I loved Original Sin. Most of it is very depressing, but one brighter moment is the story of Chuck Schumer visiting Biden a week before he dropped out:
“Mr. President, you’re not getting the information as to what the chances are. Have you talked to your pollsters?”
“No,” Biden said.
Schumer said to him, “If I had a fifty percent chance of winning, Mr. President, I’d run. It’s worth it. But, Mr. President, your chances of winning are only five percent. I’ve talked to your pollsters; I know all three of them. I’ve talked to Garin and Pollock and Murphy. And they think it’s a five percent chance. Five percent.”
“Really?” Biden said.
“They’re not telling you,” Schumer said of Donilon and Ricchetti. “The pollsters told me, ‘He’s not seen our polls. It all goes to Donilon, and Donilon interprets it.’ Okay? You have a five percent chance. The analytics guy who probably knows this best said it’s one percent.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t run,” Schumer said. “I’m urging you not to run.”
“Do you think Kamala can win?” Biden asked.
“I don’t know if she can win,” Schumer said. “I just know that you cannot.”
Biden said that he needed a week.
They stood. On their way out, Biden put his hands on Schumer’s shoulders. “You have bigger balls than anyone I’ve ever met,” Biden told him.
The thing I found most interesting about Original Sin is that Biden’s senility was incredibly big-if-true and incredibly plausible-on-priors, but evidence of it still didn’t manage to make it to a bunch of key decision makers who were extremely strongly motivated to understand it. I think that along some important dimensions it’s the most extreme example of mass epistemic failure that I’m aware of.
is this a case where many decision makers were kept in the dark, or where one key decision maker—Biden himself—was kept in the dark about his political chances by his inner circle?
Mass epistemic failure seems a lot less plausible to me than what amounts to a case of epistemic elder abuse.
Biden’s inner circle seemed to have conspired to keep many people (other senior party officials, members of Congress, Republican Party members, the media, the public, leaders of foreign states) in the dark about Biden’s condition. How involved Biden was in that, or how self-aware he was of his own deterioration, seems a bit unclear. The book describes extensive measures taken to make Biden seem more competent than he was to a vast array of different audiences.
Theranos was a conspiracy, but in the two chapters of Original Sin I’ve read so far, it seems to be describing a presidential campaign that went badly awry. It’s very interesting and maybe more important to understand, precisely because it’s much more normal. I’m just not sure I’d use the term “conspiracy“ to describe what I’ve listened to so far.
Sure they tried, but the question is whether they succeeded in keeping key decision makers in the dark, right? There was a large contingent of media that showed frequent mishaps of Biden and seemed convinced of his cognitive decline, so the info was out there and it is plausible that Biden’s inner circle failed to deceive key decision makers ( I have not read the book)
I loved Original Sin. Most of it is very depressing, but one brighter moment is the story of Chuck Schumer visiting Biden a week before he dropped out:
The thing I found most interesting about Original Sin is that Biden’s senility was incredibly big-if-true and incredibly plausible-on-priors, but evidence of it still didn’t manage to make it to a bunch of key decision makers who were extremely strongly motivated to understand it. I think that along some important dimensions it’s the most extreme example of mass epistemic failure that I’m aware of.
is this a case where many decision makers were kept in the dark, or where one key decision maker—Biden himself—was kept in the dark about his political chances by his inner circle?
Mass epistemic failure seems a lot less plausible to me than what amounts to a case of epistemic elder abuse.
Biden’s inner circle seemed to have conspired to keep many people (other senior party officials, members of Congress, Republican Party members, the media, the public, leaders of foreign states) in the dark about Biden’s condition. How involved Biden was in that, or how self-aware he was of his own deterioration, seems a bit unclear. The book describes extensive measures taken to make Biden seem more competent than he was to a vast array of different audiences.
Theranos was a conspiracy, but in the two chapters of Original Sin I’ve read so far, it seems to be describing a presidential campaign that went badly awry. It’s very interesting and maybe more important to understand, precisely because it’s much more normal. I’m just not sure I’d use the term “conspiracy“ to describe what I’ve listened to so far.
Sure they tried, but the question is whether they succeeded in keeping key decision makers in the dark, right? There was a large contingent of media that showed frequent mishaps of Biden and seemed convinced of his cognitive decline, so the info was out there and it is plausible that Biden’s inner circle failed to deceive key decision makers ( I have not read the book)
It seems to me an example of “epistemic failure” to think the “key decision makers” genuinely didn’t understand and not simply lying.
I seriously think that lots of the decision makers were wrong. See e.g. Yglesias’s article about it.