Jesse, I took the $5 per month I got back for canceling my subscription to The Free Press to pay for this subscription. I am now contributing to your work with paid subscriptions to both "Blocked and Reported" and now here at "Singal-Minded." A big reason is your tireless commitment to honest reporting and efforts to tell the truth as illustrated in this piece on Shellenberger.
He is one of several reasons I feel duped by the whole "heterodox" community and Bari Weiss and TFP in general. I have read and supported Bari since before she joined the Times, and even donated to "Common Sense" before she even went to a paid subscription model. Yet, I feel for all their talk of promoting honest debate and creating this forum for fact-based reporting and opinions from across the political spectrum, they continue to lean more into MAGA (not conservative, there's a big difference), conspiracies, or just plain contrarian opinions, rather than being truly "free" and fair.
Ironically, The Dispatch, who openly say "Hey, we are going to provide you with honest, fact-based news and analysis, but with a conservative slant," are actually more honest and fair in their reporting than TFP. I feel like The Dispatch is what The Free Press told me they were going to be.
I know you and Katie both contribute to The Free Press, including sharing opinions and analysis that dissents from some of what their other contributors may state. Have you ever asked them about this turn? Are they aware of their own biases that seem to be forming and their turn to Tucker Carlson-like "just asking questions" style of analysis?
I subscribed to The Free Press for awhile, but their sympathies became clear to me in the spring/summer of 2024. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, and TFP barely covered it. Biden goofed a debate and they just about ruptured themselves running piece after piece demanding that Biden drop out of the race. Then, when he did drop out, they complained bitterly about how he did it. It was then that I realized Bari just wanted Trump to win, which is her prerogative, but I wish she'd just have been open about that.
The good thing about all this is that TFP is a good barometer for Trump's performance. If Bari and her folks are criticizing The Donald, he must be doing badly indeed.
I'm not particularly a fan of The Free Press, but they don't seem to be "Trump-friendly." It's a mildly conservative "paper" that has two issues that it seems to freak out about: 1) the authoritarian social justice left, and 2) Israel. They're an outfit with a point of view, and at least *some* viewpoint diversity (though not a lot). I also think their editor suffers from emotional reactions driven by the left's oppressive chokehold on the media between 2016 and 2022 or so, to the point that it shows in the content.
Haha, they're not Trump-friendly NOW, because even a blind man can see that The Donald's short presidency has been a long parade of follies and disasters. Go back a year and you'll see The Free Press was singing a different tune.
I only started reading them more regularly in the past 6 months or so, but they have always been fairly anti-Biden, and I'm pretty sure they have never been election deniers or anything, but they also aren't never-Trumpers.
TFP is not MAGA, no, but they're the folks who say, "Well, maybe those advocating for January 6 pardons have a point..." Consciously or not, these takes help sanewash Donald Trump, and give permission to other journalists to do the same.
Exactly. Thats why I reference the Tucker-like “just asking questions” approach. It’s as if no matter how batshit crazy, or me-first over country Trump’s actions are, they give those still with a conscience just enough allowance for supporting Trump.
I don't think FP is a MAGA apologist outlet, but they are certainly willing to publish arguments like that (e.g., most of the stuff from Martin Gurri). That doesn't strike me as a problem, even if I don't entirely agree with those takes.
100%. I cancelled my paid subscription to him at the end of last year. He is spiraling pretty badly. His journalism has never been as intelligent as many of the other heterodox writers - he was very good on drugs/homeless issues - because he had done a lot of work on it. Then expanded to all things woke and took a lot of whatever Musk, Lindsey and others took and now is heading towards Alex Jones territory pretty quickly.
Yep. He's one of the many folks who claimed to be pro-nuance and anti- woke/authoritarian-left/etc. to start, but just couldn't sit in the complex middle and wanted a simpler answer, and a Tribe to be a part of and fight for.
Many such cases. You and Katie have likely seen even more of these.
I am pretty far to the Left and a committed feminist. I still want to see other viewpoints and understand that almost everything has complexities and nuances that need to be discussed. I keep looking for writers who understand that and when I find one I think might work, that person always makes a serious heel turn. Far, far too many people reacted to issues about COVID, to use one example, by losing their minds and becoming antivaxxers or other conspiracy loons. Sometimes experts are wrong for good or understandable reasons!! We should be able to talk about why school closures were a bad idea without assuming those advocating for them were zombies in the pay of George Soros Drag Queen Battalion!!
I am a retired litigator. My old boss and I used to talk about how much we hated conflict which seems really strange considering our jobs, until you realize that litigation is highly managed conflict. There are STRICT rules that narrow the issues as much as possible and keep the evidence coldly factual. Most people don’t have that training and so get emotionally invested in winning every single point in any discussion and also take all disagreement as a personal insult. I don’t know how to teach people the mental pattern necessary to get over their own emotions.
But that is the point!!! We were NOT ALLOWED to talk about so many many things that strayed from the Govt Covid Agenda! The real fight is ALL ABOUT FREEDOM from centralization of speech and planning!!!
Shellenberger's books on climate change and homelessness were key to my moving to the center on a number of issues. I was a supporter of his and Public on Substack from the start but canceled before long after the sloppiness and stridency took over. Thanks Jesse for the continued commitment to journalistic integrity.
Maybe he was just a broken clock who happened to be right once. I thought some of his reporting a few years ago was interesting, but he really seems to have gone of the deepend. I read part of his recent twitter rant about how 'Europeans don't respect us and think we're stupid, so we shouldn't be allies with them anymore'. Which just feels like the worst kind of of online brain rot. Yes, people on reddit love to talk shit about America. We're big and powerful and have spent quite a few decades throwing our weight around. It's popular in certain circles to talk shit about America. But if you look at ACTUAL sentiments around the world, America is still quite popular (at least we were, we'll see how long THAT lasts). So he's basically proposing becoming antagonistic to our best allies, and potentially ditching the NATO alliance that has helped keep the world MOSTLY peaceful since WW2, because some Europeans went online and said mean things.
“Part of the problem with Shellenberger and Gutentag’s attempts to tie all this to the Drop Site article is that if you look at that article, you’ll see that the authors — Grim, Ștefan Cândea, and Nikolas Leontopoulos — reference the whistleblower complaint in the context of pointing out that OCCRP does seem to at least sometimes operate in a manner which suggests genuine independence from its U.S. funders.”
Posting links to articles that say the opposite of what they are claimed to say is a favorite move of Matt Taibbi - one of Shellenberger’s buds. I keep wanting to comment on his Substack, “uh, Matt, if you keep posting links, people might read them occasionally and see that you’re full of shit sometimes.”
I think I feel the same as you, and cancelled my subscription to Racket a while ago. At the same time, he still comes off as very reasonable most of the time (recent interview on Reason’s Just asking questions), and I sometimes feel like I’m making a mistake. But actually making up my mind about this seems to be like a ton of work and not sure it’s worth doing.
