Can't say I was too impressed by this one. When you leverage your influence to take a stance on something, it's fair game to attack your influence. Journalists absolutely should be applying a higher level of scrutiny to people who speak out. If there's a problem there it's jourbalists' bias, not their methods.
It feels like vintage Scott to me. He is loudly and explicitly calling bullshit on a clearly false proposition. I didn't read him as making a huge value judgement here. To be a good Bayesian, you have to reason properly about the process that produces the evidence. People who don't operate on the presumption that the media "targets" people are going to be systematically wrong.
It feels like vintage Scott to me. He is loudly and explicitly calling bullshit on a clearly false proposition.
Is it "clearly false" though?
I'm reminded of a speech our Company VP made at our year-end/new-years all hands to the effect of "science" is 90% bullshit because scientists can just make shit up and no one but another scientist (who's probably their friend, colleague, and/or engaged in the same sort of chicanery) will ever be in a position to call them on it. Engineering is where the real challenge and intellectual rigor lies because any lay-man can tell look and tell you if the bridge stands, or the airplane flies.
If Claudine Gay was targeted, what does that change? If Scott genuinely feels that tribal Affiliation and political expediency should trump intellectual rigor, let us see him make that argument.
Scott isn't arguing against rigor. He's arguing that it's a problem when rigor is applied if and only if the subject is on the outs. I am confident that he would have no objection had Dr. Gay been banished to the eighth circle before she got famous.
The "clearly false" bit is journalists insisting that it's about ethics in games journalism they are only interested in rigor, certainly not politics, and don't dare suggest otherwise:
[Journalists] do not sit around thinking about how they’re going to “get” people they write about, and when subjects think they do, it’s more a reflection of the subject’s self-perception (or self-importance) and, sometimes, a sprinkling of unadulterated narcissism.
What value that rigor has is in that it applies equally and brooks no excuses, IE in that it is rigorous. Arguing that rigor shouldn't apply under certain circumstances or to only certain parties IS arguing against rigor.
Yes, a basic level of academic scrutiny ought to have been applied twenty years ago. Since it wasn’t, choosing the right moment to apply it is not rigorous, but opportunistic. Maybe it’s still the right choice—“that which can be destroyed by the truth should be”—but anyone choosing this moment shouldn’t get to act innocent. The “clearly false proposition” is that this is rigorous, apolitical, common decency.
Compare the last time a statute of limitations was in the news. Would you believe someone who insisted that New York’s sexual assault law wasn’t politicized? That changing the rules wasn’t trying to “get” particular targets?
He's arguing that it's a problem when rigor is applied if and only if the subject is on the outs.
The problem with this is that, as Gay proves, there's no single "on the outs." There are many different groups constantly looking for targets. I think this is good, and a world where they did not look for targets would be worse. His critique is only relevant in fields where there is only one group in power, and then the issue is not that that group is looking for targets, it's that that group has all the power.
Scott isn't arguing against rigor. He's arguing that it's a problem when rigor is applied if and only if the subject is on the outs. I am confident that he would have no objection had Dr. Gay been banished to the eighth circle before she got famous.
The dynamic is real, but Gay is a horrible example, part of the issue with her is that she should have never been hired in the first place. If someone is practicing medicine without a license, but nobody notices until he shoots his mouth off and causes a controversy, are we then supposed to allow him to continue to practice in the name of "not applying rigor only when the subject is on the outs"?
If that VP has never sat down at a CDR and thought "these engineers are talking out of their asses," then wow, he's got some talented employees.
The defense industry is littered with projects that went over-budget in order to under-deliver. Software engineering wrote the book on feature creep. Tech startups scramble to get a functional demo together so they can pull enough cash to fund the other 80% of development. And no one involved in any of these wants to admit it!
It's just that in the world of real money and real deadlines, there is a continuum of "calling them on it." At the extreme end are the lawsuits and the bankruptcies. But at the other, there's a series of reminders that sunk costs aren't always a fallacy.
Any layman can tell you that the airplane flies. What he can't tell you is if it is worth $109M or only $100M. If it complies with every term of a thousand-page contract. If an extension to update one or two of those terms will actually achieve anything. If, in ten years, USMC techs will be cursing his name for signing off on the sick VTOL thruster.
Engineering involves challenge and rigor because the problems are fundamentally not easy. Knowing exactly how they'll turn out hard isn't easy, either. It's a collaborative process of dozens or hundreds of people collecting estimates, reports, designs, results, and bills into a coherent product. All of that can apply to science, too. When everything goes right, it does. On the other...well, sometimes someone just earns a layoff.
