ring. This could be considered a failure of USAID and the idea of the model itself; hapless funding to orphanages will be directed accidentally to child sex rings. If this is considered as evidence the problem is statistically high enough, it could be considered as evidence that this aid is more utilitarian ineffective in finality than opportunity cost would allow us, and it could be considered negligent or intentional to continue.
Combined with ShoeHead's assertion that she wouldn't talk about the good things they do, this could be considered a truthful criticism of USAID.
A lot of pundits talk this way naturally, which has to be understood. I don't think it's actually a very honest way to make assertions or teach people things. It's part of the workaround to drive up intense libels in a political context while attempting to not technically lie. But it does exist, and it needs to be seen for its partial validity and intentional ambiguity.
"To be fair, some of the semi-lying comes from the epistemic angle of "the purpose of a system is what it does," which would tell us that if USAID funding goes towards a child sex ring accidentally, then we can argue truthfully that USAID funded a child sex ring"
Sure, but then the fact that she ignores the good things USAID has done is even more damning: if we're evaluating USAID on the basis of "the purpose of a system is what it does" we should, y'know, look at what it does, not just a grievance-driven selected sample of what it does. But then we might conclude something like, "the purpose of USAID is to prevent tens of millions of people dying in Africa" which doesn't make it sound like such a bad thing.
No, because she explicitly stated that she wasn't addressing good things they did. Which she is allowed to do for the sake of argument. End of discussion.
If you're evaluating a system "based on what it does", and you ignore everything good that it does, stipulating in advance that that's what you're doing just means you're being transparent about how pointless the exercise is.
"Exercise makes me feel tired and sore; it does other things too, but I'm not talking about the good things it does. This is evidence that exercise is ineffective by utilitarian lights."
No one should think this is a good argument, or contributes anything of value to an understanding of the benefits of exercise.