{"id":163762,"date":"2025-09-20T21:40:43","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T05:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163762"},"modified":"2025-09-20T08:41:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T16:41:32","slug":"the-progressive-epistemic-bubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=163762","title":{"rendered":"The progressive epistemic bubble"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nate Silver writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Jimmy Kimmel and the progressive epistemic bubble. The remark that got Kimmel in trouble was this: \u201cWe hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.\u201d This is not merely \u201cinsensitive\u201d, in which case I wouldn\u2019t have Kimmel on this list. Rather, from the best evidence available, the implication that \u201cthe kid who murdered Charlie Kirk\u201d is MAGA is false. You would call it \u201cmisinformation\u201d if that term weren\u2019t usually deployed so one-sidedly (the overwhelming majority of misinformation researchers are on the left) by progressives to things that conservatives say rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n

Kirk\u2019s alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, appeared to confess to the murder in Discord chats. While Robinson\u2019s motivations seem somewhat confused, as is often the case with assassins, and while we should approach any reporting on this topic with caution, the notion that Robinson was some sort of \u201cGroyper\u201d who killed Kirk because Kirk was too liberal appears to be wrong. \u201cI had enough of his hatred. Some hate can\u2019t be negotiated out,\u201d Robinson wrote to his roommate, whom Utah governor Spencer Cox described as \u201ca romantic partner, a male transitioning to female.\u201d (I mention that just because high levels of trans acceptance typically isn’t a MAGA trait.) Kimmel has reportedly been obstinate in refusing to correct the record.<\/p>\n

So where was Kimmel getting this from? Well, maybe from Bluesky. Or (gulp) maybe from Substack. As Gabe Fleisher pointed out, Heather Cox Richardson, the author of the #1 U.S. politics newsletter Letters from an American, wrote this weekend that Robinson \u201cappears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.\u201d Richardson presented no evidence for this; it\u2019s wishful thinking at best. But really, it’s just a falsehood; like Fleisher, I\u2019ll be polite and not use the term \u201clie\u201d just because I don\u2019t know what\u2019s in Richardson\u2019s head.4<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not looking to pick a fight with Richardson (I know some of you subscribe to her) or Kimmel. But the progressive epistemic bubble is getting really bad. Maybe not worse than the MAGA bubble \u2014 but bad, and progressives often rationalize bad behavior by saying whatever the other side is doing is worse. This has already had serious consequences, such as denialism about Joe Biden\u2019s deteriorating condition last year, which they blamed on unfair media coverage. Kimmel is a relatively mainstream figure, so if this sort of misinformation about Robinson is making its way to him \u2014 and in scripted remarks, not off-the-cuff comments like Dowd\u2019s \u2014 that suggests the bubble is expanding, slowly devouring the reality-based community, and that formerly rational commentators have trouble escaping it once they\u2019re past the event horizon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nate Silver writes: Jimmy Kimmel and the progressive epistemic bubble. The remark that got Kimmel in trouble was this: \u201cWe hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163763,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163762\/revisions\/163763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}