Go read his article on ivermectin. It’s pretty solid until his section on political consequences where he bends over backwards to make anti vax folks seem reasonable.
Pretty banal use. SA isn’t even that bad honestly, compared to people
like Yud, that guy from Roots of Progress, Steven Pinker, Bryan Caplan
(who SA shits on in OPs link), Tyler Cowen (who I’m warming up to a
little more since his defense of philosopher Amia Srinivasan)
death penalty for marijuana bro
minister of law is brain dead and convinced that marijuana is extremely hazardous for one's health. he's right tho - apparently if you possess too much of it, the state just kills you
I didn’t know about the marijuana thing, but the fact it doesn’t remotely surprise me just underscores my point
By the way I like that line about it killing you by the fact of possession
carry enough marijuana above a certain weight and there is a legal presumption that you intend to traffic drugs. trafficking carries the death penalty as one possible penalty. what penalty you get depends on weight.
before the end of the Vietnam war Singapore had a pretty liberal drug policy. it was technically illegal to consume drugs but the police had better things to do.
as america started pulling out of Vietnam, the number one consumer of heroin was gone. and all that heroin from the golden triangle made it's way to Singapore in a huge drug crisis
that, my friend speculates, is the origin story of this anti drug attitude. US imperialism is truly the gift that keeps giving
some examples from the last month that reflect Scott's insidiousness
* Scott says that Ivermectin is not a effective treatment for Covid, ***but*** we learn that the Ivermectin people are really smart (also happen to be readers of his blog?) and you should check them out, they have great thoughts on medicine and science in general.
* Scott says Orban is a dictator ***but*** also links to a twitter thread talking about how Orban is also "super-democratic".
* Scott makes a article basically endorsing publicly HBD ("secrets of great families"), discussing how great Galton is and highlights racist luminaries like Steve Sailer in the "highlights from" follow-up with no caveats.
Yeah I don't really like any of those guys, I'm just pointing out that when comparing them to each other, there is better and worse.
Why would you point out Tyler Cowen's fascination with Singapore as saying something about him? How about literally anything else he believes, maybe something more central to his intellectual identity like his insane libertarian econ beliefs.
Well the way I’d frame it is that Cowen’s beliefs about Singapore are part and parcel of his insane libertarianism. This is a guy who goes to a place where you can get caned for spitting gum on the street, eats some - presumably very nice - noodles, and decides that this is a free market utopia. I don’t have anything against Singapore, or in particular its citizens, as such, but *if* you are a libertarian, and think you get to pick and choose which market capitalist bits of “libertarian” you happen to care about: fuck you.
I still think sometimes about that awful fawning profile of the guy in Vox a while ago where everything that comes out of his mouth is valuable because it’s “interesting”.
Aside from the authoritarian nature of its legal system, the Free Market bros usually overlook the fact that
>...almost all the land in Singapore is owned by the government, 85 per cent of housing is supplied by the government-owned housing agency (the Housing Development Board) and 22 per cent of national output is produced by state-owned enterprises (the international average is around 10 per cent)
(From Ha-Joon Chang 'Economics: the user's guide)
Funnily enough - this is an aside - I’ve never done a deep dive on Ha-Joon Chang, which is ironic because even as a philosopher of economics I’m a huge fan of his *brother* Hasok Chang, who doesn’t cover political economy
I mean I’ve read enough of his stuff to know where he’s coming from, but not enough to fill in the details
I did a short course on the philosophy of science with Hasok Chang when I was a grad student (it was good). I never put it together that they were brothers.
Aside from the one I quoted from earlier, I've only read Ha-Joon Chang's book '23 things they don't tell you about capitalism'. I have some of his more technical books too, but I haven't read them yet.
That’s incredibly cool, the best seminar I ever got to take - prestige wise - was with Margaret Morrison, who sadly died not long ago
In undergrad I got to take a political theory course with an allegedly world-famous Hegel scholar, whose lecture on Hegel was ironically the hardest one to parse, not sure where I’m going with this
Where did you read that? You can definitely get caned for graffiti (the famous case being Michael Fay), but I haven't heard anything like that about gum. You get a fine for littering.
"Confused reporting about these issues led to the myth that the use or importation of chewing gum is itself punishable with caning. In fact, the only penalties provided under Chapter 57 are fines and imprisonment" - [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_sales_ban_in_Singapore)
Also maybe *make* that argument for us one of these days. I'm not even ruling it out, it's just I've been seeing him come down relatively more on the left on issues like domestic politics, climate change, vaccines. Definitely has that usual rationalist odor about him but still, making a mountain out of a molehill sometimes on this sub.
