He has a extremely poor reputation among a large pool of potential donors, employers, policy-makers, academics and ‘serious’ people. If you want your ideas taken seriously he is not the figure to have introduce them to the general public. This is true regardless of what his reputation ought to be.
Yes, but most people reading his book are considerably less important (at least, for my purposes) than people watching Laurence O’Donnell when he spends five minutes next week making fun of Glen Beck’s book. Or Maureen Dowd’s column when she does the same. Obviously if this is just a few pages in a little noticed book there is no problem with it at all (it’s basically neutral). If Beck decides to spend a lot of time talking about it, to the point that it becomes identifiable as “one of Beck’s ideas”, that would be bad. I don’t have a well-calibrated idea of how much publicity Beck gets these days or how often he puts out books which is why I’m unsure of the effect.
Beck is on the air hours a day, and he has put out about 20 books, with no end in sight. He was a wild-morning radio disc jokey and still uses that bombastic style, and never scrips out what he is going to say. His opponents just cut out tiny samples- the least politically correct stuff, to slam him with. Its very unlikely that Blue team commentators would ever get around to something this serious, when there are far more juicy bits.
This section mentions Kurzweil enough times (over 10 times), with other names, to make it very clear to anyone that this isn’t ‘beck’s’ idea.
Beck’s main ‘sciencey’ project he constantly promotes, funds, and fundraisers for is a cancer treatment where the patient is injected with metal nano particles that bond to the malignant tissue. The particles heat up under radio waves, bursting theses cells, leaving the rest of the body untouched. I’ve seen no evidence of other media outlets connecting this project with him, or any mention of this association at all.
It is my prediction that this will be ignored, as his critics have more to gain by ignoring any pro-sciencey Beck association.
Disregard me: This is an inaccurate statement, not an understatement. I still maintain the understatement of the century probably happened sometime around WWII.
Better candidate:
This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.… We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. - Neville Chamberlain
Your overall point is well taken, but you’re interpreting “century” to mean “last hundred years”. The way I’d interpret the word, this is a candidate for understatement of the last century. And the winner was probably somewhere near the Trinity test...
No, I’m referring to the fact that before the Trinity test lots of people greatly underestimated what the yield would be. Someone must surely have said “it will be a little bigger than our conventional bombs”.
There’s a famous story about Trinity where the scientists all bet on the blast magnitude, and a visiting general made a ridiculously huge prediction, way above what they hoped for, in order to flatter his hosts. He won; the blast was still far more powerful than his seemingly fanciful, signaling-motivated guess but he came the closest.
Sure they are. You’re not being creative enough if you can’t figure out how (hint: they can affect the orbital trajectories of some pretty large objects, which can themselves affect the orbital trajectories of some really big objects).
Not sure this constitutes good publicity.
Why? The guy is far from stupid and he preaches to the segment of the US population not generally interested in browsing this forum.
He has a extremely poor reputation among a large pool of potential donors, employers, policy-makers, academics and ‘serious’ people. If you want your ideas taken seriously he is not the figure to have introduce them to the general public. This is true regardless of what his reputation ought to be.
But the vast majority of people reading his book will have a positive opinion of him.
Yes, but most people reading his book are considerably less important (at least, for my purposes) than people watching Laurence O’Donnell when he spends five minutes next week making fun of Glen Beck’s book. Or Maureen Dowd’s column when she does the same. Obviously if this is just a few pages in a little noticed book there is no problem with it at all (it’s basically neutral). If Beck decides to spend a lot of time talking about it, to the point that it becomes identifiable as “one of Beck’s ideas”, that would be bad. I don’t have a well-calibrated idea of how much publicity Beck gets these days or how often he puts out books which is why I’m unsure of the effect.
These seem like low probability concerns
Beck is on the air hours a day, and he has put out about 20 books, with no end in sight. He was a wild-morning radio disc jokey and still uses that bombastic style, and never scrips out what he is going to say. His opponents just cut out tiny samples- the least politically correct stuff, to slam him with. Its very unlikely that Blue team commentators would ever get around to something this serious, when there are far more juicy bits.
This section mentions Kurzweil enough times (over 10 times), with other names, to make it very clear to anyone that this isn’t ‘beck’s’ idea.
Beck’s main ‘sciencey’ project he constantly promotes, funds, and fundraisers for is a cancer treatment where the patient is injected with metal nano particles that bond to the malignant tissue. The particles heat up under radio waves, bursting theses cells, leaving the rest of the body untouched. I’ve seen no evidence of other media outlets connecting this project with him, or any mention of this association at all.
It is my prediction that this will be ignored, as his critics have more to gain by ignoring any pro-sciencey Beck association.
This evidence is sufficient for me to update to your level of concern.
He puts out books fairly frequently, I believe. I can’t attest to anything else. It’s been years since I paid attention to him.
It does, however, constitute good evidence of the success of other publicity.
I really enjoyed the debate following this comment; both in that I felt it was necessary, and also in that it was resolved very quickly and elegantly.
Oy.
Is this “Oy, we’re in trouble, just like Jack says,” or “Oy, Jack just said something stupid”?
I don’t know what “Oy” means. Can you clarify?
“Oy”-ignorance is what identifies you as a non-NY LessWrongian :-p
Traditionally, “an exclamation typically expressing mild frustration or expressing feelings of uncertainty or concern.”
I had thought that exclamation was spelled “Oi!”
Nah, that means like “hey!”, I think. You might’ve reversed the two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oy_vey
I follow American politics pretty closely, but am tone-deaf to some of the responses to this post.
Jack apparently is saying “Beck has a particular ideology and a mass audience and so this will embroil us in politics.”
Is Carl is saying “Leave off the politics already, it’s good to have the write-up,” or “Yes, you’re right”?
Understatement of the century.
Overstatement of the… thread.
Disregard me: This is an inaccurate statement, not an understatement. I still maintain the understatement of the century probably happened sometime around WWII.
Better candidate:
This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine.… We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again. - Neville Chamberlain
Your overall point is well taken, but you’re interpreting “century” to mean “last hundred years”. The way I’d interpret the word, this is a candidate for understatement of the last century. And the winner was probably somewhere near the Trinity test...
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Strikes me as just statement statement not over or under (I’m assuming this is your reference?)
No, I’m referring to the fact that before the Trinity test lots of people greatly underestimated what the yield would be. Someone must surely have said “it will be a little bigger than our conventional bombs”.
There’s a famous story about Trinity where the scientists all bet on the blast magnitude, and a visiting general made a ridiculously huge prediction, way above what they hoped for, in order to flatter his hosts. He won; the blast was still far more powerful than his seemingly fanciful, signaling-motivated guess but he came the closest.
It will go boom and look bright. I dunno what else, I just clear the floors.
Atomic bombs aren’t much good for destroying one world, let alone worlds in general.
Sure they are. You’re not being creative enough if you can’t figure out how (hint: they can affect the orbital trajectories of some pretty large objects, which can themselves affect the orbital trajectories of some really big objects).