I know that in the spirit of playing the ball and not the man you have to add caveats to these sorts of pieces about their subject being a good guy etc., but in the case of Noah he has exhibited a track record of intellectual dishonesty across many, many different topics that is truly startling. At some point such a consistent record of bad faith argumentation should make it not so controversial for him to be labelled a bad actor. He is of course free to write whatever he likes but anyone remotely close to the levers of power should be warned away from listening to him.
We can argue whether Noah consistently fields bad takes that enable and give permission structures for the abuses of silicon valley and other wealthy interests out of “ignorance or intentional malice.”
But the collective effect of his contributions are the same, regardless of his motivations.
To this outside observer he seems like an illustration of the old Upton Sinclair quote about it “being difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon not understanding it.”
I suspect in coming years we will learn where Noah’s bread is getting its extra butter and subs, and it will all make more “sense,” even as his takes continue to stubbornly defy real world logic.
I suspect we all have anecdotes about influential people talking garbage. Back in the 1990s, when Rush Limbaugh was at his peak, I recall him talking about nuclear power and spouting unadulterated nonsense. (I can't recall what he said, just that I was disgusted at his obvious ignorance about it.) Similarly, one of Ann Coulter's books of diatribes about liberals showed she had poor knowledge of biology and evolution.
Both were influential in their time and responsible for disseminating misinformation and disinformation to support their POVs.
Lastly, the power of the tobacco industry, and more recently, the fossil fuel industry, to influence politicians to follow their POVs to stymie legislation that would impact their vested interests. The president and the GOP are still in denial about global heating and doing everything they can to reverse decarbonizing the US energy system.
There is no one writing on these topics today who has a greater disparity between the size of their audience and the quality of their analysis than Noah Smith.
My first experience with him was 6 years ago, back when he was purporting to be a professional "China Watcher" (he does not know any Chinese, does not understand Chinese culture) and he repeatedly humiliated himself with basic misunderstandings. His approach has always been to double down or ignore obvious errors and contradictions. I do not know why people read him. He is not a good writer, he is not funny, he is not insightful.
My assessment is a little more nuanced: sometimes he makes sense, and sometimes he makes arguments that are ridiculous on their face. The latter is true often enough that I also mostly don't bother reading him. As with China, He also sometimes comments on Japan, where he apparently has spent some time, but the understanding of Japan he demonstrates is also usually superficial and flawed.
I've also noticed that his substack is one of the few that limits comments to subscribers only, and I wonder why.
The thing is, the Glasgow Weaver was proven wrong and the theorists in political economy were proven right. The machine that the Glasgow Weaver was concerned about did lead to dramatically better incomes for most people in the future, even if in the short term the Glasgow Weaver suffered. The prosperity generated by automation during the Industrial Revolution did get redistributed later. And the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution were incredibly good. From much lower mortality to arguably the banning of slavery. Of course, this doesn't mean AI will have the same effect; it might not, we don't know. It's entirely possible that AI will be a disaster, and democracy is the only social technology that exists that can prevent dystopian futures of impoverished masses or whatever, so preserving democracy is essential.
In terms of aggregate prosperity vs distribution, this just seems like a bizarre dichotomy. You need resources in order to distribute resources. Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland wouldn't be able to offer the quality of life they do if their GDP per capita weren't really high. The high union density and generous welfare state of the Nordic countries can only redistribute the resources available in those societies. None of this is to say that redistribution doesn't matter. If, for example, the US redistributed more, people at the bottom of the US socioeconomic strata would be better off. It's just that growth is also essential.
“If … the US redistributed more”—That’s a very big “if”, given current socioeconomic trends and the concerted, long term efforts the oligarch class have been making to thwart it.
As he strongly supports teh "Abundance" philosophy of economic growth, one can usually see this as the distorting prism through which he approaches issues. If a position looks like it may hinder "growth", he is against it.
I think your differences with Noah come down to differences between graduate education in economics (in the narrow post-war neoclassical model), versus graduate education in political economy and graduate education in just about any other social science other than economics or psychology. Noah is further hampered by having only done physics as an undergrad.
