Do you call such a person “liberal,” “progressive,” “center-left,” “centrist,” “Pinkerite,” “technocratic,” “neoliberal,” “libertarian-ish,” “classical liberal”? Why not simply call them “correct”? 🙂
(https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6173)
posted on December 21, 2021 12:51 AM by
u/vertebralsilence
39
u/typell56 pointsat 1640050952.000000
‘look I support a nominally progressive thing, but I also support
things that progressives disagree with! I’m such a renegade!’
a person who thinks free markets are bad because they ‘elevate
triviality’ but also thinks they’re good because capitalism is just a
tradcon
a person who dislikes trump but also dislikes the people that dislike
trump is . . . that’s not even really a political position, it’s just
being contrarian
a person who thinks social justice is good, apart from when they
think social justice requires them to say things that aren’t true, is
called someone who disagrees with social justice.
a person who thinks the holocaust was bad but also that jews have a
special culture that makes them super smart is . . . uh . . . kind of
racist, I guess?
amusing discussion in the comments re; his points on religion.
Someone points out ‘Religious people are the most vulnerable to new
religions like QAnon’. Scott responds:
Traditional religions seem to be prophylactic against certain
specific modern religions, such as Marxism and wokeism. But as you
pointed out, other modern religions, such as QAnon, are if anything
parasitic on traditional religions.
tribes suffer from in-group thinking, which causes them to view all other tribes as terrible and their own tribe as the only good and smart one
this is why we have formed a group that also dislikes every other tribe, but for totally rational and logical reasons this time
> Traditional religions seem to be prophylactic against certain specific modern religions, such as Marxism and wokeism.
Forget the intersection of Marxism and liberation theology, that's far too esoteric. Has he never seen a [church with a Black Lives Matter sign](https://www.google.com/search?q=churches+with+black+lives+matter+signs&source=lnms&tbm=isch)? Some of them have been [a bit famous for them](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/proud-boys-burned-destroyed-black-lives-matter-signs-black-churches-dc).
>Traditional religions seem to be prophylactic against certain specific modern religions, such as Marxism and wokeism. But as you pointed out, other modern religions, such as QAnon, are if anything parasitic on traditional religions.
JFC. Qanon wasn't parasitized by American Evangelicalism; a pre-existing neocharismatic movement glomped onto Qanon and infused it with explicit religious apocalyptic messaging.
This is just conservatism with a rationalist twang to it (e.g Embryo
selection for bullshit metrics like IQ). laughable that he calls such a
person “center-left” and “progressive”.
Of course his comment section has devolved into HBD, I get 18 search
results for HBD and some guy saying “read hereditarian leftists like
Freddie DeBoer and Kathryn Paige Harden” and “[implied genetic] IQ
gaps”. I use to be shocked by this.
It is interesting to note his adoration for the 60s hippies (though
not when they grow older and continue the same principles they lived by)
I remember in the NY Times article on SSC he said that the rationalist
are the modern hippies.
What, finally, do you call someone whose image of an ideal world
might include a young woman wearing a hijab, an old Orthodox man with
black hat and sidecurls, a broad-shouldered white guy from the backwoods
of Alabama, and a trans woman with purple hair, face tattoos and a nose
ring … all of them standing in front of a blackboard and arguing about
what would happen if Alice and Bob jumped into opposite ends of a
wormhole?
I know this one! A person who cannot imagine black people!
E: holy shit he added in the hijab woman is now black. Stop reading sneerclub (sorry not just black but Black).
Also thats part of technocrat ideal (and also part of rhe neoreactionairy one, where big brains are shown as the big ideal, which consideringhe shares personal emails with old moldy, and the lack of black people in his example is indeed worrying). Anyway pretty myopic to include this as part of the ideal world, and just ignore all the other problems.
Reminds me of how often the main characters in King novels are writers. 'My ideal world is STEM classroom!'
Also that is a pretty weird stereotype of a trans person (and of course a trans woman).
E: ow look Islamophobia and racism in the comments (also prob antisemitism, but I didnt read all the comments). Unrelated to that, I feel bad for Scott and his family, about to go on vacation and he posts something like this which will eat up a massive amount of time in reading and reaction to the replies. Go be with you family! Why would you go 'about to have my holiday, time to fire up the old culture war again'.
[This is a good decision](https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6173#comment-1921523) however. (Perhaps do some reevaluation on other stances you might be wrong about Scott).
That edit is so cursed. Also Scott please stop snooping here, you should spend some quality time with your family and obsessing over internet randos should be no part of that.
As an Internet rando, I cosign this advice.
I used to read his blog, circa 2008--2010. Then I got professionally interested in quantum information theory and started cracking the books myself. After that, my interest in anything he had to say faded away. Either it was about his own specialization within science, in which case there would be a meatier treatment that I could sink my teeth into instead, or it was opinionating about something else, which I could get anywhere else. And in the opinionating, there was a vaguely off-putting vibe (not just regarding the blog name, which I don't think I ever bothered to read all the way back and learn the origin of). While I'd have a hard time identifying specific examples after all these years, I do recall an ambience of "everyone who cares about this topic is exactly the same kind of nerd that I am". Which ... no?
> Also Scott please stop snooping here, you should spend some quality time with your family and obsessing over internet randos should be no part of that.
