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The reason that I can make a statement about journalists based on this is that the New York Times really is big and influential in the journalism profession. On the other hand, Poor Minorities aren't representative of poor minorities.

Not only that, the poor minorities example is wrong in the first place. Even the restricted subset of poor minorities don't all want to steal your company's money. The motte-and-bailey statement isn't even true about the motte. You never even get to the point of saying something that's true about the motte but false about the bailey.

it seems really unlikely that he’s gotten any better at even the grammar of rationalist communication.

You don't need to use rationalist grammar to convince rationalists that you like them. You just need to know what biases of theirs to play upon, what assumptions they're making, how to reassure them, etc.

The skills for pretending to be someone's friend are very different from the skills for acting like them.

I understood the comment I was responding to as saying that Zack was helping Cade do a better job of disguising himself as someone who cared about good epistemics.

Yes, but disguising himself as someone who cares about good epistemics doesn't require using good epistemics. Rather it means saying the right things to get the rationalist to let his guard down. There are plenty of ways to convince people about X that don't involve doing X.

Scott is already too charitable. I'd even say that Scott being too charitable made this specific situation worse. I don't find this to be a worthwhile thing about Scott either for us to emulate, or for Scott to take further.

"Quokka" is a meme about rationalists for a reason. You are not going to have unerring logical evidence that someone wants to harm you if they are trying to be at all subtle. You have to figure it out from their behavior.

Sometimes it just isn't true that both sides are reasonable and have useful perspectives.

His behavior is clearly accepted by the New York Times, and the Times is big and influential enough among mainstream journalists that this reflects on the profession in general.

explaining any obvious cutouts that make someone an Okay Journalist.

Not lying (by non-Eliezer standards) would be a start.

"Outperform at talking about epistemics" doesn't mean "perform better at being epistemically correct", it means "perform better at getting what he wants when epistemics are involved".

People say make an idea a story, and I still get slammed.

The idea still has to be worthwhile and argued well. Making it a story may help, but it isn't a cureall.

Jiro2d1111

I find these excuses to be terrible reasoning.

-- Exactly what does it mean to be "entangled closer with physical reality"? Naively I would believe that everything is entangled with physical reality to a degree of 100%. And I don't think you can easily describe a concept of "entangled with physical reality" that is something you'd reasonably want to do, that justifies walking barefoot, and that has no other strange implications.

-- Exactly where are you getting your information about how much rigid movement is natural? It sounds like a scientific claim without the science.

-- "Natural" has some of the same problems as "entangled with physical reality"--lots of things are natural from smallpox to cyanide. If you can articulate a definition of "natural" that explains why you'd actually want it, and which applies to walking barefoot (including to sidewalks and streets, which I'd call not natural!), I'd like to see it.

-- Why in the world would you want to "reduce what you need and broaden what you tolerate"? Is that just reasoning from "I was taught as a child to not be too greedy, and reducing what I need is sort of like being less greedy"? And if I wanted to broaden what I tolerate, I'd go learn Japanese, not walk barefoot.

-- "Sharp objects are rare" is another way of saying "yeah, there are some". Shoes are like seatbelts in this sense. They protect against things that are rare, but which happen.

-- You're not "opening people's minds" by ignoring their objections to you walking barefoot. That's just taking "I ignore social cues" and treating it as a virtue instead of a deficiency.

It’s not crazy to hazard that some of the more-strongly-stigmatized things on the list above have incidence that’s 10x or even 100x what is readily apparent, just like the number of trans folk in the population is wildly greater than the median American would have guessed in the year 1980.

There's an alternative explanation: trans is mostly a social contagion and the incidence actually went up by 10x or 100x, rather than always being there but you never noticed it.

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