So, lately Scott Alexander and his friends have been making a big
deal over how we claim that their community is too right wing or
alt-right, when according to his reader survey, over 60% fall into the
category liberal or social democratic, and only about 2% openly identify
as alt-right, a tiny amount, which as it happens is the same amount who
identified as Marxist, and none of us say it’s a Marxist blog. Meanwhile
they have about 5% neoractionary and 7% regular conservative, which are
bigger, but still obviously minority views there.
So, anyone who claims his blog’s readership is mainly right wing,
conservative, alt right, or neoreactionary, is, strictly speaking,
either wrong or lying. As Yudkowsky says:
Your annual reminder that Slate Star Codex is not and never was
alt-right, every real stat shows as much, and the primary promoters of
this lie are sociopaths who get off on torturing incredibly nice targets
like Scott A.
He does kind of have a point, but an argument doesn’t end the moment
one person cites one statistic that superficially supports their case,
so I think we should go over objections and counterarguments, and decide
how much weight to give this criticism. The main objections and
responses I can think of are:
- Is it really fair to call us “liars” instead of people who disagree
with him? Is it really fair to lump all disagreement into the category
of “torture”? And what statistic does he have proving that most of us
are sociopaths? Is there a survey he can point to proving that? If not,
then isn’t he also a liar and sociopath by his own standard?
- How many people are making the claim that that a majority
of SSC readers are alt right, conservative, or neoreactionary? I
personally believe that 5% neoreactionary is far too much for any
community that pretends to value rational thought, the same way I would
if it were 5% flat Earthers. Yudkowsky could certainly take the position
that 2% alt right or 5% neocreactionary is healthy, but that would be a
value disagreement, not either of us being liars. Are we actually
posting fake statistics? If so, we should stop and apologize. But I’m
not totally sure we are. We should get to the bottom of this.
- Has anyone done much analysis on the comments on /r/slatestarcodex
or /r/themotte to check their political viewpoint and upvote/downvote
scores? I understand that Scott Alexander has produced his own data on
this, but it was low quality and biased in my opinion.
- How much can we break the statistics down by readers vs. commenters
vs. frequent commenters, and can we compare blog stats to subreddit
stats? Is it possible that the liberals reading are mostly lurkers,
while alt righters are disproportionately likely to comment? I really
have no idea, I’m honestly not great with data. It would be very
interesting to see if anyone has looked into this. (I say this as a self
identified liberal on the survey who stopped commenting because I
thought there was too much alt right presence in the comments, but still
reads the blog.)
- How much should we trust self reported information? We don’t know
what standards people are using, and someone who self identifies as a
liberal might be viewed as a reactionary by someone else. (This has
actually happened to me before.) If someone considers me a reactionary,
are they wrong, lying, or do they just hold a different opinion from me?
Those are three entirely separate categories.
- I wonder if this is partially my fault for complaining that SSC and
its subreddit have a right wing bias, when this isn’t very precise or
accurate. Someone could be pro-life and want lower taxes, which would
probably put them firmly in the right wing category, but I wouldn’t
object to this in the same way I object to much of what is posted in the
culture war threads. I think what people find repugnant about the
community is more a certain strain of racist, classist, misogynistic,
and anti-LGBTQ viewpoints often associated with conservatism, rather
than conservatism per se.
- In light of the last few points, maybe it would be better if we
complained less about them being too right wing, and more about specific
beliefs we disagree with, or statistics that better support our case?
For example, the readership is about 88% white, while being less than 1%
black, and is about 58% male. Maybe it would just be better to say that
we think they have an anti-black and anti-female bias? I personally
dislike the practice of looking up statistics to supposedly “prove” that
your opponents are objectively wrong, without delving into the nuance of
it at all, because I consider that a form of scientism and
pseudo-objectivity. But if the rationalists insist on playing that game
with us, maybe we should do it with numbers that better support our
case?
- By the way, should we take a stronger stance against doxxing and
harassment? I realize we are officially firmly against it, but I just
wonder if we could make our position even stronger. There’s a subtext
here that while we’re against it, it’s perhaps partly because it makes
us look bad, or because the admins don’t want us to, and I wonder if we
were sending a more full throated message, rationalists would have to
deal with less repugnant and unforgivable harassment in real life. For
example, maybe there should be a rule against mentioning anything about
anyone’s real name or location, even if it’s already public. Like if
someone said, “The Shtartle Code, run by a Wisconsin based psychology
professor under the pseudonym Scott Ayerman,” maybe we should ask them
to take out any extraneous info, because even if it’s not doxxing it
could form part of a breadcrumb trail that someone uses to dox him.
