I was very surprised to see the investment solicitation, and it seems
likely the “friend” who has him writing this is one of the YCombinator
VCs who induced him to Substack and guaranteed him a living from it,
which makes this the most outrageously bought-and-paid-for editorial
content I’ve seen in a long time that didn’t at least have “advertorial”
written on it somewhere. Disturbing because this is exactly the kind of
unacceptable violation of journalistic norms that the anti-Substack
concern trolls have been arguing would happen.
If you knew GAME THEORY you'd understand that being famous for not taking kickbacks is how you get to the juiciest kickbacks \*taps head\*
Actually, was he? I suppose if he ever touched on the subject it was in the middle of a 14k word post involving at least 3 sequences, Narnia and Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment so I might have missed it.
Totally agree, I religiously read Mic Wright (an independent journalist) who uses substack and in fact today his daily newsletter was a critique of smug prestige columnists who look down on people who use non-traditional forms of communicating their ideas. Fair enough to Siskind for that. The criticism is more of the hypocrisy (if hypocrisy is the case) because he trades on the claim that he’s on the up-and-up; it’s a venial sin but that isn’t an excuse.
There is also not just money, mutual promotion is also a thing. Be nice to and promote scientology, they will be nice [to you and promote you](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185183/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1).
Dr. C F confirmed for being a scientologist.
E: the movie itself isn't even that bad for a shitty science fiction movie, people just love to hate it like they love to hate nickleback. The problem is just that Hubbard isn't that good of a fiction writer (his non-fiction also sucks).
I really enjoyed *Battlefield Earth* when I was like 12. Dunno if I would enjoy it now, but I really liked that part where the guy learned all human knowledge Matrix-style and then went back to his tribe and was like “dude, isosceles triangle, man, two sides are equal to each other”.
Some unexpected insights in this subthread. Funny how once he starts
talking about something non-political, people start to notice his “I’m
just joking” and “This thing is usually wrong but… [does the thing]”
rhetoric. From various users:
Putting the verbatim investment pitch in the comments, then directing
readers to the comments to read the investment pitch is a weird way of
trying to appear impartial.
…
I agree that it’s obviously joke-y in that it exaggerates for
humorous effect and isn’t meant to be taken literally… It functions as a
sort of weakman, as if saying “if the best argument against it is that
the FDA banned it, how bad could it be?”
…
The initial part of the article did just feel like it was getting all
the bad stuff out of the way, and the humorously over the top
descriptions / Vice quote isn’t really scary, it almost seems like a
rhetorical strawman because they are so over the top.
…
In almost every location wherein you remotely touched the danger of
DNP, it was immediately met with a comedic comment.
He's such a worm in the way he handles things like this. He goes from saying he was "just joking" in one part to implying an obvious joke of his was serious depending on what he wants to argue.
That way he can make non-conformist claims, yet pretend he didn't make these claims, and of course still profit when his friend's company goes public.
I'm sorry. I was confused that your entire reply was a quote.
" Maybe you should ask yourself why you're "all for contrarianism". "
Because I learn more listening to a diversity of arguments and sifting through them than listening to the same argument, over and over with its weaknesses unexamined. Also, I've found that the desire for 'consensus' among experts tends to incentivize chilling effects by narrowing the Overton window. See Stephen Jay Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium. He was basically hounded till he walked his theory back to 'genetic gradualism.' But with the discovery of epigentics it seems he may well have been correct. It's this push for an echo chamber in response to criticism of expertise (by experts) that I severely distrust.
Granted, there's a huge potential for hubris when people who lack even a basic education in a topic try to be contrarian. But when it comes to someone with a solid foundation in a discipline, even if their beliefs are fundamentally wrong their criticisms are often very educational.
I'd point to someone like Deusberg who believed that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. Was his fundamental thesis correct? No, of course not. But I learned a fair bit about study design, issues with various tests, the toxicity of AZT, etc. by reading things he wrote.
It's this fundamental drive to "Be Right" even to the exclusion of practicing good methodology or understanding the weakness in a given model, that I feel is addressed by contrarianism. Most people, including experts, have their blind spots, their institutional biases, and even their infighting. I was wearing a mask during the COVID epidemic back when the CDC recommended against doing so. Hubris aside, sometimes experts do get things wrong. Sometimes it takes a generation for an institutional bias to change. Harvard professor Paul Ewald has made some interesting observations about the evolution of disease virulence that seem to have incompletely permeated epidemiological 'expertise' even +20 years after they were put to print. Most articles for public consumption don't even acknowledge the internal conflict on this point.
And quite frankly, I find debates more engaging than lectures.