I still have a subscription to Taibbi. Reading him helps me understand how former lefties who have jumped on the Trump bandwagon explain that transition. I also feel indebted to him for his 2020 articles about DeAngelo and how the "American left has lost its mind" His writing helped me articulate my own alienation from wokeness.
Taibbi is smarter and more careful than Shellenberger, and has much more actual experience as a reporter, but I see a similar obsession with finding government conspiracies everywhere. To me, it seems like it should be possible to express anger at the cultural arrogance of our bureaucratic elite w/o constantly accusing them of engaging in elaborate Dan Brown style conspiracies.
I agree that Taibbi is smarter and more diligent than Shellenberger. I was, admittedly, taking sort of a cheap shot (though it is true that he sometimes posts links and it’s clear that he hasn’t actually read them). I may roll my eyes at his breathless writing style, but he is a good writer (I also roll my eyes at his titles, which are equal parts clickbait and snark, but I guess they’re driving traffic, so who am I to tell him to stop).
And you know what - I have actually found his reporting valuable. For instance, I’m getting into studying fact checking from an academic angle, and I probably wouldn’t have thought of doing it if not for his reporting on e.g. the Twitter Files. I also find Taibbi fascinating (again, from an intellectual standpoint) as a prominent example of the phenomenon you describe. I stay subscribed to him because he provides me with valuable “data.”
Other than that…I think it’s pretty clear that he’s happy to be a stenographer for the new administration. His, um, let’s just say “admiring” article on JD Vance’s performance in Munich makes that pretty clear. His ostensible commitment to free speech is pretty questionable, given the openly censorious stuff Trump et al. are doing or threatening that he consistently fails to mention. If he feels like the revenge censorship is deserved, then fine - but please drop the “I’m an old-school ACLU liberal” schtick.
One last thing - I get that he was personally burned by Russiagate, and he lived in Russia for a while and has genuine affection for the place and culture (he talks a lot about his love for Russian literature). I sympathize with wanting to stick up for a place he feels a connection to that’s become the avatar of all evil for a crowd that he despises anyway (ask me about Finland sometime, though admittedly no one’s calling it an authoritarian dictatorship as far as I’m aware). But man, he sure is in “Ukrainians deserve to be subjugated to Putin’s whims because censorship and neoliberalism” mode these days.
I've always admired his commitment to free speech. But his dismissal of Trump kicking AP out of press conferences as "trolling" while holding up Vance's speech as iconic definitely sends mixed messages to me. He's also been silent on stifling of criticism of Israel in the American press. He and Walter selectively pick stories that confirm their deep state paranoia while ignoring others (Are the fired National Park employees part of the "deep state purge" going on?). I've debated canceling my subscription but I continue because I've admired him a long time, and it's good to have other points of view.
Our responses to Taibbi seem to be very similar. I also got more interested in the academic critique of misinformation research through reading T's diatribes.
But I guess that I continue to be more sympathetic to him than you are. He makes me think about things that I would otherwise ignore. Yeah, the fact that he no longer admits (or no longer cares) that Trump is a bully and a liar tends to undermine his credibility. But I don't need Taibbi to learn about Trump's faults. I do get perspectives from him that I don't get from my other news sources. The question is how to evaluate them.
"But I don't need Taibbi to learn about Trump's faults."
I've heard him latch onto this sentiment himself -- arguing that there's no value in his piling onto the anti-Trump bonanza. This is pretty disingenuous, because by this point his audience has shifted to include a lot of anti-DNC Trump sympathizers, who really *could* stand to hear somoene they trust calling out Trump's flagrant attacks on free speech. I mean, the story of Trump's purge of DEI ideology from universities, or his muzzling of the CDC -- these are *so much worse* than what Taibbi complained of in the Twitter FIles (e.g., BIden requesting that nudes of his son be taken down). Taibbi could disprove accusations of audience capture very easily, but he's unwilling.
I lost any respect for Taibbi when I learned what he wrote for ‘The eXile.’ The guy is a truly horrible misogynist and has never had a moment’s self-reflection about that. His MAGA turn was entirely predictable to anyone who knows what he thinks about women. I have made analyzing his terrible takes something of a hobby lately, although I am going to give that up for Lent.
If you really want to make your head hurt, read the transcripts of his Friday sessions with Walter Kirn. Kirn sounds like he’s auditioning for a guest host job on InfoWars, down to the awful supplement bullshit. Kirn thinks Luigi Mangione was a false flag by the Deep State to create an alternate to Trump and RFK jr.
I agree Taibbi is more careful than Shellenberger, although that's not saying much. Taibbi's reporting of the Twitter files was seriously sloppy -- not just in the sense of drawing tendentious conclusions, but basic factual errors. Watch his interview with Mehdi Hasan at the time where he's forced to concede that he mixed up the names of organizations, confused timelines, and completely misrepresented the Stanford Internet Observatory's work.
Oh yeah - I don’t think Taibbi’s reporting on the Twitter Files was “good,” per se, just that his reporting on them alerted me to the idea that fact-checking and misinformation monitoring is an important political and epistemological battleground.
The errors were so clear cut he had little option but to admit to them. Yes, on of many errors was *adding* a letter to an acronym, which mistakenly implicated a govt agency - serving his theory of govt collusion, conveniently. And that was one of several errors and half truths.
I love Taibbi but he's starting to remind me of Joe Rogan (and the JRE obsession with relitigating Covid and everything woke for the umpteenth time) in a sense, where he just CANNOT HELP but shoehorn into every conversation, every new story, every event....some sort of deep state, first amendment threatening yarn. It's almost like a physical tic...
I love a lot of what he has written on this stuff, but it seems like a clear case of audience capture lately, where he's really, really stretching on some of these stories. And frankly, I've found Racket News to be a bit mentally exhausting to read lately.
I'm super super bummed about this as well. I actually subscribed to him after reading a super interesting article he wrote years ago called (I believe) "The Left to Right Media Pipeline."
The premise of the article was essentially (and this was in the midst of Covid insanity) that previously left leaning/centrist-y journalists and writers would step outside of the left wing/legacy media orthodoxy on one issue (think school closures, Covid origin, etc) and would be immediately shunned and branded whole hog as a charleton. They would then refuse to "platform" said journalists and ANY of their ideas, thereby forcing those journalists to accept appearances on more (and more...) right leaning platforms, which would welcome the "castaways" with open arms. Appearing on these platforms like FOX or Tucker Carlson would only further entrench the legacy media position that these people were "right wing journalists," pushing them further and further into the embrace of right wing media as almost a practical function of their careers, if nothing else.....
Anyway, I still think that was incredibly precient.
Ha, yes, he’s the chicken little of state/corporate censorship - even it’s not there, he’ll pretend it is. (And where there is state censorship by actors favoured by his fanbase -- like Trump's muzzling of the CDC, or his purge of anything DEI related from research grants-- somehow not a peep from Taibbi and Shellenberger?)
I knew it! My history with Shellenberger is the same as with Bret Weinstein, and at about the same time. Initially, I was quite taken with what they had to say - Weinstein on DEI gone off the rails and Shellenberger on the interlinked crises of homelessness, addiction and untreated mental illness. (I should have been more attentive to my misgivings about Shellenberger's choice of title, "San Fransicko.")
