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If, come the 2026 midterm or 2028 presidential elections, the economy was looking decent to strong and there had been significant progress towards any of the following goals; balancing US trade deficiets, restoring US shipbuilding capacity, or peace in Ukraine. Would you update your priors? Or is being an anti-populist such a core component of your identity that you would deny reality to protect your ego?
If the latter, how is your claim that "Trump is a buffoon" any less of a fully general "everything proof" argument?
US shipbuilding capacity isn't going to be restored without first breaking the various unions involved, which isn't going to happen. Even after that you'd need someone who could build things from the ground up -- maybe Musk has someone at Tesla who could do this. But it would probably require hiring a lot of foreign experts, too.
Ukraine seems unlikely to happen due to the intransigence of the parties (in particular Putin, who thinks he can get it all eventually) but if it does I'm sure it will be spun as surrendering to Putin (which it wouldn't be, but Ukraine would lose significant territory)
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Strong economy (which would mean back to trendline without strong inflation, NOT merely a return to positive growth), trade deficit narrowed by a lot (really doesn't matter since the thesis of tariff criticism is that they are bad for the economy so this is fully covered by that item, but the volatility, reputational loss and immediate financial pain needs to not all be for naught), peace in Ukraine with a Ukraine-favoring resolution would make me update my assessment.
US shipbuilding is very "who cares", and I'm not sure how to judge a successful policy since fixing it would take decades of reform. Certainly, having revenue from US gov purchases of ships go up would not count.
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I already give Trump credit for destroying wokeism or at least hastening it's demise. I also gave him credit for announcing a buildup of the military, which is a good idea. Hopefully he actually goes through with it and doesn't waffle.
I don't find balancing US trade deficits to be a priority. Something like reshoring (high tech) manufacturing though, sure.
Yes, it would be great if he could restore US shipbuilding.
Peace in Ukraine is highly contingent on what the peace looks like. If it's effectively "force Ukraine to surrender and give up huge swathes of land that they wouldn't need to if Biden were still around" is not a good peace. If it was "ceasefire at current lines, and Ukraine protected from future invasions by European guarantees", that'd be reasonable.
So that is a "no" then, you would not update your priors.
This is pretty low effort and seems meant only to antagonize and not actually get at the other person's reasoning. Playing gotcha with "I asked you a yes or no question, and you gave me a couple of paragraphs of explanation but didn't say yes or no therefore you didn't answer my question" is obnoxious. If you genuinely believe you still do not have an answer:
Honestly it must be said that these rules are often honored more in the breach than in practice, but this one-liner just stands out as egregiously "ZING! I am not arguing to understand but to score points."
@TheAntipopulist is one of the specific users i had in mind writing the OP.
Their three paragraphs here and replies elsewhere in this thread can be summarized as; "even if the populists are sucessful (which they wont be) it will be for reasons outside thier control and thus not count."
So cutting to the chase, no the anti populist is not going to be updating his priors regarding populism and populists.
With that in mind do you really think they are arguing to understand rather to score points? A large portion of the users' output (along with thier user name) is little more than casual disparagement of anyone outside the managerial class.
Casual disparagement that you are not just tolerating but actively defending from push-back.
All three specify circumstances under which he would update, and some of them aren't even all that demanding. None of them require things outside the government's control or at least not wildly more than your list that he was replying to. Reading "here are three ways I would update" as "I wouldn't update" is... certainly a thing someone said on the Internet today.
Honestly, you're not making much sense. You don't seem to be reading what the words in front of you actually say, but what your opinion of the person posting them leads you to expect to be there.
No they did not specify any circumstances under which they would update, they explained why even if x y and z were to happen they are not high priorities and thus beneath consideration. While there is a throw-away line about giving Trump credit for setting "wokeness" back a bit the possibility that Trump and the people who voted for him might genuinly believe the things they claim to believe is dismissed out of hand.
That only even remotely applies to the first one, and well, let's take a closer look at it, in two parts:
Almost nobody thinks it is! Including most right-leaning economists! This is an entirely reasonable sentiment.
Very clearly states something that would change his priors, with no qualifiers of the sort you described. So even his first point only half fits your description, even being maximally generous to you.
That's the entire second statement. What is there in here that is accurately described as "explain[ing] why even if x y and z were to happen they are not high priorities and thus beneath consideration"?!? Even a straightforward yes doesn't satisfy you!
Again, there's nothing unreasonable here. This is an entirely appropriate level of nuance for the topic (for a brief forum post - it would be too little in almost any other context!) and I submit that it fits my description far better than it does yours. In particular, the last sentence clearly spells out a circumstance where he'd change his priors with no hedging like you describe.
At best a sixth of his list fits your description; there is one sentence in the entire post, half of one of the three main points, that looks as you describe. Frankly, you seem to have some sort of weird bitch-eating-crackers thing going on with this poster on a personal level, that makes you look unhinged to people like me who don't know or care about the backstory behind it.
You're pulling the same trick, claiming that Trump and the people who voted for him can't possibly believe the things they claim to believe because "all right thinking economists" are in the opposing camp is not an argument, it is assuming the conclusion.
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I sincerely don't understand how you're coming to that conclusion based on what I wrote.
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