I don't see Scott as being less evidence-motivated than other sources, though bias is endemic to human thought. We can try to be aware of our biases, and Scott seems to be to a decent extent, so far as I'm aware. Though I'm sure there are things I've missed. It's when people start believing they have no biases that it becomes harder to acknowledge blind spots. Even, say, scanning electron microscopy is the result of selection to show a particular effect since many pictures are often taken and only a few chosen. Bias is pervasive.
The issue I have with these ad hominem attacks against a person's motivation is that they're almost always selectively applied. We quickly get into the realm of "You can't trust the climate scientists! They're doing it for a paycheck!" Which I don't think serves anyone. Or else we excuse the scientists their paycheck because they're part of our tribe but believe that money will corrupt some other group. Most of the time it's better to just focus on the truth value of an argument or the soundness of its methodology as opposed to selectively applied ad hominems.
*Couldn't you have learned these things by reading someone else?*
These things were not emphasized by other sources. So... no, frankly. At least, not without pursuing a Masters degree or PhD in the relevant field. Debate makes information accessible.
>" I think you're stacking the deck by picking Stephen Jay Gould as your example instead of, say, Michael Behe or Ken Ham. Context matters. "
Fair enough. You cut, I choose. Lets use your example of Behe, then. In Behe's debate with Miller regarding the evolution of the bacterial flagellum, Miller argued that the Type Three Secretory system could have been a precursor to the flagellum.
[http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html](http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html)
However, evidence seems to suggest the opposite, that the TTSS is likely a *descendant* of the TTSS.
[https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1002983](https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1002983)
In retrospect, I find Miller's position a bit naïve since regardless of the paradigm one is working from I wouldn't expect an organ which ***parasitized complex plants*** to have ***preceded the evolution of complex plants***. But perhaps Miller was thinking that the TTSS could have just been some kind of biological jet engine instead, which makes some sense. In any case, the mistake must not have been an obvious mistake if an expert made it, right? It's only obvious in retrospect.
In short; Behe served a useful role as gadfly in that he made a testable, predictive argument contra Miller.
I can't speak for you, but this outcome led me to make slightly different predictions.
*" but this is misleading if you're actually trying to assess the value of expertise in general. "*
I'm ***not***. I'm trying to assess ***the value of expanding one's Overton Window to include consideration of arguments from educated contrarians when formulating one's views.***
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton\_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)
I'm saying that listening to contrarians has value, even if that value naturally includes some greater risk of the contrarian being wrong. I'm ***not*** dismissing the value of expertise in general. The mainstream view should also be included in any discussion. To put a finer point on it; people who ***only*** listen to a selected list of contrarians are worse off than those who only listen to those within the mainstream. But... that's not what I'm advocating for.
" [Deusberg's work was used to justify public policy that caused an estimated 300,000 deaths.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg#Consequences_of_AIDS_denialism) I think on the whole, the world would have been better off if he wasn't taken seriously. "
Yes. And we're talking about a scenario where there was a rather strong attempt to de-platform Deusberg. I remember talking to my genetics professor about it at the time (around 1999 or so.) He said that he disagreed with Deusberg's position, but also disagreed with the attempts to delegitimatize him. Speaking for myself, those kinds of attacks against an expert can move people to see a disagreement as a conflict rather than a mistake. Seeing a disagreement as a conflict makes it easier to disregard expertise and to not trust remaining experts. Which is what neither of us want.
I don't think that people should make policy based on contrarian views. I also don't think we should require consensus to promote policy. I'm sure I'm asking too much of some people. But requiring 100% consensus spoils the scientific discussion for the sake of winning the short term political fight. And in the long term, spoiling the scientific discussion tends to undermine faith in the scientific process, moving it from the realm of expertise and mistake theory to the realm of conflict theory. Moving the discussion to the realm of conflict theory seems to be partly what you're worried about.
In contrast; The Open Notes movement in response to the non-public origin of CRU's climate data was a good move to maintain the climate discussion in the realm of expertise.
And of course at its most extreme, preventing policy based on Deusberg can give you a policy based on Lysenko. There's no way to ensure that the good guys will always be the censors.
> " That's because debates are a form of entertainment. Of course watching a conflict is going to be more exciting than watching a lack of conflict; every narrative needs conflict at it's core to keep people interested. "
Sure. I'm okay with that.
