Thread by @PMatzko

The New York Times article about SlateStarCodex is finally out and it is...bad. There's a lot I could parse, but let me just walk you through one paragraph that is so misleading as to be deceptive.

nytimes.com/2021/02/13/tec…

Take the first sentence of this paragraph. Now, technically the clause--"who proposed a link between race and IQ"--could simply modify "Murray" and have nothing to do w/ SSC.

But 99% of readers are going to assume that the clause actually defines SSC's alignment with Murray. In other words, the author is strongly implying that SSC shares Murray's racist beliefs.

And that would be big(!)...if it were at all true. It is not. Indeed, if you go to the hyperlink, you'll find that SSC's purported "alignment" has nothing to do with Murray's "Bell Curve." slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/23/thr…

What SSC & Murray agree about is that poverty is partly hereditable and thus very sticky, so much so that the proposition job retraining programs will meaningfully address mass economic disruption is a pie-in-the-sky fantasy.

Funnily, this is a mundane progressive policy stance. Oh no, SSC believes poverty is...cyclical! Quelle horreur! Job retraining is a sop for politicians to show they're doing something rather than a meaningful solution to the decline of mid-20th c factory towns?? May it never be!

What the journalist is doing is lazy. If SSC says he *ever* agreed on *anything* with Charles Murray, than he *must* agree with Murray on *everything.* And since Murray has racist views on race and genetics, SSC must--by the transitive power of bad journalism--share those views.

This is dumb. If I were to propose that, say, Bernie Sanders' past expressions of admiration for socialist economies necessarily means he supports every atrocity committed by any socialist regime, you'd tell me to get a grip (and spend less time hanging out with Ben Shapiro).

Now, the second sentence in the paragraph is equally problematic, and much harder to track down since the author provided no hyperlink. Here it is.

No wonder he didn't provide a link; it doesn't say what he implies it does!

slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/aga…

The author's juxtaposition of this sentence w/ the first strongly implies that SSC agrees with Murray's racist proposition. It's the same transitive illogic again.

But if you go and read the actual article, SSC is citing Murray not to agree with him but in order to parse the various ways that one might object to Murray's beliefs *as racist*.

In any case, the Times piece is chock full of sections which are, like this one, full of bad faith representation and accusation by grammatical implication. It's a bad piece that the @nytimes should yank.