When you have a bunch of people making such vicious marks about his reputation, snooping or otherwise checking on it would be an obvious impulse
> Reminds me of how often the main characters in King novels are writers.
["It's the perfect place for me to quit drinking, finish my novel, and really come to terms with that deer we hit on our way over."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIwDqRXec4s)
The thing is, he's simultaneously extremely self obsessed and completely lacking in self awareness.
Like that other thing with his complaining about feminism. Context: a blog that he named from a rather creepy sexual fantasy about forced marriage to the prettiest girl in a shtetl! The prettiest girl bit really fucking adds to it, too. Absolutely zero awareness of how it comes across (and that the way it comes across is actually quite accurate).
He even kept going on about how feminism has traumatized him by making him too afraid to act like a creep to be able to talk to women when he was younger.
All under a large-font banner of an instance of where he had many nearly equivalent name choices, and he didn't even get "bullied by feminism" into having a tiny itty bitty amount of embarrassment to not pick the one he picked.
edit: This is that same pattern. I think it works something like, he intrinsically gives absolutely zero fuck about racial issues that don't concern him. All that police brutality protest stuff, it just slips his mind. The same amount as Trump voters of the same suburb. Well, fair enough, most people care little about issues that don't concern them, that's how people are. But he thinks he's *better than that* and by god he'll really try hard at it, from first principles.
I'm sure he'll dig himself some horrid hole when race and IQ comes up.
If he was so afraid of being perceived as a creep/weirdo, couldn't he look at how normal people behaved, imitate that, and reduce his likelihood of being classified as such? Or could he focus on being friends (first) with no emphasis on something as passing as a person's appearance?
You ever try to live a whole day imitating somebody else just to be popular? Aaronson’s solution is to make peace with his dorkyness and learn not take everything as a targeted personal attack on him. Some self-awareness would help, given that he’s the opposite of immune from firing potshots at people he doesn’t like himself.
I (22m) both intensely guilt/pressure myself for not being normal as an autistic person (having recieved my diagnosis while in Simsbury, CT), and the desire for social integration (combined with f\*tishes) has effectively overrun 1) any real desire to learn anything 2) any special interests,
and parental (esp Dad) pressure\[0\] to be normal which means 1) having normal interests 2) planning to be heterosexually married\[1\] with kids in the future
\[0\] Previously having said that the relationship should be
\- with a member of the same religion
\- eventually producing kids ('Never date a woman who doesn't want to have kids')
\- preferably with someone of the same ethnicity
but, they have denied that they placed restrictions and now saying they don't care if I get married
\[1\]I want to enter a relationship, but at the same time do not want to harm\[2\]/be creepy to anyone else, especially given how dysfunctional my parents' marriage has been at certain points, so I do not ask anyone and increasingly guilt myself over this and the fact that American middle-class adult life is designed for minimum socialization, second only to say, Japanese hikikomori
\[2\]I.e being narcissitic or abusive. I would avoid this by becoming a volcel through procedures which reduce libido
I tried engaging with the Algebra 1 issue with some of the authors of
the letter on Twitter, and left feeling like my views were
misrepresented. Except they were misrepresented by famous and tenured
professors in my field. And I am a postdoc on the job market, being
evaluated by friends and colleagues of these people. And now I am left
wondering if my job applications are ruined, and trying to come up with
strategies to salvage my chances. Mostly, I am hoping that I am too
insignificant for anyone to really care what I think, and that anyone
who did notice has forgotten I exist.
‘look I support a nominally progressive thing, but I also support things that progressives disagree with! I’m such a renegade!’
a person who thinks free markets are bad because they ‘elevate triviality’ but also thinks they’re good because capitalism is just a tradcon
a person who dislikes trump but also dislikes the people that dislike trump is . . . that’s not even really a political position, it’s just being contrarian
a person who thinks social justice is good, apart from when they think social justice requires them to say things that aren’t true, is called someone who disagrees with social justice.
a person who thinks the holocaust was bad but also that jews have a special culture that makes them super smart is . . . uh . . . kind of racist, I guess?
amusing discussion in the comments re; his points on religion. Someone points out ‘Religious people are the most vulnerable to new religions like QAnon’. Scott responds:
. . . so it’s not about religion at all, is it.
This is just conservatism with a rationalist twang to it (e.g Embryo selection for bullshit metrics like IQ). laughable that he calls such a person “center-left” and “progressive”.
Of course his comment section has devolved into HBD, I get 18 search results for HBD and some guy saying “read hereditarian leftists like Freddie DeBoer and Kathryn Paige Harden” and “[implied genetic] IQ gaps”. I use to be shocked by this.
It is interesting to note his adoration for the 60s hippies (though not when they grow older and continue the same principles they lived by) I remember in the NY Times article on SSC he said that the rationalist are the modern hippies.
I know this one! A person who cannot imagine black people!
I tried engaging with the Algebra 1 issue with some of the authors of the letter on Twitter, and left feeling like my views were misrepresented. Except they were misrepresented by famous and tenured professors in my field. And I am a postdoc on the job market, being evaluated by friends and colleagues of these people. And now I am left wondering if my job applications are ruined, and trying to come up with strategies to salvage my chances. Mostly, I am hoping that I am too insignificant for anyone to really care what I think, and that anyone who did notice has forgotten I exist.
Why do these types continue to think they are so special and unique and “nuanced” when they all echo the same bullshit back at one another?