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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   32783 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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I'm not sure what your point is. Intellectual consistency is... bad? Uninteresting? Something else?

Your point is correct, nobody has a good retort here because they just dislike the fact that Hanania has turned his gun on right wing foolishness now.

Yeah, it's a perfect example of this hilarious early post from Scott:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/13/arguments-from-my-opponent-believes-something/

  1. Argument From My Opponent Believes Something, Which Is Kinda Like Believing It On Faith, Which Is Kinda Like Them Being A Religion: “The high priests of the economic orthodoxy take it on faith that anyone who doubts the market is a heretic who must be punished.”
  1. Argument From My Opponent Believes Something, Which Means They Believe It Is The Answer To One Question, Which Is Kinda Like Believing It Is The Answer To All Questions, But It Isn’t: “Statists believe government can solve all our problems. They need to understand the world doesn’t work that way.”

There's 8 more examples, Hanania is being criticized for having a belief he's been consistent on.

Equivalent to the Pope claiming Catholicism is the one true way. If he wasn't saying that, he wouldn't be the Pope.

Hannia's brand is basically to present himself as the much neglected wiseman that the right should be listening to. Leveraging this self-styled reputation is how he makes money.

I'm not sure how to distinguish this from Hanania having a consistent view and Hanania believing that he is correct. That seems like a standard that would rule out pretty much everybody.

Show examples of him holding to his principles, whatever you propose them to be, in a way that undermines Dean's view of his 'brand'.

I'm sorry, I don't follow the actual criticism here, or what you think I need to prove.

This tangent began with hydroacetylene writing:

Richard Hanania’s whole schthick is ‘republicans are dumb but I’m stuck on the same side of the aisle’. No matter the news of the day, he has to come up with that take.

You should, accordingly, downgrade the weight of evidence of him coming up with that take.

I read this as stating that it is unsurprising that Hanania states things consistent with things that he has stated previously. Well, yes. But this hardly seems to make sense as a criticism of him. Intellectual consistency is not a vice.

This was followed by Dean stating:

Equivalent to the Pope claiming Catholicism is the one true way. If he wasn't saying that, he wouldn't be the Pope.

Hannia's brand is basically to present himself as the much neglected wiseman that the right should be listening to. Leveraging this self-styled reputation is how he makes money.

Again, it's not clear how this is any kind of valid criticism of Hanania - any more than "you're Catholic!" is a valid criticism of the pope. Hanania's articles tend to be consistent with articles that Hanania has written in the past. The pope's statements tend to be consistent with the pope's previous statements. If there's a difference between the two of them, it's that Catholicism is explicitly formalised as an ideology in a way that Hanania-ism is not.

And, yes, Hanania makes money from people paying to read his writing, but I missed the part where that was a criticism.

My objection is that these criticisms prove too much. It's bad when authors give takes consistent with their previous takes? It's bad when authors make money from their writing? These criticisms, if generalised, exclude almost every writer.

Now, to your comment specifically:

Show examples of him holding to his principles, whatever you propose them to be, in a way that undermines Dean's view of his 'brand'.

Yes, Hanania has a financial interest in catering to his readership. This is true of every author who gets paid for their writing, including every Substacker in the world. We do not automatically dismiss all writing on this basis.

I am aware of no compelling reason to believe that Hanania is insincere in the top article here, and at any rate, even if he were, that wouldn't invalidate any of the observations in the article itself.

So I am left very confused at what seems to me to be a desperate and unproductive groping for an ad hominem. What is the point?

Hanania has a narrative he’s selling and every headlines-dominating story has to fit into that narrative.

That doesn’t make the narrative wrong. But it means that example #9000 from Hanania isn’t something we should just trust.

How can that be distinguished from any pundit who has a consistent worldview, though? Certainly we should take all pundits with a grain of salt, but I can't see anything that makes Hanania worse or less trustworthy than any comparable pundit. Scott Alexander has a bunch of narratives that he's selling - rationalism, effective altruism, AI nonsense. Freddie deBoer has a bunch of narratives he's selling - Marxism, socialism, education reform. Matt Yglesias has a bunch of narratives he's selling - YIMBYism, economic centrism. It feels to me like you're holding Hanania to a higher standard that every other Substack bloviator out there.

I don't know what you mean exactly by "comparable", but I think Scott has a great track record of being better and more trustworthy than Hanania.

Entirely possible. I am not asserting that in terms of content, Hanania, or for that matter Scott Alexander, are frequently correct. I think they both get lots of things wrong. I'm asserting that the mere fact that Hanania has a consistent worldview or agenda, in itself, is not a reason to dismiss him.

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Where did I say ‘we should take Freddie deBoer as gospel’?

