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Comment by deiznof | Hacker News Reader

The idea that calling out systemic racism is like a Nazi propaganda tactic. Look up any of his other views on literally any social issues, it's just whatever Fox News-esque conservative would want to hear. Like, somehow it's not the government snatching people up in vans that is Nazi-like, it's actually the anti-racist protesters that are Nazi's to the genius brain of Thomas Sowell. How do people idolize this guy?

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if you define “conservative” as “wrong”, then I understand your point, but then your statement is trivial - it’s a statement of opinion, “sowell is wrong”, masquerading as evidence and using 12 times as many words as needed.

Yes, I am giving my opinion on Thomas Sowell in a post about Thomas Sowell. My post is very short, like a third of it is a quote from him. And I didn't define conservative as wrong, I said he is a standard, non-special conservative AND wrong. What are your actual disagreements?

Well, the problem with opinions is that they are not that helpful. For example, I could say the following:

Sowell is a classical liberal and right. Sowell is a neoconservative and wrong. Sowell is a traditional conservative and right. Sowell is a neoliberal and wrong. Sowell is a classical liberal and wrong. Sowell is a neoconservative and right. Sowell is a traditional conservative and wrong.

Without some way to separate the true sentences from the false sentences none of them are very helpful, even if one in the pile happens to be true.

You're offering commentary, not a counterargument. What specifically is Sowell wrong about?

What specifically is he right about? Why do we require evidence when someone says he is wrong, but we do not require evidence for the numerous times in this thread where people say his book is “required reading”?

First, everyone here who likes Sowell can put forth specific, concrete examples where he is right, instead of making vague statements about how brilliant he is and then demanding evidence only when someone disagrees.

> First, everyone here who likes Sowell can put forth specific, concrete examples where he is right, instead of making vague statements about how brilliant he is and then demanding evidence only when someone disagrees.

Why? The positive argument already exists. It's Sowell's writing. What are you asking for a cliff's notes? The disagreement you're talking about must obviously stem from something in the source material we're talking about. So what is it?

It exists for economics exclusively, he has never proven himself in regards to social issues to be anymore than a common twitter conservative.

Do you expect to be taken seriously when you dismiss someone with a resume like his as “nothing more than a common twitter conservative”? How do you even fool yourself into believing that?

None of his books that I've read are about economics, they're all about social issues, including very deep ones like why people separate into opposing camps on political issues.

It's really just worth reading some of that stuff before you decide he's just a Tweeter. He's basically the opposite of that.

I'm asking for concrete evidence that his opinions have predictive power which has been assessed independently.

If no such evidence exists then all we have is just-so story-telling, which can be discounted.

The fact that a lot of people seem to believe his ideas are convincing is irrelevant to this discussion.

People believe all kinds of things because they sound plausible to them - partly because other people have made careers out of working out how to push people's "This sounds plausible so I shall believe it" buttons.

Which is why reproducible evidence and independent peer review are things. And why it's absolutely reasonable - in fact required - to question assertions that can't be grounded in them.

> How do people idolize this guy?

Read his books and find out. You'll be supporting a black author if you do.

> The idea that calling out systemic racism is like a Nazi propaganda tactic. Look up any of his other views on literally any social issues, it's just whatever Fox News-esque conservative would want to hear.

With regard to the Fox News-watching American conservative base and bad Nazi analogies, it's useful to keep in mind what you're dealing with. Grover Norquist said in an interview in 2003 that the estate tax is equivalent to the Holocaust. When Terry Gross politely allowed him to walk that statement back, he said that it's just morally equivalent to the Holocaust. [2] Of course all the thinking involved is total bullshit and the man is batshit crazy, but the interview is not without interest.

Such a lunatic must be the object of widespread derision on the right, right? Nope. Almost all Republican lawmakers sign his bizarre loyalty oath upon taking office, pledging they're not going to raise taxes. [3]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2004/01/06/o...

[2] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=145298...

[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-grover-norquist-pledg...

Maybe Sowell wrote this before the internet - the man is 90 - but today I mentally turn the page whenever something is compared to Nazis.

Both the left and right do this, and it's almost never meaningful. More a lazy way to call your opponents poopheads.

Unfortunately he said it in an interview about 3 weeks ago on Fox News.

Well in fairness he didn't actually compare anything to Nazis. He compared something to one single precept that was espoused and made well-known by them. Unlike say the "Punch a Nazi" movement from last year that literally claimed modern day Nazis are numerous and living amongst us.

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