Because even stating that Scott Ayerman isn’t his real name gives
someone a clue to start looking for his real name. I’m not saying that
we should label people as doxxers even when they’re doing no such thing.
But maybe we should just have more of a zero tolerance type policy for
the common good. Of course, it’s wrong to say that this is a doxxing sub
when it’s already strictly against the rules here, so maybe we should
just ignore the strawman criticism, but at the same time, if we can do a
little more, maybe we should.
- When Yudkowsky and all them complain about sociopaths, are they
mostly talking about us, or are there other groups we should worry about
that actually are full of sociopaths? (It seems like the rationality
community is full of people who assume any criticism of anyone is aimed
at them, and I hope I’m not doing the same thing here.)
The bottom line of all this is: how should we respond to a lot of
recent criticism of /r/sneerclub? Should we try to refute it? Or, are
there some parts that are true, and if so, should we change our
behavior?
According to the 2018 survey data, ~65% of users are rightwing or libertarian if you filter the responses by comment frequency. And that’s on the main site’s comments, which are usually considered to be less rightwing than the /r/slatestarcodex culture war threads were.
I think “we” should respond to the criticism by not being a unified team with rules, strategies, and completely shared goals. Or, actually, prespond to the criticism?
My personal view:
It’s not that I assume that 50% or 30% or some other number of SSC/CW/LW people are neoreactionaries or fascists etc. I guess it would be kinda interesting to know the number? But my alarm is that Team Rationalist is demonstrably open to these voices and has been a kind of nursery to many of them. You don’t have to be mostly right wing in order to be dangerously productive of the right wing.
The explicitly political stuff is only part of what distresses me about Team Rationalist. The uncritical technophilia is intellectually bankrupt and societally risky. Highjacking important and useful tools that I teach and use in real life (probability theory, Bayesianism, statistical inference, etc) to start a cult of personality also seems distressing.
I guess I think it’s probably a net good if Team Rationalist spends tons of time worrying bootlessly about some random internet forum.
I would just note that the things we sneer at are the things we sneer at; somebody commenting or lurking on SSC or LessWrong is not immediately under that banner. Specific posts and specific people are mocked.
Yudkowsky projects at all dissenters; he should be summarily ignored and mocked. See above.
While I agree in general with the principle of making things take a little bit of puzzle-piecing to get things together, what is done here seems wholly adequate.
On the one hand, yes, on the other, this is what conservatism is. cf Corey Robin’s thesis in The Reactionary Mind. One of the few good applications of the idea pOliTicSi iS thE mInD KiLlER is to ask what you actually mean by conservatism and then compare it to close readings of actual conservative theory.
Anyway, people here object to the Rationalist Community (TM) on different levels and for different reasons - Rationalism(TM) is Bad Philosophy, but it isn’t intrinsically fascist, for instance, so if we’re mocking that it’s for their intellectual bankruptcy and arrogance. The fact SSC and the CW thread harbor fascists is a different issue, and the fascists themselves are a slightly different issue than harboring fascists. You likely possess the resources to break this down yourself.
i’m inclined to say “very little”. beyond the general tendency of fascists to lie if they think it helps, there’s plenty of obvious examples of people claiming to be “liberal” (or specifically “classical liberal”) in the context of arguing over anti-feminist or anti-“sjw” views. the idea that ssc’s commentariat is mostly left or liberal seems ludicrous remembering that the discussions of hbd ended up taking over the culture war thread to a point where the mods stepped in to ban them.
in general i don’t trust any claims of being left or liberal or whatever online because i think the political compass and other similar things have thoroughly skewed what people use these words to mean on internet forums.
Why even accept the statistic in the first place? Unless there was some formal survey done, thats all from the slatestarcodex survey. The google docs survey that said the average IQ of the ssc readership is in the 99th percentile plus other oddities. So I reject the premise, but I can still answer some of these.
No. Sneerclub is based around link posts to actual real comments or blog posts etc. If anyone doesn’t trust our characterization of a comment, they are free to click through and read as much context as they want.
Don’t know. Don’t care.
Nope. Feel free to do the work scraping reddit comments.
For the SSC survey? very little.
Why? sneerclub isnt a political campaign.
Yeah, rationalists. Especially ssc commentors.
Edit: Also, that ssc survey has other interesting factoids in it. The ssc readership, according to scott, has 11x as many neo reactionaries as black people, and 7x as many alt-righters. Interpret that as you will.
Would you do me a favor, and gather together a list of each of his reader surveys going back as far as you can. I think if you’d do that, we’d have better grounds to analyze what it means to say that his community it “liberal” or “alt-right.”