HlynkaCG
old man yelling at clouds
netstack 9mo ago·Edited 9mo ago
The point is not that engineers don't occasionally over-promise and under-deliver. The point is that unlike people who work in science or academia, they actually have to deliver.
ETA: in short, what @SnapDragon said, the critical difference between a scientist, an academic, and an engineer is that unlike the other two, the engineer actually has to actually produce something of value if he/she wants to keep their job.
And that's the point. That's the one, last, important step that (much of) science is lacking. Have you built something that works AT ALL? It's not that engineering doesn't suck. It's that modern "science" is even worse, because so much of its product (random unreplicated research papers, written on esoteric subjects, skimmed by friendly peer reviewers and read by nobody else) never needs to pass that final filter.
I read it as saying "smearing is irrelevant" when I find it very relevant. More to the point, in the real world, where arguments are not usually logical propositions, I'm a big believer in ad hominem. I'm a lot less likely to look into someone's theory of quantum gravity if it turns out their phd was faked. Ad hominem is a very useful heuristic.
The media targetting people is a separate thing and has a lot more to do with media bias than with the smearing/sniffing out personal details itself.
The false proposition is "journalists don't target hitpieces against people they don't like".
I guess I'm not big on the plagiarism train because I already assumed Gay's academic credentials were hogwash. From [Wikipedia:]
"Claudine Gay (born 1970)[2][3] is an American political scientist and academic administrator who was the 30th president of Harvard University, and is the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard.[4] Gay's research addresses American political behavior, including voter turnout and politics of race and identity.[5]"
This isn't quite the same as saying someone is "The L. Ron Hubbard Professor of homeopathy and psychoanalysis", but it's pretty darn close. I don't care if a homeopathy journal has a plagiarism scandal. That doesn't affect my opinion of it's accuracy.
I don't care if a homeopathy journal has a plagiarism scandal. That doesn't affect my opinion of it's accuracy.
You're already sold on homeopathy being bad, but a plagiarism scandal is absolute gold if other methods of convincing others that the journal is bunk have failed.
The false proposition is "journalists don't target hitpieces against people they don't like".
Well I'll definitely agree that's a false proposition, but to me the article seemed more focused on "hitpieces are bad" than on "actually journalists do write hitpieces."
If it’s fair game, then why were Spiers and others so eager to deny it?
Undermining opponents’ credibility is effective. It’s also considered gauche. Perhaps even a sign that one is acting in bad faith! This is not a coincidence; as Scott points out, that sort of strategy is symmetric. Agnostic to the truth.
For professionals who like to portray themselves as noble truth-seekers, that’s an awkward position. The mythos of American journalism is complicated, but I really do think it leans into “speaking truth to power.” Call it a legacy of the Cold War. The reflex, then, is to insist that whatever one is doing—no, it’s very cool and very countercultural.
I like it when that’s actually true. I’d like it to win out over the tribalistic, partisan allure of scoring easy points. If that means we don’t learn about the sex lives and past transgressions of people we’d never otherwise have met…so be it.
If it’s fair game, then why were Spiers and others so eager to deny it?
Mainly because most journalists are on one side of the equation. So long as smearing is only a tool the left can use against the right, smearing should be defended. The thing is that "smearing" isn't really the problem here, the problem is that the smearing only goes one way (due to the political distribution of journalists) and there's nobody in the other corner to defend you or counter-smear.
This is not a coincidence; as Scott points out, that sort of strategy is symmetric. Agnostic to the truth.
I think this is where our disagreement lies. I find personal details highly relevant to the value of someone's opinion. A professor who plagiarizes should not be given the same respect as one who does not. A philosopher who cheats on their spouse, likewise. Virtue clings to virtue; the more someone has their life in order the more attention I will pay to what they have to say.
[Journalists] do not sit around thinking about how they’re going to “get” people they write about, and when subjects think they do, it’s more a reflection of the subject’s self-perception (or self-importance) and, sometimes, a sprinkling of unadulterated narcissism.
That’s defensive, right? Spiers doesn’t want to be described as “get”ting people, so she’s denying that someone might have done it to Scott. (But if they did, then it’s all his fault…)
The category of smearing can’t be legitimized. If it were, then Rufo and others would get some of that legitimacy. More importantly, journalism would lose a lot of prestige. I think journalists would be largely unhappy with a world where media outlets were best known for publishing salacious personal details, even if all those details were always 100% true. It’s strictly less classy than the stereotype of hard-hitting investigative journalism.
Many things, such as Scott's doxxing, rape accusation investigations, and reporting on a politician's track record, qualify as "smearing."
Smearing is OK if it's accurate, and there aren't other broader issues such as rampant selection bias targetting only one side of an issue.
