I am both surprised and glad my comment led to an update :)
FWIW I never expect the political blogs to be playing by the good rules of the rest of the intellectual writing circles, I view them more as soldiers. Not centralexamples of soldiers, but enough so that I’d repeatedly be disappointed by them if I expected them to hold themselves to the same standards.
(As an example, in my mind I confidently-but-vaguely recall some Matt Yglesias tweets where he endorsed dishonesty for his side of the political on some meta-level, in order to win political conflicts; interested if anyone else recalls this / has a link.)
(If this also doesn’t count as “intellectual writing circles”, consider renaming your category, since I clearly do not understand what you mean, except inasmuch as it is “rationalist or rationalist-adjacent circles”.)
The Gelman post in question is importantly not about arguing for the linked post being bad/stupid, it was taking it fully as a given. I actually think that’s an importantly different dynamic because if you are in a context where you can actually presume with your audience that something is bad, then writing it in a title isn’t actually influencing the status landscape very much (though it’s tricky).
Similarly, I think on LessWrong writing a title which presumes the falsity of the existence of a christian god would in other contexts I think be a pretty bad thing to do, but on LessWrong be totally fine, for similar reasons.
As an example, in my mind I confidently-but-vaguely recall some Matt Yglesias tweets where he endorsed dishonesty for his side of the political on some meta-level, in order to win political conflicts; interested if anyone else recalls this / has a link
I won’t say I would necessarily be surprised, per se, if he had written something along these lines, at least on Twitter, but as as general matter Matt believes Misinformation mostly confuses your own side, where he wrote:
My bottom line on this is that saying things that are true is underrated and saying things that are false is overrated.
We’re all acutely aware of the false or misleading things our political opponents say, and it’s easy to convince yourself in the spirit of “turnabout is fair play” that the key to victory is to play dirty, too. The real problem, though, is that not only does your side already say more false and misleading things than you’d like to admit, but they are almost certainly saying more false and misleading things than you realize. That’s because your side is much better at misleading you than they are at misleading people outside of your ideological camp, and this kind of own-team deception creates huge tactical and strategic problems.
I do believe Matt’s support of truth-telling in political fights is instrumental rather than a terminal value for him, so perhaps him articulating this is what you were thinking of?
I am both surprised and glad my comment led to an update :)
FWIW I never expect the political blogs to be playing by the good rules of the rest of the intellectual writing circles, I view them more as soldiers. Not central examples of soldiers, but enough so that I’d repeatedly be disappointed by them if I expected them to hold themselves to the same standards.
(As an example, in my mind I confidently-but-vaguely recall some Matt Yglesias tweets where he endorsed dishonesty for his side of the political on some meta-level, in order to win political conflicts; interested if anyone else recalls this / has a link.)
Andrew Gelman: “Bring on the Stupid: When does it make sense to judge a person, a group, or an organization by its worst?” (Not quite as clearcut, since it doesn’t name the person in the title, but still)
(If this also doesn’t count as “intellectual writing circles”, consider renaming your category, since I clearly do not understand what you mean, except inasmuch as it is “rationalist or rationalist-adjacent circles”.)
I certainly consider Gelman a valid example of the category :)
The Gelman post in question is importantly not about arguing for the linked post being bad/stupid, it was taking it fully as a given. I actually think that’s an importantly different dynamic because if you are in a context where you can actually presume with your audience that something is bad, then writing it in a title isn’t actually influencing the status landscape very much (though it’s tricky).
Similarly, I think on LessWrong writing a title which presumes the falsity of the existence of a christian god would in other contexts I think be a pretty bad thing to do, but on LessWrong be totally fine, for similar reasons.
I won’t say I would necessarily be surprised, per se, if he had written something along these lines, at least on Twitter, but as as general matter Matt believes Misinformation mostly confuses your own side, where he wrote:
I do believe Matt’s support of truth-telling in political fights is instrumental rather than a terminal value for him, so perhaps him articulating this is what you were thinking of?