4 ms·

A recording of a car crash: discovering on live radio/podcast that the central tenet of your book is wrong, and amateurishly so. Naomi Wolf 'death recorded' on

A recording of a car crash: discovering on live radio/podcast that the central tenet of your book is wrong, and amateurishly so. Naomi Wolf 'death recorded' on BBC[1], skip to 5:51. After this the book was pulped and she had some sort of psychotic break during COVID and allied with ultra-right and COVID denialist loonies. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-48639663 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-48639663

globnomulous 3mo ago
This is astonishing. How could a person go to the lengths of writing an entire book without ever looking up this sort of thing?
- brohee 3mo ago
  The most astonishing thing is that she still holds the PhD whose thesis was the basis of the book. A stain on Oxford reputation.
- somenameforme 3mo ago
  The term she mistook for meaning a death/execution had been recorded was "death recorded". So it's a mistake that could be made similarly to how one might confidently assume that a "public school" is a school which is a school that is either government funded or open to anybody in the local area. More generally I think people are inappropriately confident in general. When you go through history just about every century prior people believed many things that the next century would come to see as plainly false. People in modern times seemed to have stopped believing this was true, yet it's likely that people during every given century also stopped believing such was true, because what you believe "now" is always assumed to be correct. Nobody wants to believe they hold false beliefs, even though there's a practically 100% certainty that all of us do, and in quite healthy quantities.
  - NooneAtAll3 3mo ago
    ...what is public school then?
    - somenameforme 3mo ago
      A fee charging privately operated institution that does not receive public funding. [1] Brits have a way with words. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
      - t-3 3mo ago
        The US still somewhat has a similar distinction with public and private colleges. Private vs public funding rather than private vs public admission.
        ted_dunning 3mo ago
        A similar distinction with opposite polarity, however. A public school in Britain does not receive public funding. A public school in the US is entirely publicly funded.
    - peterfirefly 3mo ago
      When rich people started having their kids educated with children of other rich people instead of at home by tutors.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    You have to be confident by default or you'll never get anything done. I always find myself stuck in analysis paralysis and then I look back at something like the history of Minecraft and realise he wrote the whole game (minus content additions) from scratch in only about two years, and all the updates I remember not liking were just another Tuesday for him as there had been similar updates every few weeks during that entire time period. Like, I bought the game just before the Nether was added, and I thought that was not a very good feature, but just a few weeks before that, he'd added monster spawners, and just a few weeks before that, he'd added redstone, and a few weeks before that, minecarts, and a few weeks before that, signs, and a few weeks before that, the world wasn't infinite yet. Just another few months back, and the game didn't have an inventory. That guy had the opposite mindset of me and he got shit done.
    - RossBencina 3mo ago
      > You have to be confident by default or you'll never get anything done. Crippling doubt can happen. Blind confidence has its own hazards. You only need to be confident that you can proceed, in spite of having provisional, incomplete knowledge. "But if you grip to your beliefs too tightly, you will not recognise The Truth when it comes knocking on your door." (forget who said that)
- bryanrasmussen 3mo ago
  When I read your comment I completely give myself over to the understanding that you mean she wrote a whole and continuous book, without ever researching whether you meant a book about uncastrated male animals. Imagine my surprise when I go the radio to discuss your comment and a zoologist calls up to correct my understanding of a common English phrase.
  - globnomulous 3mo ago
    Sorry, I don't follow. Did I make a dumb mistake and fail to notice? Am I a total hypocrite?
jandrese 3mo ago
[flagged]
- angry_octet 3mo ago
  No it's not that they don't check facts, it's that facts don't matter. She found a community where poor scholarship and vibes was celebrated.
  - gruntled-worker 3mo ago
    Yep. It's like rooting for a team or a rock star. Alice is a football stats wiz. Alice is a WR Jones fan because he has an incredible 40-yd dash time and leads the league in YAC. Bob is a WR Smith fan. Bob knows the stats are all cooked. Bob knows that if the stats weren't cooked, WR Smith would lead the league in all categories. Therefore, Bob doesn't bother with stats.
zahlman 3mo ago
Is the video available not through a proprietary player? > After this the book was pulped and she had some sort of psychotic break during COVID and allied with ultra-right and COVID denialist loonies. That's quite an extreme shift considering she had previously been a leading figure in third-wave feminism and an OWS activist.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
  The other Naomi, Naomi Klein, wrote an entire book that uses Wolf's "transformation" as a structural scaffold to explore the rise of the new right/MAGA etc. etc. It's called "Doppelganger".
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Which electronics youtuber Naomi got disappeared in China for showing bad parts of china? Was that a third Naomi?
    - jasonjayr 3mo ago
      Naomi Wu aka Sexy Cyborg - she did a lot of electronics work, and showcasing tech
- AndrewKemendo 3mo ago
  I couldn’t get the video to work. Here’s the relevant clip I found on youtube. https://youtu.be/3uRCcEoGWxs https://youtu.be/3uRCcEoGWxs
  - murphyslaw 3mo ago
    BBC iPlayer is not available outside the UK.
    - 3mo ago
anitil 3mo ago
I wasn't sure if I would be able to listen again - it's so hard to hear.
onraglanroad 3mo ago
It doesn't seem too egregious an error to assume "death recorded" means they were executed, rather than the opposite where death was recorded as the verdict but not actually executed. Not checking newspaper reports of the period is lazy though and exactly the kind of thing I'd expect a journalist to do and therefore be the one to discover the flaw.
- angry_octet 3mo ago
  If you're not a historian it wouldn't be an egregious error.
peterfirefly 3mo ago
I just listened to it. I think she handled it remarkably well.
- angry_octet 3mo ago
  She had poise in the moment.