Siskind is worse than these guys. At least Yud is mostly focused on wacky AI theories while Siskind seems really interested in making racial pseudoscience an acceptable belief inder the guise of 'civil debate'.
Nah sa is worse.
At least very bad people were told to leave lesswrong, not allowed to setup a walled garden.
Yud is weird (which isnt even bad, half the posters here are also weird in various ways) and pretentious, sa is eugenics and manipulative.
I will say I am credibly informed that Yud has rapy tendencies, so he’s not exactly off the hook here like (I assume) most people with weird personality traits on this sub
Certainly, sa being worse doesn't let yud of the hook for the bad things he did. I just simplified here and didnt want to make another list of bad things they both did. He also disnt denoince sa when his nrx stuff came out but tried to get rid of the whistleblower. He most certainly isnt of the hook.
And sorry if my post came off as trying to minimize the hurt caused by yuds, not my intention at all.
He had her on his podcast and it was a productive if charged conversation, and at least once Srinivasan chastised Tyler for saying something he did not actually say. His comment section was attacking her, and he basically did a follow up post where he was like "I've learned that women have it much harder when voicing their opinions in an open forum than men do". It seemed like he really went to bat for her, and directly repudiated his usual followers.
1) That isn’t very fucking altruist
2) my quote unquote “mentor” is old enough and respectable enough that I’ll let it slide if he slips out that word, as happened last time I saw him face to face
3) I didn’t even notice you said that until it got flagged but fuck out of my sub if you’re going to abreact to /u/Myrdradek politely and correctly pointing you to a norm against the word “retarded” that’s been in play for an *extremely* long time
I’m kind of amazed that Srinisivan even bothered to chastise Cowen
This is a woman with the *most impeccable* academic career you could come up with off the top of your head
If anything she’s in way ahead of Cowen, by age
Yeah well if she deigned to go on his podcast and engage in a good faith discussion with him maybe this sub could learn to exercise some nuance and distinction. She even said he was someone she admired. Tyler Cowen is a really smart dude, but guess what, really smart dudes can be driven by amoral ideologies and believe stupid shit just like everyone else.
I’m speaking purely in my personal capacity as a commentator on philosophy, economics, and public affairs
If you want to get aggro at me as if every fucking time I say something it’s on behalf of this subreddit maybe you can take that nuanced approach and shove it up your *own* arse, where it might do some good for your irritable bowel syndrome
I don’t know why you flew off the handle at me like this but it isn’t for anything close to a good reason, and yes that’s a David Lewis reference, asshole
Alright I'm sorry I did go aggro, I apologize.
I think you've made a good case for your suspicions of SS and Tyler Cowen, my response is really more directed at the general impression I get from the sub as your views seem to be representative, but that's neither here nor there.
I'm defensive because I do like and agree with the odd SS piece or Marginal Revolution post, which is of course, I realize, compatible with the critique you are making, with which I also largely agree.
Again, my bad.
There are good Scott Siskind pieces in the archives, although he’s really gone off the rails since turning to be a professional writer rather than just a blogger - the glaring signs were always there but he’s really got fucked up by now. Cowen on the other hand still has a few things to say on Marginal Revolution, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go: I generally object to his image as a fascinating mind in the Ezra Klein sort of sphere - especially that infuriating article in Vox - because having a lot of disparate musings is ultimately indistinguishable from being Matt Yglesias, and I fucking hate Yglesias. The way I see it, anyone who religiously follows every Tyler Cowen post must have been raised by Rodney Dangerfield to find him *that* level of interesting.
But right back at ya: that’s neither here nor there, and of course I accept the apology.
This sub has a diversity of views, albeit leaning in certain directions both politically and personally, and I think it’s important to keep in mind that the only real rule is “keep it fun, don’t be stupid, but if some bad shit goes down we still take all comers”
This is the first article I’ve read from SS in a year or so; he really has disappeared down a anti-woke rabbit hole, hasn’t he?
(I’m looking at the “democrats are screwed in the next election because Biden and Pelosi are so ultra woke” stuff, not the “Balkans are tall” stuff)
Pretty banal use. SA isn’t even that bad honestly, compared to people like Yud, that guy from Roots of Progress, Steven Pinker, Bryan Caplan (who SA shits on in OPs link), Tyler Cowen (who I’m warming up to a little more since his defense of philosopher Amia Srinivasan)