You didn't. I was just picking a few examples of similar internet pundits with different viewpoints to Hanania. DeBoer is frequently wrong, but I don't think he's dismissed simply because he has an overall direction to his thought. Every online writer has some kind of direction or narrative to their thought. Hanania ought to be treated the same way as deBoer or Alexander or Yglesias.

Again, it's not clear how this is any kind of valid criticism of Hanania - any more than "you're Catholic!" is a valid criticism of the pope.

"You're Catholic" is absolutely a valid criticism of someone trying to convince you that some piece of information proves that Catholicism is true. The piece of information truly might prove that Catholicism is true, but an already-believing Catholic can't be trusted to make that judgment call. No more than Trump can be trusted to make a judgment call on how good a president Biden was, given that he's demonstrated a penchant for characterizing everything Biden did as the worst thing any president did ever.

Fitting every new piece of information into a pre-set narrative that one likes is intellectual consistency only in the sense that it's a consistently confirmation bias. That's sort of what it means when some narrative is described as someone's "schtick."

Now, it's possible that it is factually not the case that it's his schtick, but rather that he genuinely takes a skeptical look at each new piece of evidence and is helplessly forced to conclude, despite his best efforts to prove otherwise, that his narrative is shown to be correct yet again.

As you allude to, distinguishing between these two things isn't particularly easy. In both situations, it's being intellectually consistent and believing that he is correct. This points to the fact that being intellectually consistent and believing that oneself is correct isn't actually worth anything: the value in such a thing only comes from the belief of oneself as correct having some actual basis in fact. That's something one can make arguments about by looking at the actual behavior of the person. I'd say that, by default, everyone should be presumed to be falling prey to confirmation bias all the time, doubly so if their preferred narrative is self aggrandizing, triply if that person is particularly intelligent and thus better able to fit evidence to narrative. It's only by credibly demonstrating that they are open to other narratives that they can earn any sort of credibility that their arguments have any relationship with reality. That's where showing oneself to be capable of undermining one's preferred narrative comes in, and there's no better way to demonstrate this capability than by doing it.

"You're Catholic" is absolutely a valid criticism of someone trying to convince you that some piece of information proves that Catholicism is true. The piece of information truly might prove that Catholicism is true, but an already-believing Catholic can't be trusted to make that judgment call.

I'm ambivalent on how reasonable this is.

On the one hand, a Catholic would seem to have a natural bias towards the truth of Catholicism. If we are evaluating some novel piece of information that may or may not bear on the truth of Catholicism, we should expect the Catholic to be predisposed to interpreting that evidence in ways that support the truth of Catholicism. In that sense knowing that the person is Catholic should make us more skeptical of any Catholicism-supporting conclusions they draw.

On the other hand... I would expect people who encounter evidence that Catholicism is true to be disproportionately Catholic, because factual beliefs can be motivating. Suppose there's an argument that, if correct, shows that Catholicism is true. Obviously people who think that the argument is correct are going to convert to Catholicism - I'd question anybody who didn't. To say that we can't trust Catholics on the subject of Catholicism is to stack the deck. People who find Catholicism convincing become Catholics. If by doing so they remove themselves from the community of people with whom we can have reasonable discussion about Catholicism, well, then we would seem to have an arbitrary prejudice against Catholicism. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, for any belief or ideology.

For instance - you can't trust evolutionary biologists on the subject of whether evolution is true. They're evolutionary biologists! We should immediately distrust the testimony of people who believe evolution is true on the subject of evolution. That seems absurd. So too with everything else.

The problem is that both these points seem compelling to me, to an extent, especially because for an overarching ideology like Catholicism, people are likely to adopt Catholicism for reasons unrelated to the merits of any given argument. This is less the case for a specific theory like evolution, though ideologies like rationalism, conservatism, socialism, etc., are more like Catholicism than they are like evolution. I think where I end up is that we should not rule partisans of a particular ideology out of discussions of that ideology, though we should be aware of their biases and take them into account. Thus, say, Catholics can and should be consulted on the subject of whether or not Catholicism is true (we can hardly expect anybody else to make the case for Catholicism!), but we should be more critical than usual of their assessments of new information.

On Hanania specifically:

Now, it's possible that it is factually not the case that it's his schtick, but rather that he genuinely takes a skeptical look at each new piece of evidence and is helplessly forced to conclude, despite his best efforts to prove otherwise, that his narrative is shown to be correct yet again.

I guess I don't see a valid criticism of Hanania here relative to other pundits. Yes, I'm sure it's true that his positions are a combination of sincere assessment of new data and his best interpretation thereof and a retrofitting of that new data into his existing conceptual framework. He has an existing view or narrative of the world, he will think that narrative is correct or at least the best, most plausible one available, and when he obtains new information, he starts by trying to fit that information into that narrative.

