The “both sideism” of everyone is biased does not apply to Elon Musk in the slightest
>Yes, everyone—including highly-educated professionals who “believe in science” and “trust experts” and read broadsheet newspapers and go to farmers’ markets and so on—is biased, but “bias” doesn’t begin to describe somebody like Elon Musk.
>[Almost everything](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u8_fp1TtJE) that Musk communicates or amplifies on X—and he posts and reposts a staggering quantity of content to a vast audience—is an [outright lie, half-truth, or flagrant propaganda](https://www.richardhanania.com/p/liberals-only-censor-musk-seeks-to). And, of course, the only reason he can do this is that he inhabits a right-wing ecosystem in America which has wholly abandoned even the pretense of caring about truth, reality, or objectivity.
“My eyes are WIIIDE OPEN!” is a phrase I often read or hear from people who are confirmation-bias based.
There’s also a video trend in social media where anonymous chuds with oversized headphones (a la Howard Stern show studio decorum) spout out “facts” in rapid-fire cadence about any and every topic as if it were a life-changing revelation
I don’t know why, but this impresses a majority of people I personally know and care about, but for me, I sniff fraud immediately.
AtticusDrench on
> Cynicism gives rise to a problem of moral flattening. Even if everyone is highly limited in their propensities towards altruism, some are more limited than others. And even if cynicism is correct at one level of abstraction, sweeping generalizations about human nature inevitably obscure such individual differences.
> Yes, everyone is biased, but some are much more biased than others. There are significant individual differences in how intellectually virtuous people are, and some people—Musk included—are, let’s say, less circumspect than they might be in their attitude towards truth and honesty.
> Moreover, profound differences exist in the social norms and procedures enforced in different communities and institutions. For all the genuine flaws of elite knowledge-generating institutions like science, academia, legacy media, and so on, they implement norms designed to encourage conformity to Enlightenment values and responsible intellectual conduct (fact-checking, peer review, sourcing claims, issuing formal corrections, etc.), even if they often fall short of this goal.
This is really well put. People struggle to accept that an institution can be flawed but still the best option we have. Because of that, we end up valorizing or romanticizing them—not because they’re perfect, but because getting people to trust and uphold them seems to require a bit of simplification. But that creates real tension when we turn around and critique them or when their flaws inevitably come to light.
Even good-faith criticism can shake people’s trust rather than strengthen it. Instead of recognizing that, say, the news is imperfect but still their best shot at staying informed, people throw up their hands and jump ship to alternative media. Some of that’s fine—there are solid independent journalists—but most people aren’t seeking out a veteran reporter’s Substack or a scientist’s newsletter. They’re scrolling YouTube, following Twitter accounts, and landing in an ocean of grifters and ideologues. And this isn’t just a media problem. The same dynamic plays out in academia, government, and countless other institutions.
I don’t know exactly how to solve this. I get why people are frustrated with institutions like the New York Times or the Democratic Party, but it worries me when they turn to something like MeidasTouch instead. Sure, it channels their anger (I’m angry too!), but I still believe in the pursuit of truth, objectivity, and fair coverage—even if humans are pretty bad at all of those. As the Constitution puts it, we strive “to form a more perfect union.” We’re never going to get it exactly right, but that pursuit gets us closer to those ideals, and that seems worth it to me.
SenranHaruka on
> They often obscure the possibility that one reason for anti-establishment backlash is establishment failures over many years, including shocking epistemological catastrophes. In the UK and United States, for example, this includes the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and many aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic response
OK but can you see how liberal elites think it’s weird to blame them for a war they didn’t want, a financial crisis they didn’t cause, and a pandemic response that was hindered by people disobeying it?
Blaming the left for the Iraq War should be considered grounds to have your driver’s license revoked and be tested for a stroke. Blending them together with the neocons they’ve always fucking hated as one shared “establishment” is exactly the fallacy that’s destroying the truth.
4 Comments
The “both sideism” of everyone is biased does not apply to Elon Musk in the slightest
>Yes, everyone—including highly-educated professionals who “believe in science” and “trust experts” and read broadsheet newspapers and go to farmers’ markets and so on—is biased, but “bias” doesn’t begin to describe somebody like Elon Musk.
