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Notes -
Some not-bare links, words, and a Scott watch.
1 a. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing
First, a Scott post on Biden, debate, and a personal accounting of The Big Reveal. The curtain drawn across the stage to lay bare Biden's cognitive decline for the world to see. This is the common framing and narrative, anyway. He writes:
He then suggests Biden drops out, dropping Kamala as well, and throwing in some "purple-state Governor". Like Scott, this seems rather late in the game to me. There is still plenty of time to the election, as I'm sure the Biden loyalists are also telling themselves, so anything can happen. Who knows, maybe Biden gets a war? Wars are good for incumbents.
1 b. https://eigenrobot.substack.com/p/come-on-man
Eigenrobot, Twitter poaster extraordinaire, has some good thoughts looking at the same theme, but with regards to the media. He lays some groundwork with articles speaking of Biden's potential decline as an elderly gentleman some dating back to 2017.
Finishing with something that's been mentioned here many times:
Biden is old! This reaction with CNN anchors exclaiming, "how could the Whitehouse aides forsake us" is funny. Journalists have gotten worse at their jobs, that's how. There was space and time to talk about Biden's age and its potential impact it may have on the election. All well within the Overton window, even. Some journalists did write about it-- even those in Respectable Publications. That this idea was pushed into right-wing meme territory is an apparent, notable, visible failure for journalists. Not only do they feel lied to, they feel inadequate that they allowed themselves to be lied to. An outrage!
I listened to this Q&A with Scott and Nate Silver at the allegedly controversial Manifest conference that happened in June. There's some interesting tidbits in there if you're interested in prediction markets, Nate Silver+election models, AI risk, and so on. Perhaps not anything new for your ears that these two haven't written about.
The time stamp shows Scott answering a question about AI and how that may play into the risk of future wars. He first says that wars between great powers have a good chance of going nuclear and that is bad. However you want to define "good chance", fine. Then he goes on to say how it is his impression that "often [wars between great powers happen because] everybody was trying to do brinksmanship and made a mistake".
Scott is answering questions off the cuff in an informal, impromptu format. He's not some foreign policy wonk and neither am I. Brinkmanship is a thing. Some conflicts may escalate to unwanted, outright hostilities due to brinkmanship, political grandstanding, or get accidentally'd into full blown war. My impression is that escalation is usually not a mistake, though. Ukraine is not some exception as Scott suggests.
Escalation can be a proactive, reactive, or provocative measure to induce war. Escalation can be seen as a deterrent by one side, then used as a provocation to the other, sure, but I don't think it's fair to call these things mistakes. They are realities. Over stepping, going a little to far, these things can happen between states as they do people. Maybe he means a war that led to nuclear exchange would be considered a mistake. Which is probably true if it happens.
This doesn't make the point Eigen thinks it makes. Biden was not senile in 2020! Compare his 2020 debates to his 2024 debate. In 2020 down due to age, sure, but not senile. And there were many reports during the first half of his presidency that was capably acting as the president. I think understanding and predicting is just difficult, and it's easy to blame other peoples' mistakes on bias when you're making the same mistake inverted. No incentives or experience exist that prepares most people for accurate predictions about politics, and both Biden and Trump's staff are strongly incentivized to mislead you, and just as reversed stupidity isn't intelligence, the truth isn't halfway in between both sides' propaganda!
Hmm, true. I wouldn't call Biden senile yet. I'd call him
old, with a scoop ofburgeoning senility*. I'm not going to dig thru 2020 stuff, but he was more capability for sure. I'm also not going to take Mr. Cluchey's account as gospel. His plea for media to "demonstrate the clarity and capacity to do their job" makes my eyes roll. Dan, too, apparently ignored evidence of Biden's ability in the past year or more and laughed at the media as they tried to "do their job." How happy would Dan have been if they did their job, the Whitehouse invited them to do their job, and came to a similar conclusion in, say, November 2023? Do we trust Dan here to spill the beans if he did see something concerning?The media is building and driving a narrative. They often do so haphazardly, because that's what they do. While a hostile media might be upsetting to Biden administration, perhaps they could do a better job inviting media scrutiny to get to the truth-- if the truth is he's mostly fine, most of the time, for most of the day. We don't know to what extent the narrative is true, beyond what we see.
Age focused political attacks are destined to become true at some point. We can say AOC has cognitive impairment due to age, then cash in on that attack 40 years down the line. When Trump starts avoiding public appearances, events, and gathers a posse to surround him to get to and from Air Force One we will hear about it for days.
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Liberals read. Conservatives watch tv. All of Scott's excuses make perfect sense if the only information one gets from the political sphere is text. I suppose he had good reasons to doubt the credibility of all those people who said Biden was senile, I remember many of them claiming that Hillary was about to keel over in 2016 too.