But the last I checked that was how everybody thinks. Everybody has narratives or interpretative frameworks that they apply to experience, and first interpret new evidence in ways that fit with their existing categories. It's only when new evidence becomes overwhelming, or else so dramatically contradicts the existing framework as to be undeniable, that they are forced to reconsider.

I'd say that, by default, everyone should be presumed to be falling prey to confirmation bias all the time, doubly so if their preferred narrative is self aggrandizing, triply if that person is particularly intelligent and thus better able to fit evidence to narrative. It's only by credibly demonstrating that they are open to other narratives that they can earn any sort of credibility that their arguments have any relationship with reality. That's where showing oneself to be capable of undermining one's preferred narrative comes in, and there's no better way to demonstrate this capability than by doing it.

Can you think of any particular examples of this? The thing is, what this sounds like to me in practice is the idea that everybody should be presumed to be dishonest except for people who have radically changed their belief systems.

That seems like a heuristic that will easily lead one astray - it would imply, for a start, that inconsistent opportunists are more (intellectually) trustworthy than people who stick to their principles. Doesn't that seem bizarre?

The problem is that both these points seem compelling to me, to an extent, especially because for an overarching ideology like Catholicism, people are likely to adopt Catholicism for reasons unrelated to the merits of any given argument. This is less the case for a specific theory like evolution, though ideologies like rationalism, conservatism, socialism, etc., are more like Catholicism than they are like evolution. I think where I end up is that we should not rule partisans of a particular ideology out of discussions of that ideology, though we should be aware of their biases and take them into account. Thus, say, Catholics can and should be consulted on the subject of whether or not Catholicism is true (we can hardly expect anybody else to make the case for Catholicism!), but we should be more critical than usual of their assessments of new information.

Of course we shouldn't rule partisans out of discussions of that ideology, and we should be aware of their biases and take them into account. It seems that you are agreeing entirely with hydroacetylene's original point, that "You should, accordingly, downgrade the weight of evidence of him coming up with that take."

I guess I don't see a valid criticism of Hanania here relatively to other pundits.

Why would you think that this is a criticism unique to Hanania versus just most pundits in general? Most pundits in general should have their arguments for their preferred narratives discounted.

Can you think of any particular examples of this? The thing is, what this sounds like to me in practice is the idea that everybody should be presumed to be dishonest except for people who have radically changed their belief systems.

I don't see how you can jump from what I wrote to "dishonest," which is loaded with meaning that is lacking in "falling prey to confirmation bias." Likewise, "belief systems" implies a sort of system of belief in a way that someone's "preferred narrative" doesn't. I'd say Scott Alexander is an example of a pundit who does a decent (maybe even good! Definitely not perfect) job of demonstrating an ability to at least entertain undermining his preferred narratives in his essays, where he often tends to spend quite a lot of time at least appearing to present, in good faith, arguments that contradict things he believes to be true.

That seems like a heuristic that will easily lead one astray - it would imply, for a start, that inconsistent opportunists are more (intellectually) trustworthy than people who stick to their principles. Doesn't that seem bizarre?

Again, you seem to jump from "preferred narratives" to "principles," which is very bizarre. Someone can stick to their principles completely and jump from narrative to wildly different narrative, due to how their principles dictate their interpretation of facts. Likewise, there's no reason to believe that an inconsistent opportunist isn't sticking to his own principles, since his principles could be driving him to become an opportunist. So no, what I wrote doesn't imply that at all, by my lights.

Why would you think that this is a criticism unique to Hanania versus just most pundits in general? Most pundits in general should have their arguments for their preferred narratives discounted.

Because I don't think most citations of pundits here are met with this kind of backlash. I perceive Hanania to be singled out as particularly lacking in credibility. My response is not that Hanania is necessarily correct on any issue, but rather that he should not be dismissed for reasons unrelated to his actual positions.

For what it's worth I find the argument about assessing counter-arguments and changing one's views to be an odd one to apply to Hanania, because Hanania is somebody who changed his preferred narrative in response to experience, surely? Hanania used to be an edgy racist, and wrote about how he changed his mind. If changing one's mind is a sign of intellectual honesty, he seems to meet that bar.

To your objections towards the end, I'm happy to revise any of the specific language, but I read you as suggesting that a person who has consistently advocated for a single position or narrative without changing it is less trustworthy than a person who has changed their position. This seems unintuitive, to me.

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And quadruply if the only way you ever interact with them is online and you never have in person conversations with them, because then you don't have facial tells and they have time to craft a response.

Gattsuru's point is solid though too - arguments providing evidence against the shtick would be counter proof of the shtick - a single article in the opposite direction wouldn't prove much, but it would be some proof that he wasn't just arguing in this direction because he always argues in this direction. I also consider it genuinely noble to argue against self-interest, if not necessarily wise.

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