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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32261 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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I don't think it is Joe Biden though. My priors are that sons don't really want to be controlled by their fathers. But in case he had such a relationship with his father, he would had called him less formally, like “Dad” or similar.

One of Hunter's (former) business associates who was on the email chain in question was interviewed by Tucker Carlson, and specifically confirmed that in this case "Big Guy" was a sort of code when referring to Biden Sr. It would have been weird for them to all call him "Dad"!

It might be. Tucker Carlson is not very reliable though.

Why do you say that?

tucker isn't the source, former business associate tony bobulinski is the source

tucker's reliability is mostly irrelevant here, we're not relying on "unidentified source promise"

Tucker Carlson is not very reliable though.

like what?

I don't know who Tony Bobulinski is and how trustable he is. The fact that Tucker quotes him doesn't add anything. It is just mostly gossip which may be correct or may not. It doesn't update my priors much.

Maybe I am going the way that Taleb calls via negativa. I am careful and exclude things I don't have enough positive information about. That eliminates most of disaster modes (of course, it also makes me to lose some potentially great deals too).

so what are you asking for? direct proof looks like a former business associate explicitly claiming who "the big guy" was in the email chains

tucker is irrelevant to that; basic research would reveal who the source is and a guess about their reliability

your position appears to be essentially you don't know, you've done basically zero research about this topic (and aren't willing to), tucker talking about it triggers your bias and creates a perception there is something unreliable about the source, and your bias about son behavior generally points to it being wrong therefore you have a very high bar for believing it to be true?

is that right?

Exactly.

Why should I even care about this issue? I was just trying to convey how much would I trust this information based on my priors. I don't think I am biased exactly because I don't care about it. However, this is more interesting that Tucker doesn't move my priors.

If I read something on wikipedia that would move my priors.

Fair enough. What is the difference between "my priors" and "my bias"?

Compared to whom?

Practically everyone who is qualified to speak about this matter.

Who is qualified to speak about this matter? I’d say Tucker is about as reliable as any relatively large media person. Do you have evidence otherwise?

For that matter, no one has contradicted Tucker’s 2020 reporting so that is a good bit of positive evidence per se.

The fact that he is a media person disqualifies him already.

He talked rubbish about war in Ukraine. He is not interested in finding truth, just make controversial statements to increase his audience (and income).

What rubbish did he talk about? Was there a fact he got wrong or merely an opinion you didn’t like?

Also, you seem to be ignoring my second point.

The usual – that Russian invasion is the US fault for not promising to not expand NATO, that Ukraine is losing the war (it is a stalemate on the front but Ukraine is retaining statehood and even becoming closer to and more integrated with the EU which could be kind of victory).

So opinion got it. That doesn’t mean his interview with Tony B should be discounted.

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