In effect, he has only studied a certain conception of wealth (and progress defined through aggregate national productivity), and never really studied power. As you point out in the neoclassical model competition has nullified power inequities, and their is no endogenous concept of power. At best power is a an exogenous exception, studied only through the lens of market failure. Equally they really only study a very abstract model of one social institution, markets, and never really studied any other one, unless it can be understood in terms of rational choice theory.
In that sense, it is not a personal failing on Noah's part, just a failing of the incredibly narrow and unrealistic models of "society" dominant in econ.
I hear the "professional blinkers" argument a lot, and really tried to wrap my head around how that would work, but I just can't get there.
Especially for someone like Smith whose role involves commenting on current affairs in the US. If that's your beat, there is no way to square it with econ 101 ideas about the nullification of power through competition. If his main concern is still to stamp out heretical notions about how money can be turned into political power and vice versa...
The charitable term for that would be "deliberately obtuse." After seeing the tweet that opened this post, I'm more inclined to go with "bootlicker."
You lost me with “In the words of a Glasgow weaver, The theorists in political economy attach more importance to the aggregate accumulation of wealth and power than to the manner of its diffusion, or its effects on the interior of society.”
These are not your words of course, but I think they reinforce some of Smith’s complaint about bibliography and notes. Are these the words of a Glasgow weaver? “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. It seems more like a not so noble sentiment “Don’t trust the tech bros, trust the WORKERS! If they had the advantage of my education, they would sound exactly like me, so, for reasons of efficiency just let me make decisions instead of corporations, and realize that if you disagree you are guilty of silencing the marginalized—not me, their humble avatar.”
Not the first time I've seen Noah mispresent other people's work. Truth is sacrificed to win the argument. Plus, he's prone to sucking up to the scions of Silicon Valley. Ignore him.
No, I think Noah honestly does not understand what they are getting at. It has to do with the concept of power. What is power? In physics it is force multiplied by velocity. The social sciences use power as an analogy for the exertion of a social force to cause change (movement through multidimensional social space, that is a distance) at a particular rate. That is:
Social power = social force x social change per time (i.e. force times velocity)
Social power can be economic, political, or other (cultural). An example of economic power is a talk I had at the gym with the owner of a greenhouse business who talked about the difficulty of finding good workers. I asked how much they paid and she said $17-18/hr. I told her about how people I know who were making $10/hr in fast food before the pandemic were now making $13-15. Greenhouse work is outdoors and physically demanding and so carries a premium wage compared to physically less demanding indoor work like fast food. The wage premium offered by your job is less than half of what it used to be and that might be your problem.
Here the economic “force” was the appearance of higher pay from easier jobs that was causing a worker shortage in her business. The cause of the higher pay was worker shortage in the easier jobs. The cause of that was the enormously long economic expansion (longest in history). Knowing this, I suggested she pay higher wages and raise her prices, arguing that the higher wages reflect economic prosperity that has also affect your customers who will continue to buy at the higher price.
Now in one sense there is no coercive “power” involved in the shift in labor availability. In another sense, it is markets doing their thing, what might be called “market power.” Here the force is the behavioral change caused by the reduced wage differential between jobs. This force is exerting over an economic distance in the sense of the workers not hired and the future revenue they might have brought not being realized. The rate at which this happens is what makes it experienced as power and which would eventually force them to change their behavior. There is very definitely coercion involved here, but it is not exerted by any conscious entity, but by the environment.
This is a pretty odious pattern with Noah. He seems intent on humiliating people and gets out over his skis. I wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt at this point.
My take on reading the comments after reading this very insightful essay is one of dismay that most of the comments are taking shots at Noah Smith, which is fine and unfortunately to be expected, and not getting at the challenge raised, which is so much more important than dumping on someone who is in a position to not care that you are dumping off them. what was the challenge?.
"So how do we create a situation in which other voices than those of accidentally eloquent billionaires like Elon Musk can have some influence on debates over tech policy?"
Someone should invent a system in which anyone can submit opinions (ideally in text, audio, or video format) for public viewing and then people can say if they "agree" or "like" the opinion. Then the opinions that get the most agreement would rise to the top of some kind of leaderboard or data feed. I'm sure the technology exists, but the TechBros would never release it to the public. It would undermine their power.
A great public service, or as great a public service as posting on social media gets anyway.
Like your deranged billionaires post ab Cowen, you're taking down another mainstream economics and diehard free marketeer guy. Two down, too many to go.
