I like Mic Wright, who is a sort of disaffected journalist turned media critic, our own /u/dgerard runs a bunch of cool stuff from music to his more famous stuff arguing against bitcoin, my close friend Nathan Oseroff-Spicer used to help run the American Philosophical Association (APA) blog before he was unreasonably forced out of our supposed profession for not being sufficiently transphobic
These are just examples, I have a bucketload tucked away but I also just woke up from a bad night’s sleep
Do you have any links for Nathan Oseroff-Spicer blog and what happened with him and the APA. Is it just his Twitter profile? I'm looking to go in to the hellscape that is philosophy, and so any information about him would be helpful.
Nathan’s spouse is trans (and also a very good friend of mine: we often side against him politically and have a lot of fun doing it), and he’s a very determined kind of guy so he got into that
It all started when he was a (talented) PhD candidate at KCL in London (he’s originally from Baltimore but for whatever reason wound up as an anglophile) and when Kathleen Stock got into her transphobia gig he made some perhaps moderately ill-judged but accurate replies to her on twitter which spiralled into Brian Leiter doxxing his reddit account at the behest of some kid who was studying at a different university in London, who apparently showed some contrition for it later on
He was eventually fired from his gig at the APA and KCL refused to support him over the Leiter issue, so he noped out with a second MA rather than carry on to finish the PhD. This is all very public information so I’m sure he doesn’t mind my talking about it. A thing you will learn is that academic politics are vicious because the stakes are so low - I quit academic philosophy after my MSc partially because of this event
Brian Leiter incidentally is a very influential fucking scumbag who got where he is not because of any merit but because he started a notorious bullshit fucking rating system for graduate programmes in philosophy (which hadn’t existed before for some reason) and plied that into a blog and a career doing mediocre political philosophy and being transphobic. Also notoriously he has been credibly and publicly accused of delivering actual shit in the post to at least two of his critics. He is also a lawyer.
I just made myself angry retelling the story so I’ll just finish by saying Nathan is currently not on twitter as of just the other day, but he can be contacted by email if you can find it: we usually get in touch via social media because we live 1000 miles apart these days so I don’t have it immediately to hand
Thanks a lot for the write up. I've heard about Leiter before. Unfortunately, his blog seems popular enough that it shows up pretty high on philosophy related searches on Google. Luckily, I had a professor who gave me some of the context surrounding him, but I'm not so sure others would be so lucky. I hadn't heard about this stuff though, but I'm not really surprised.
Yeah I think it was when I was in undergrad that the story about the shit broke, and there were all sorts of people trying to be “sceptical” about whether it was real, but these days every fucker just accepts it because the evidence is pretty fucking clear
If you want advice on a career in academic philosophy in my opinion the best person to find on twitter is Joe Morrison of I believe Manchester these days, though I knew him at Queen’s University Belfast
Brilliant lecturer, but more importantly very no-bullshit about how it all works and extremely devoted to helping people navigate the system
He also has a very fun intro book on philosophical logic you can find online: he delighted years ago in telling the story of how the publishers gave him a random number of illustrations he could use, so he picked like a cow and a horse playing the piano or something like that on a whim
Joe also by sheer coincidence mentored Nathan for a while when he was figuring out how to make it through the controversy
I’m kind of in awe that he actually just comes out and says this.
The guys who actually employ people to research things for their
stories, they’re the ones who don’t do research. They just don’t care
enough! What possible incentives do people who are paid to write news
stories have to check whether the stories are true?
Bloggers, on the other hand, absolutely no ulterior motives
there.
And its not like there’s not a fair criticism of mass media to make,
but he just doesn’t have the conceptual tools for it. Like, ah yes,
independent journalists are better because of . . . ‘nuance and
abstraction’? Just read Manufacturing Consent you dork
Part of what annoys me about this is that the media is really easy to
dunk because there is so much of it and we have really high standards
for it so that literally any bad story can mean the “media” is bad.
The obvious corollary is that there is so much utter fucking nonsense
coming out of online bloggers, but we have such low standards for them
that when a blogger writes something good we step back and think we need
to reassess blogging.
I think if you’re selective about bloggers, you can find really good shit (not Scott Siskind), whereas it is really hard to be selective about media reporting even from trusted sources like the BBC. I hate the locution “these days” but there has been a noticeable drop into the gutter at most major publications over the last five or so years. So I understand why people turn to independent bloggers as an alternative, even if they pick badly: I don’t hate Siskind fans for being Siskind fans, I hate them for being shitty people who turn to Siskind.
Reading “manufacturing consent” and one of the first points he makes is that rising newspaper costs killed off all the leftist newspapers in the 19th century, as they couldn’t raise money from their poorer readers, and they weren’t friendly enough to advertisers to close the gap. The same process seems to be ongoing, but since there are no longer any leftist newspapers to kill off we’re seeing actual investigations and nuance on the chopping block instead.
I would say that “all that’s left is clickbait”, but that implies that we don’t have further we could fall.
> but there has been a noticeable drop into the gutter at most major publications over the last five or so years.
I don't even know if I believe this or how I would know if it's true.