>" but I have the self-awareness to realize that the reason I find them more engaging than lectures is not because they are better at getting to the truth. "
I disagree. Though it takes a bit more work to learn from a debate, perhaps, the understanding of where the fault lines lie in a field of expert opinion tends to be useful information. In my father's generation serious debate was something that was actively valued. News outlets were encouraged to 'get both sides of the story.' (Still only two, but better than today.) In 2021 people sit in their respective echo chambers and listen to their preferred news sources. When so many political discussions are just proxy tribal wars it becomes easy to discard the view of an "expert" based on their political affiliation or class or motivations. As Chomsky rightly complained, modern presidential debates are a farce because the responses aren't long enough to change anyone's mind.
I'm agreeing with you and also wanted to point out a few more things here. (I'm reacting to the person in agreeing with to not create another novel length debate, as I don't like debates)
> I don't see Scott as being less evidence-motivated than other sources
'Other sources' is doing a lot of work here.
Scott has also been caught changing his opinions relative to others to try and convince them (something about 'my friends are way more [political movement] than can be healthy, so I'm taking a contrarian position to them.
He outright doesn't get certain terms (or acts like he doesn't) and refuses to steelman these things in a normal way. (See his stances on leftwing politics and communism, and also his trauma based opinions on feminism).
The aids crisis caused by gay acceptance is also just a great example of Scott ignoring evidence. (And he didn't change is mind after people pointed out he was wrong, he just deleted the accusation).
Scott wrote about a book he didn't read and was so wrong the author called him out on it. Etc etc.
If Scott counts as evidence based, we also should count as evidence based. But nope this is the hateclub and scott is a honest truthseeker.
(I left out the part about lying about being racist because that part of Scott makes some sense to lie about).
E: In a lot of cases, Scotts post fail the posting guidelines of his own community. (From the subreddit: Comments should be at least two of {true, necessary, kind}. Be kind, or bring evidence. Be charitable. No CW. Bring evidence if you aren't being obvious. Don't be obnoxious). The only reason people don't apply the rules to him is because he, as The Senpai, is given automatic expert status. He should start replying to and defending (or better, attacking his own weak points) his own posts under a pseudonym as an experiment and see what kind of reaction he gets then.
" The reason this thread exists is because Scott got caught shilling for his friend's diet pill company. "
He didn't "get caught." He was rather explicit about what he was doing. Like it or hate it, I find your phrasing odd.
" Someone with a bit more humility might recognize that this makes you an an amateur who isn't really qualified to speak as an authority. "
Considering I was trying to improve my own understanding of a particular topic in that instance, this attempt at an attack seems a bit orthogonal to the point.
" It's contrarianism all the way down, so to speak; the rationality community is a circularly self-justifying network of blogs "
I'm not familiar with more than one or two rationalist blogs. But this doesn't seem to fit. Perhaps it's a paradigm all the way down? (Though even that might be an exaggeration.)
But whether you're talking about postmodern philosophy or Catholicism, paradigms are internally referential. Researchers in a particular sector of biology cite other researchers in that particular field of biology. I've seen Scott cite plenty of textbook examples, of course. He acknowledges contrary positions. I gave links to sources that were peer reviewed. I used *your own suggestion* as a model. The claim of intellectual insularity is a poorly fitting jacket.
Other criticisms of Scott aside (and there are some valid ones), it really feels like some of the people in this particular thread, yourself included, are looking for a reason to hate people deeply out of proportion to the subject at hand. It's like someone could tell you they were wearing a blue shirt and you would say that they "were caught trying to wear a blue shirt." Nah fam. You're not Sherlock Holmes for figuring out that Scott was trying to hype his friend's stock. Agree or disagree with the ethics of the action, you were handed that fact on a platter. Being "caught" implies an attempt at subterfuge. There was none of that at work here.
I do read Scott's blog sometimes. I figured I'd also read his detractors to see what kind of an arguments they made. Because, as stated previously, I deliberately try to avoid living in an intellectual bubble. I read a wide range of material.
" I think you're overestimating Behe's contribution. "
This particular study was done because of Behe's debate with Miller on the specific topic of their debate. If you want to categorize that as 'not much of a contribution' then \*shrug.\*
" Lysenko was a contrarian too, as his views were not the mainstream view among biologists at the time. "
Contrarianism is relative to a norm or group. I'm skeptical of the notion that one can be a bona fide "contrarian" and also the source of a government enforced orthodoxy, simultaneously. Unless you're discussing *two separate events*, that rather directly contradicts the meaning of the term. The enforcement of Lysenko as a mandatory norm in the USSR had nothing to do with contrarianism. You need a definition of "contrarian" that isn't just a synonym in your mind for 'wrong.' Most paradigm shifts started with some measure of contrarianism. Lysenko was rather explicitly trying to create a theory of evolution and heredity that ***conformed*** to existing Marxist dogma.