Calling these guys Panglossian about markets is being kind. At this point their work appears to be little more than desperately shilling for billionaires. Off the charts gag reflex in these two particular hot takes, BDS and Big Tech's benign politics. Now, right now, your position is the public are being too hard on billionaires?! Really?
And why do I say desperately? Well, what does China's state capitalist takeover of green energy technologies over the last 10-15 years say about private global capital's free marketplace of ideas and Big Tech in the US? Trying to deny this world historical failure of free markets makes free marketeers feel a little desperate, not surprisingly.
Noah rules. He’s not God but he’s very smart and his analyses are worthy. I don’t understand why social media expects pundits to be omniscient or make predictions using a crystal ball. He will have ideas and some of them might turn out to be wrong for the moment. Most ppl like him and like you are somewhat wrong MOST of the time. There are kernels of wisdom even in “wrong” writings that may pan out later. That’s the nature of punditry. Nobody was “right” about covid 19. Some more slack approaches resulted in more deaths up from but better economies, and vice versa. Most ppl who reflect on something in good faith and take the time to use supporting details are going to stumble into some worthy arguments even if they don’t pan out.
He’s not just “a decent guy” but a highly intelligent person with many gifts.
That being said i lost the main idea in both your and his essays and i have a hard time following them. I mean the main idea is you appear more worried than he does about power held by tech giants. ok. Just unable to weigh the merits of either one of your arguments as i am lost in your supporting details.
As much as I am generally inclined to agree with the critiques of path dependence and "winner take all" dynamics that Acemoglu and Johnson, and other political economists, make, I think Margolis & Liebowitz are entirely correct on the merits when it comes to the discussion of Dvorak keyboards.
The Dvorak myth was dispensed with most thoroughly by Marcin Wichary in his magisterial history of keyboards, Shift Happens (https://shifthappens.site/), which points to a lot of the same weaknesses in the case for Dvorak's superiority, like Dvorak himself supervising the Navy study, convergent development of QWERTY-like layouts by different typewriter prototypes, and early typing competitions.
Even if Dvorak was technically superior in some narrow sense, I think it's still so fundamentally similar to QWERTY as a technology that it doesn't serve as a useful example of path dependence in the way that, say, investment in automobile versus train infrastructure does.
"Marketplace of ideas"...LOL! Hasn't this Smith bloke ready ANYTHING published by the Thiel-Yarvin school of techno-dominance? And the "Network City" chap, Srinivasan, now hard at work worming his way into the Malaysian government to "cut a deal" to provide space and resources for the New Feudalism, again using the immense power of MONEY to influence government.
For the love of Christ, there's nearly a few TRILLION dollars of SV muscle already monopolizing the — you know — "marketplace", and for the 99% of us soon- to-be serfs and helots, OUR ideas gain no purchase, and the Noah person seems at a loss to grasp the elemental truth of it all...feh!
While ideas are important, a crucial step is the conversion of ideas into property because without property you can’t seek rents. The wealthy have overwhelming access to the levers of government that handle that conversion. Just look at the continued extension of copyright to protect Disney and others.
"There's a Club and you aint in it". This is the essense of Acemoglu and Johnson's argument, and they're not wrong. This is a frontal assault on the Market and efficiency as its supreme value so I can see why some economists would have a problem with that. From the essay the ideas of power vs influence seem to be used interchageably on both sides which I think hopelessly confuses the argument. I imagine power as dictating an outcome rather than influencing it. But influence is far more valuable in manufacturing consenus for an outcome, which is desirable if you're the one making all the money.
Just a general observation, but it seems to me that the preferred method of argumentation among right-wing “intellectuals” is to take a cherry-picked statement, rip it from its context, and attack it with spurious logic while at the same time ignoring or trivializing the opponent’s main argument. Very convincing among those who are predisposed to agree!!
I know that in the spirit of playing the ball and not the man you have to add caveats to these sorts of pieces about their subject being a good guy etc., but in the case of Noah he has exhibited a track record of intellectual dishonesty across many, many different topics that is truly startling. At some point such a consistent record of bad faith argumentation should make it not so controversial for him to be labelled a bad actor. He is of course free to write whatever he likes but anyone remotely close to the levers of power should be warned away from listening to him.
I agree Dolores.