As to the criticisms of sneerclub:
It is very clear that by calling us liars, sociopaths, afflicted with the “dark triad,” etc—Yud et al is engaging in clear ad hominem. And if you love rationalism and civil discourse, that is a big problem. It is no small thing that maligning members of this little subreddit as “evil,” then us being impercise in calling rationalists “alt-right” really seems pretty mild.
I do think that we do complain very specifically about their specific toxic beliefs (HBD, apologia for racism, anti-feminism, etc). But I don’t think that matters, because in Scott’s book we’re a scapegoat and in Yud’s book we are malicious narcissists. It’s more important to them that they can point at us as bad guys, and actually addressing our concerns (whether explicit or not) undermines the symbolic effect they hope to capitalize. For if they were to engage honestly with our concerns, they would not longer be able to treat us like boogie-men or scapegoats.
As to the question as to the question of doxxing. 1. it is against the administrative rules of reddit and against the principles of sneering to engage duplicitous actions like pretending to be a patient of Scott. 2. it has been asserted that we support or instigate doxxing against Scott is clearly a vile smear against our good name. But perhaps more importantly: if Scott doesn’t want to tarnish his name with associations with racists and fascists just because they make a tiny minority of his readers, then he should extend us t he same courtesy and not insinuated that our sub supports or harbors doxxers and harassers.
Not going to claim that I speak for anyone else, but I struggle to see this as an a left vs right issue. From what I’ve seen of this subreddit, it’s people venting and satirising others. It’s usually aimed at those that express or facilitate odorous views, and those that display an arrogance that exceeds their actual understanding. Not sure I agree with each individual sneer on this subreddit, but I agree that people who fall into those categories should be mocked when it’s clear that you can’t talk to them person to person. Some people can’t be engaged in any other way. Sometimes you have to give up on engaging them, and appeal to the rest of the community instead. Personally I struggle with being sneerly, but if people don’t care that they don’t understand that they don’t understand, what else can you do?
There are obviously ideological differences between the people who post on this subreddit and those they mock, but I can’t see how they fit an easy divide like left vs right, presuming that everybody on this subreddit easily fits the same category.
Just because a reactionary calls themselves a “liberal” or a “social democrat” doesn’t make it true. SSC is a cesspit of reactionaries.
Not this.
Looking at your userpage, you seem to comment in theMotte/SSC about as frequently as you comment here. So I’m not sure how I feel about all the plural first-person pronouns in this post. Like, it’s fine if you as an individual want to comment in both places. I’m not gonna police your posting nor demand that you pick a side. But I’m not sure why I should accept you speaking for the group as a whole.
These sorts of questions are fine to ask, and I’m generally pro introspection. But I’m not sure why you’re asking these questions in this context for sneerclub as a whole, rather than personally grappling with what you believe.
Are you new here? This subreddit is relatively light on political circlejerking and heavy on primary sources (if you want to call a CW comment that). Compared to other political/adjacent subreddits.
also yikes effortpost
I want to know how people can consider themselves liberal if the only economists they listen to are libertarians who teach at George Mason.
I’ll be honest, I’m pretty sure that SSW and the rationalist community in general are overwhelmingly reactionary and any so-called ‘survey’ to the opposite is simple bullshit.
[deleted]
They consider me someone who doxxed Scott Alexander because I mentioned him by name in a post. I’ve gotten DMs from people telling me I should be nicer to people who have “impressed them”. Hell, when I came into Sneerclub last year, they considered me a demon for giving Kathy a voice.
I give their criticisms exactly zero validity. More champagne please.
I honestly don’t think they’re worth going to that much trouble. They don’t go to that much trouble to understand anyone who disagrees with them either. They’re just a circle-jerk producing little new or useful information. Who cares what they say they think?
stop saying “we”, I looked through your comment history.
This is absolutely standard for rationalists.
Not at all. Your guys are citing your own self-descriptions as evidence third parties should agree with you as objective descriptions. This is nonsense.
I would first want you guys to put forward any evidence that this is a thing that is happening and you’re not just making shit up. Because so far there isn’t any, at all.
Thing is, when you talk with rationalists, “social democratic” means “supportive of a generous welfare state but only for the right, white, kind of people”, “liberal” means “libertarian but also let them eat UBI cake so actually it’s liberal”, and “libertarian” means “neoreactionary with extra steps”.
You aren’t the bad guys. The only people who are bad are the people who harassed and doxxed Scott in real life. Making fun of people on the internet doesn’t make you a bad person. As someone who posts on r/drama, I admit it can be really fun (and a huge waste of time). I am admittedly a huge fan of Scott (EY not so much), but by posting his thoughts online, he opened himself to criticism. It’s really that simple.
You got jebaited pretty hard here.
[deleted]