It didn't take me long to realize that both Shellenberger and Weinstein suffer from the galaxy brain syndrome that makes the sufferer believe he is a notable authority on all subjects.
When he was doing the podcast rounds for the book, both Andrew Sullivan and a Reason writer lauded his reporting but both said the title was off-putting and might keep people from taking it seriously.
Weinstein is another one that I liked at first. But he and his wife I think are suffering from audience capture as Jesse described. Maybe since they were unfairly let go by Evergreen they don't want to lose this new source of income. But they've gone off the rails with their support of MAHA and Trump.
His argument is that the defunding of USAID is reasonable, because it has been, "spending so much money on information control and information operations, both in the form of demanding censorship by social media platforms, and financing supposedly “independent” journalism.." ?
He goes on, "For example, USAID in 2021 published a “Disinformation Primer” that urged
greater censorship by social media platforms as well as “prebunking,” a psychological
technique to program people to reject information disfavored by the government
Here is what the document actually says about 'prebunking':
Five Steps to Execute a Prebunking
Strategy
1. Take a look at fact-checking websites
and databases to get a sense of the
trends in misinformation.
2. Map out which misinformation trends
are popular on Twitter (or other
social media) in politicians’ stump
speeches.
3. Find additional source material with
the facts about the misinformation
likely to be repeated.
4. Prepare your social networks for the
high potential for misinformation.
5. Turn “prebunk into debunk” by
immediately posting correct
information anywhere you can. Finally,
in using prebunking techniques, she
counsels that speed matters.
Somehow this idea-- anticipating misinformation and preparing factual material to counteract misinformation spread by politicians--mutates in Shelleberger's addled brain to "psychological technique to program people to reject information disfavored by the government without thinking." It's asinine.
When writing on this topic, Shellenberger should include a conflict of interest statement because he himself is a firehose of misinformation.
The problem is "misinformation" and "factual material" are not as straightforward in practice as they are in the abstract. There are tremendous problems with laundering government-funded partisan warfare as some kind of neutral activity.
Where does that USAID document advocate for 'laundering government-funded partisan warfare'? It effectively says, politicians will spread misinformation online; here are some "promising ways that journalists, civil society organizations, technology specialists, and governments are finding to prevent and counter misinformation and disinformation."
Shellenberger thinks that virtually any attempt to combat misinformation-- by government or Big Tech-- amounts to censorship. It's a childish perspective, which leads him to perceive something sinister in the USAID document.
It illustrates how giving the government-- and the intelligence community in particular--power to decide what is "misinformation" and pressure social networks to remove it, is so easily abused for partisan purposes.
Do you really want the Trump administration deciding what counts as "misinformation" and then pressuring Bluesky to remove it?
Let me remind you that we are talking about the USAID document linked above -- which, according to Shellenberger, promotes a "psychological technique to program people to reject information disfavored by the government without thinking." What is that nefarious technique? I quote it above-- it amounts to promoting factual information to innoculate people against misinformation.
At no point does the USAID doc argue that governments should pressure social media organizations to remove 'misinformation'. In fact the document emphasizes the risk this poses to free speech. Moreoever, the USAID document is not even addressed at government, primarily. It's mostly about how civil society and journalists can *combat misinformation by politicians and government*.
Shellenberger is obvious where not false and false where not obvious.
That’s a recipe which worked well for Rush Limbaugh and others.
===
Part of my family roots are in DC - Uncle in Pentagon, Dad in Department of State, Godparents, close family friends, Brother, Sister, Nephews in various other roles. Most of us assumed USAID was a US propaganda wing not unlike USAGM (US Agency for Global Media, which we never hear anything about, interestingly). My niece and I laughed about the naïveté a few weeks back.
For instance, In Pakistan, a USAID-funded health program covered a fake vaccination program used by CIA operatives to gather DNA samples tracing Osama Bin Laden.
Russia detests USAID and USAGM, which gives the best perspective on these recent actions. USAID is but one agency in a constellation of external influence players.
That you will also hear nothing about, and is more interesting a story - what’s on Russia’s to-do list.
Can you quote me any sentence that is plausibly interpreted as promoting a "psychological technique to program people to reject information disfavored by the government without thinking"?
This is not a tomato, to-mah-to thing. Shellenberger is alleging that this USAID document advocates for a kind of government brainwashing when it manifestly does not.
Read "the misinformation" as "the actually true information that we plan to ensure no one believes." I mean, it even uses weird neologisms like "prebunk" that are often a hallmark of groupthink and double-speak.
"No reasonable person"? I guess that's your call to make. I tend to believe someone who is reading that as double-speak has their sensitivity to such things turned too high, but the difference is not in reason, but in starting point.
That's funny -- I was just talking about his latest in a group chat. I really disagree with his assessment of Russia's invastion of Ukraine as something that would have been "a fixable local issue" if not for the intervention of all those rules-based international order types. I think anything involving Russia now has such insane negative polarization surrounding it that heterodox thinkers end up adopting something of an anti-anti-Russia stance (because anti-Russia libs are annoying and mean) that doesn't line up with their previously stated principles.
I find it hilarious that Taibbi suggests he finds free expression so valuable while only reporting on freedom of expression issues from one direction. I don't know if it's my own frame that makes me think Taibbi has become something of a contrarian, or if he's simply been radicalized by the stifling environment of the media on the left.
I haven't written him off, and he's an excellent writer, but I no longer respect his principles either, because it doesn't seem like he does.
I tend to agree with this. I think his experiences with the left, left such a bad taste in his mouth he's become reflexively contrarian towards them. I think joining up with Walter Kirn added some conspiracy addled thinking as well.
I strongly disagree about this. The neocons who did so much to manufacture the Russia fiasco are the same ones who brought us the Iraq mess and twenty years of futility in Afghanistan. I have always reviled them, and so has Taibbi. The liberal who love the Cheneys all of a sudden are the ones who don't line up with their previously stated principles.
Furthermore, Taibbi reported from Russia for several years in the 90s and speaks and reads Russian. He has been paying close attention to Russia for decades. Have you?
I have two issues, Taibbi, like many people, dismissed the idea that Russia would invade Ukraine. He thought, like I did, Putin is positioning for concessions. That was wrong. Much like the pundits who whiffed on Iraq, it makes me think that Taibbi's basic understanding of the situation was wrong, so I'm not sure what insight he has going forward on that topic.
His podcast partner Walter Kirn was on Andrew Sullivan's podcast leading up to the election. At one point Sullivan was talking about, yes, the Dems have done bad things, but he wishes that Trump wasn't so repugnant, shallow, predatory, nonreflective, vain, corrupt. And Kirn responded that these observations about Trump seemed more like behind-the-curtain stuff that he's not really familiar with. It was, I don't know, a brazen lie that no one could believe?
Is Trump intemperate? This is the first I'm hearing about it.