I think Spiers would disagree with #1, and basically say that if her side does it, it's hard-hitting investigative journalism, while if the other side does it, it's smearing. She'll rationalize this as being about intent--her side wants what's best for everyone; her opponents are solely motivated by pure malice--which is why she says it's ridiculous to suggest that her side's smears are actually smears.
Scott, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be aware of #2. He sees that smears can be used to portray only one side of a story, and therefore smearing is always bad. The thing is, the reason that's bad is because it's only portraying one side of the story, not because it's smearing specifically.
I think if we lived in a world where everyone suffered the degree of scrutiny that heterodox progressives suffer, Scott wouldn't have much of an issue with his treatment.
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Notes -
Can't say I was too impressed by this one. When you leverage your influence to take a stance on something, it's fair game to attack your influence. Journalists absolutely should be applying a higher level of scrutiny to people who speak out. If there's a problem there it's jourbalists' bias, not their methods.
It feels like vintage Scott to me. He is loudly and explicitly calling bullshit on a clearly false proposition. I didn't read him as making a huge value judgement here. To be a good Bayesian, you have to reason properly about the process that produces the evidence. People who don't operate on the presumption that the media "targets" people are going to be systematically wrong.
Is it "clearly false" though?
I'm reminded of a speech our Company VP made at our year-end/new-years all hands to the effect of "science" is 90% bullshit because scientists can just make shit up and no one but another scientist (who's probably their friend, colleague, and/or engaged in the same sort of chicanery) will ever be in a position to call them on it. Engineering is where the real challenge and intellectual rigor lies because any lay-man can tell look and tell you if the bridge stands, or the airplane flies.
If Claudine Gay was targeted, what does that change? If Scott genuinely feels that tribal Affiliation and political expediency should trump intellectual rigor, let us see him make that argument.
Oh, on a separate note.
Scott isn't arguing against rigor. He's arguing that it's a problem when rigor is applied if and only if the subject is on the outs. I am confident that he would have no objection had Dr. Gay been banished to the eighth circle before she got famous.
The "clearly false" bit is journalists insisting that
it's about ethics in games journalismthey are only interested in rigor, certainly not politics, and don't dare suggest otherwise:Corporate_needs_you_to_find_the_differences.png
What value that rigor has is in that it applies equally and brooks no excuses, IE in that it is rigorous. Arguing that rigor shouldn't apply under certain circumstances or to only certain parties IS arguing against rigor.
That cuts both ways.
Yes, a basic level of academic scrutiny ought to have been applied twenty years ago. Since it wasn’t, choosing the right moment to apply it is not rigorous, but opportunistic. Maybe it’s still the right choice—“that which can be destroyed by the truth should be”—but anyone choosing this moment shouldn’t get to act innocent. The “clearly false proposition” is that this is rigorous, apolitical, common decency.
Compare the last time a statute of limitations was in the news. Would you believe someone who insisted that New York’s sexual assault law wasn’t politicized? That changing the rules wasn’t trying to “get” particular targets?
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The problem with this is that, as Gay proves, there's no single "on the outs." There are many different groups constantly looking for targets. I think this is good, and a world where they did not look for targets would be worse. His critique is only relevant in fields where there is only one group in power, and then the issue is not that that group is looking for targets, it's that that group has all the power.
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The dynamic is real, but Gay is a horrible example, part of the issue with her is that she should have never been hired in the first place. If someone is practicing medicine without a license, but nobody notices until he shoots his mouth off and causes a controversy, are we then supposed to allow him to continue to practice in the name of "not applying rigor only when the subject is on the outs"?
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If that VP has never sat down at a CDR and thought "these engineers are talking out of their asses," then wow, he's got some talented employees.
The defense industry is littered with projects that went over-budget in order to under-deliver. Software engineering wrote the book on feature creep. Tech startups scramble to get a functional demo together so they can pull enough cash to fund the other 80% of development. And no one involved in any of these wants to admit it!
It's just that in the world of real money and real deadlines, there is a continuum of "calling them on it." At the extreme end are the lawsuits and the bankruptcies. But at the other, there's a series of reminders that sunk costs aren't always a fallacy.
Any layman can tell you that the airplane flies. What he can't tell you is if it is worth $109M or only $100M. If it complies with every term of a thousand-page contract. If an extension to update one or two of those terms will actually achieve anything. If, in ten years, USMC techs will be cursing his name for signing off on the sick VTOL thruster.
Engineering involves challenge and rigor because the problems are fundamentally not easy. Knowing exactly how they'll turn out hard isn't easy, either. It's a collaborative process of dozens or hundreds of people collecting estimates, reports, designs, results, and bills into a coherent product. All of that can apply to science, too. When everything goes right, it does. On the other...well, sometimes someone just earns a layoff.