We can argue whether Noah consistently fields bad takes that enable and give permission structures for the abuses of silicon valley and other wealthy interests out of “ignorance or intentional malice.”
But the collective effect of his contributions are the same, regardless of his motivations.
To this outside observer he seems like an illustration of the old Upton Sinclair quote about it “being difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon not understanding it.”
I suspect in coming years we will learn where Noah’s bread is getting its extra butter and subs, and it will all make more “sense,” even as his takes continue to stubbornly defy real world logic.
If anyone can help me find these instance, I would be very interested!
I suspect we all have anecdotes about influential people talking garbage. Back in the 1990s, when Rush Limbaugh was at his peak, I recall him talking about nuclear power and spouting unadulterated nonsense. (I can't recall what he said, just that I was disgusted at his obvious ignorance about it.) Similarly, one of Ann Coulter's books of diatribes about liberals showed she had poor knowledge of biology and evolution.
Both were influential in their time and responsible for disseminating misinformation and disinformation to support their POVs.
Lastly, the power of the tobacco industry, and more recently, the fossil fuel industry, to influence politicians to follow their POVs to stymie legislation that would impact their vested interests. The president and the GOP are still in denial about global heating and doing everything they can to reverse decarbonizing the US energy system.
I have a rule of muting Noah and skipping pieces that engage with him. I probably agree with him on 90%+ of political issues but he is so unpleasant.
There is no one writing on these topics today who has a greater disparity between the size of their audience and the quality of their analysis than Noah Smith.
My first experience with him was 6 years ago, back when he was purporting to be a professional "China Watcher" (he does not know any Chinese, does not understand Chinese culture) and he repeatedly humiliated himself with basic misunderstandings. His approach has always been to double down or ignore obvious errors and contradictions. I do not know why people read him. He is not a good writer, he is not funny, he is not insightful.
My assessment is a little more nuanced: sometimes he makes sense, and sometimes he makes arguments that are ridiculous on their face. The latter is true often enough that I also mostly don't bother reading him. As with China, He also sometimes comments on Japan, where he apparently has spent some time, but the understanding of Japan he demonstrates is also usually superficial and flawed.
I've also noticed that his substack is one of the few that limits comments to subscribers only, and I wonder why.
What’s more nuanced about this?
Okay, maybe not a lot more nuanced. I only meant to say that once in awhile I see quotes from Smith that seem reasonable.
Noah Smith, occasionally reasonable by accident.
Well said!
Well said!
Ah, the old “stopped clock” analogy!
disagree on all fronts
The thing is, the Glasgow Weaver was proven wrong and the theorists in political economy were proven right. The machine that the Glasgow Weaver was concerned about did lead to dramatically better incomes for most people in the future, even if in the short term the Glasgow Weaver suffered. The prosperity generated by automation during the Industrial Revolution did get redistributed later. And the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution were incredibly good. From much lower mortality to arguably the banning of slavery. Of course, this doesn't mean AI will have the same effect; it might not, we don't know. It's entirely possible that AI will be a disaster, and democracy is the only social technology that exists that can prevent dystopian futures of impoverished masses or whatever, so preserving democracy is essential.
In terms of aggregate prosperity vs distribution, this just seems like a bizarre dichotomy. You need resources in order to distribute resources. Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland wouldn't be able to offer the quality of life they do if their GDP per capita weren't really high. The high union density and generous welfare state of the Nordic countries can only redistribute the resources available in those societies. None of this is to say that redistribution doesn't matter. If, for example, the US redistributed more, people at the bottom of the US socioeconomic strata would be better off. It's just that growth is also essential.
“If … the US redistributed more”—That’s a very big “if”, given current socioeconomic trends and the concerted, long term efforts the oligarch class have been making to thwart it.
I think you’re being too kind to Noah by a fair margin. He doesn’t deserve it at this point.
I also think it’s ironic that Noah plays an active role in how big tech wields power. He’s just a courtier, with all that entails.
As he strongly supports teh "Abundance" philosophy of economic growth, one can usually see this as the distorting prism through which he approaches issues. If a position looks like it may hinder "growth", he is against it.
I think your differences with Noah come down to differences between graduate education in economics (in the narrow post-war neoclassical model), versus graduate education in political economy and graduate education in just about any other social science other than economics or psychology. Noah is further hampered by having only done physics as an undergrad.