>[Almost everything](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u8_fp1TtJE) that Musk communicates or amplifies on X—and he posts and reposts a staggering quantity of content to a vast audience—is an [outright lie, half-truth, or flagrant propaganda](https://www.richardhanania.com/p/liberals-only-censor-musk-seeks-to). And, of course, the only reason he can do this is that he inhabits a right-wing ecosystem in America which has wholly abandoned even the pretense of caring about truth, reality, or objectivity.
>This ecosystem is increasingly dangerous, including in the way it is opening up intellectual space for [repugnant](https://unherd.com/newsroom/why-is-joe-rogan-interviewing-conspiracists-like-ian-carroll/) %5Banti-Semitic%5D(https://nypost.com/2025/03/07/opinion/as-top-podcasters-host-antisemites-jews-need-to-stand-up-to-bullies-across-the-spectrum/) %5Bconspiracy theorizing%5D(https://time.com/6336123/elon-musk-antisemitic-post-x/). And given the extent to which America influences other societies and the American right is [explicitly allied](https://time.com/7260499/alice-weidel-far-right-afd-germany-musk-vance-trump/) with right-wing populist parties elsewhere, there’s a significant risk that this radical epistemic dysfunction will have a broader global significance in the years to come.
>
“My eyes are WIIIDE OPEN!” is a phrase I often read or hear from people who are confirmation-bias based.
There’s also a video trend in social media where anonymous chuds with oversized headphones (a la Howard Stern show studio decorum) spout out “facts” in rapid-fire cadence about any and every topic as if it were a life-changing revelation
I don’t know why, but this impresses a majority of people I personally know and care about, but for me, I sniff fraud immediately.
> Cynicism gives rise to a problem of moral flattening. Even if everyone is highly limited in their propensities towards altruism, some are more limited than others. And even if cynicism is correct at one level of abstraction, sweeping generalizations about human nature inevitably obscure such individual differences.
> Yes, everyone is biased, but some are much more biased than others. There are significant individual differences in how intellectually virtuous people are, and some people—Musk included—are, let’s say, less circumspect than they might be in their attitude towards truth and honesty.
> Moreover, profound differences exist in the social norms and procedures enforced in different communities and institutions. For all the genuine flaws of elite knowledge-generating institutions like science, academia, legacy media, and so on, they implement norms designed to encourage conformity to Enlightenment values and responsible intellectual conduct (fact-checking, peer review, sourcing claims, issuing formal corrections, etc.), even if they often fall short of this goal.
This is really well put. People struggle to accept that an institution can be flawed but still the best option we have. Because of that, we end up valorizing or romanticizing them—not because they’re perfect, but because getting people to trust and uphold them seems to require a bit of simplification. But that creates real tension when we turn around and critique them or when their flaws inevitably come to light.
Even good-faith criticism can shake people’s trust rather than strengthen it. Instead of recognizing that, say, the news is imperfect but still their best shot at staying informed, people throw up their hands and jump ship to alternative media. Some of that’s fine—there are solid independent journalists—but most people aren’t seeking out a veteran reporter’s Substack or a scientist’s newsletter. They’re scrolling YouTube, following Twitter accounts, and landing in an ocean of grifters and ideologues. And this isn’t just a media problem. The same dynamic plays out in academia, government, and countless other institutions.
I don’t know exactly how to solve this. I get why people are frustrated with institutions like the New York Times or the Democratic Party, but it worries me when they turn to something like MeidasTouch instead. Sure, it channels their anger (I’m angry too!), but I still believe in the pursuit of truth, objectivity, and fair coverage—even if humans are pretty bad at all of those. As the Constitution puts it, we strive “to form a more perfect union.” We’re never going to get it exactly right, but that pursuit gets us closer to those ideals, and that seems worth it to me.
> They often obscure the possibility that one reason for anti-establishment backlash is establishment failures over many years, including shocking epistemological catastrophes. In the UK and United States, for example, this includes the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and many aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic response
OK but can you see how liberal elites think it’s weird to blame them for a war they didn’t want, a financial crisis they didn’t cause, and a pandemic response that was hindered by people disobeying it?
Blaming the left for the Iraq War should be considered grounds to have your driver’s license revoked and be tested for a stroke. Blending them together with the neocons they’ve always fucking hated as one shared “establishment” is exactly the fallacy that’s destroying the truth.