What are the Worst MR Posts?

What are the worst MR posts, most illogical, poorly reasoned, low value, inconsistent?

From the Archives, written by ChatGPT:

These are provisional candidates for weak reasoning, selected because there is a specific gap between the evidence and the conclusion. This is not an objective ranking of all 40,326 posts in the downloaded archive. Poor reasoning should also be distinguished from low value: an overstated argument can still be unusually useful to think against.

1. Tyler Cowen — Democracy and the Democrats

October 22, 2022 · Main defect: conflating concern about democratic breakdown with unwillingness to accept electoral defeat. Cowen writes that many Democrats believe:

“democracy works satisfactorily only when it delivers sufficiently low gas prices!”

But two positions are logically distinct:

• “Democracy is illegitimate when voters choose policies I dislike.”
• “Voters might elect politicians who subsequently weaken democratic institutions.”

These are illustrative formulations, not quotations from the post. The second does not imply the first. Someone can accept an election’s legitimacy while worrying about what its winner will do. The post does not adequately establish which position its targets hold. It then compares a sympathetic account of classical liberalism with an unsympathetic account of Democrats, without applying an equivalent evidentiary test to both. The opening also dismisses certain anticipated objections through an insult. That discourages scrutiny precisely where the argument needs distinctions. Verdict: One of the clearest candidates for an unfairly framed argument. The useful underlying point—that democracy can produce bad outcomes—does not establish the accusation being made. Read the original post

2. Tyler Cowen — What the hell is going on?

May 25, 2016 · Main defect: an elastic psychological explanation supported by loosely connected observations. The central hypothesis is:

“The contemporary world is not very well built for a large chunk of males.”

That is worth investigating. The trouble comes when male economic difficulties, changing gender relations, political anger, violence, and support for quite different political movements are bundled together under “brutes.” Several things remain unestablished:

• Are the men experiencing the cited disadvantages the same men driving the political developments?
• Does the mechanism explain support for Sanders and Trump in the same way?
• What observation would distinguish resistance to a “nicer” world from resentment of economic insecurity or perceived contempt?
• What does “nice” mean independently of the author’s preferences?

The label risks doing the explanatory work: people support objectionable politics because they are brutish; their politics then becomes evidence of their brutishness. Credit where due: Cowen explicitly calls the hypothesis uncertain and acknowledges weak evidence. That makes it an honest speculative post, rather than a falsely presented research finding. Verdict: A provocative conjecture that outruns its supporting evidence. The caveats are better than the causal argument. Read the original post

3. Alex Tabarrok — The Gaslighting of Parasite

June 25, 2020 · Main defect: treating a contestable interpretation as an unambiguous demonstration. Film spoilers follow. The pivotal sentence is:

“This is not my judgement it is what the film tells us.”

That is exactly what the review needs to establish. Several inferences are too strong:

• A child noticing a smell does not establish that the smell lacks class significance. Material conditions can produce differences that children notice.
• The poor family’s dishonesty does not rule out a critique of inequality. A film can depict morally compromised people within an unjust or damaging social structure.
• Images of sewage and infestation do not uniquely imply that the filmmaker regards the family as morally filthy.
• Other critics reaching a different interpretation does not establish deliberate deception or “gaslighting.”

The strongest version of the review would argue that conventional readings underweight the family’s agency and wrongdoing. Instead, it often claims those observations exclude alternative readings. Verdict: Among the most intellectually stimulating but least securely demonstrated of the reviews considered in this archive analysis. This qualifies the earlier recommendation of the review: it deserved inclusion as provocative criticism. That does not make its claims of interpretive certainty persuasive. Read the original post

4. Tyler Cowen — No, American fascism can’t happen here

March 1, 2018 · Main defect: turning a plausible obstacle into an impossibility claim. The MR excerpt argues:

“American fascism cannot happen anymore because the American government is so large and unwieldy.”

Institutional complexity plausibly makes comprehensive control harder. But the conclusion requires additional premises:

• Why must an authoritarian movement control the entire bureaucracy rather than strategically important parts?
• Why does administrative fragmentation necessarily constrain coercion rather than sometimes obscure responsibility?
• How much control would be sufficient, and what evidence establishes that this threshold cannot be reached?

These are questions about the argument’s structure, independent of whether one thinks a particular American administration qualifies as fascist. The June 16, 2025 retrospective points to institutional resistance and executive setbacks. Those are relevant evidence for constraints. They cannot, by themselves, validate the original categorical impossibility claim. Verdict: A potentially valuable institutional argument weakened by excessive certainty. “Important barriers exist” is much better supported than “cannot happen.” This assessment concerns the argument reproduced on MR; the complete linked Politico essay could not be retrieved for this review. Read the original MR post

5. Alex Tabarrok — The Case for Getting Rid of Borders—Completely

October 13, 2015 · Main defect: moving too quickly from equal moral worth to a particular institutional conclusion. The excerpt argues that foreigners do not possess less inherent moral worth. But that premise alone does not settle whether governments may impose any entry restrictions. Equal moral worth can coexist with arguments about special obligations, institutional responsibilities, competing rights, or consequences. Those arguments might ultimately fail—but they require engagement. Likewise, comparing restrictions on exit with restrictions on entry does not establish their moral equivalence. It poses a question rather than answering it. The longer Atlantic essay, published October 10, 2015, adds economic arguments, so it would be unfair to characterize the case as exclusively moral. Nevertheless, the sweeping dismissal of competing moral frameworks is insufficiently defended. Verdict: Forceful advocacy with a missing argumentative bridge. This is a criticism of the claimed deduction, not a demonstration that open borders is wrong. Read the original MR post

Recurring weaknesses

Across these examples, three weaknesses recur:

• Certainty exceeds the argument: “cannot,” “obviously,” and “the film tells us” substitute for establishing the relevant threshold.
• Opposing positions receive less charitable treatment: disagreement becomes evidence of bad motives, confused psychology, or inability to face reality.
• An interesting mechanism becomes a complete explanation: institutional complexity, male displacement, or equal moral standing is asked to resolve more than it actually establishes.

Allegations of inconsistency across posts require more caution. A changed view, a different context, or a different definition is not necessarily a contradiction. The stronger criticism here is uneven standards of proof within individual arguments. For a rigorous critical essay, the strongest starting points are Democracy and the Democrats and The Gaslighting of Parasite. Both have identifiable logical problems that can be examined without relying on hindsight or agreement with the critic’s politics.

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