I think the really key thing here is the bait-and-switch at play.
Insofar as “controversial” means “heated discussion of subject x”, let’s call that “x-controversial”.
Now the article generates heated discussion because of “being a hit piece”, and so is “hit-piece-controversial”. However, there’s then also heated discussion of racism on the forum, call that “racism-controversial”.
If we then unpack the argument made by Garrison above, it reads as “It is fair and accurate to label Manifest racism-controversial, because of a piece of reporting that was hit-piece controversial”—clearly an invalid argument.
Moreover, I don’t know that the forum discourse was necessarily that heated; and seems like there could be a good faith conversation here about an important topic (for example the original author has been super helpful in engaging with replies, I think). So it also seems lots of “heat” got imported from a different controversy.
Crucially, I think part of the adversarial epistemic playbook of this article, the journalist behind it, as well as your own Tweets and comments supporting it, is playing on ambiguities like this (bundling a bunch of different x-controversial and y-controversial things into one label “controversial”), and then using those as the basis to make sweeping accusations that “organisations [...] cut all ties with Manifold/Lightcone”.
I think the really key thing here is the bait-and-switch at play.
Insofar as “controversial” means “heated discussion of subject x”, let’s call that “x-controversial”.
Now the article generates heated discussion because of “being a hit piece”, and so is “hit-piece-controversial”. However, there’s then also heated discussion of racism on the forum, call that “racism-controversial”.
If we then unpack the argument made by Garrison above, it reads as “It is fair and accurate to label Manifest racism-controversial, because of a piece of reporting that was hit-piece controversial”—clearly an invalid argument.
Moreover, I don’t know that the forum discourse was necessarily that heated; and seems like there could be a good faith conversation here about an important topic (for example the original author has been super helpful in engaging with replies, I think). So it also seems lots of “heat” got imported from a different controversy.
Crucially, I think part of the adversarial epistemic playbook of this article, the journalist behind it, as well as your own Tweets and comments supporting it, is playing on ambiguities like this (bundling a bunch of different x-controversial and y-controversial things into one label “controversial”), and then using those as the basis to make sweeping accusations that “organisations [...] cut all ties with Manifold/Lightcone”.
That is what I’m objecting so strongly against.