It seems to me that it is possible to construct a story in either direction.
Obvious mistakes in the letter may mean it’s a false flag operation—the letter has obvious weaknesses to make it easier to argue against it. And if the organization refuses to act on the letter, it would set a precedent; now other organizations could be asked to grow at least as much spine as LSA. Or maybe the actual goal is just to make Pinker a martyr, probably to help sell his books or something.
On the other hand, “the purpose of propaganda is to humiliate”. If the letter succeeds, it would drive home the point that showing your opponents to be factually wrong, or even transparently lying, is not going to save you. Also, that it is not enough to avoid crimethink, but even anything that could be misinterpreted as crimethink, so the only safe way is to actively work on your social justice credentials; for example by leading the witchhunts.
Could be this, could be that.
My bet is that this is probably not a false flag operation, because it would be too risky if the complicated plan fails. (But I admit that the part of me that enjoys imagining complicated plans wants this to be one.) The obvious mistakes in the accusations are not sufficiently strong evidence in my eyes to overcome the priors; I have seen people believe crazy things when politics was involved. (For example, as far as I know, the shooting of 4 men and 2 women was described in media as a misogynistic attack; it is possible that someone simply remembered the version from media and didn’t bother to verify. Or lied on purpose, expecting that readers would misremember.)
My bet is that this is probably not a false flag operation, because it would be too risky if the complicated plan fails. [...] strong evidence in my eyes to overcome the priors
There are plenty of book authors who do these kinds of things. Ryan Holiday describes in Trust Me I’m Lying that he did false flag attacks to promote Tucker Max and others. The idea that it’s benefitial PR to do these things is out of the open.
If the letter succeeds, it would drive home the point that showing your opponents to be factually wrong, or even transparently lying, is not going to save you.
It would be possible to claim that the letter is a Sokal type stunt in case the letter actually succeeds.
What stands out to me is that this looks low-effort, but stuff like the footnote thing, and some of the rather subtle though simple argumentation, seem fundamentally incompatible with being low-effort. This is what I see as most significant that something is off. And if you try and take the letter at face value or as an effort to be taken at face value, you would expect to see evidence of motivation/effort, since someone has to care enough to bother. That’s also why I doubt the humiliation aspect—if you want to show someone you can enforce absurdity, it’s usually a lot showier with more effort involved, and it would be more clearly absurd. This is more dumb than audacious. It could be incompetence, but the footnote also seems fundamentally incompatible with that. It’s just not a natural kind of shoddy work—more of a generic placeholder.
It’s not particularly brilliant, so I don’t think the letter itself is more than a pretext or experiment, if it’s a false flag thing. It’s not done in the way someone like Pinker would do it if he was trying to sell books or make himself a martyr or be well-guarded against future accusations. I wasn’t sure how sharp Pinker was at first (in a strategically alert sense, not an academic one), or how conflict-averse. After researching this, I’ve concluded he is quite sharp and not afraid of conflict—so it’s too slapped together for it to have been a big move on his part. It would have to be a small component of a larger move.
I think it is a mistake to assume there is much risk if the plan fails, or that it would have to be particularly complicated. A lot of this stuff is normal PR behavior, as ChristianKI says below. There’s a lot of mischief and “inexplicable” stuff that goes on daily on the Internet, and people barely notice many of the crazier things, let alone something like this, which is pretty boring.
Interesting points. Part of why it seems so fishy to me is that, personally, I have a lot of experience with far-left lists of demands and takedowns. They’re certainly not perfect, but in my experience they are reliably 1) longer, 2) better researched, 3) better written, and 4) more vicious.
Again I will offer examples like the attempt to remove Hsu and the recent list of dozens of demands at Princeton. On easily-measured scales, such as number of demands/pieces of evidence, the letter to the LSU is a clear outlier. It’s hard for me to imagine them stopping at only 6 complaints. On less easily measured scales, like how damning or aggressive the evidence is, I also think that it is a clear outlier; not only worse than normal, but well worse than the normal worst examples of the genre.
Of course this is all based on my previous experience with this sort of document, and that’s something I can’t share, it’s just built into my priors. But if you’re willing to accept my semi-expert opinion on this, then my take is that it seems fishy.
