Aaronson’s issues with the NYT article are pure gold. A taste
(emphasis mine):
7. Despite thousands of words about the content of SSC, the piece
never gives Scott a few uninterrupted sentences in his own voice, to
convey his style. This is something the New Yorker piece did do, and
which would help readers better understand the wit, humor, charity, and
self-doubt that made SSC so popular. To see what I mean, read the NYT’s
radically-abridged quotations from Scott’s now-classic riff on the Red,
Blue, and Gray Tribes and decide for yourself whether they capture the
spirit of the original (alright, I’ll quote the relevant passage myself
at the bottom of this post). Scott has the property, shared by many
of my favorite writers, that if you just properly quote him, the words
leap off the page, wriggling free from the grasp of any bracketing
explanations and making a direct run for the reader’s brain. All
the more reason to quote him!
8. The piece describes SSC as “astoundingly verbose.” A more neutral
way to put it would be that Scott has produced a vast quantity of
intellectual output. When I finish a Scott Alexander piece, only in
a minority of cases do I feel like he spent more words examining a
problem than its complexities really warranted. Just as often, I’m left
wanting more.
I love how their idea of a "hit piece" involves "not directly quoting the author's work for extended snippets", as if this was somehow a common thing newspapers did.
This is something I learned not to do in writing back in, like, middle school - it's usually a sign that you don't understand the work you're discussing, or that you're trying to pad your word count. Pretty astonishing that Aaronson hasn't learned that lesson in all his years working in academia.
>*Scott has the property, shared by many of my favorite writers, that if you just properly quote him, the words leap off the page, wriggling free from the grasp of any bracketing explanations and making a direct run for the reader’s brain.*
Good grief. Over the top much? It sounds like Wayne & Garth fawning over Alice Cooper.
OTOH...
"Wait, that's it - it's like the wriggling words infuse directly into the frontal lobe. Why, it's nothing less than virtual psychiatry!"
>The piece describes SSC as “astoundingly verbose.” A more neutral way to put it would be that Scott has produced a vast quantity of intellectual output.
lol thats a pretty good sneer in itself
> the wit, humor, charity, and **self-doubt**
On the one hand, sure, both Scotts are teeming with insecurity. But self-doubt in terms of intellectual modesty? loooooooooooooool.
I don't like sneering at Aaronson, so I'll just say that JFC, I wish these people could figure out that "charity" and "empathy" isn't, "being nice to people just like you." That's... that's not "charity" that's basic primate, no, basic fucking **mammal** behavior.
After reading about what happened to Kathy Forth- which the NYT
article neglects to mention in any way- I simply can’t take any claim
that the article is a “hit piece” on the rationalist community
seriously.
I think this is an important takeway from the rationalist community controversies, every time there is a controversy, their reaction to the controversy shows just how irrational they are. It shows how bad they are at practicing what they preach.
All the talk about outgroups, toxioplasmosis, tabooing words etc, it all goes into the bin, as soon as people go after the community.
'we should beware creating tribal conflicts' 'sneerclub made covid worse!'
What struck me the most was Aaronson’s mention of just how long he
spent talking to the reporter. Then add that amount of time for every
source cited in the article and others not named.
I see some Rationalists trying to refute the piece point by point by
challenging whether each conclusion had enough support from the given
evidence, as if it were a scientific paper (or in their case, a long
online argument). But that’s not how journalism works: you do an
enormous amount of research and get a clear sense of what’s true, then
only a tiny fraction of the raw facts go into the final result,
sometimes in a way that’s still difficult for others outside the
newsroom to verify if you promised the source anonymity or interviewed
them solely “on background”. It is meant to be informative, not
persuasive. So it’s not meaningful to ask Do the facts presented in
the article sufficiently prove the conclusions?, because that’s a
dodge from the real question, Are the article’s conclusions
correct? Nobody who’s criticizing it needed the NY Times’ reporting
to know whether Rationalism is a gateway drug to neoreaction etc.
I’m really puzzled by this cult of personality around Scott
Alexander. I mean it’s not just online like with Yudkowsky, there are
respected scientists and academics (e.g. Aaronson) who claim he’s a
“great intellectual”, but having read many SSC posts and all of the most
popular ones it’s still unclear to me what are the prized intellectual
contributions. Can anyone name a single serious idea of Scott Alexander,
even a flawed one, outside the field of psychiatry?
My theory is that Siskind's eugenical views are flattering to a certain type of person. Academics love to be told that their success is due to them being inherently smart and good, rather than being largely based on luck and social circumstance.
His writing style also more generally flatters his nerdy readers even without dipping into eugenics. It's that aesthetic of, "you're a clever young man, you recognize academic memes when they're presented to you, reading is a form of stimming that appeals to you and you deserve to be treated in a more forgiving way than you are for your social deficits." That's how the whole rationalist sphere markets itself really; as a sort of self-soothing for awkward, iconoclastic nerds.
The issue of course being that when you coddle every nerd's fear of rejection by declaring condemnation and ostracism off limits, you get a safe space for misogynists, racists and fascists to recruit without limit.
