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I have a chip on my shoulder about a few guys who regularly make subtly fallacious arguments in favor of a position they support but who will never actually defend those arguments when pressed by someone with subject-area knowledge. As in, I've had to watch time and time again when somebody points out the error in the logic or brings in their own, seemingly superior data and these people will ignore it entirely and/or shift to a slightly different position.
Intellectual cowardice is an ongoing pet peeve of mine. All the moreso by parties who make their living on their analysis of reality. They seem to fill a niche that's a step above "blowhard cable news pundit" where people who want their priors confirmed but also want to think they're not being fed a line of biased tripe like the proles.
Again, this became blatant with Noah suddenly coming to the realization back in October that YES, the Left houses a LARGE amount of antisemitism whilst Conservatives/righties have been pointing this out for a really long time. He's happy to believe that the right tolerates antisemites and condemn them for it, because that fits his preferred conclusions. Simple.
I went back to his feed again and now I had to read the gem "Nuclear is a niche product." Which is 'true' in the broad sense (it is niche because nobody is allowed to build it!) but then he declares solar the superior product and when somebody reasonably calls him out on this he wouldn't even deign to respond.
"Nuclear is a niche product! Solar is our best bet!"
"Wait, by any fair definition Solar is in fact very niche and will remain that way for years to come, what are you basing that on?"
Clearly he's just engagement baiting at this point, but again, this is all decreasing the quality of discourse, and somehow this guy makes his living by the quality of his input to discussions. Compare that to Zeihan's take on the same issue, which means we can actually compare their accuracy down the road.
On the other hand, I've yet to hear the good counterargument that demographic collapse won't inevitably lead to certain nations experiencing massive internal chaos.
China currently depends on imports for its basic energy and food needs, and the primary value they have to trade is a massive labor pool and, more recently, massive pool of consumers. And they admit that this pool is about to shrink sharply because the country's TFR has been well below replacement for decades now.
The cascade of effects seems straightforward:
Which of these steps is wrong, or where can the CCP intervene to avert the end state?
He's been pointing out that the U.S. efforts to secure the seas for private vessels are likely to decrease, and with the Houthis continuing to interfere with shipping in the Red Sea there's already plenty of signs that this is accurate.
I see the Reddit comment and yeah, he definitely blew the 'two year' prediction and I'd not expect anything like that to occur even in the next two years, but I actually agree that we're in 'witching hour' times, where fat tailed impacts can occur on short time scales.
Indeed, the main reason I'm not a full doomer myself is that I'm seeing two possible futures, one where AI and automation lives up to the hype and manages to usher in a new industrial revolution, and one where things spiral out of control before we get true benefits from AI and we end up in a deep global recession. I honestly couldn't tell you which is more likely, but I don't see a likely future where we kind of just muddle along on the current path without something giving way.
Noah seems to try to put the optimist spin on things but doesn't seem to actually want to engage with the doomer's case in earnest. He mostly seems to say "line has been going up in the past, I believe line will go up in future." Which is fine... but not useful.
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