I've always appreciated Andrew Sullivan's take on Trump and the Democrats. It seems so....sane? I often wonder why so much of our population seems physically (or emotionally) incapable of arriving at those same conclusions...
I love this concept of anti-anti-Russia stance. I also LOATHE the knee jerk responses from the frothing at the mouth Ukraine supporters these days. It seems that the issue has gotten so batshit polarized that nobody is allowed to have even the most slightly nuanced take.
I'm still waiting for someone to tell me why I am supposed to view the wholesale slaughter of Joe Blow Russian (not to be confused with Putin or actual Russian leadership) as some sort of value-added, beneficial outcome. I keep getting told that our billions are "weakening Russia" although the actual bad guy, Putin, seems stronger than ever domestically and within his sphere of influence.
Oh, and this nebulous goal of weakening Russia through horrific war has a cost? Don't worry, it's just an entire generation of young Ukranian men - the same corpses that these types claim to care so much about.
I don't have an answer as to what to do. Far from it. But going through the motions - practical, emotional, from a humanity perspective - is enough to make your head hurt.
I generally like(d?) what Shellenberger has exposed in other realms--but any 'flabbiness' in his efforts is causing prior good (?) work to be questioned. He needs to buck up, it seems to me.
Someone at Genspect, a gender critical organization in the UK, has a regrettable penchant for selecting figures from the heterodox lineup as speakers for Genspect conferences. Speakers of that ilk have included James Lindsay, Heather Heying, Peter Boghossian and - yes - Michael Shellenberger.
Whoever is choosing speakers for Genspect either doesn't know that most heterodox thinker have outworn their welcome among discerning critics in the US or they sympathize with their politics and positions on controversial issues. Either way, it isn't helping the sex-realist cause to have them associated with it.
I'm in a similar boat. I liked his work on nuclear power, and I was interested in his discourse on San Francisco. I subscribed to Public mostly because Leighton Woodhouse was a cofounder. I very quickly found Shellenberger's work to be highly associative, constantly peppering with facts that illustrated "links" between things that usually didn't hold up under scrutiny, or never went further than "don't these two facts, when stood side by side, look suspicious?" He'd build a whole narrative around these associative games, but without ever really addressing the core of the issue: what is the evidence that a thing is true? Not that it *might* be true. That it *is* true.
It's not that he never delivered the goods. It's just that he often didn't.
Jesse, I love your deep dives when you start tracking sources in someone else's (wrong) argument but I think it's a better use of your time when you do it for scientific publications rather than conspiracy theories. I think there are a lot of scientists who would read what you write and be moved to act. I don't know who this particular piece convinces other than people like me who'd never heard this theory before and would never have believed it even if they had.
One of the principal reasons Trump is back in office is because of his concerted campaign to undermine truth and reality. He convinced his voters not to trust the mainstream media, and they don't. He persuaded them that he is the sole source of truth, and they believe him. Trump and a host of surrogates such as Fox News have been feeding the American public lies, half-truths and baseless conspiracy theories for about a decade. As a consequence, a shockingly large percentage of the population has detached itself from our shared reality and exists in a silo where black is white and the 2020 election was stolen. That, coupled with animosity Trump has inculcated in his base toward Democrats, is one significant reason why Democratic politicians cannot reach them.
Mr. Singal has done a great service to the cause of democracy and truth by getting to the bottom of this particular conspiracy and refuting it soundly. If nothing else, it helps us know the enemy and their MO better. It also gives readers the facts they need to refute this conspiracy should they encounter it in the wild. My only criticism is that Mr. Single didn't provide a one-paragraph summary for readers to use in responding to Mr. Shellenberger's canard.
I think this is consistent with his focus on debunking claims that don't pass muster made by journalists at large mainstream publications regardless of topic.
Really sad to see this spiral. I was hopeful that his work on the WPATH files would help people understand what is happening with transgender ideology.
What is annoying to me personally about Shellenberger becoming a crackpot is that I have had several run-ins here and on Barpod where I defended heterodox people in general and Shellenberger in specific. Good news is that people are not paying too much attention to what I say so the credibility hit will be manageable.
I do think the "heterodox" sphere has gotten much worse as of late so probably less you misjudging and more them falling into audience capture or whatever else
That's kind of you to say, but for some of them the signs were there for me to see that when they spoke about the problem of lefty censoriousness their concern was the "lefty" part not the "censoriousness" part.
"if you look at that article, you’ll see..." Yeah but I think people like this rely on their (increasingly addled) readers not following links. Links are a sort of decorative flower on the cake - not intended to be used. I bet that people do not follow those links, in the vast majority of cases, but if you sprinkle them around then they *look* impressive: wow, look at all the research! You could probably have every link be a rickroll of some sort on a page like that and nobody would notice.
"Shellenberger and Gutentag lard their article with a lot of other aspersions about OCCRP and USAID that don’t actually come close to proving their claims."
This tends to be Public's modus operandi: stuff a whole bunch of facts that are loosely related, build a narrative around them that doesn't show how they prove anything, leaving many extremely obvious questions unasked like "okay, that's nice, but couldn't the reason for this just as well be X?", don't bother including complicating or contradictory facts, lead with a dramatic clickbait headline.
It's the smoke cloud version of building a case. I'm going to show you as much smoke as possible, but never will I show you the fire. And all the while, I'll write a headline that suggests the article will show the fire.
"To his credit, Shellenberger has been open about the role resentment has played in his shift away from the left and toward what can only be described as staunchly pro–Donald Trump politics, noting in a celebratory article he and Gutentag posted shortly after the election that he (alongside others) felt “stigmatized and ostracized” by a decade of woke excess."
Bullshit. This guy was never on the left. You're telling me someone was so upset about "woke excess" they'd change their basic thinking about how people should be treated in this country? Again, bullshit.
Jesse, I took the $5 per month I got back for canceling my subscription to The Free Press to pay for this subscription. I am now contributing to your work with paid subscriptions to both "Blocked and Reported" and now here at "Singal-Minded." A big reason is your tireless commitment to honest reporting and efforts to tell the truth as illustrated in this piece on Shellenberger.
He is one of several reasons I feel duped by the whole "heterodox" community and Bari Weiss and TFP in general. I have read and supported Bari since before she joined the Times, and even donated to "Common Sense" before she even went to a paid subscription model. Yet, I feel for all their talk of promoting honest debate and creating this forum for fact-based reporting and opinions from across the political spectrum, they continue to lean more into MAGA (not conservative, there's a big difference), conspiracies, or just plain contrarian opinions, rather than being truly "free" and fair.
Ironically, The Dispatch, who openly say "Hey, we are going to provide you with honest, fact-based news and analysis, but with a conservative slant," are actually more honest and fair in their reporting than TFP. I feel like The Dispatch is what The Free Press told me they were going to be.
I know you and Katie both contribute to The Free Press, including sharing opinions and analysis that dissents from some of what their other contributors may state. Have you ever asked them about this turn? Are they aware of their own biases that seem to be forming and their turn to Tucker Carlson-like "just asking questions" style of analysis?
