{"id":30243,"date":"2016-10-07T01:00:37","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T05:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=30243"},"modified":"2016-10-07T08:00:51","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T12:00:51","slug":"qotd-abuse-of-poes-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/10\/07\/qotd-abuse-of-poes-law\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Abuse of Poe&#8217;s Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Poe\u2019s Law is the belief that some religious fundamentalists are so stupid that it\u2019s impossible to distinguish them from a parody.<\/p>\n<p>This is all nice and well in the abstract, but when applied to a particular case, where a particular atheist has fallen for a parody site, it tends to be an unfortunate stand-in for \u201cSome atheists are so ignorant that it\u2019s impossible for them to distinguish religious people from a parody of religious people.\u201d Listen:<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> \u201cThe Pope just said that everyone who isn\u2019t creationist should be put in jail! What an outrage!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>B:<\/strong> \u201cUh, you <em>do<\/em> know that\u2019s on <em>The Onion<\/em>, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>A:<\/strong> \u201cOh, well, haha, Poe\u2019s Law, just goes to show how dumb those religious people are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Problem is, Poe\u2019s Law isn\u2019t limited to religion any more. Now it\u2019s politics, culture, science, and anywhere else where one side thinks their opponents are so stupid it\u2019s literally impossible to parody them (ie everywhere on both sides). You spread the dumbest and most obviously fake rumors to smear your opponents. And then when you\u2019re caught, instead of admitting you were fooled, you claim Poe\u2019s Law and smear your opponents even more.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, once you\u2019re willing to admit this dynamic exists, it can make for some pretty interesting guessing games and unintentional Intellectual Turing Tests \u2013 see the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/poeslawinaction\/\" target=\"_blank\">Poe\u2019s Law In Action subreddit<\/a> for some examples.<\/p>\n<p>Scott Alexander, <a href=\"http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2015\/01\/21\/these-are-a-few-more-of-my-least-favorite-things\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;These Are A Few (More) Of My (Least) Favourite Things&#8221;, <em>Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2015-01-21.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Poe\u2019s Law is the belief that some religious fundamentalists are so stupid that it\u2019s impossible to distinguish them from a parody. This is all nice and well in the abstract, but when applied to a particular case, where a particular atheist has fallen for a parody site, it tends to be an unfortunate stand-in for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,11],"tags":[447,463],"class_list":["post-30243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-atheism","tag-parody"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7RN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30243"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36057,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243\/revisions\/36057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}