4 ms·

For those who don’t know, Cremieux is a prolific Twitter poster. He posts a lot of graphs and charts and presents himself as purely objective and data driven, b

by Aurornis 11mo ago

For those who don’t know, Cremieux is a prolific Twitter poster. He posts a lot of graphs and charts and presents himself as purely objective and data driven, but follow him for a while and you’ll start to see he’s highly politically motivated and will pretend to be completely blind to any data that disagrees with his agenda. He has become a popular figure in the “rationalist” community which this blog (Marginal Revolution) belongs to, so you won’t find criticisms within this sphere. Cremieux is the type of poster who posts 90% accurate information to build trust and then slips in 10% agenda-pushing material. If you’re not paying close attention or following people who will debunk him, it all looks equally scientific. He was highly active during the last election with political claims and data that were easily debunked or shown to be taken out of context. He’s also a big proponent of buying GLP-1 peptides from questionable sources and mixing your own injections, which he advertises broadly but then puts his “guides” behind a paywall as a source of income. Because he profits from subscriptions to his guides, he has a huge conflict of interest when explaining the safety of buying these underground peptides and mixing your own injections, but he’s held up as a source of scientific truth for how completely safe it is by people who don’t recognize his conflict of interest.

tptacek 11mo ago
He's also a main character in white supremacist Twitter, for whatever that's worth. Whatever the deal is, he's probably not wrong about autism.
- Aurornis 11mo ago
  > Whatever the deal is, he's probably not wrong about autism. I agree, but it’s worth pointing out that this is kind of his whole schtick: Most of the topics he posts about are probably objectively based and generally accurate. He uses this to build trust before slipping in the bananas claims about immigrants, race/IQ stuff, and other political topics, or when it comes time to sell followers on subscriptions to his GLP-1 guides (which do not contain any information you couldn’t find freely from numerous other sources)
  - tptacek 11mo ago
    I agree that's the dynamic but I don't think it's useful to call him out for the accurate stuff, since, again, I think you really have to be paying attention to "that part of Twitter" (you and I apparently both do so for oppositional reasons) to know what's going on here. Lasker won't make you wait long before bringing the racist stuff out!
- devonkim 11mo ago
  This seems fairly consistent with deep, accomplished experts in any field or craft - their competencies in one area don't necessarily translate well into validity anywhere else laterally or even vertically. This seems extremely obvious even for typically "smart" people such as doctors, lawyers, engineers because among many folks I know scamming these white collar professionals out of money by feeding into their egotism is basically how they make their living. While I don't think we should fence people into professional castes or anything like that but in the modern age of AI and charisma-based validity / authority healthy skepticism seems like a requisite to not be suckered into modern infomercial quackery.
  - Aurornis 11mo ago
    > This seems fairly consistent with deep, accomplished experts in any field or craft - their competencies in one area don't necessarily translate well into validity anywhere else laterally or even vertically. With this person, his core area of pseudo-research has been the race/IQ generalizations. He has a long history of eugenics content and his Reddit posts engage in Nazi stuff. He jumps into popular topics like autism statistics to ride those trends on Twitter and expand his reach. Once you follow him, you realize it’s a steady drip of the lightly disguised eugenics stuff that has been his core focus for a long time.
coldtea 11mo ago
Graphs and charts are the best way to lie. And if someone is a prolific poster of them, there's always an agenda.

tptacek 11mo ago

He's also a main character in white supremacist Twitter, for whatever that's worth. Whatever the deal is, he's probably not wrong about autism.

Aurornis 11mo ago
> Whatever the deal is, he's probably not wrong about autism. I agree, but it’s worth pointing out that this is kind of his whole schtick: Most of the topics he posts about are probably objectively based and generally accurate. He uses this to build trust before slipping in the bananas claims about immigrants, race/IQ stuff, and other political topics, or when it comes time to sell followers on subscriptions to his GLP-1 guides (which do not contain any information you couldn’t find freely from numerous other sources)
- tptacek 11mo ago
  I agree that's the dynamic but I don't think it's useful to call him out for the accurate stuff, since, again, I think you really have to be paying attention to "that part of Twitter" (you and I apparently both do so for oppositional reasons) to know what's going on here. Lasker won't make you wait long before bringing the racist stuff out!
devonkim 11mo ago
This seems fairly consistent with deep, accomplished experts in any field or craft - their competencies in one area don't necessarily translate well into validity anywhere else laterally or even vertically. This seems extremely obvious even for typically "smart" people such as doctors, lawyers, engineers because among many folks I know scamming these white collar professionals out of money by feeding into their egotism is basically how they make their living. While I don't think we should fence people into professional castes or anything like that but in the modern age of AI and charisma-based validity / authority healthy skepticism seems like a requisite to not be suckered into modern infomercial quackery.
- Aurornis 11mo ago
  > This seems fairly consistent with deep, accomplished experts in any field or craft - their competencies in one area don't necessarily translate well into validity anywhere else laterally or even vertically. With this person, his core area of pseudo-research has been the race/IQ generalizations. He has a long history of eugenics content and his Reddit posts engage in Nazi stuff. He jumps into popular topics like autism statistics to ride those trends on Twitter and expand his reach. Once you follow him, you realize it’s a steady drip of the lightly disguised eugenics stuff that has been his core focus for a long time.

coldtea 11mo ago

Graphs and charts are the best way to lie. And if someone is a prolific poster of them, there's always an agenda.