4 ms·
You can play a fun game with this snippet from the NYT article. You can replace the word "Rationalists" with the name of any group at all and the resulting stat
by musicbizsucks 6y ago
You can play a fun game with this snippet from the NYT article. You can replace the word "Rationalists" with the name of any group at all and the resulting statement seems vaguely true due to the imprecise nature of the language.
> Many Rationalists embraced “effective altruism,” an effort to remake charity by calculating how many people would benefit from a given donation. Some embraced the online writings of “neoreactionaries” like Curtis Yarvin, who held racist beliefs and decried American democracy. They were mostly white men, but not entirely.
"Republicans" and "Democrats" and "college students" and "Californians" all work, etc.
- cobraetor 6y agoI wonder if there is an online course that educates people on journalism-based rhetoric like this.
- ThankYouBernard 6y agoyou can play any number of "fun games" to validate whatever pre-conceived notion you have about NYT
- colinmhayes 6y agoThat's also a pretty bad definition of effective altruism. For how much they spout "do the most good" you'd think the author could just use that?
- bobcostas55 6y agoThe whole thing is bizarre. The author has been working on this piece for something like 10 months now, and he can't get a basic definition of EA right? I saw a hot take on twitter that Metz deliberately did a bad job because he didn't actually want to write a hit piece and his superiors forced him into it.
- hundreddaysoff 6y agoThis is an interesting theory. It also seems somewhat testable, because if true and Metz's superiors are not tone-deaf they we'd expect they will fire him, no? I wonder if it was Metz who had the idea for the original more positive-angled story re SSC's COVID info.