MacGregor the Bridge Builder
astralcodexten.com
MacGregor the Bridge Builder
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Re: MacGregor the Bridge Builder
#2> One time we invited Richard Hanania to a prediction market conference. There were five or six news articles about it, and I can’t remember whether any of them mentioned the word “prediction”. As far as our reputation was concerned, it had become the Richard Hanania Conference For Richard Hananias. You invent an amazing new form of forecasting, incubate multibillion dollar startups, accidentally get thousands of people addicted to sports gambling - but you invite one conservative!
This is weird framing.
It's like MacGregor saying "you fall in love with one curly haired blonde beauty" and looking for support for that position.
> Between 2008 and the early 2010s, Hanania wrote for alt-right and white supremacist publications under the pseudonym Richard Hoste.[5][6] He acknowledged writing under the pseudonym when it was reported in 2023
Of course, the author also has a hidden fondness for the same cause, so I guess it makes sense that he's try to sanewash it as just conservatism.
Re: MacGregor the Bridge Builder
#3Articles like this always seem to ignore the case where the sheep is in fact the most salient thing about MacGregor, sending nudes to a minor is in fact the most salient thing about Weiner, and the alt-right bigotry is in fact the most salient thing about Hanania.
If there were ameliorating details about those events, that might be salient. And if there's something genuinely more important, if they cured cancer, they might get to be known as "MacGregor, who cured cancer and fornicated with sheep", the way that Weiner's biography says "American politician and sex offender" (observe that the author also remembers that he's a politician). But "bridge builder" and "worked on XYZ legislation", by comparison, are not information-theoretically important for people to remember.