What he apparently didn't do was watch the clips.
To be totally honest from time to time I go "Hmm maybe a tiny bit of TV could actually be useful", because the medium does have some actual advantages, but I would say my preference goes deeper than just politics -- I don't even like YouTube videos and will do almost anything possible to get tutorials/answers/information from written form instead. I do kind of wonder how alone I am in this, because a lot of people I speak to, and especially my age or slightly younger, vastly prefer YouTube. But I was raised in a house where the TV was rarely on (live programming), and certainly not tuned to the news. Also, not on TikTok either, so there's that. I imagine Scott is much the same.
YouTube is uniquely bad and transmitting information via video through what they incentivize and how they do it. A sub 2 minute video that gets directly to the point of its subject matter, for instance a how-to video on completing some task (car repair, video game level, homework question), while obviously superior at its intended function is less likely to appear in search results and offers next to nothing to its creator. What you tube actually incentivizes are 10 minute+ videos, with ads, that keep people watching. Effectively communicating information is, at best, a happy accident. This also occurs in text based communication as well, were a single sentence answer to a question (a personal example from recently: an excel formula I'd forgotten), will be stretched to 7+ paragraphs of useless words with at least 3 ads, one of which is a video that auto-plays, with the actual answer to the question (a single sentence often less that 10 words long) being buried in the 2nd to last paragraph. At least with text you can ctrl+F.
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It's easy to see why the left didn't catch onto Biden's age problem sooner: negative partisanship. Intense polarization clouds everybody's eyes and means neither side is really looking at the evidence in an unbiased way. The Right has been banging the "Biden is senile" drum for a long time now, long before it was persuasive to people outside the conservative information bubble. They'd post something like Biden flubbing numbers or stuttering as "irrefutable proof" that he had dementia, despite Biden having issues with those for his entire political career. When the evidence actually started getting more persuasive, it was still easy enough to ignore since the people most interested in it had been crying wolf for years. Some on the left saw it sooner, but most only really started believing it once it was impossible to deny during the debate.
Of course the Right is going to take a victory lap, but it's pretty silly to see them do this while also ignoring Trump's own cognitive decline. It's nowhere near as advanced as Biden's is, but compare his most recent debate performance to his debates in 2016 and its clear that his brain is slowing down as well. I'd peg the Trump of today roughly where Biden was 4 years ago, i.e. not terrible, but there are definitely worrying signs. He's always had a meandering speaking style, but it's gotten noticeably worse over time. There's funny stuff too, like Trump challenging Biden to a cognitive test while in the next breath forgetting the name of his own doctor. Trump is only 3 years younger than Biden and would be older than Biden is today when he would leave the White House.
When people on the right encounter this opinion, they mirror what the Left's reaction has been for years and say that not only is it utterly ludicrous to think this, but that it's so ridiculous that the person saying it must be a liar engaging in bad faith.
"Republicans might have been right all along, but instead of lingering in that uncomfortable truth, let's consider the ways in which Republicans are still wrong and I am still right."
Don't uncharitably put words in someone else's mouth. Don't do this sort of "Rewriting someone else's post to make it sound simplistic and dumb and what I think they actually meant."
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This is about as dishonest as the “Biden is as sharp as a tack” argument.
No, Republicans were attacking Biden for stuttering or flubbing numbers. It was qualitatively different and much worse. This is just repeating a bad talking point.
Yes Trump is old. So is Bernie, Buffet, and Grassley. They are all very much with it. On the other hand, McConnell or Biden are younger than some of those guys but clearly worse. Is there a risk that Trump falls off a cliff? Sure. But he is much better than Biden was four years ago.
Accusing somebody of "dishonesty" because they have a different viewpoint than yours doesn't really add much besides vitriol to the conversation. It's heat without extra light.
Republican age accusations against Biden ran the gamut from the reasonable to the absurd. Scott discussed some of the sillier ones in his article like how Biden was some sort of meat-puppet jacked up on every stimulant in DC. A lot of the dumber ones were either irony-poisoned, or coming from the QAnon bent, so I did the courtesy of not including those as it felt like a strawman. If you have an article that summarizes the right-leaning age arguments against Biden, then that would be valuable to add to the conversation.
Sure, people age at different rates, but the priors are that octogenarians and late-septuagenarians are really old no matter what. Maybe he'll make it to Grassley's age, but there's a much better chance he'll have a steep decline at some point. The decline has already started, it's just a question of when the floor falls out.
Accusing someone of being dishonest when they are being dishonest is an important way to ensure the conversation remains honest. You are being dishonest by trying to turn a story about Biden into one about Trump when they obviously aren’t the same. Classic case of deflection.
