I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
Thanks. I agree here that “criminals” seem a more plausible interpretation of what he said than “woke activists.” I also definitely sympathize with an unthinking tweet written in the moment being misinterpreted, especially by people on the EA Forum.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
I agree this is true in general. I think we might have different underlying probabilities of how accurate that model is however. In particular, I find it rather plausible that people pushing for “edgy” political beliefs will intentionally backtrack when challenged. I also have a cached view that this type of strategic ambiguity is particularly popular among the alt-right (not saying that other political factions are innocent here).
And in this particular case, I’d note that the incentive for falsifying what he meant is massive.
Again, I don’t know Richard and how strong his desire is to always be consistently candid about what he means. It’s definitely possible that he’s unusually truth-seeking (my guess is that some of his defenders will point to that as one of his chief virtues). I’m just saying that you should not exclude deception from the hypothesis space in situations similar to this one.
I reached out to Hanania and this is what he said:
““These people” as in criminals and those who are apologists for crimes. A coalition of bad people who together destroy cities. Yes, I know how it looks. The Penny arrest made me emotional, and so it was an unthinking tweet in the moment.”
He also says it’s quoted in the Blocked and Reported podcast episode, but it’s behind a paywall and I can’t for the life of me get Substack to accept my card, so I can’t doublecheck. Would appreciate if anybody figured out how to do that and could verify.
I think generally though it’s easy to misunderstand people, and if people respond to clarify, you should believe what they say they meant to say, not your interpretation of what they said.
Thanks. I agree here that “criminals” seem a more plausible interpretation of what he said than “woke activists.” I also definitely sympathize with an unthinking tweet written in the moment being misinterpreted, especially by people on the EA Forum.
I agree this is true in general. I think we might have different underlying probabilities of how accurate that model is however. In particular, I find it rather plausible that people pushing for “edgy” political beliefs will intentionally backtrack when challenged. I also have a cached view that this type of strategic ambiguity is particularly popular among the alt-right (not saying that other political factions are innocent here).
And in this particular case, I’d note that the incentive for falsifying what he meant is massive.
Again, I don’t know Richard and how strong his desire is to always be consistently candid about what he means. It’s definitely possible that he’s unusually truth-seeking (my guess is that some of his defenders will point to that as one of his chief virtues). I’m just saying that you should not exclude deception from the hypothesis space in situations similar to this one.
It’s certainly possible he’s lying.
But given what I’ve read of his other work, I’d be very surprised if he was referring to all black people.
However, being pissed off at criminals and criminal apologists is completely in his wheelhouse, and makes way more sense.