Newsrooms in general have been downsizing SIGNIFICANTLY over the last half-decade or so; this is trivially easy to find information about. Some of the positions most affected by this are a) copyeditors and b) fact-checkers, because they're considered basically optional by the rich assholes who run things. (We can just make the reporters fact-check and copyedit their own work, after all!)
If you *haven't* noticed a precipitous drop in quality at your favorite mainstream news source, you've either got a favorite that's in a spectacularly good position vis-à-vis the rest of the industry, or you haven't been paying attention.
OK, in major publications of the last five years *in the UK*
I know this because I (sometimes) live there and was born there, in spite of semi-adopting the Balkans as my home when I can over the last year
Perhaps it isn’t the same in e.g. the US but there has definitely been a precipitous increase in British journalists - especially amongst the Murdoch employed press - taking off the so-to-speak “mask” in the Johnson/Plague Era
Yeah, there was an editorial published by the American staff expressing what would politely be called “dismay” at how The Guardian’s (now) home office in London (they were originally published out of Manchester) were just that transphobic
The rest of the UK press is even worse: just in the last few weeks there’s been a slew of transphobic bullshit from the Sunday Times et al. which serves exclusively to stoke those transphobic fires
Turning back to The Guardian, there was an infamous debate that everyone in Britain which everyone seems to have forgotten over regular Guardian columnists Suzanne Moore and less regular Guardian columnist Julie Burchill defending transphobia as a matter of principle: it’s a whole thing, even my mother ruined a dinner party by forcing a debate on trans stuff with a non-binary friend of mine who she mistook on basically these grounds for a male-to-female “transsexual” or whatever, because she’d been misled by the media in the UK(KK)
Yeah the guardian really sucks like that, even before this they sometimes had weirdly slanted articles, but damn they really helped creating terf Island. And sorry to hear about your mom. I have managed (or tried at least) to mostly tell my fam all the weird stories about trans people in the media are overblown and tried to give some context and acceptance. (A bit odd when your parents suddenly start talking about detransitioners, Im afraid the terfism is spreading to the netherlands slowly)
Word on the Internets today is that [the *Guardian* deleted part of a Judith Butler interview where Butler said that terfs were allied with fascists](https://twitter.com/sysid_ACE/status/1435324849862422528).
> *It seems that some within feminist movements are becoming sympathetic to these far-right campaigns. This year's furore around Wi Spa in Los Angeles saw an online outrage by transphobes followed by bloody protests organized by the Proud Boys. Can we expect this alliance to continue?*
> It is very appalling and sometimes quite frightening to see how trans-exclusionary feminists have allied with rightwing attacks on gender. The anti-gender ideology movement is not opposing a specific account of gender, but seeking to eradicate "gender" as a concept or discourse, a field of study, an approach to social power. Sometimes they claim that "sex" alone has scientific standing, but other times they appeal to divine mandates for masculine domination and difference. They don't seem to mind contradicting themselves.
> The Terfs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) and the so-called gender critical writers have also rejected the important work in feminist philosophy of science showing how culture and nature interact (such as Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, EM Hammonds or Anne Fausto-Sterling) in favor of a regressive and spurious form of biological essentialism. The anti-gender ideology is one of the dominant strains of fascism in our times. So the Terfs will not be part of the contemporary struggle against fascism, one that requires a coalition guided by struggles against racism, nationalism, xenophobia and carceral violence, one that is mindful of the high rates of femicide around the world, which include high rates of attacks on trans and genderqueer people.
> The anti-gender movement circulates a spectre of "gender" as a force of destruction, but they never actually read any works in gender studies. Quick and fearful conclusions take the place of considered judgments. Yes, some work on gender is difficult and not everyone can read it, so we have to do better in reaching a broader public. As important as it is, however, to make complex concepts available to a popular audience, it is equally important to encourage intellectual inquiry as part of public life. Unfortunately, we are living in anti-intellectual times, and neo-fascism is becoming normalized.
([comments from the interviewer](https://twitter.com/socialrepro/status/1435389139885699080))
Really weird deletion that. As from what I can tell it is basically the truth. They get caught with far right people or just plain old heavy duty conservatives all the time.
Yep. It's a pretty unremarkable take.
And then there's [this](https://eoinhiggins.substack.com/p/guardian-pulls-judith-butlers-comments) --- unconfirmed, but the plot may thicken:
> According to sources close to the situation, the company's UK editors have used the offending section as a "pretext" to pull a Guardian US series focused on trans issues called Gender Now that Butler's interview was meant to launch.
My mum and I have reconciled on this stuff by essentially agreeing not to talk about it, along with a few other things. She’s a very intelligent and kind-hearted woman who - like your folks - has been misled on the details by having the wrong sources for her opinions. Mostly I find it amusing that she started that debate on the assumption that my friend was MtF rather than AFAB.
CW: transphobia
Assuming everybody is Trans is a very specific weird form of anti-trans which seems to crop up a lot. Amusing in a way, esp when even other anti-trans people have to step up and correct their fellow haters (I just assume you have seen the recent child rapist who got accused of being trans while she wasnt, it was all over twitter yday).
