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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   29677 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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Correct, my model is that if they weren't lying and cheating, I wouldn't see them lying and cheating. Charitable models are all well and good, but sometimes, you can simply see that people are lying and cheating and this is the base truth of the matter. What happens in reality will substantially impact my position on whether they're lying and cheating, but it will be based on whether they're lying and cheating, not whether I could come up with an incredibly implausible explanation for how they're actually very honest and doing their duty.

If I'm paraphrasing correctly, your point was 'why spend hundreds of pages pretending to justify your actions with evidence and legal theory when you were just going to lie and cheat to get this outcome no matter what'.

That doesn't sound like someone who has carefully read through the entire document and carefully considered every argument and weighed it against legal precedent and come to the conclusion that this is lying and cheating. It sounds like someone who has decided that they don't need to bother doing that analysis because they've already concluded it's lying and cheating in advance of considering that evidence.

That's not 'seeing them lying and cheating', that's interpreting things to be 'lying and cheating' before actually demonstrating that to be the case.

But correct me if I'm wrong about your process here.

(And if your point is just 'anything that is unusual/unlikely on baserate priors and also disadvantages Trump will be interpreted as lying and cheating because my prior on that is already high and thus it's the highest-probability explanation I have for rare events like these,' then that could be a reasonable position but you'd need to state it and argue for it explicitly)

That doesn't sound like someone who has carefully read through the entire document and carefully considered every argument and weighed it against legal precedent and come to the conclusion that this is lying and cheating.

Correct, I didn't read hundreds of pages of dissembling. There is no careful weighting required to arrive at the conclusion that no insurrection occurred. I am familiar with January 6, I have read the Amendment in question, and that suffices. I also have not actually read every scholarly work of scientology prior to concluding that it's probably a load of shit.

I have no particular affinity for Donald Trump, but I have a great deal of contempt for dishonest lawyers attempting to make convoluted arguments to avoid plain meanings.

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