I subscribed to The Free Press for awhile, but their sympathies became clear to me in the spring/summer of 2024. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, and TFP barely covered it. Biden goofed a debate and they just about ruptured themselves running piece after piece demanding that Biden drop out of the race. Then, when he did drop out, they complained bitterly about how he did it. It was then that I realized Bari just wanted Trump to win, which is her prerogative, but I wish she'd just have been open about that.
The good thing about all this is that TFP is a good barometer for Trump's performance. If Bari and her folks are criticizing The Donald, he must be doing badly indeed.
I'm not particularly a fan of The Free Press, but they don't seem to be "Trump-friendly." It's a mildly conservative "paper" that has two issues that it seems to freak out about: 1) the authoritarian social justice left, and 2) Israel. They're an outfit with a point of view, and at least *some* viewpoint diversity (though not a lot). I also think their editor suffers from emotional reactions driven by the left's oppressive chokehold on the media between 2016 and 2022 or so, to the point that it shows in the content.
Haha, they're not Trump-friendly NOW, because even a blind man can see that The Donald's short presidency has been a long parade of follies and disasters. Go back a year and you'll see The Free Press was singing a different tune.
I only started reading them more regularly in the past 6 months or so, but they have always been fairly anti-Biden, and I'm pretty sure they have never been election deniers or anything, but they also aren't never-Trumpers.
TFP is not MAGA, no, but they're the folks who say, "Well, maybe those advocating for January 6 pardons have a point..." Consciously or not, these takes help sanewash Donald Trump, and give permission to other journalists to do the same.
Exactly. Thats why I reference the Tucker-like “just asking questions” approach. It’s as if no matter how batshit crazy, or me-first over country Trump’s actions are, they give those still with a conscience just enough allowance for supporting Trump.
I don't think FP is a MAGA apologist outlet, but they are certainly willing to publish arguments like that (e.g., most of the stuff from Martin Gurri). That doesn't strike me as a problem, even if I don't entirely agree with those takes.
100%. I cancelled my paid subscription to him at the end of last year. He is spiraling pretty badly. His journalism has never been as intelligent as many of the other heterodox writers - he was very good on drugs/homeless issues - because he had done a lot of work on it. Then expanded to all things woke and took a lot of whatever Musk, Lindsey and others took and now is heading towards Alex Jones territory pretty quickly.
Ditto. Though cancelled more recently.
Yep. He's one of the many folks who claimed to be pro-nuance and anti- woke/authoritarian-left/etc. to start, but just couldn't sit in the complex middle and wanted a simpler answer, and a Tribe to be a part of and fight for.
Many such cases. You and Katie have likely seen even more of these.
I am pretty far to the Left and a committed feminist. I still want to see other viewpoints and understand that almost everything has complexities and nuances that need to be discussed. I keep looking for writers who understand that and when I find one I think might work, that person always makes a serious heel turn. Far, far too many people reacted to issues about COVID, to use one example, by losing their minds and becoming antivaxxers or other conspiracy loons. Sometimes experts are wrong for good or understandable reasons!! We should be able to talk about why school closures were a bad idea without assuming those advocating for them were zombies in the pay of George Soros Drag Queen Battalion!!
exactly. Many get dragged down out of nuance via overwhelm.
I am a retired litigator. My old boss and I used to talk about how much we hated conflict which seems really strange considering our jobs, until you realize that litigation is highly managed conflict. There are STRICT rules that narrow the issues as much as possible and keep the evidence coldly factual. Most people don’t have that training and so get emotionally invested in winning every single point in any discussion and also take all disagreement as a personal insult. I don’t know how to teach people the mental pattern necessary to get over their own emotions.
But that is the point!!! We were NOT ALLOWED to talk about so many many things that strayed from the Govt Covid Agenda! The real fight is ALL ABOUT FREEDOM from centralization of speech and planning!!!
Who didn’t “allow” you to talk about this? What punishment did the government threaten? Who went to jail?
Shellenberger's books on climate change and homelessness were key to my moving to the center on a number of issues. I was a supporter of his and Public on Substack from the start but canceled before long after the sloppiness and stridency took over. Thanks Jesse for the continued commitment to journalistic integrity.
Maybe he was just a broken clock who happened to be right once. I thought some of his reporting a few years ago was interesting, but he really seems to have gone of the deepend. I read part of his recent twitter rant about how 'Europeans don't respect us and think we're stupid, so we shouldn't be allies with them anymore'. Which just feels like the worst kind of of online brain rot. Yes, people on reddit love to talk shit about America. We're big and powerful and have spent quite a few decades throwing our weight around. It's popular in certain circles to talk shit about America. But if you look at ACTUAL sentiments around the world, America is still quite popular (at least we were, we'll see how long THAT lasts). So he's basically proposing becoming antagonistic to our best allies, and potentially ditching the NATO alliance that has helped keep the world MOSTLY peaceful since WW2, because some Europeans went online and said mean things.
It's so fucking stupid and it driving me nuts.
“Part of the problem with Shellenberger and Gutentag’s attempts to tie all this to the Drop Site article is that if you look at that article, you’ll see that the authors — Grim, Ștefan Cândea, and Nikolas Leontopoulos — reference the whistleblower complaint in the context of pointing out that OCCRP does seem to at least sometimes operate in a manner which suggests genuine independence from its U.S. funders.”
Posting links to articles that say the opposite of what they are claimed to say is a favorite move of Matt Taibbi - one of Shellenberger’s buds. I keep wanting to comment on his Substack, “uh, Matt, if you keep posting links, people might read them occasionally and see that you’re full of shit sometimes.”
It's been painful watching Taibbi's descent into audience capture. He was once a favourite journalist.
I think I feel the same as you, and cancelled my subscription to Racket a while ago. At the same time, he still comes off as very reasonable most of the time (recent interview on Reason’s Just asking questions), and I sometimes feel like I’m making a mistake. But actually making up my mind about this seems to be like a ton of work and not sure it’s worth doing.
I still have a subscription to Taibbi. Reading him helps me understand how former lefties who have jumped on the Trump bandwagon explain that transition. I also feel indebted to him for his 2020 articles about DeAngelo and how the "American left has lost its mind" His writing helped me articulate my own alienation from wokeness.
Taibbi is smarter and more careful than Shellenberger, and has much more actual experience as a reporter, but I see a similar obsession with finding government conspiracies everywhere. To me, it seems like it should be possible to express anger at the cultural arrogance of our bureaucratic elite w/o constantly accusing them of engaging in elaborate Dan Brown style conspiracies.
I agree that Taibbi is smarter and more diligent than Shellenberger. I was, admittedly, taking sort of a cheap shot (though it is true that he sometimes posts links and it’s clear that he hasn’t actually read them). I may roll my eyes at his breathless writing style, but he is a good writer (I also roll my eyes at his titles, which are equal parts clickbait and snark, but I guess they’re driving traffic, so who am I to tell him to stop).