In effect, he has only studied a certain conception of wealth (and progress defined through aggregate national productivity), and never really studied power. As you point out in the neoclassical model competition has nullified power inequities, and their is no endogenous concept of power. At best power is a an exogenous exception, studied only through the lens of market failure. Equally they really only study a very abstract model of one social institution, markets, and never really studied any other one, unless it can be understood in terms of rational choice theory.
In that sense, it is not a personal failing on Noah's part, just a failing of the incredibly narrow and unrealistic models of "society" dominant in econ.
I hear the "professional blinkers" argument a lot, and really tried to wrap my head around how that would work, but I just can't get there.
Especially for someone like Smith whose role involves commenting on current affairs in the US. If that's your beat, there is no way to square it with econ 101 ideas about the nullification of power through competition. If his main concern is still to stamp out heretical notions about how money can be turned into political power and vice versa...
The charitable term for that would be "deliberately obtuse." After seeing the tweet that opened this post, I'm more inclined to go with "bootlicker."
You lost me with “In the words of a Glasgow weaver, The theorists in political economy attach more importance to the aggregate accumulation of wealth and power than to the manner of its diffusion, or its effects on the interior of society.”
These are not your words of course, but I think they reinforce some of Smith’s complaint about bibliography and notes. Are these the words of a Glasgow weaver? “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. It seems more like a not so noble sentiment “Don’t trust the tech bros, trust the WORKERS! If they had the advantage of my education, they would sound exactly like me, so, for reasons of efficiency just let me make decisions instead of corporations, and realize that if you disagree you are guilty of silencing the marginalized—not me, their humble avatar.”
Not the first time I've seen Noah mispresent other people's work. Truth is sacrificed to win the argument. Plus, he's prone to sucking up to the scions of Silicon Valley. Ignore him.
No, I think Noah honestly does not understand what they are getting at. It has to do with the concept of power. What is power? In physics it is force multiplied by velocity. The social sciences use power as an analogy for the exertion of a social force to cause change (movement through multidimensional social space, that is a distance) at a particular rate. That is:
Social power = social force x social change per time (i.e. force times velocity)
Social power can be economic, political, or other (cultural). An example of economic power is a talk I had at the gym with the owner of a greenhouse business who talked about the difficulty of finding good workers. I asked how much they paid and she said $17-18/hr. I told her about how people I know who were making $10/hr in fast food before the pandemic were now making $13-15. Greenhouse work is outdoors and physically demanding and so carries a premium wage compared to physically less demanding indoor work like fast food. The wage premium offered by your job is less than half of what it used to be and that might be your problem.
Here the economic “force” was the appearance of higher pay from easier jobs that was causing a worker shortage in her business. The cause of the higher pay was worker shortage in the easier jobs. The cause of that was the enormously long economic expansion (longest in history). Knowing this, I suggested she pay higher wages and raise her prices, arguing that the higher wages reflect economic prosperity that has also affect your customers who will continue to buy at the higher price.
Now in one sense there is no coercive “power” involved in the shift in labor availability. In another sense, it is markets doing their thing, what might be called “market power.” Here the force is the behavioral change caused by the reduced wage differential between jobs. This force is exerting over an economic distance in the sense of the workers not hired and the future revenue they might have brought not being realized. The rate at which this happens is what makes it experienced as power and which would eventually force them to change their behavior. There is very definitely coercion involved here, but it is not exerted by any conscious entity, but by the environment.
This is a pretty odious pattern with Noah. He seems intent on humiliating people and gets out over his skis. I wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt at this point.
Noah Smith, unintentionally I believe, comes across as an odious individual online. I aim to avoid his writing at all costs.
My take on reading the comments after reading this very insightful essay is one of dismay that most of the comments are taking shots at Noah Smith, which is fine and unfortunately to be expected, and not getting at the challenge raised, which is so much more important than dumping on someone who is in a position to not care that you are dumping off them. what was the challenge?.
"So how do we create a situation in which other voices than those of accidentally eloquent billionaires like Elon Musk can have some influence on debates over tech policy?"