And Scott is quite full of shit here. His judgement was so bad that it wasn’t until the debate that he realized Biden was suffering from strong mental decline. In fact, Scott has been going downhill for a long time (basically since he was doxxed). He isn’t an authority.
Finally I don’t need to cite an article. It’s been obvious for a long time to any honest observer that Biden is suffering from a pretty bad case of mental decline. The debate just laid it clear for the world in a way that couldn’t be massaged away. Biden hasn’t been well for awhile and the people who need to own that are the people who’ve denied it — people like you and Scott. We shouldn’t be hearing from you “what about Trump.” We should be hearing from you “how did I get this so wrong.”
So you're not backing off the claim that I'm being "dishonest" here then. Please elaborate, what exactly do you mean by it? I've already said in multiple places that Biden is obviously worse than Trump in terms of age. Why isn't this enough? What would I have to do in your eyes to be having an "honest" conversation?
Some source (even a basic one!) would be helpful in evaluating how Biden's perceived mental decline in 2020 is being compared to Trump's potential mental decline today. You say it's obvious, but for people who disagree with you it might not be so obvious that Trump is far more robust than Biden was 4 years ago.
I’m saying you’re dishonest because you aren’t asking the right questions ie how did I get this so wrong.
And there are many clips. General observations. Heck compare the debates between 2024 and 2020. Trump doesn’t need to sometimes close his eyes to try to really remember what he wanted to say.
How would "not asking the right questions" be considered "dishonesty"? It seems like we're using very different definitions of that word.
In terms of clips, Trump has plenty of them himself. Like when he forgot the name of his doctor. Or how he keeps confusing Biden for Obama, then in the same speech he confuses Hillary for Obama. Or when he confused Orban as the leader of Turkey. Or when he confused Jeb Bush for W. Bush. These are the obvious examples. I'd say the best example was his performance in the debate vs Biden. Aging affects people differently, and while Trump can maintain a confidence cadence in his voice, his meandering speaking style has gotten noticeably worse (as I said above previously).
Of course you'll retort that these don't really prove much. Forgetting individual facts is something politicians do often, and while the rate at which Trump is doing so is increasing, as of now it's hard to say this is more than just a "warning sign". But of course, the same could be said of Biden in 2020.
I don’t think all of those things are mistakes. For example, it is a common belief amongst the right that Obama is really running the Biden admin behind the scenes.
Also Trump always meandered. But he had a train of thought that he always got back to.
He can also have an unscripted hour long pod cast fairly easily. See the all in podcast.
Finally, yes I think when your priors are destroyed in front of the nation resorting to what aboutism” suggests you aren’t truth seeking.
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That Eigenrobot post really nails it. I had a relatively tame disagreement with someone who has since deleted their response back on the reddit version a few years ago about this exact scenario, and was noting the markers of early-stage alzheimers back in 2020 due to a member of the extended family who has been going through roughly the same thing at roughly the same pace. I won't claim some sort of magical prognosticating powers, only just being willing to observe publicly available information and not be spun (a childhood stutter that reemerged in his late 70s my stuttering ass.)
But the debate was just too hard to explain away. Beyond the clear aphasia, the vacant expression, the weak and tremulous voice, the physical signs are impossible to ignore. That's not just the first lady helping the president take a single step down off a short stage, but a staffer immediately stepping up to provide a second bit of support. This is the way you treat an 81 year-old man who definitely has a history of falling when unaided, and those falls have not been reported out of the White House at all. I'm not talking stumbles on the stairs to AF1 or tripping over a sandbag at a speech, but the kind of falls that accompany the middle and late stages of alzheimers.
I'm not even mad at Biden, his grasping nursemaid wife, his corrupt family, or the staffers and flunkies who honored the omerta on saying what was really happening. I'm pissed that we went four years without anyone in the media thinking, "Boy, I could really make a name for myself by reporting on how Biden's gait has notably changed within the last 18 months." Or, "It sure is weird that Biden keeps calling himself a Senator or Vice President and doesn't do public appearances at night. I should start digging." The first, second, and third question always seems to be "Will this help Trump/Republicans in any way? If so, better just ignore it."
Republicans, and Trump especially, are not more honest than Democrats. Such is the nature of the species homo politico. Except that Republicans/Trump mostly can't get away with it due to being forced to operate in enemy territory. Democrats, and the liberal portions of the federal machine, on the other hand . . . We just had four years of Trump Russia! Russia! Russia! followed by two years of Covid lies at the same time that the man at the helm of the ship of state was slowly (and then rapidly) turning into a root vegetable. Having a political press, intelligence apparatus, and bureaucratic state that is completely pliant to the will of one political party isn't just bad for the out party, it encourages deep rot in the benefitting party too. Occasionally that rot gets exposed to air.