> I don't see Scott as being less evidence-motivated than other sources
This appears to be making a checkable claim, but isn't. Which particular sources are you thinking of here?
My comment is somewhat qualitative.
But let me give a specific example of what I'm thinking of.
Here's a page from the Economic Policy Institute on the wage-productivity gap. The EPI is a leftist think tank, but I refer to them because people frequently copy and paste graphs and arguments that they produce.[https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/)
Here's a post from Scott on the same topic.
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/25/wage-stagnation-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/25/wage-stagnation-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/)
The EPI states; " The income, wages, and wealth generated over the last four decades have failed to “trickle down” to the vast majority ***largely because policy choices*** made on behalf of those with the most income, "
The specific "policy choices" are not outlined or argued for, as nearly as I can tell. Are they talking about the Gold standard? Tax law? Inflationary policy which tries to address 'sticky wages?' Issues like increased foreign competition and even foreign work being counted as American labor (made in China but 'assembled' in the USA) remain unexplored. America had a huge wage boost right after WWII since it essentially had no foreign competition from Europe or Asia.
While Scott doesn't address foreign labor being counted as American productivity as I'd like (it's a difficult topic to get data for) his article explores many more issues related to the labor productivity gap than EPI does. The focus on wages rather than total cost of labor is, itself, problematic since it fails to account for things like increased payroll taxes and the rising cost of benefits. But Scott takes the time to illustrate that these issues are actually small relative to the size of the total gap. ***But he does address them***. He posts graphs from different sources, which suggest that the numbers from the EPI might be a little biased, while still illustrating a real problem. (Surprise! But a lot of people take the EPI's numbers at face value so that's important.) He actively points out several topics that he didn't explore because they remained above his capacity. How common is that? I can think of a handful of articles from the Atlantic where people might use that style, but usually people opt for hubris and bold assertions.
Usually, people try to argue that an effect runs ***mostly*** one way or all another. As nearly as I can tell, Scott does not.
The authors of one of the cited economic papers even shows up in the comments of Scott's post to discuss the matter. It's rare for comments sections to advance the discussion.
I've posted Scott's article during discussions of the wage productivity gap, and people tend to believe that it moved the discussion forward.
Of those posts on this topic accessible to a lay audience, Scotts was one of the better ones. But if you have an article that you feel is more on-point than Scott's I'm happy to read it. While it's hard to "check" a qualitative claim, as you note, that seems like one way to do it. If you can find another article that is more even-handed and better addresses the shape of the data (ideally while being accessible to a lay audience) I'll happily concede the argument and post a link to your article instead when the topic comes up.
Im also all in on contrarianism and i have to react to this:
> I'm sorry. I was confused that your entire reply was a quote.
No you were not confused you knew what it was.
Isnt contrarianism fun?
The prestigious British MPFS journal had an excellent essay on this topic. It's from back in 1972, but I feel it's held up quite well.
[https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqn9](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hwqn9)
I was wondering if Scott having no dayjob anymore and writing fulltime would have a noticeable effect on the quality of writing. An article a day would make it the lack of research and overusing of a certain rhetorical style a lot more noticeable.
(this being the 21st century, you can still buy it online for
/pill)
I’m sure nobody will be inspired by the post to go look for those,
just like I’m sure those FDA-banned pills contain exactly the stated
dosage and don’t contain any other contaminant that’s even more toxic
than DNP itself.
Honestly gwern is such low-hanging fruit, but then again so is Siskind
Like the old Siskind, gwern generally takes up too much space to be worth bothering with
We’ve had a few gwern sneers now and again though
the new bayesian supermen of the rationalist movement: gulping down
rat poison, feeling their muscles swell with power and brain expand to
unheard of sizes
Doubt it, but considering Yud recently (as in somewhere in the last year) lost a lot of weight (good job to him btw, wanting to lose weight and then actually losing it is hard), this might inspire a few people in the community/rationalistosphere to do some stupid things.
By coincidence, I just started listening to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that takes on the diet/fitness/wellness axis of evil, and this shit really does sound like the LW/SSC version of fen-phen.
I mean yes, but probably not in anywhere close to a professional context, amongst a group of close friends and hopefully not in such a long winded way.
And almost without fail, there are streams of reports from people who
have very bad experiences or hyperreactions to what they assumed were
safe doses.
Good job Scott.
E: and it is going to be sad if this is what breaks peoples
confidence, and not, the lying about nrx thing. (Which granted a lot of
insiders prob totally missed, so pointing that to scottstans will be a
rich veign of sneer for decades to come).