A shift supervisor at the Mistakes-Blogging-For-Education branch of
the Shitty Opinion Factory is angry on the internet again. Hackernews,
naturally, is outraged as well: just because the comments section of
some asshole’s blog happens to be a place where technolibertarians
cross-pollenate with white supremacists, says Hackernews, doesn’t mean
it’s fair to focus on that instead of on how smart that blog’s
readership has convinced itself it is. So smart, in fact, that to
criticize them at all is tantamount to an admission that you’re up to
something. This sort of censorship, concludes Hackernews, should never
have been allowed to be published.
That is so old news I had to look up who Michael Richards was.
But yes, that means there are 3 semi-relevant meanings, I meant N as a variable, but also there is n-gate.com the site making fun of the orange site.
Looked it up: Facebook is nr 7 in the most visited site in the world, (youtube is nr 2). The rest is shopping or search basically. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_popular_websites
(I assumed facebook would be the first social media site, I was wrong due to YT).
Any sources on the “majority of internet users post under their real names” claim? I’m genuinely curious (and skeptical). If true, that’s definitely a recent phenomenon.
once you teach
people that they can think for themselves (There is this common
saying [as in I have seen it a few times since NYTA-Gate] about SSC that
it somehow teaches you to think for yourself, which seems a bit
counterfactual, esp as most people seem to have decided that this
article is somehow a hitpiece.
I also saw sneerclub is being blamed for the ‘hitpiece’, as the NYT
talked to Dgerard and Sandifer. Which is normal for Aaronson.
And that is all I’m going to say about this, because my long comments
on Aaronson are starting to make me uncomfortable.
E: one thing, I know people love the red/blue/gray thing, but damn is
that description of the political divide classist. As the SRA (socialist
rifle association) fans say, go far enough left and you get your guns
back.
It’s a typically self-flattering taxonomy. Only instead of the usual dummies vs smarties dichotomy, this is a more “sophisticated” trichotomy with two groups of dummies fighting over mere “issues” while Neo and the smarties understand reality as it truly is.
> Neo and the smarties understand reality as it truly is.
In the early 00s, I was aware of a handful of confused young men that made a habit of taking pictures of themselves with japanese swords while wearing ill-fitting black trench coats and posting these online. Unsurprisingly, their views on a variety of topics fell squarely in what would now be called the rationalist camp.
Reading a few of these comments is so depressing, so many of Scotts readers are fully on board on the 'hit piece' thing (or worse), and some are even recreating Scotts 'worst argument in the world' logical fallacy again, and thinking they are having some incredible revelation. Not only are they not original, they keep reinventing the same stuff over and over again. The obsession with creating more and more rules of thumbs, fallacies, and biasses to avoid is tiring.
blah blah blah. a normal point of view presented by a normal person -
nevermind a good one - wouldn’t attract so many nazis and other
evil shitheads and then fail so hard at fighting them or shutting them
out of a community organized around it. address that or shut the fuck up
about it forever, Scotts.
Aaronson’s issues with the NYT article are pure gold. A taste (emphasis mine):
After reading about what happened to Kathy Forth- which the NYT article neglects to mention in any way- I simply can’t take any claim that the article is a “hit piece” on the rationalist community seriously.
What struck me the most was Aaronson’s mention of just how long he spent talking to the reporter. Then add that amount of time for every source cited in the article and others not named.
I see some Rationalists trying to refute the piece point by point by challenging whether each conclusion had enough support from the given evidence, as if it were a scientific paper (or in their case, a long online argument). But that’s not how journalism works: you do an enormous amount of research and get a clear sense of what’s true, then only a tiny fraction of the raw facts go into the final result, sometimes in a way that’s still difficult for others outside the newsroom to verify if you promised the source anonymity or interviewed them solely “on background”. It is meant to be informative, not persuasive. So it’s not meaningful to ask Do the facts presented in the article sufficiently prove the conclusions?, because that’s a dodge from the real question, Are the article’s conclusions correct? Nobody who’s criticizing it needed the NY Times’ reporting to know whether Rationalism is a gateway drug to neoreaction etc.
I’m really puzzled by this cult of personality around Scott Alexander. I mean it’s not just online like with Yudkowsky, there are respected scientists and academics (e.g. Aaronson) who claim he’s a “great intellectual”, but having read many SSC posts and all of the most popular ones it’s still unclear to me what are the prized intellectual contributions. Can anyone name a single serious idea of Scott Alexander, even a flawed one, outside the field of psychiatry?
Quoting from n-gate.com
[deleted]
once you teach people that they can think for themselves (There is this common saying [as in I have seen it a few times since NYTA-Gate] about SSC that it somehow teaches you to think for yourself, which seems a bit counterfactual, esp as most people seem to have decided that this article is somehow a hitpiece.
I also saw sneerclub is being blamed for the ‘hitpiece’, as the NYT talked to Dgerard and Sandifer. Which is normal for Aaronson.
And that is all I’m going to say about this, because my long comments on Aaronson are starting to make me uncomfortable.
E: one thing, I know people love the red/blue/gray thing, but damn is that description of the political divide classist. As the SRA (socialist rifle association) fans say, go far enough left and you get your guns back.
blah blah blah. a normal point of view presented by a normal person - nevermind a good one - wouldn’t attract so many nazis and other evil shitheads and then fail so hard at fighting them or shutting them out of a community organized around it. address that or shut the fuck up about it forever, Scotts.