The point is not that engineers don't occasionally over-promise and under-deliver. The point is that unlike people who work in science or academia, they actually have to deliver.
ETA: in short, what @SnapDragon said, the critical difference between a scientist, an academic, and an engineer is that unlike the other two, the engineer actually has to actually produce something of value if he/she wants to keep their job.
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And that's the point. That's the one, last, important step that (much of) science is lacking. Have you built something that works AT ALL? It's not that engineering doesn't suck. It's that modern "science" is even worse, because so much of its product (random unreplicated research papers, written on esoteric subjects, skimmed by friendly peer reviewers and read by nobody else) never needs to pass that final filter.
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What's the false proposition?
I read it as saying "smearing is irrelevant" when I find it very relevant. More to the point, in the real world, where arguments are not usually logical propositions, I'm a big believer in ad hominem. I'm a lot less likely to look into someone's theory of quantum gravity if it turns out their phd was faked. Ad hominem is a very useful heuristic.
The media targetting people is a separate thing and has a lot more to do with media bias than with the smearing/sniffing out personal details itself.
The false proposition is "journalists don't target hitpieces against people they don't like".
I guess I'm not big on the plagiarism train because I already assumed Gay's academic credentials were hogwash. From [Wikipedia:]
This isn't quite the same as saying someone is "The L. Ron Hubbard Professor of homeopathy and psychoanalysis", but it's pretty darn close. I don't care if a homeopathy journal has a plagiarism scandal. That doesn't affect my opinion of it's accuracy.
You're already sold on homeopathy being bad, but a plagiarism scandal is absolute gold if other methods of convincing others that the journal is bunk have failed.
Well I'll definitely agree that's a false proposition, but to me the article seemed more focused on "hitpieces are bad" than on "actually journalists do write hitpieces."
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If it’s fair game, then why were Spiers and others so eager to deny it?
Undermining opponents’ credibility is effective. It’s also considered gauche. Perhaps even a sign that one is acting in bad faith! This is not a coincidence; as Scott points out, that sort of strategy is symmetric. Agnostic to the truth.
For professionals who like to portray themselves as noble truth-seekers, that’s an awkward position. The mythos of American journalism is complicated, but I really do think it leans into “speaking truth to power.” Call it a legacy of the Cold War. The reflex, then, is to insist that whatever one is doing—no, it’s very cool and very countercultural.
I like it when that’s actually true. I’d like it to win out over the tribalistic, partisan allure of scoring easy points. If that means we don’t learn about the sex lives and past transgressions of people we’d never otherwise have met…so be it.
Mainly because most journalists are on one side of the equation. So long as smearing is only a tool the left can use against the right, smearing should be defended. The thing is that "smearing" isn't really the problem here, the problem is that the smearing only goes one way (due to the political distribution of journalists) and there's nobody in the other corner to defend you or counter-smear.
I think this is where our disagreement lies. I find personal details highly relevant to the value of someone's opinion. A professor who plagiarizes should not be given the same respect as one who does not. A philosopher who cheats on their spouse, likewise. Virtue clings to virtue; the more someone has their life in order the more attention I will pay to what they have to say.
That’s defensive, right? Spiers doesn’t want to be described as “get”ting people, so she’s denying that someone might have done it to Scott. (But if they did, then it’s all his fault…)
The category of smearing can’t be legitimized. If it were, then Rufo and others would get some of that legitimacy. More importantly, journalism would lose a lot of prestige. I think journalists would be largely unhappy with a world where media outlets were best known for publishing salacious personal details, even if all those details were always 100% true. It’s strictly less classy than the stereotype of hard-hitting investigative journalism.
Agreed.
I believe that:
Many things, such as Scott's doxxing, rape accusation investigations, and reporting on a politician's track record, qualify as "smearing."
Smearing is OK if it's accurate, and there aren't other broader issues such as rampant selection bias targetting only one side of an issue.
I think Spiers would disagree with #1, and basically say that if her side does it, it's hard-hitting investigative journalism, while if the other side does it, it's smearing. She'll rationalize this as being about intent--her side wants what's best for everyone; her opponents are solely motivated by pure malice--which is why she says it's ridiculous to suggest that her side's smears are actually smears.
Scott, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be aware of #2. He sees that smears can be used to portray only one side of a story, and therefore smearing is always bad. The thing is, the reason that's bad is because it's only portraying one side of the story, not because it's smearing specifically.
I think if we lived in a world where everyone suffered the degree of scrutiny that heterodox progressives suffer, Scott wouldn't have much of an issue with his treatment.
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