From Scott’s article:
In conclusion, Texas truly is the greatest state.
Really? Wtf people died. And not only died, people lost thousands of
dollars paying for a day of power due to surge pricing, and the electrical
grid was minutes away from a cascade failure which would have blown
the whole grid (one of the risks here is transformers exploding).
The complaint about vice being melodramatic is funny however, the
part he complains about has a certain Scott like quality.
> Really? Wtf people died. And not only died, people lost thousands of dollars paying for a day of power due to surge pricing, and the electrical grid was minutes away from a cascade failure which would have blown the whole grid (one of the risks here is transformers exploding).
yes, but profits went up biggly , and isn't that what really matters?
> Every time you think the galaxy-brains of the rat-community can't get more absurd the universe takes it as a challenge to prove you wrong.
*Fools rush in where angels fear to tread*. If you're "rational," you don't need to fear that your take on dubious subjects will be wrong, doncha know.
If there were a drug that worked like DNP, but was safe it would be a healthcare revolution.
It would be great for humanity if people could swallow a pill and start burning fat while also not killing people.
DNP is not that drug though.
"If there were a drug that worked like DNP, but was safe it would be a healthcare revolution." I'm not so sure about that - a large subset of people would swallow that pill and then eat like a pig all day, every day. High blood pressure & atherosclerosis, here we come!
Though you're right that it would help some people enormously.
From what I gather the issue with all of these metabolic hacks is that your body maintains a homeostasis and if you are to burn more, you'll simply eat more.
They're hoping that your body would maintain one kind of energy homeostasis (where you take off some clothing to maintain constant body temperature and not cook yourself to death, which only takes a few degrees temperature rise) but not the other kind (where you eat more).
I'm going to go on a limb here and say that if there is ever going to be a safe-ish weight loss pill, it would work by making you feel equally full from a lesser amount of food (which would be very difficult to do right), and not by dis-regulating your mitochondria. Messing around with mitochondria for weight loss is akin to trying to change the room temperature without touching the thermostat on your air conditioner, by leaking out some freon. It might work but it will never be a good option.
Another approach to obesity is reducing the reward value of food, but it's also difficult to do right. The cannabinoid receptor antagonist rimonabant worked that way, but it also reduced the reward value of everything else, and got pulled from the market after it was linked to suicide. IIRC it doubled the risk of depression. The combo drug naltrexone/bupropion also works similarly w/ bupropion being a stimulant/antidepressant and naltrexone being an opioid antagonist that's also used to treat substance addiction. This one doesn't seem to have the drastic side effects of rimonabant. It's possible that the glucagon-like peptide analogues also reduce food reward, but no one knows yet.
Either way I think there are better approaches to obesity out there than ingesting a pesticide and boiling your insides
I have a good friend who has EDS and can't exercise at an acceptable level. Perhaps this class of drug (with the bugs worked out) would be more niche than people hope. But it would still help a lot of people. Though I suspect there will be other ill effects not touched on by the article related to increased metabolism and lifespan. Though if protein synthesis isn't involved... maybe not?
But I'd love to see your appetite suppressant, also.
ahaha
Some unexpected insights in this subthread. Funny how once he starts talking about something non-political, people start to notice his “I’m just joking” and “This thing is usually wrong but… [does the thing]” rhetoric. From various users:
…
…
…
I’m sure nobody will be inspired by the post to go look for those, just like I’m sure those FDA-banned pills contain exactly the stated dosage and don’t contain any other contaminant that’s even more toxic than DNP itself.
neat, scott is Gwern now
the new bayesian supermen of the rationalist movement: gulping down rat poison, feeling their muscles swell with power and brain expand to unheard of sizes
do u think scott will pop these pills himself or?
oof size: Large
Couldn’t resist the temptation to post one of my favourite Fall covers
/u/dgerard
[deleted]
Dr. Siskind, MD replies in the thread > I’ll be honest - I am fond of crazy drugs
Can you imagine any serious psychiatrist saying this?
Good job Scott.
E: and it is going to be sad if this is what breaks peoples confidence, and not, the lying about nrx thing. (Which granted a lot of insiders prob totally missed, so pointing that to scottstans will be a rich veign of sneer for decades to come).
From Scott’s article:
Really? Wtf people died. And not only died, people lost thousands of dollars paying for a day of power due to surge pricing, and the electrical grid was minutes away from a cascade failure which would have blown the whole grid (one of the risks here is transformers exploding).
The complaint about vice being melodramatic is funny however, the part he complains about has a certain Scott like quality.
[removed]
So foolishly naïve.