I would hold a tighter grip on your horses. The article does not contravene the headline. Hanania talks at length about how much he hates wokeness.[1] He doesn’t mention his views on genocide. He notes that some issues are more important than being anti-woke (as an example, he mentions anti-aging research). So in sum, this article suggests:
he hates wokeness vehemently
he thinks some issues are more important than wokeness.
It seems entirely consistent with the article that Hanania hates wokeness more than genocide, and a straightforward reading of the headline and context would support this. We don’t know whether Hanania puts genocide as one of the ‘5-10’ more important issues.
So we have mildly positive, at best neutral evidence on how Hanania rates genocide compared to wokeness. ‘Thinks is worse’ could mean different things. One reading is that ‘worse = rates as a more important problem’ (on which we should be unsure). Another reading is ‘worse = hates more’ (on which we have positive evidence). Either reading is reasonable.
E.g. “I’ve hated wokeness so much, and so consistently over such a long period of my life, that I’ve devoted a large amount of time and energy to reading up on its history and legal underpinnings and thinking about how to destroy it.”
The entire article is about how he hates wokeness the most but recognizes that objectively there are other bigger problems; genocide is an example he mentions of an objectively worse problem.
Could you point me to where he does so? I only see mentions of genocide in the title (which he does not contradict), and in the context of liberals’ relative hatred. And where he says “Emotionally, I don’t identify with the tribe of ‘people who don’t commit genocide.’”
The article reads to me as straightforwardly saying “I know [wokeness] is nowhere near the most important issue I could be focusing on [but I find myself doing it anyways]” and reflecting on why he (and others) feel so much more passionate and outraged about topics like pronouns (for him) and racial slurs (for people on the left), when there are so many things that from a system 2 perspective are much bigger deals that he and others feel much less passionate about when they come up (like genocide).
This feels like an interesting point (though I have disagreements with some of the writing in the essay). I have failed to find a literal sentence with “I think genocide is more important than X”, since he mostly invokes the term when talking about how he is surprised how dispassionate other people are about that topic, but the overall content of the post is the opposite of what I thought he was going to say when Peter linked to it.
It agree he also says it might be in the top 5-10, which I agree seems somewhat incongruent, though like, the whole point of the post is to explore internal cognitive dissonance in him and others, so some inconsistency doesn’t seem inappropriate (though yeah, I think it makes the post worse and the meaning less clear, which is still bad).
Eh, I personally think of some things in the top 10 as “nowhere near” the most important issues, because of how heavy-tailed cause prioritization tends to be.
That’s reasonable. My point is that it’s much less clear and open to contestation that Hanania’s article says the opposite of what the headline is, but given the example is ~retracted anyway my point is not important
I would hold a tighter grip on your horses. The article does not contravene the headline. Hanania talks at length about how much he hates wokeness.[1] He doesn’t mention his views on genocide. He notes that some issues are more important than being anti-woke (as an example, he mentions anti-aging research). So in sum, this article suggests:
he hates wokeness vehemently
he thinks some issues are more important than wokeness.
It seems entirely consistent with the article that Hanania hates wokeness more than genocide, and a straightforward reading of the headline and context would support this. We don’t know whether Hanania puts genocide as one of the ‘5-10’ more important issues.
So we have mildly positive, at best neutral evidence on how Hanania rates genocide compared to wokeness. ‘Thinks is worse’ could mean different things. One reading is that ‘worse = rates as a more important problem’ (on which we should be unsure). Another reading is ‘worse = hates more’ (on which we have positive evidence). Either reading is reasonable.
E.g. “I’ve hated wokeness so much, and so consistently over such a long period of my life, that I’ve devoted a large amount of time and energy to reading up on its history and legal underpinnings and thinking about how to destroy it.”
The entire article is about how he hates wokeness the most but recognizes that objectively there are other bigger problems; genocide is an example he mentions of an objectively worse problem.
Could you point me to where he does so? I only see mentions of genocide in the title (which he does not contradict), and in the context of liberals’ relative hatred. And where he says “Emotionally, I don’t identify with the tribe of ‘people who don’t commit genocide.’”
The article reads to me as straightforwardly saying “I know [wokeness] is nowhere near the most important issue I could be focusing on [but I find myself doing it anyways]” and reflecting on why he (and others) feel so much more passionate and outraged about topics like pronouns (for him) and racial slurs (for people on the left), when there are so many things that from a system 2 perspective are much bigger deals that he and others feel much less passionate about when they come up (like genocide).
This feels like an interesting point (though I have disagreements with some of the writing in the essay). I have failed to find a literal sentence with “I think genocide is more important than X”, since he mostly invokes the term when talking about how he is surprised how dispassionate other people are about that topic, but the overall content of the post is the opposite of what I thought he was going to say when Peter linked to it.
He says wokeness is in the “top 5-10, depending how you count”. That doesn’t seem to be ‘nowhere near’?
The text in quotes is a quote:
It agree he also says it might be in the top 5-10, which I agree seems somewhat incongruent, though like, the whole point of the post is to explore internal cognitive dissonance in him and others, so some inconsistency doesn’t seem inappropriate (though yeah, I think it makes the post worse and the meaning less clear, which is still bad).
Eh, I personally think of some things in the top 10 as “nowhere near” the most important issues, because of how heavy-tailed cause prioritization tends to be.
Yeah, I was thinking about that as well. Seems plausible for something to be top 5-10 and also “nowhere near”.
That’s reasonable. My point is that it’s much less clear and open to contestation that Hanania’s article says the opposite of what the headline is, but given the example is ~retracted anyway my point is not important