Rationality Quotes April 2012

Oscar_Cunningham

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

It's not an improbable claim so much as a nigh-unfalsifiable claim.

I mean, imagine the following conversation between two hypothetical people, arbitrarily labelled RZ and EN here:
EN: By finding enough "code words" you can make any criticism of Obama racist.
RZ: What about this criticism?
EN: By declaring "epic", "confirmation mess", and "death blow" to be racist "code words", you can make that criticism racist.
RZ: But "epic", "confirmation mess", and "death blow" aren't racist code words!
EN: Right. Neither is "food stamps".

Of course, one way forward from this point is to taboo "code word" -- for example, to predict that an IAT would find stronger associations between "food stamps" and black people than between "epic" and black people, but would not find stronger associations between "food stamps" and white people than between "epic" and white people.

I think "nigh-unfalsifiable" is unfair in general when it comes to the use of code words, but I'm not familiar with the facts of the particular case under discussion.

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Rationality Quotes April 2012

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Rationality Quotes April 2012

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