Someone should invent a system in which anyone can submit opinions (ideally in text, audio, or video format) for public viewing and then people can say if they "agree" or "like" the opinion. Then the opinions that get the most agreement would rise to the top of some kind of leaderboard or data feed. I'm sure the technology exists, but the TechBros would never release it to the public. It would undermine their power.
A great public service, or as great a public service as posting on social media gets anyway.
Like your deranged billionaires post ab Cowen, you're taking down another mainstream economics and diehard free marketeer guy. Two down, too many to go.
Calling these guys Panglossian about markets is being kind. At this point their work appears to be little more than desperately shilling for billionaires. Off the charts gag reflex in these two particular hot takes, BDS and Big Tech's benign politics. Now, right now, your position is the public are being too hard on billionaires?! Really?
And why do I say desperately? Well, what does China's state capitalist takeover of green energy technologies over the last 10-15 years say about private global capital's free marketplace of ideas and Big Tech in the US? Trying to deny this world historical failure of free markets makes free marketeers feel a little desperate, not surprisingly.
Noah rules. He’s not God but he’s very smart and his analyses are worthy. I don’t understand why social media expects pundits to be omniscient or make predictions using a crystal ball. He will have ideas and some of them might turn out to be wrong for the moment. Most ppl like him and like you are somewhat wrong MOST of the time. There are kernels of wisdom even in “wrong” writings that may pan out later. That’s the nature of punditry. Nobody was “right” about covid 19. Some more slack approaches resulted in more deaths up from but better economies, and vice versa. Most ppl who reflect on something in good faith and take the time to use supporting details are going to stumble into some worthy arguments even if they don’t pan out.
He’s not just “a decent guy” but a highly intelligent person with many gifts.
That being said i lost the main idea in both your and his essays and i have a hard time following them. I mean the main idea is you appear more worried than he does about power held by tech giants. ok. Just unable to weigh the merits of either one of your arguments as i am lost in your supporting details.
As much as I am generally inclined to agree with the critiques of path dependence and "winner take all" dynamics that Acemoglu and Johnson, and other political economists, make, I think Margolis & Liebowitz are entirely correct on the merits when it comes to the discussion of Dvorak keyboards.
The Dvorak myth was dispensed with most thoroughly by Marcin Wichary in his magisterial history of keyboards, Shift Happens (https://shifthappens.site/), which points to a lot of the same weaknesses in the case for Dvorak's superiority, like Dvorak himself supervising the Navy study, convergent development of QWERTY-like layouts by different typewriter prototypes, and early typing competitions.
Even if Dvorak was technically superior in some narrow sense, I think it's still so fundamentally similar to QWERTY as a technology that it doesn't serve as a useful example of path dependence in the way that, say, investment in automobile versus train infrastructure does.
"Marketplace of ideas"...LOL! Hasn't this Smith bloke ready ANYTHING published by the Thiel-Yarvin school of techno-dominance? And the "Network City" chap, Srinivasan, now hard at work worming his way into the Malaysian government to "cut a deal" to provide space and resources for the New Feudalism, again using the immense power of MONEY to influence government.
For the love of Christ, there's nearly a few TRILLION dollars of SV muscle already monopolizing the — you know — "marketplace", and for the 99% of us soon- to-be serfs and helots, OUR ideas gain no purchase, and the Noah person seems at a loss to grasp the elemental truth of it all...feh!
While ideas are important, a crucial step is the conversion of ideas into property because without property you can’t seek rents. The wealthy have overwhelming access to the levers of government that handle that conversion. Just look at the continued extension of copyright to protect Disney and others.
"There's a Club and you aint in it". This is the essense of Acemoglu and Johnson's argument, and they're not wrong. This is a frontal assault on the Market and efficiency as its supreme value so I can see why some economists would have a problem with that. From the essay the ideas of power vs influence seem to be used interchageably on both sides which I think hopelessly confuses the argument. I imagine power as dictating an outcome rather than influencing it. But influence is far more valuable in manufacturing consenus for an outcome, which is desirable if you're the one making all the money.
They're really two magnitudes of the same thing. Power occurs when influence reaches 100%.
Just a general observation, but it seems to me that the preferred method of argumentation among right-wing “intellectuals” is to take a cherry-picked statement, rip it from its context, and attack it with spurious logic while at the same time ignoring or trivializing the opponent’s main argument. Very convincing among those who are predisposed to agree!!