And you know what - I have actually found his reporting valuable. For instance, I’m getting into studying fact checking from an academic angle, and I probably wouldn’t have thought of doing it if not for his reporting on e.g. the Twitter Files. I also find Taibbi fascinating (again, from an intellectual standpoint) as a prominent example of the phenomenon you describe. I stay subscribed to him because he provides me with valuable “data.”
Other than that…I think it’s pretty clear that he’s happy to be a stenographer for the new administration. His, um, let’s just say “admiring” article on JD Vance’s performance in Munich makes that pretty clear. His ostensible commitment to free speech is pretty questionable, given the openly censorious stuff Trump et al. are doing or threatening that he consistently fails to mention. If he feels like the revenge censorship is deserved, then fine - but please drop the “I’m an old-school ACLU liberal” schtick.
One last thing - I get that he was personally burned by Russiagate, and he lived in Russia for a while and has genuine affection for the place and culture (he talks a lot about his love for Russian literature). I sympathize with wanting to stick up for a place he feels a connection to that’s become the avatar of all evil for a crowd that he despises anyway (ask me about Finland sometime, though admittedly no one’s calling it an authoritarian dictatorship as far as I’m aware). But man, he sure is in “Ukrainians deserve to be subjugated to Putin’s whims because censorship and neoliberalism” mode these days.
I've always admired his commitment to free speech. But his dismissal of Trump kicking AP out of press conferences as "trolling" while holding up Vance's speech as iconic definitely sends mixed messages to me. He's also been silent on stifling of criticism of Israel in the American press. He and Walter selectively pick stories that confirm their deep state paranoia while ignoring others (Are the fired National Park employees part of the "deep state purge" going on?). I've debated canceling my subscription but I continue because I've admired him a long time, and it's good to have other points of view.
Our responses to Taibbi seem to be very similar. I also got more interested in the academic critique of misinformation research through reading T's diatribes.
But I guess that I continue to be more sympathetic to him than you are. He makes me think about things that I would otherwise ignore. Yeah, the fact that he no longer admits (or no longer cares) that Trump is a bully and a liar tends to undermine his credibility. But I don't need Taibbi to learn about Trump's faults. I do get perspectives from him that I don't get from my other news sources. The question is how to evaluate them.
"But I don't need Taibbi to learn about Trump's faults."
I've heard him latch onto this sentiment himself -- arguing that there's no value in his piling onto the anti-Trump bonanza. This is pretty disingenuous, because by this point his audience has shifted to include a lot of anti-DNC Trump sympathizers, who really *could* stand to hear somoene they trust calling out Trump's flagrant attacks on free speech. I mean, the story of Trump's purge of DEI ideology from universities, or his muzzling of the CDC -- these are *so much worse* than what Taibbi complained of in the Twitter FIles (e.g., BIden requesting that nudes of his son be taken down). Taibbi could disprove accusations of audience capture very easily, but he's unwilling.
I lost any respect for Taibbi when I learned what he wrote for ‘The eXile.’ The guy is a truly horrible misogynist and has never had a moment’s self-reflection about that. His MAGA turn was entirely predictable to anyone who knows what he thinks about women. I have made analyzing his terrible takes something of a hobby lately, although I am going to give that up for Lent.
If you really want to make your head hurt, read the transcripts of his Friday sessions with Walter Kirn. Kirn sounds like he’s auditioning for a guest host job on InfoWars, down to the awful supplement bullshit. Kirn thinks Luigi Mangione was a false flag by the Deep State to create an alternate to Trump and RFK jr.
I agree Taibbi is more careful than Shellenberger, although that's not saying much. Taibbi's reporting of the Twitter files was seriously sloppy -- not just in the sense of drawing tendentious conclusions, but basic factual errors. Watch his interview with Mehdi Hasan at the time where he's forced to concede that he mixed up the names of organizations, confused timelines, and completely misrepresented the Stanford Internet Observatory's work.
Oh yeah - I don’t think Taibbi’s reporting on the Twitter Files was “good,” per se, just that his reporting on them alerted me to the idea that fact-checking and misinformation monitoring is an important political and epistemological battleground.
I watched it then.
He quickly corrected and admitted his error. I believe the issue was one letter of the acronym..
And wasn't one a part or associate of other organization?
The errors were so clear cut he had little option but to admit to them. Yes, on of many errors was *adding* a letter to an acronym, which mistakenly implicated a govt agency - serving his theory of govt collusion, conveniently. And that was one of several errors and half truths.
I love Taibbi but he's starting to remind me of Joe Rogan (and the JRE obsession with relitigating Covid and everything woke for the umpteenth time) in a sense, where he just CANNOT HELP but shoehorn into every conversation, every new story, every event....some sort of deep state, first amendment threatening yarn. It's almost like a physical tic...
I love a lot of what he has written on this stuff, but it seems like a clear case of audience capture lately, where he's really, really stretching on some of these stories. And frankly, I've found Racket News to be a bit mentally exhausting to read lately.
I'm super super bummed about this as well. I actually subscribed to him after reading a super interesting article he wrote years ago called (I believe) "The Left to Right Media Pipeline."
The premise of the article was essentially (and this was in the midst of Covid insanity) that previously left leaning/centrist-y journalists and writers would step outside of the left wing/legacy media orthodoxy on one issue (think school closures, Covid origin, etc) and would be immediately shunned and branded whole hog as a charleton. They would then refuse to "platform" said journalists and ANY of their ideas, thereby forcing those journalists to accept appearances on more (and more...) right leaning platforms, which would welcome the "castaways" with open arms. Appearing on these platforms like FOX or Tucker Carlson would only further entrench the legacy media position that these people were "right wing journalists," pushing them further and further into the embrace of right wing media as almost a practical function of their careers, if nothing else.....
Anyway, I still think that was incredibly precient.
He fights for your free speech Bozo!
Ha, yes, he’s the chicken little of state/corporate censorship - even it’s not there, he’ll pretend it is. (And where there is state censorship by actors favoured by his fanbase -- like Trump's muzzling of the CDC, or his purge of anything DEI related from research grants-- somehow not a peep from Taibbi and Shellenberger?)
I knew it! My history with Shellenberger is the same as with Bret Weinstein, and at about the same time. Initially, I was quite taken with what they had to say - Weinstein on DEI gone off the rails and Shellenberger on the interlinked crises of homelessness, addiction and untreated mental illness. (I should have been more attentive to my misgivings about Shellenberger's choice of title, "San Fransicko.")
It didn't take me long to realize that both Shellenberger and Weinstein suffer from the galaxy brain syndrome that makes the sufferer believe he is a notable authority on all subjects.
When he was doing the podcast rounds for the book, both Andrew Sullivan and a Reason writer lauded his reporting but both said the title was off-putting and might keep people from taking it seriously.
Weinstein is another one that I liked at first. But he and his wife I think are suffering from audience capture as Jesse described. Maybe since they were unfairly let go by Evergreen they don't want to lose this new source of income. But they've gone off the rails with their support of MAHA and Trump.
