# Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 25, 2022, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442 "2022-04-25T22:50:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 263
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5246 "2023-06-20T21:14:51Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > If you read Reading is a liberal plot. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5247 "2023-06-20T21:20:25Z")
And if you read Lewis Carroll, you’d know that when Sam uses a word, it means just what he chooses it to mean, neither more nor less /s ---
**Author:** ![Sylvanz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Sylvanz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sylvanz)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5248 "2023-06-20T21:33:59Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > Yes, we know. Adding racist language however… ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5249 "2023-06-20T21:56:09Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > The problem with “debates” as a general proposition is that they usually aren’t a good response to resolving controversies. I have no idea as to Dr. Hotez’s speaking skills, but just more generally being right does not mean you will prevail in a debate as so many debate club participants have discovered over the year. This came up a lot decades ago when carefully prepped creationists would clamor for public debates on evolution, get some biologist to agree, then destroy them on the debate stage because even fairly quick-thinking scientists were often not sufficiently prepared to deal with the line of clever, nimble bullshit the creationists were throwing down. > > Public debates in these situations are often a trap tactic. This is exactly right. I recall a “debate” on the reality of anthropogenic climate change between Gavin Schmidt and Richard Lindzen. Schmidt is a climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and co-founder of the award-winning climate science blog RealClimate that seeks to dispel climate denialism with scientific facts. Richard Lindzen is crackpot who’s made a name for himself as a notorious climate denier; he’s actually a legitimate scientist specializing in atmospheric physics, but manages to separate his professional research from a life-long affinity with contrarianism, wherein he revels in the adulation of climate change deniers when he shamelessly spouts lies that he absolutely knows are not true. Anyway, the outcome of the “debate” was that the lay audience and assorted morons who listened to it cast votes at the end of it, and Lindzen was deemed the “winner”. But that’s not how science is conducted, and not how truth is discovered. It says nothing at all about whose side the facts were on. In fact it doesn’t even work for political debates, where the most aggressive loudmouth is frequently the perceived “winner”. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5250 "2023-06-20T22:25:23Z")
You know the other side’s got 'nuthin when they resort to snarking over word choices. Call it a protest and not a riot, I don’t care. Nitpick the people on the list, but there are still a lot of heavy hitters with MDs and Ph.D’s who signed it. In any event, I was asked to show where public health officials said the protests were okay because racism was a bigger risk than Covid. I provided exactly that, and all I got in return was a word nitpick and some snark. Typical. And thr opposite of anti-racism is not racism. Anti-racism IS racism. It’s just ‘offsetting’ rqcism against a dominant group, which the left approves of and the right generally does not. It’s also a way of declaring non-raciats to be racist because they don’t do enough to stop it in others. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5251 "2023-06-20T22:29:21Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I don’t care. No, you clearly don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5252 "2023-06-20T22:38:32Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And ‘trust me - I’m a scientist’ died on the right the day they started calling for censorship for people who said things like the virus was airborne or that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, and a lot of health professionals declared that the George Floyd riots were A-ok because racism was a bigger public health threat than Covid. They blew their trust, so now they are being challenged on everything. Nonsense. The real reason that trusting scientists has died on the right is because scientists keep insisting on telling right-wingers scientific facts they don’t want to hear. E.g., about anthropogenic global warming, public health hazards from pollution, lack of scientific evidence for racist, homophobic, sexist, transphobic and religious-extremist ideologies, and all the other issues on which right-wing activism is firmly and aggressively anti-science. Conservatives in general have been grubbing around for excuses to distrust and repudiate scientific expertise since long before summer 2020. Pretending that the anti-science orientation of conservatives is a recent phenomenon that you can blame on scientists themselves somehow forfeiting conservatives’ trust by irresponsible behavior is merely self-flattering horseshit. (The specific horseshittiness of your claims about “health professionals” defending “George Floyd riots”, or ceasing to care about COVID-protection protocols when anti-racism protests are involved, has already been pointed out. It should be noted that your bizarre allegations that scientists in general somehow forfeited public trust because of (uncited) “calls for censorship” of findings about airborne COVID transmission, which were in fact the outcome of research by scientists, are also horseshit.) ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5253 "2023-06-20T22:41:43Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > E.g., about anthropogenic global warming, public health hazards from pollution, lack of scientific evidence for racist, homophobic, sexist, transphobic and religious-extremist ideologies, and all the other issues on which right-wing activism is firmly and aggressively anti-science. The list of science the right rejects is so long it’s easier to list the science they do agree with. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5254 "2023-06-20T22:42:54Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > In any event, I was asked to show where public health officials said the protests were okay because racism was a bigger risk than Covid. I provided exactly that You didn’t show any evidence at all of any public health officials making unscientific claims that COVID safety protocols didn’t matter or were irrelevant as long as the situation was an anti-racism protest. That was the insinuation that you were trying to make, but none of the actual evidence supports it, so now you’re trying to pretend that you backed up your claim when you didn’t. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > And thr opposite of anti-racism is not racism. Anti-racism IS racism. That is some 1984-level wordfuckery you’ve got going there. > [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > It’s also a way of declaring non-raciats to be racist because they don’t do enough to stop it in others. This too is horseshit. It’s the special kind of white-fragility snowflake horseshit that makes its appearance when conservatives are confronted with the uncomfortable fact that systemic racism doesn’t stop affecting society as a whole just because some white people consciously reject and disavow racist beliefs. But instead of just facing reality and recognizing that a historically unjust world is bound to be imperfect and even well-intentioned people can’t magically escape all responsibility for helping to fix it, they pout and sulk and whine that the real problem is that the anti-racists themselves are being racist, so there. Crybabies. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5255 "2023-06-20T22:43:58Z")
Opposing racism = racism… that’s some next level bullshit you’ve mined out of your nether regions, Sam. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5256 "2023-06-20T23:10:12Z")
Sorry for nitpicking words, but there’s an _ **ENORMOUS** _ distance between a protest and a riot. You seem to think they’re synonyms for some reason. That sort of lack of attention to detail is probably one reason your argument is nonsense. Anyway, the goalposts shifted a bit. Public health officials never said riots were “A-ok.” Your cite shows that some public health officials did, in fact, say that in terms of public health, mass gatherings were a lesser threat (covid \< white supremacy), but you are misrepresenting your own cite. I think it’s because you don’t read closely. Maybe you’re reading beyond your skill level? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5257 "2023-06-20T23:26:01Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Opposing racism = racism… that’s some next level bullshit you’ve mined out of your nether regions, Sam. I’m loath to support Sam and I don’t know that he’s referencing anything remotely defensible but there do exist **arguments** that particular forms of anti-racism are, themselves, racist. E.g.: > **[The Case Against Affirmative Action](https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-case-against-affirmative-action)** > > If, after 25 years, affirmative action has not succeeded in ending discrimination, perhaps it is time to try something else. > **[Rethinking the design of the race and ethnicity question on surveys](https://uxdesign.cc/rethinking-the-design-of-the-race-and-ethnicity-question-on-surveys-6f9066c69392)** > > Note to readers: I wish I had more resources and funding to really do justice to a project like this. For the time being, however, this… In a spherical cow in a vacuum sense, you could argue that anything that recognizes race is basically racist. Since anti-racism is predicated on the existence or race, it’s racist. From a biological/genetic standpoint, the whole idea of race and ethnicity is effectively bunk. No one is any particular anything but themselves. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5258 "2023-06-20T23:27:37Z")
That’s not what he said. He said anti-racism, which is the same thing as opposing racism, is the same as racism, and that’s just totally ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5259 "2023-06-20T23:27:51Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > anti-racist language is guaranteed to alienate the right Yes, and “you have to eat your broccoli” is guaranteed to alienate toddlers. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5260 "2023-06-20T23:28:18Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Sorry for nitpicking words, but there’s an _ **ENORMOUS** _ distance between a protest and a riot. Do you think he doesn’t know that? I’m done being pissed off by this racist troll. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5261 "2023-06-20T23:28:21Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > He said anti-racism, which is the same thing as opposing racism, is the same as racism, and that’s just totally ridiculous. I’ll grant you that. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5262 "2023-06-20T23:35:19Z")
I think he might not: I doubt if he’s attended either one. But you’re right: I shouldn’t engage. It’s not productive. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5263 "2023-06-20T23:37:00Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Nonsense. The real reason that trusting scientists has died on the right is because scientists keep insisting on telling right-wingers scientific facts they don’t want to hear. Pseudoscientists, like [Vernon Coleman,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Coleman) OTOH… [His fellow nuts have been yammering about wanting to see debunkers debate him, too.](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Vernon_Coleman&diff=prev&oldid=1128706891) ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5264 "2023-06-20T23:40:07Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Since anti-racism is predicated on the existence or race, it’s racist. Except, anti-racism is predicated on the existence of racism. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2023, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/5265 "2023-06-20T23:41:29Z")
Yeah, that’s fair. I’ll retract the statement. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=262) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=264)