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This just seems like “my outgroup lies” by Scott. There were just sooo many videos and incidents.
His outgroup does lie. Frequently and, sometimes, brazenly. That's politics, baby. It's not so reasonable to assume they are baseless smears to the extent that you're surprised by something closer to the truth given the facts in this case. Like the Hunter laptop story. That was a true story. It was even a believable story. But, it was also a timely political smear, which reasonable people are skeptical of. Folks should not take every claim in political attack ads at face value.
Outright shoving them into the Republican propaganda box isn't doing people like Scott any favors. I would not be surprised if Scott hadn't paid attention to or watched any Biden old clips-- certainly not selectively edited ones posted to pwn libs on X.com.
I believe it was Michael Moynihan of the Fifth Column that said, a couple years ago now, what sold him that Biden's age was a real problem was the distinct omission of it as a topic in media. That late night talk shows didn't make jokes about his boomer moments was evidence itself this was not a concern people were interested in even laughing about. Then again, I'm not sure we'll ever really see a late night talk show scene that sees hosts take D-politicians to task for jokes.
I keep hearing about these selectively edited Biden gaffes, but I keep seeing normal videos of Biden having senior moments.
Those are the same thing seen through different eyes, right? If I took a video every time my mother forgot the name of something or why she came into a room, I could absolutely make her look demented. If all you have is a set of videos curated by interest group A, and another set of videos curated by B, your final conclusion is going to have to rely on your pre-existing opinions or some other set of evidence (frequency of videos, or lack of unscripted public appearances). A lot of Ds should have known better, but I can see why people like Scott weren't convinced.
The videos went beyond forgetting a name.
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Of course his outgroup lies. But his in group lies a lot too. Including to him. Maybe he wants to revisit his position on the media.
His point with "the media rarely lies" wasn't that the media isn't deceptive. He was using an extremely narrow definition of lie - to deliberately tell a known falsehood as true. I do agree with him that the media rarely does that.
Yet here…they basically did. Not all lies are created equally. When the media directly lie, they seem to lie on the really weighty matters.
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I doubt this would violate Scott's position that the media rarely lies. For that to happen, you would need to show that:
1 is necessary for it to be a lie, but as we know, most news outlets wouldn't take a stand quite like that. They'd instead say something like "White House PR team indicates reports of cognitive decline are overstated". There's a few levels of indirection there, that make it hard for us to say that the media themselves were lying. They'd be reporting on what someone else says, and they also wouldn't be saying that he has no cognitive decline, but something far more defensible.
2 is necessary for us to say that the media lies more than rarely. But even if we find some examples where an outlet did something like 1, that wouldn't be enough to say that it's more than "rarely" lying.
It depends on who you classify as the media. See Joe Scarborough’s comments.
NYT also wasn’t very honest on it either.
What did NYT say? I really doubt they'd make factual claims that go beyond reporting what other people say.
What did Joe Scarborough say? Once again, individuals actors or outlets would not be enough to fully falsify Scott's claim. There would be to be many, and then it'd end up being a judgement call about how you define "rarely"
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/us/politics/biden-age-videos.html
They described the clips as misleading. Now they are citing those same clips as evidence of Biden’s frailness.
Joe S said Biden is probably sharper than he has ever been.
Looking at that article, I don't think they make any strong factual claims that can be proven false. They say the clips are misleading and it of context and edited to remove crucial details. That's hard stuff to say "that's factually incorrect". The video clips were edited so some contextual info was lost. "Crucial", and what details are important to the context could vary person to person.
Are they now citing the same clips? If they are, that would be weasley, but I'm not sure if counts as proving they were "lying" before. I definitely think that nytimes and the media in general suck, and they have no scruples, and are probably bad for the world, but I do think that it's very hard to catch them in an outright lie.
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Mods, can we get a mega thread for Biden’s age?
There's not enough posts to justify a megathread. This is the megathread. I can collapse chains easily. Browsing thread and yeah, this could have gone in a pinned comment or something.
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there's been considerable concern lately about declining participation in the forum. This is the most political ferment we've seen in a while; why dilute it?
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Yes, Republicans have been calling Biden senile for years. But even as early as his inauguration ceremony he was repeating instructions from an earpiece ("salute the marines") instead of following them. I don't object to the earpiece itself here: it's fair enough that for a big event like inauguration you might have someone giving you cues, but he's been wobbly since the start and only gone downhill. There were also a few instances where he appeared very confused about what documents he was signing and when he should sign them, but I can't find the good clips of that online any more.
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