Shellenberger's recent testimony before the Committee on Homeland Security was similarly idiotic. See: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Shellenberger-2025-02-13.pdf
His argument is that the defunding of USAID is reasonable, because it has been, "spending so much money on information control and information operations, both in the form of demanding censorship by social media platforms, and financing supposedly “independent” journalism.." ?
He goes on, "For example, USAID in 2021 published a “Disinformation Primer” that urged
greater censorship by social media platforms as well as “prebunking,” a psychological
technique to program people to reject information disfavored by the government
without thinking." Here is the document he references to support that claims: https://web.archive.org/web/20240622164647/https:/www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/2023-01/Disinformation-Primer.pdf
Here is what the document actually says about 'prebunking':
Five Steps to Execute a Prebunking
Strategy
1. Take a look at fact-checking websites
and databases to get a sense of the
trends in misinformation.
2. Map out which misinformation trends
are popular on Twitter (or other
social media) in politicians’ stump
speeches.
3. Find additional source material with
the facts about the misinformation
likely to be repeated.
4. Prepare your social networks for the
high potential for misinformation.
5. Turn “prebunk into debunk” by
immediately posting correct
information anywhere you can. Finally,
in using prebunking techniques, she
counsels that speed matters.
Somehow this idea-- anticipating misinformation and preparing factual material to counteract misinformation spread by politicians--mutates in Shelleberger's addled brain to "psychological technique to program people to reject information disfavored by the government without thinking." It's asinine.
When writing on this topic, Shellenberger should include a conflict of interest statement because he himself is a firehose of misinformation.
The problem is "misinformation" and "factual material" are not as straightforward in practice as they are in the abstract. There are tremendous problems with laundering government-funded partisan warfare as some kind of neutral activity.
Where does that USAID document advocate for 'laundering government-funded partisan warfare'? It effectively says, politicians will spread misinformation online; here are some "promising ways that journalists, civil society organizations, technology specialists, and governments are finding to prevent and counter misinformation and disinformation."
Shellenberger thinks that virtually any attempt to combat misinformation-- by government or Big Tech-- amounts to censorship. It's a childish perspective, which leads him to perceive something sinister in the USAID document.
The problem is well-illustrated by what happened with Hunter Biden's laptop. But that is by no means the only such illustration.
I'm sorry but no - the Hunter Biden laptop story does not illustrate that combatting online misinformation is always nefarious. This is silly.
It illustrates how giving the government-- and the intelligence community in particular--power to decide what is "misinformation" and pressure social networks to remove it, is so easily abused for partisan purposes.
Do you really want the Trump administration deciding what counts as "misinformation" and then pressuring Bluesky to remove it?
Let me remind you that we are talking about the USAID document linked above -- which, according to Shellenberger, promotes a "psychological technique to program people to reject information disfavored by the government without thinking." What is that nefarious technique? I quote it above-- it amounts to promoting factual information to innoculate people against misinformation.
At no point does the USAID doc argue that governments should pressure social media organizations to remove 'misinformation'. In fact the document emphasizes the risk this poses to free speech. Moreoever, the USAID document is not even addressed at government, primarily. It's mostly about how civil society and journalists can *combat misinformation by politicians and government*.
Good straightforward piece.
Shellenberger is obvious where not false and false where not obvious.
That’s a recipe which worked well for Rush Limbaugh and others.
===
Part of my family roots are in DC - Uncle in Pentagon, Dad in Department of State, Godparents, close family friends, Brother, Sister, Nephews in various other roles. Most of us assumed USAID was a US propaganda wing not unlike USAGM (US Agency for Global Media, which we never hear anything about, interestingly). My niece and I laughed about the naïveté a few weeks back.
For instance, In Pakistan, a USAID-funded health program covered a fake vaccination program used by CIA operatives to gather DNA samples tracing Osama Bin Laden.
Russia detests USAID and USAGM, which gives the best perspective on these recent actions. USAID is but one agency in a constellation of external influence players.
That you will also hear nothing about, and is more interesting a story - what’s on Russia’s to-do list.
The problem is the document is a Rorschach test. One sees in it whatever one expects to see.
Can you quote me any sentence that is plausibly interpreted as promoting a "psychological technique to program people to reject information disfavored by the government without thinking"?
This is not a tomato, to-mah-to thing. Shellenberger is alleging that this USAID document advocates for a kind of government brainwashing when it manifestly does not.
Think of it in terms of double-speak. That's how some people read it.
This is what Shelleberger is describing as a brainwashing:
"Five Steps to Execute a Prebunking
Strategy
1. Take a look at fact-checking websites
and databases to get a sense of the
trends in misinformation.
2. Map out which misinformation trends
are popular on Twitter (or other
social media) in politicians’ stump
speeches.
3. Find additional source material with
the facts about the misinformation
likely to be repeated.
4. Prepare your social networks for the
high potential for misinformation.
5. Turn “prebunk into debunk” by
immediately posting correct
information anywhere you can."
No reasonable person would construe this as 'double speak' for some more nefarious plan of state censorship.
Read "the misinformation" as "the actually true information that we plan to ensure no one believes." I mean, it even uses weird neologisms like "prebunk" that are often a hallmark of groupthink and double-speak.
"No reasonable person"? I guess that's your call to make. I tend to believe someone who is reading that as double-speak has their sensitivity to such things turned too high, but the difference is not in reason, but in starting point.
Any thoughts about Matt Taibbi these days? I've always admired his journalism, but he doesn't seem too far behind Shellenberger recently.
That's funny -- I was just talking about his latest in a group chat. I really disagree with his assessment of Russia's invastion of Ukraine as something that would have been "a fixable local issue" if not for the intervention of all those rules-based international order types. I think anything involving Russia now has such insane negative polarization surrounding it that heterodox thinkers end up adopting something of an anti-anti-Russia stance (because anti-Russia libs are annoying and mean) that doesn't line up with their previously stated principles.
I find it hilarious that Taibbi suggests he finds free expression so valuable while only reporting on freedom of expression issues from one direction. I don't know if it's my own frame that makes me think Taibbi has become something of a contrarian, or if he's simply been radicalized by the stifling environment of the media on the left.
I haven't written him off, and he's an excellent writer, but I no longer respect his principles either, because it doesn't seem like he does.
I tend to agree with this. I think his experiences with the left, left such a bad taste in his mouth he's become reflexively contrarian towards them. I think joining up with Walter Kirn added some conspiracy addled thinking as well.
I strongly disagree about this. The neocons who did so much to manufacture the Russia fiasco are the same ones who brought us the Iraq mess and twenty years of futility in Afghanistan. I have always reviled them, and so has Taibbi. The liberal who love the Cheneys all of a sudden are the ones who don't line up with their previously stated principles.
Furthermore, Taibbi reported from Russia for several years in the 90s and speaks and reads Russian. He has been paying close attention to Russia for decades. Have you?
I have two issues, Taibbi, like many people, dismissed the idea that Russia would invade Ukraine. He thought, like I did, Putin is positioning for concessions. That was wrong. Much like the pundits who whiffed on Iraq, it makes me think that Taibbi's basic understanding of the situation was wrong, so I'm not sure what insight he has going forward on that topic.