In a way I do sympathize with older people who find it all a bit confusing, because the idea that you can just change genders, and not just that, that gender is a loose spectrum, and not a rigid binary, is reasonably new. Or new in the way that the future isn't evenly distributed, the idea has always existed, but for some reason it was pushed away into the sidelines somewhere in the last century (There was a ww2 era newspaper where some soldier (?) got praised for transitioning into a beautiful woman, not something you would have seen uncritical the past few decades, at least as long as I have been alive (I do know history is more complex than that btw)). Hell the first time I heard of trans people was in a radio song mocking a MtF woman saying she kept her dick in a jar on the mantlepiece, so much for the progressive Netherlands. The problem with our culture of 'you are allowed to say everything' is that 99% of the people just use it to punch down. (And I have of course also done this in the past, im not without sin in this, and it is hard to escape the culture you grow up in (So much sexism (this less so than in other places, in our metal scene women were accepted and praised for example, not so in the Italian scene according to a woman I once spoke)/homopobia/transphobia/xenophobia/islamophobia)).
Saying this about the guy who refused to actually check up on
themotte/the culture war thread, and just trusted his fans when they
said ‘Kein neonazis here, Herr Scott’, is chefs kiss.
(The opening off Scotts article: ‘Then I remembered the Law Of
Rationalist Irony’) Just goes to show, for the teachings of Rationalism
are not actually guidelines or tools to be used consistently, but they
are arguments, used to prove they are right. (Esp as he later talks
about being confused, isnt there also the law of noticing your
confusion?), and them the conclusion is ‘tribalism bad, Rationalist word
for decoupler du jour good’ with an added pinch of ‘perhaps you should
trust me’ added for flavor.
And there is one problem with distrusting the media, the people who
shout the hardest about mistrusting them always turn out to be people
who you should trust even less. Are we forgetting the Rationalist rule
of witchhunts?
Also, welcome SSC readers who come here to check out all sides after
Scotts article saying you should do your homework. Shout out here in the
comments if you actually were convinced to check out Sneerclub because
you have noticed your own media flaws after reading Scotts post.
Further sneer material, Scott and Yud joking about how they both are always right in the caliphate in the followup tweets. We can't really be a cult, we are just joking about being a cult.
Kind of ambiguous between “all online bloggers are good
(false)and”some online bloggers are good” (true but useless,unless you
say who they are in terms anyone can agree with).
[deleted]
I’m kind of in awe that he actually just comes out and says this.
The guys who actually employ people to research things for their stories, they’re the ones who don’t do research. They just don’t care enough! What possible incentives do people who are paid to write news stories have to check whether the stories are true?
Bloggers, on the other hand, absolutely no ulterior motives there.
And its not like there’s not a fair criticism of mass media to make, but he just doesn’t have the conceptual tools for it. Like, ah yes, independent journalists are better because of . . . ‘nuance and abstraction’? Just read Manufacturing Consent you dork
Part of what annoys me about this is that the media is really easy to dunk because there is so much of it and we have really high standards for it so that literally any bad story can mean the “media” is bad.
The obvious corollary is that there is so much utter fucking nonsense coming out of online bloggers, but we have such low standards for them that when a blogger writes something good we step back and think we need to reassess blogging.
Tell me you don’t know what investigative journalism is, without telling me you don’t know what investigative journalism is.
Blogger: We are good at nuance and abstraction!
Also blogger: All major media companies are evil!
<Only the Sith deal in absolutes.gif>
Saying this about the guy who refused to actually check up on themotte/the culture war thread, and just trusted his fans when they said ‘Kein neonazis here, Herr Scott’, is chefs kiss.
(The opening off Scotts article: ‘Then I remembered the Law Of Rationalist Irony’) Just goes to show, for the teachings of Rationalism are not actually guidelines or tools to be used consistently, but they are arguments, used to prove they are right. (Esp as he later talks about being confused, isnt there also the law of noticing your confusion?), and them the conclusion is ‘tribalism bad, Rationalist word for decoupler du jour good’ with an added pinch of ‘perhaps you should trust me’ added for flavor.
And there is one problem with distrusting the media, the people who shout the hardest about mistrusting them always turn out to be people who you should trust even less. Are we forgetting the Rationalist rule of witchhunts?
Also, welcome SSC readers who come here to check out all sides after Scotts article saying you should do your homework. Shout out here in the comments if you actually were convinced to check out Sneerclub because you have noticed your own media flaws after reading Scotts post.
A rare instance in which Scott’s post isn’t especially sneer-worthy but Eliezer decided to be a smug jackass about it, and preen like a real wanker.
Without clicking through, I’m going to guess that this is about the story recently investigated by Daniel Dale, fact-checker for CNN.
In fairness, to the Big Yud, I have also forgotten Scott’s post from two weeks ago.
https://twitter.com/esyudkowsky/status/1434897262677671941
Seems like motivated cognition to me, bud.
Kind of ambiguous between “all online bloggers are good (false)and”some online bloggers are good” (true but useless,unless you say who they are in terms anyone can agree with).
Who else.has the time.and money to research things? Academics!