I believe by this point you're just sealioning [1], but:

* "the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people"

* "This can't be fixed."

* "it makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to help black citizens anymore."

* "you just need to get away from them. Just get as much distance as you can."

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

I’m trying to get people to explain the racism rather than just write selected quotes. I want explicit explanations, since if serious accusations (like racism) keep being implied rather than explicit, then they can’t be reasonably argued against. And serious accusations should be able to be argued against. But you can’t argue a negative; you need an actual rationalization to be explicitly stated, which is why I suspect that so many accusers are so incredibly vague in their accusations.

You, in this thread, keep just quoting and not explaining anything, which does not exactly help your case.

"Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity ('I'm just trying to have a debate'), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter. It may take the form of 'incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate' ... "

I know what “Sealioning” is. I read the original comic it came from. And this is entirely tangential to my request for explanations. Also, your comment now consists entirely of a quote, without any argument of your own.

This comment gets at the heart of the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34942502

The poll doesn’t prove anything, especially that black people as a race are a hate group. The idea an entire race should be considered a “hate group” is absurd on its face. So one should approach results indicating as such with a big question mark, because they are surprising. That the phrase in question is a white supremacist dog whistle fully explains the results actually.

But to take this poll credulously and throw your hands up in the air as Scott does says a lot. He doesn’t stop there though, he runs with it. With a full throat he declares an end to the idea of our integrated multicultural society. He implores white people to purposefully segregate and insulate themselves from black prior as an act of safety.

I think it’s been pointed out a couple times in this thread how polls can be deceptive. That Scott doesn’t even really grapple with this possibility and instead dives straight to “white flight” mode… well, for his sake I just hope he can get over this phase.

You explain quite well why his apparent reaction is absurd in many ways, which is why an initial good faith guess about what he’s doing should probably be that he’s being facetious, and using the poll results to rationalize not giving anyone preferential treatment anymore.

That would be an appropriate guess for anyone who hasn’t paid attention to Adams the past 6 or so years. The poll is confirming his prejudices, that’s why he’s so eager to believe them.

If Adams has been putting on a fake alt-right persona this whole time, I would encourage him maybe he should stop the act, otherwise people might start confusing him for a raging racist.

Until then, I’ll believe Adams is what Adams is telling me he is.

I think that you are correct. This is a good explanation. I was writing my own but now I don't need to because this one is better (it is the same ideas than what I thought, but you could write it better than I do).

No one owes you an explanation. Read the quotes and tell us why they're not racist.

That's not how civilized societies work. If you make an accusation you have to explain what you mean, not simply echo words back at the speaker - that's what children do because they haven't yet learned how to debate or reason.

Children are the ones to repeatedly ask the same question. Consider this a teachable moment where we're encouraging you to reason through it. As I said, present why you don't think it's racist.

Advising whites segregate themselves from blacks on the grounds of a poll result?

First that’s a hell of a thing to say based on a poll result.

Second it doesn’t really follow when the point of integration wasn’t that every racial group unanimously had warm cuddly views of another, the biggest reason it happened is that segregation was causing things like unequal treatment of black people and self-esteem issues in black children. What he advises is something we know has racist outcomes in practice, and it’s also directly racist to literally just avoid or associate with people because of skin colour.

A possible counter-argument could be that he’s just being somewhat facetious, and takes the stupid poll result and runs with it, and then shows what the result would be if one were to take the poll results at face value.

Also, one could easily imagine that he further uses the poll results to withdraw from the societal obligation to show preferential treatment to some people, which he has grown tired of, since it mainly resulted in him being called a racist anyway.

If he was actually an “unhinged racist”, I doubt that he would sound like the person in the video. What he does sound like, to my non-American ears at least, is someone who’s been trying to do good for most of his life, and gotten nothing but complaints and accusations of racism for it, and is tired of the whole thing and wants to wash his hands of it. Of course, trying to advocate for separatism is a tricky proposition, since it has horrible historical precedents. But he does not mention these, so I could easily believe that he simply did not think of that particular parallel, and is just advising people to steer clear of the whole issue, albeit in an ill-advised way.

It is way too easy to write people off as “unhinged racists” when you can easily interpret their actions otherwise. As the HN guidelines say, “Assume good faith.”

Ah yes. Schrodinger’s racist. The racists can gleefully agree with your opinion and if anyone gets upset you can just resort to “just joking bro!”

That the HN community is called to assume good faith doesn’t mean we have to be naive or credulous in the face of blatant bad faith. If this were Scott Adams’ first trip round the alt-right talking points block, maybe you have a point. But he’s been doing stuff like this for 6+ years, and he either likes the attention or actually believes all of it. Those are the only two good faith interpretations left. Either way people are taking him literally, so if he wants to clarify his actual position, he should now.

If you don’t understand why telling white people to stay the hell away from black people as they are a hate group and there is no hope of helping them is racist, I’m afraid you simply don’t understand what racism to any degree where further explanations would help.

What he advised might be reasonable if you were to assume that the opinion poll is literally correct. Since it’s not reasonable, it follows that maybe the opinion poll is stupid. Which might be his point.

I think he could have made that point without offering a full throated defense of segregation. It’s not a clever or novel thing to say that polls are biased, especially Rasmussen polls. If what you say is true, then all he’s doing is trying to be edgy while spreading white nationalist talking points. Still not a great look for Adams in the best case scenario. Shows a real lack of judgement and character — he’s a grown man.

I’m sure there’s some internet law that says when you pretend to be something enough, you become that thing. If Scott is pretending to be an alt-right white nationalist sympathizer to make points about the integrity of polling, he’s doing a great job. He’s doing so well, he’s got even the white nationalists thinking he’s one of them.

Maybe today would be a good time for Adams to clarify. Or maybe he’ll let us go on believing what he said on his podcast is representative of his beliefs.