It seems to me that it is possible to construct a story in either direction.
Obvious mistakes in the letter may mean it’s a false flag operation—the letter has obvious weaknesses to make it easier to argue against it. And if the organization refuses to act on the letter, it would set a precedent; now other organizations could be asked to grow at least as much spine as LSA. Or maybe the actual goal is just to make Pinker a martyr, probably to help sell his books or something.
On the other hand, “the purpose of propaganda is to humiliate”. If the letter succeeds, it would drive home the point that showing your opponents to be factually wrong, or even transparently lying, is not going to save you. Also, that it is not enough to avoid crimethink, but even anything that could be misinterpreted as crimethink, so the only safe way is to actively work on your social justice credentials; for example by leading the witchhunts.
Could be this, could be that.
My bet is that this is probably not a false flag operation, because it would be too risky if the complicated plan fails. (But I admit that the part of me that enjoys imagining complicated plans wants this to be one.) The obvious mistakes in the accusations are not sufficiently strong evidence in my eyes to overcome the priors; I have seen people believe crazy things when politics was involved. (For example, as far as I know, the shooting of 4 men and 2 women was described in media as a misogynistic attack; it is possible that someone simply remembered the version from media and didn’t bother to verify. Or lied on purpose, expecting that readers would misremember.)
There are plenty of book authors who do these kinds of things. Ryan Holiday describes in Trust Me I’m Lying that he did false flag attacks to promote Tucker Max and others. The idea that it’s benefitial PR to do these things is out of the open.
It would be possible to claim that the letter is a Sokal type stunt in case the letter actually succeeds.
What stands out to me is that this looks low-effort, but stuff like the footnote thing, and some of the rather subtle though simple argumentation, seem fundamentally incompatible with being low-effort. This is what I see as most significant that something is off. And if you try and take the letter at face value or as an effort to be taken at face value, you would expect to see evidence of motivation/effort, since someone has to care enough to bother. That’s also why I doubt the humiliation aspect—if you want to show someone you can enforce absurdity, it’s usually a lot showier with more effort involved, and it would be more clearly absurd. This is more dumb than audacious. It could be incompetence, but the footnote also seems fundamentally incompatible with that. It’s just not a natural kind of shoddy work—more of a generic placeholder.
It’s not particularly brilliant, so I don’t think the letter itself is more than a pretext or experiment, if it’s a false flag thing. It’s not done in the way someone like Pinker would do it if he was trying to sell books or make himself a martyr or be well-guarded against future accusations. I wasn’t sure how sharp Pinker was at first (in a strategically alert sense, not an academic one), or how conflict-averse. After researching this, I’ve concluded he is quite sharp and not afraid of conflict—so it’s too slapped together for it to have been a big move on his part. It would have to be a small component of a larger move.
I think it is a mistake to assume there is much risk if the plan fails, or that it would have to be particularly complicated. A lot of this stuff is normal PR behavior, as ChristianKI says below. There’s a lot of mischief and “inexplicable” stuff that goes on daily on the Internet, and people barely notice many of the crazier things, let alone something like this, which is pretty boring.
Maybe a GPT-2/3 ‘open letter to cancel a prominent public intellectual’ that was accidentally shared/published?
It was before that took off, but I’m pretty positive Pinker or a friend of his wrote it up as a pretext for interviews on the topic.
Interesting points. Part of why it seems so fishy to me is that, personally, I have a lot of experience with far-left lists of demands and takedowns. They’re certainly not perfect, but in my experience they are reliably 1) longer, 2) better researched, 3) better written, and 4) more vicious.
Again I will offer examples like the attempt to remove Hsu and the recent list of dozens of demands at Princeton. On easily-measured scales, such as number of demands/pieces of evidence, the letter to the LSU is a clear outlier. It’s hard for me to imagine them stopping at only 6 complaints. On less easily measured scales, like how damning or aggressive the evidence is, I also think that it is a clear outlier; not only worse than normal, but well worse than the normal worst examples of the genre.
Of course this is all based on my previous experience with this sort of document, and that’s something I can’t share, it’s just built into my priors. But if you’re willing to accept my semi-expert opinion on this, then my take is that it seems fishy.