The 'Books give the same power as philanthropy because i have successful blog which gives me some influence' physically hurt me. He just forgot most blogs and books are not successful. But fat stacks always give direct influence.

"wilfully obtuse" might as well be Scott’s personal catchphrase at this point.

Same. But we’re not alone. In his [wiki article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Reich#Personal_life_and_education) it literally says: >He is often confused with Robert Reich, professor of political science at the University of California - Berkeley and former secretary of the department of labor.

> pure libertarianism (skepticism of those who exercise power) Uh, libertarianism is all about bouncing on power's dick.

I wonder if Reichs opinion of ssc has changed, after the massive amount of willfully obtuse comments which refuse to steelman what he said.

Imagine Hitlersplaining to a guy named Reich.

[deleted]

He pretty clearly skims. I think he also has a problem where his brain is so riddled with untruths that he kind of just ignores what's right in front of him. A good example is in his review of Singer's writings on Marx: >But here I have to give conservatives their due. As far as I can tell, Marx literally, so strongly as to be unstrawmannable, believed there was no such thing as human nature and everything was completely malleable. >>Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. >And: >>It is evidence that economics establishes an alienated form of social intercourse as the essential, original, and natural form >Which Singer glosses with: >>This is the gist of Marx’s objection to classical economics. Marx does not challenge the classical economists within the presuppositions of their science. Instead, he takes a viewpoint outside those presuppositions and argues that private property, competition, greed, and so on are to be found only in a particular condition of human existence, a condition of alienation. >I understand this is still a matter of some debate in the Marxist community. But it seems to me that if Singer is right, if this is genuinely Marx’s view, it seems likely to be part of what contributed to his inexcusable error above. The problem of course is, *if you read the quotations carefully*, Marx was never saying that there is "no such thing as human nature" and that "everything is completely malleable". He just says that the 'essence of man' is not inherent in every single person, but rather the essence of man is an ensemble of social relations. Where is "completely malleable" here? Where is "no such thing as human nature" - Marx *literally* just said there's an essence! Scott is quoting passages *that prove Scott's point wrong*. He's simply not reading what's written down in plain english in front of him because a conservative apparently told him that Marx believed humans are completely malleable. The second quote is "that economics establishes an alienated form of social intercourse as the essential, original, and natural form". This is just saying that economists look at human interactions under capitalism and posit this as original and natural - that it has existed throughout history. He's saying that other economists are wrong about humans, not that there is "no such thing as human nature" and that "everything was completely malleable". Readers who are not Marxists look carefully! Ask yourself if Marx ever says anything even approaching "everything was completely malleable" in either of these excerpts. If not, why did Scott present these passages as good evidence for such claims? Is it because he does not read carefully? Notice that he says Singer "glosses" this issue. But there *is no issue*! Singer is losing points in Scott Alexander's mind because he's not fully addressing a "problem" that doesn't exist. A problem that Scott Alexander half remembers from some (uncited, of course) conservative commentary. Then Scott hedges his bet by saying "a matter of some debate in the Marxist community" (which Marxists? where? - we're never told - likely because Scott never read any). Well, which is it? Does Marx say this "so strongly as to be unstrawmannable" or is this a matter of "some debate" (that we're never actually shown)? An absolute mess of an argument that could have been avoided by 1. Actually reading. 2. Forgetting what conservatives have told him about Marx for 10 minutes, enough time to read and think critically about what's right in front of him. Prior knowledge accumulates like junk in Scott's brain and it ends up polluting all new knowledge. In his brain he seems to weigh "something I heard a conservative say once" as heavily (or heavier!) than the text which is actually physically in front of him. You can see this again in the linked comments where he says the following: >Neither Koch brother did half as much for libertarianism as Ayn Rand, and Chomsky does more than Soros can to justify God’s ways to man. In what fantasy world are Soros and Chomsky on the same politcal team? Scott Alexander has apparently read Chomsky, but did he *comprehend* it? That's the question. edit: Also that Singer quote about "Marx does not challenge the classical economists within the presuppositions of their science" is complete junk because that's what the first ~200 pages of Capital Vol. 1 are about (well, more than that really but the first parts most strongly) and he literally has a book called "A Contribution To The Critique Of Political Economy". Did Singer do the readings?

Typically he reads the books and then attributes to them theses they don’t put forth but which Scott imagines the author would advance if he were speaking face-to-face with them. For instance he clearly read Manufacturing Consent but instead of understanding that Chomsky and Herman were formulating and evaluating a particular model of how propaganda functions in liberal democracies, he quotes their thesis as > everybody else got these genocides wrong, and we are going to tell you the truth about them. Missing the point this thoroughly is actually pretty impressive since someone who just read the title and byline of the book could probably get closer to the actual thesis, which itself is stated explicitly in the first sentence of the preface: > In this book, we sketch out a “Propaganda model” and apply it to the performance of the mass media of the United States. The man is just so disastrously inept at evaluating arguments and emotionally incapable of contending with disagreement that he cannot help but mutate the texts he reads into the ones he wanted to attack before he started reading. We should applaud his efficiency that he finally quit wasting his time with the books and now cuts straight to the chase.

Yeah, I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he read those books and the ideas failed to penetrate his skull, but ironically I may have been to charitable.

Thanks, im always a bit weary to add ssc sneers as he is basically the only rationalist who i semi reg still read outside of sc. And I dont want to make all of sc about one scott.

Eh, while that might be true, "being right" doesen't really have much to do whether or not something is influential or not.