For any statement from now to 2025 if a poll of manifold users is asked "Was Richard Hanania's statement that [X] unnecessarily provocative and racist" Will the Yesses outnumber the Nos, and will Yes + No comprise more than half of votes. at least 10 answers, ideally using manifolds poll tool.
Options
yes
No
i don't know
Question badly framed
Text may alter slightly but this is basically what I'm gonna ask
The Yes side gets to make the case 3 times, if all don't resolve this question yes, this question resolves no, regardless of future statements.
The Yes side will have to coordinat their 3 poll attempts in some way. Random people can't just burn them.
1,000
3.00Thoughts on this one YES holders?
@IsaacKing I wasn’t trying to say that at all, I was pointing to his comments such as “Palestinian culture is rotten to the core” which I personally think are unnecessarily provocative (and racist in that it condemns an entire ethnic group).
@ShadowyZephyr I was just trying to collect some examples, I think Manifold as a whole would agree some of these are racist.
https://twitter.com/RichardHanania/status/1712872287329046694
Uses the phrase "third world people" in place of "blacks", but it's clear that's what he means. I think he gets away with this one in the public eye because it's making fun of white nationalists, but when his statement is effectively "white nationalists are just as stupid as black people", I think that qualifies as unnecessarily provocative and racist under the most widespread definitions of racism.
@NathanpmYoung I don't think he means "blacks". I think he means what he says, 'third world people', which includes people in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, but not necessarily Americans or Europeans, regardless of race.
Not yet, we have over a year to wait before resolution is incoming. He'll say something more explicit than that, and if he doesn't, we can use it then. Let's wait for the three best examples
Hanania currently advocating "a real siege of Gaza, where food, medicine, and electricity are cut off indefinitely."
https://open.substack.com/pub/richardhanania/p/the-ethical-case-for-a-siege-of-gaza
Will Hanania make unnecessarily provocative statements? Absolutely
Will Hanania make such statements on topics relating to race/ethnicity? Very likely
Could one of those statements be honestly be interpreted as "racist"? I'd say unlikely but possible.
This question is mainly hanging on the fact that only a single market/poll on Manifold would cause this to resolve to "YES".
I think this market is much more an implication of people's perception of possible subsets of manifold users than of the possibility of Henania expressing a clearly "racist" opinion.
Then again the word "racist" means a lot of things to a lot of people.
@Tarl Oh are you trying to imply in the description that it would only be polls that you will make on Henanias possible future statements count or could any poll created by any user that matches your criteria count?
@Tarl This poll is effectively trying to guess how many Manifold users are progressive/woke. But these polls are always going to have a huge unintentional selection bias. Unless you can somehow have very high confidence in one outcome over another, betting on markets like these is basically playing roulette. Add to that the incentive to vote in accordance with your bet, and given a small enough sample size, the poll gets even more meaningless still.
@JamesColiar I don't think so. Anyone could just share to more, less woke users. Either your doubting I'll hold a fair poll (I'm gonna use the on site poll) or your doubting the community. I don't think this community is exceeding woke tbh.
I think if you don't think you'll think he's said something bad, you should back your man.
I don't think so. Anyone could just share to more, less woke users.
People could also do the opposite
Either your doubting I'll hold a fair poll (I'm gonna use the on site poll) or your doubting the community.
I'm not doubting your integrity, I'm saying that simply by the virtue of the way these polls are going to be conducted, there's going to be an inadvertent selection bias. A selection bias isn't always a problem, as long as you're aware of it, but here, depending on what selection bias ends up as part of this, the result will be different.
I don't think this community is exceeding woke tbh.
Perhaps, but I don't think you'd have to get that far to interpret some of Hanania's statements as racist. Your run-of-the mill progressive, even Democrat, might do so as well, regardless of context.
I think if you don't think you'll think he's said something bad, you should back your man.
If I wanted to play roulette, I'd go into a casino.
@NathanpmYoung I appreciate the effort directed towards trying to operationalize this! Betting a small amount of NO, though it wouldn't really surprise me that much if he was judged to have done so. "unnecessarily provocative" is pretty coarse.
I do think something like "the frequency and magnitude of his bad takes will drop over time" though, which is what I would like to see in someone who is striving to become better
@Austin For this community to vote over 25% and more yes than no that he was "unnecessarily provacative" and racist is a high bar, surely?
@NathanpmYoung Is it a high bar? Depends a lot on engagement, which I'm not sure I can predict. Right now I see 18 manifolders (versus 4) with an incentive to vote yes in any such poll. I'm not saying that they would if doing so was clearly wrong, but the vast majority of my uncertainty in this market is about manifolders rather than Hanania. (And I say this as the holder of the biggest no position.)
@NathanpmYoung You could, and doing so would change the degree to which I'm willing to bet, but it would also be moving the goalposts of the market significantly so I certainly wouldn't recommend it.
But also it doesn't much change what I anticipate to be the basic dynamic of lopsided incentives: My hunch is that Hanania has more devoted haters than he has devoted fans – at least on Manifold. If you could persuade the people who don't care about him either way to appraise what he says then I'd bet roughly according to my beliefs about him, but a threshold doesn't ensure that.