His podcast partner Walter Kirn was on Andrew Sullivan's podcast leading up to the election. At one point Sullivan was talking about, yes, the Dems have done bad things, but he wishes that Trump wasn't so repugnant, shallow, predatory, nonreflective, vain, corrupt. And Kirn responded that these observations about Trump seemed more like behind-the-curtain stuff that he's not really familiar with. It was, I don't know, a brazen lie that no one could believe?
Is Trump intemperate? This is the first I'm hearing about it.
I've always appreciated Andrew Sullivan's take on Trump and the Democrats. It seems so....sane? I often wonder why so much of our population seems physically (or emotionally) incapable of arriving at those same conclusions...
Kirn the other day described Trump's cabinet picks as "wildly popular". I couldn't believe he was serious.
I love this concept of anti-anti-Russia stance. I also LOATHE the knee jerk responses from the frothing at the mouth Ukraine supporters these days. It seems that the issue has gotten so batshit polarized that nobody is allowed to have even the most slightly nuanced take.
I'm still waiting for someone to tell me why I am supposed to view the wholesale slaughter of Joe Blow Russian (not to be confused with Putin or actual Russian leadership) as some sort of value-added, beneficial outcome. I keep getting told that our billions are "weakening Russia" although the actual bad guy, Putin, seems stronger than ever domestically and within his sphere of influence.
Oh, and this nebulous goal of weakening Russia through horrific war has a cost? Don't worry, it's just an entire generation of young Ukranian men - the same corpses that these types claim to care so much about.
I don't have an answer as to what to do. Far from it. But going through the motions - practical, emotional, from a humanity perspective - is enough to make your head hurt.
I generally like(d?) what Shellenberger has exposed in other realms--but any 'flabbiness' in his efforts is causing prior good (?) work to be questioned. He needs to buck up, it seems to me.
Someone at Genspect, a gender critical organization in the UK, has a regrettable penchant for selecting figures from the heterodox lineup as speakers for Genspect conferences. Speakers of that ilk have included James Lindsay, Heather Heying, Peter Boghossian and - yes - Michael Shellenberger.
Whoever is choosing speakers for Genspect either doesn't know that most heterodox thinker have outworn their welcome among discerning critics in the US or they sympathize with their politics and positions on controversial issues. Either way, it isn't helping the sex-realist cause to have them associated with it.
I'm in a similar boat. I liked his work on nuclear power, and I was interested in his discourse on San Francisco. I subscribed to Public mostly because Leighton Woodhouse was a cofounder. I very quickly found Shellenberger's work to be highly associative, constantly peppering with facts that illustrated "links" between things that usually didn't hold up under scrutiny, or never went further than "don't these two facts, when stood side by side, look suspicious?" He'd build a whole narrative around these associative games, but without ever really addressing the core of the issue: what is the evidence that a thing is true? Not that it *might* be true. That it *is* true.
It's not that he never delivered the goods. It's just that he often didn't.
I think Woodhouse left, correct?
He did. He's back at his old stack.
He and Lee Fang do a podcast that I think is pretty good. A much more nuanced take on the firings at USAid
Jesse, I love your deep dives when you start tracking sources in someone else's (wrong) argument but I think it's a better use of your time when you do it for scientific publications rather than conspiracy theories. I think there are a lot of scientists who would read what you write and be moved to act. I don't know who this particular piece convinces other than people like me who'd never heard this theory before and would never have believed it even if they had.
I strongly disagree.
One of the principal reasons Trump is back in office is because of his concerted campaign to undermine truth and reality. He convinced his voters not to trust the mainstream media, and they don't. He persuaded them that he is the sole source of truth, and they believe him. Trump and a host of surrogates such as Fox News have been feeding the American public lies, half-truths and baseless conspiracy theories for about a decade. As a consequence, a shockingly large percentage of the population has detached itself from our shared reality and exists in a silo where black is white and the 2020 election was stolen. That, coupled with animosity Trump has inculcated in his base toward Democrats, is one significant reason why Democratic politicians cannot reach them.
Mr. Singal has done a great service to the cause of democracy and truth by getting to the bottom of this particular conspiracy and refuting it soundly. If nothing else, it helps us know the enemy and their MO better. It also gives readers the facts they need to refute this conspiracy should they encounter it in the wild. My only criticism is that Mr. Single didn't provide a one-paragraph summary for readers to use in responding to Mr. Shellenberger's canard.
I think the concerted effort to undermine truth and reality has authors on both sides of our particular spectrum here in the US. Not a one-sided deal.
I disagree here. People like Shellenberger have come to dominate the political landscape largely because there are no trustworthy people pushing back
I think this is consistent with his focus on debunking claims that don't pass muster made by journalists at large mainstream publications regardless of topic.
Really sad to see this spiral. I was hopeful that his work on the WPATH files would help people understand what is happening with transgender ideology.
It did help. Jesse does not have the final word on who is credible and who is not.
What is annoying to me personally about Shellenberger becoming a crackpot is that I have had several run-ins here and on Barpod where I defended heterodox people in general and Shellenberger in specific. Good news is that people are not paying too much attention to what I say so the credibility hit will be manageable.
I do think the "heterodox" sphere has gotten much worse as of late so probably less you misjudging and more them falling into audience capture or whatever else
That's kind of you to say, but for some of them the signs were there for me to see that when they spoke about the problem of lefty censoriousness their concern was the "lefty" part not the "censoriousness" part.
"if you look at that article, you’ll see..." Yeah but I think people like this rely on their (increasingly addled) readers not following links. Links are a sort of decorative flower on the cake - not intended to be used. I bet that people do not follow those links, in the vast majority of cases, but if you sprinkle them around then they *look* impressive: wow, look at all the research! You could probably have every link be a rickroll of some sort on a page like that and nobody would notice.
"Shellenberger and Gutentag lard their article with a lot of other aspersions about OCCRP and USAID that don’t actually come close to proving their claims."
This tends to be Public's modus operandi: stuff a whole bunch of facts that are loosely related, build a narrative around them that doesn't show how they prove anything, leaving many extremely obvious questions unasked like "okay, that's nice, but couldn't the reason for this just as well be X?", don't bother including complicating or contradictory facts, lead with a dramatic clickbait headline.
It's the smoke cloud version of building a case. I'm going to show you as much smoke as possible, but never will I show you the fire. And all the while, I'll write a headline that suggests the article will show the fire.
Anyone who’s heard *decades* worth of Dave Emery-style Milieu-ology knows the playbook.
"To his credit, Shellenberger has been open about the role resentment has played in his shift away from the left and toward what can only be described as staunchly pro–Donald Trump politics, noting in a celebratory article he and Gutentag posted shortly after the election that he (alongside others) felt “stigmatized and ostracized” by a decade of woke excess."
Bullshit. This guy was never on the left. You're telling me someone was so upset about "woke excess" they'd change their basic thinking about how people should be treated in this country? Again, bullshit.