Anyone else get that impression? A year ago, SSC had some incisive commentary, and approached a lot of the culture war topics with the sensitivity of someone who deeply understood the nation’s hinterland.
Now, it’s spun into a whole lot of techno-utopianism that I just can’t get on board with, and adopted much in the way of the region’s well-known blinders.
nah, it was bad a year ago too
I don’t think he’s ever been what I’d call a good writer. He does occasionally stumble onto the truth by sheer stubbornness and word volume. But virtually everything he’s ever written on politics or culture is terrible. He is constantly walking into debates seemingly with no understanding of the players or past arguments and then explaining with self-satisfaction why everyone who has discussed this in the past is wrong but he, amazingly, has the insight of Real Truth. And his Real Truths are generally either barely disguised reactionary apologetics, or just something really obviously false.
I don’t think so. This isn’t the first time he’s lived in the SF area; he was there before he did his residency too.
This is total armchair psychology ass-pulling, but if I had to guess, I would say it’s that he’s no longer surrounded by worshippers. For a long time pretty much everyone interacting with him bowed low, but especially in the last year there are more people than ever pushing back against his dumb shit (here, on Twitter, etc.). A lot of people who get used to uncritical devotion can’t handle it when it ends, and respond with defensive anger and more identification with the remaining loyal followers. See also fellow-traveler-in-technoutopianism Paul Graham, who lapped it up while the media worshipped Silicon Valley unconditionally, and then had a freakout once the love affair ended and had to let someone else run YC.
Scott has a great ability to seem reasonable until you actually look closer at what hes tries to imply with his posts. Hes the master of motte and baily tactics, which is ironic considering he popularised the term. You probably just learnt to look closer once he posted stuff you disagreed with.
Scott’s been bad way longer than a year. Slate Star Codex was never good.
He got noticeably worse when he gave up the LiveJournal and launched his own brand, but that was quite a few years ago.
I suggest instead that you are growing as a person. I suggest going back to random old stuff and seeing how it actually measures up.
(and in particular lol at him having any useful contribution on culture wars)
No, Scott’s basically the same. There’s a few things that could be going on here.
In the last year you might have gotten smarter. Most people grow and change, learn in the period of a year. Scott doesn’t, he just follows the same incestuous blog ring that he has for years.
Scott’s strain of techno-libertarianism or techno-utopianism has grown old and the cracks are already appearing. Many of the “unicorns” of Silicon Valley optimism have slowed their growth or gone bust. Tesla looks shakey. Steve Jobs is dead. Marx’s falling rate of profit still haunts. Finance capital looks towards schemes like ICOs and rent-seeking. Those who would criticise that Silicon Valley optimism in the popular press (Jacobin, Current Affairs Magazine, Viewpoint, etc) have found something of a voice in the last couple years and an intellectual midget like Scott can’t really compete.
Similarly the political project that would most align with this techno-utopianism, neoliberalism, has suffered a series of setbacks. Financial crisis in 2007. Trump defeated Clinton. Brexit. Endless war in the Middle East. This leads Scott to the strange position of mildly supporting Sanders even though Scott cannot actually provide a coherent affirmative case for Sanders (not saying there isn’t one, I’m saying Scott doesn’t have the intellectual ability to verbalise it and is still chained to old ideology).
Scott was always bad
I agree