globnomulous 3mo ago

This is astonishing. How could a person go to the lengths of writing an entire book without ever looking up this sort of thing?

brohee 3mo ago
The most astonishing thing is that she still holds the PhD whose thesis was the basis of the book. A stain on Oxford reputation.
somenameforme 3mo ago
The term she mistook for meaning a death/execution had been recorded was "death recorded". So it's a mistake that could be made similarly to how one might confidently assume that a "public school" is a school which is a school that is either government funded or open to anybody in the local area. More generally I think people are inappropriately confident in general. When you go through history just about every century prior people believed many things that the next century would come to see as plainly false. People in modern times seemed to have stopped believing this was true, yet it's likely that people during every given century also stopped believing such was true, because what you believe "now" is always assumed to be correct. Nobody wants to believe they hold false beliefs, even though there's a practically 100% certainty that all of us do, and in quite healthy quantities.
- NooneAtAll3 3mo ago
  ...what is public school then?
  - somenameforme 3mo ago
    A fee charging privately operated institution that does not receive public funding. [1] Brits have a way with words. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
    - t-3 3mo ago
      The US still somewhat has a similar distinction with public and private colleges. Private vs public funding rather than private vs public admission.
      - ted_dunning 3mo ago
        A similar distinction with opposite polarity, however. A public school in Britain does not receive public funding. A public school in the US is entirely publicly funded.
  - peterfirefly 3mo ago
    When rich people started having their kids educated with children of other rich people instead of at home by tutors.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  You have to be confident by default or you'll never get anything done. I always find myself stuck in analysis paralysis and then I look back at something like the history of Minecraft and realise he wrote the whole game (minus content additions) from scratch in only about two years, and all the updates I remember not liking were just another Tuesday for him as there had been similar updates every few weeks during that entire time period. Like, I bought the game just before the Nether was added, and I thought that was not a very good feature, but just a few weeks before that, he'd added monster spawners, and just a few weeks before that, he'd added redstone, and a few weeks before that, minecarts, and a few weeks before that, signs, and a few weeks before that, the world wasn't infinite yet. Just another few months back, and the game didn't have an inventory. That guy had the opposite mindset of me and he got shit done.
  - RossBencina 3mo ago
    > You have to be confident by default or you'll never get anything done. Crippling doubt can happen. Blind confidence has its own hazards. You only need to be confident that you can proceed, in spite of having provisional, incomplete knowledge. "But if you grip to your beliefs too tightly, you will not recognise The Truth when it comes knocking on your door." (forget who said that)
bryanrasmussen 3mo ago
When I read your comment I completely give myself over to the understanding that you mean she wrote a whole and continuous book, without ever researching whether you meant a book about uncastrated male animals. Imagine my surprise when I go the radio to discuss your comment and a zoologist calls up to correct my understanding of a common English phrase.
- globnomulous 3mo ago
  Sorry, I don't follow. Did I make a dumb mistake and fail to notice? Am I a total hypocrite?

jandrese 3mo ago

[flagged]

angry_octet 3mo ago
No it's not that they don't check facts, it's that facts don't matter. She found a community where poor scholarship and vibes was celebrated.
- gruntled-worker 3mo ago
  Yep. It's like rooting for a team or a rock star. Alice is a football stats wiz. Alice is a WR Jones fan because he has an incredible 40-yd dash time and leads the league in YAC. Bob is a WR Smith fan. Bob knows the stats are all cooked. Bob knows that if the stats weren't cooked, WR Smith would lead the league in all categories. Therefore, Bob doesn't bother with stats.

zahlman 3mo ago

Is the video available not through a proprietary player? > After this the book was pulped and she had some sort of psychotic break during COVID and allied with ultra-right and COVID denialist loonies. That's quite an extreme shift considering she had previously been a leading figure in third-wave feminism and an OWS activist.

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
PaulDavisThe1st 3mo ago
The other Naomi, Naomi Klein, wrote an entire book that uses Wolf's "transformation" as a structural scaffold to explore the rise of the new right/MAGA etc. etc. It's called "Doppelganger".
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Which electronics youtuber Naomi got disappeared in China for showing bad parts of china? Was that a third Naomi?
  - jasonjayr 3mo ago
    Naomi Wu aka Sexy Cyborg - she did a lot of electronics work, and showcasing tech
AndrewKemendo 3mo ago
I couldn’t get the video to work. Here’s the relevant clip I found on youtube. https://youtu.be/3uRCcEoGWxs https://youtu.be/3uRCcEoGWxs
- murphyslaw 3mo ago
  BBC iPlayer is not available outside the UK.
  - 3mo ago

anitil 3mo ago

I wasn't sure if I would be able to listen again - it's so hard to hear.

onraglanroad 3mo ago

It doesn't seem too egregious an error to assume "death recorded" means they were executed, rather than the opposite where death was recorded as the verdict but not actually executed. Not checking newspaper reports of the period is lazy though and exactly the kind of thing I'd expect a journalist to do and therefore be the one to discover the flaw.

angry_octet 3mo ago
If you're not a historian it wouldn't be an egregious error.

peterfirefly 3mo ago

I just listened to it. I think she handled it remarkably well.

angry_octet 3mo ago
She had poise in the moment.