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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   27107 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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"using it as it was meant to be used?"

Fundamentally he seems either deliberately unwilling or simply unable to comprehend that the interviewer is asking about means rather than ends. Saying 'I was elected to close the borders/change our terms of trade' is just a total non-sequitur response to the question 'have you expanded the powers of the presidency'. It would be one thing to say 'I don't care about process, I care about results', but he doesn't say that, he's just talking past the question.

AFAIK this is (sadly) standard political interview technique. Open live debate with a hostile interview can go wrong in too many ways, so you don’t do it unless you’re desperate. The standard technique is to totally ignore anything the interviewer says and repeat your talking points until they give up.

Even if the interviewer gives you a jumping off point for what you want to say you still shouldn’t take it because there’s too much chance they've booby-trapped the framing.

Sad but true.

It's not sad, it is a rational response to the fact that journalists have zero interest in reporting anything honestly and are de-facto hostile in every interaction you have with them. You would be a fool to ever answer their questions in the same way you'd answer a friend's or co-worker's. You treat it as an opportunity to get your talking points and story out -- nothing more.

Source: me, a local politician

IQ Distribution Meme.

Left: Why can't he just answer the question??

Middle: The interviewer is hostile and can trivially control the frame.

Right: Trump is feigning ignorance and deliberately misunderstanding the question in order to sneak in a non sequitur in a transparent attempt to change the frame. He must think we're idiots.

Edit: I got the meme exactly backwards. Of fucking course this is one of my most-engaged-with comments in my history on this website. No you're salty.

Alternative, IMO more accurate frame:

Left: Thats a stupid question.

Mid: Why not answer the question.

Right: Obviously no one would respond to a hostile question.

Are you familiar with the meme? The point isn't to flatter the one you agree with as the highest-IQ response. The humor lies in the irony that Joe sixpack could see the world more clearly than the wordcel egghead. Maybe you and I disagree on what levels of intelligence is required for each response.

Yes, I am aware of the meme. You are using it wrong. The overly wordy "High IQ" answer in your depiction is exactly the sort of thing that is classically put as a midwit answer. Plus, journalists themselves are probably the most commonly depicted class of persons as exemplifying the midwit in both this specific meme and internet culture as a whole.

Damn you're right.

I think you're the one that's using the meme incorrectly. The first and third propositions are not the same because the third is too wordy. For the meme to work, the idiot has to come to a gut conclusion and not state an open question. The fact that you have to explain what it means and it is not immediately obvious - unlike anti_dan - supports this conclusion.

The humour is that the instinctive/heuristic response of Joe Sixpack is often in line with the ultimate response of a very high IQ guy because JS I’d drawing on correct evolved heuristics. It’s the midair who tries to be contrarian and puts together a cool ‘akshually’ response that both JS and the genius wizard can see isn’t viable.

The way I've always seen it used, the humor is in the fact that people graduate past the naive idiotic conclusion by noticing some principle and grabbing onto it... and then it turns out that if you're even better you go back to the original "idiotic" answer because of some nuance that the principle overlooks.

That’s what I mean. It’s sad in the broader sense of ‘it would be nice if things weren’t this way’ not ‘loser’.

Good to hear from someone with actual experience!

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