One of the most common arguments against rationality is “something
something white males”. I have never been able to entirely make sense of
it, but I imagine if you gave the people who say it 50 extra IQ points,
they might rephrase it to something like “because white males have a lot
of power, it’s easy for them to put their finger on the scales when
people are trying to do complicated explicit computations; we would
probably do a better job building a just world if policy-makers
retreated to a heuristic of ‘choose whichever policy favors black women
the most.’”
It feels even worse that he actually manages to get part of the point “it’s easy for them to put their fingers on the scales” (see the sort of shitty statistics cops self-report and misinterpret) and then completely ignores any actual solution (using empathy and listening to the lived experience of marginalized groups for instance) in favor of his strawman.
It seems his mask has slipped ever since he changed websites. In his older writing he would waste several paragraphs failing to properly steelman as opposed to slipping straight from half assed steelman to strawman in a single sentence.
> any actual solution (using empathy and listening to the lived experience of marginalized groups for instance)
Does this mean reading those articles about how black women are tired all the time? How does that help?
Thought I’d banned you, don’t know why I didn’t
Edit: I remember now, both times it was because I was enjoying some kind of drama and forgot to ban after
Since rationality := the things that get you what you want, it's rational for Scott to go further off the cryptofascist deep end if it gets him more subscribers.
I remember when these guys used to argue in favor of steel manning —
presenting and challenging the strongest version of your opponent’s
arguments instead of the weakest. It’s interesting that in this case he
can’t really think about this argument in a critical way at all — even
when he adds 50 imaginary IQ points to these imaginary opponents, what
he comes up with for them to say is still ridiculous and a mockery.
If I were an ungenerous person, I'd say that "steelmanning" was about gamesmanship all along: Present what you *claim* is the "strongest version" of your opponent's argument, and you can create the impression that even their best isn't very good.
I think you're right, though I do think there's some value in the basic concept of not attacking strawmen and trying to understand people you disagree with. To me, the fact that this guy couldn't even try to understand the people he is attacking here just reflects the overwhelming disdain that he has for them. He is basically throwing away the rationalist pose and reveling in the types of attacks that he normally decries as being tribalistic or irrational.
Yes, as always, it comes down to “are you operating in good faith or not.” And once his emails got leaked, it became clear (to those who hadn’t figured it out before) that he absolutely never is.
That’s certainly an accurate description of Scooter’s approach. At BEST, he would attempt to “improve” an argument by translating it into rationalist terms (meaning, his own made up fantasy jargon.) More often, his “steelmanning” was always just another kind of strawmanning — converting an argument he dislikes into something on his terms that he feels more comfortable arguing with.
If only someone could hold Scott’s face directly to this sentence and
force his eyelids open a la A Clockwork Orange and ask “but
what about the principle of charity, Scott? What about it?” repeatedly,
until he was forced to answer honestly. Then we could maybe get a
breakthrough, like that secret
of our success post where he accidentally reasoned himself into a
corner and was forced to conclude that figuring out everything from
first principles with Bayes’ theorem is a terrible game plan for dealing
with reality, and then shuddered and never thought about that conclusion
again.
If we're supposed to be the HR department for the Rationalists, then who is our mutual employer? Big Basilisk? (Makes sense, given that HR departments exist to protect their employer from employees.)
“something something white males”
-Angela Davis
The rest of the paragraph is not much better
It is hard to understand the idea of privilege if your substack bucks depend on you not getting it.
(Other post about this ssc post)
I remember when these guys used to argue in favor of steel manning — presenting and challenging the strongest version of your opponent’s arguments instead of the weakest. It’s interesting that in this case he can’t really think about this argument in a critical way at all — even when he adds 50 imaginary IQ points to these imaginary opponents, what he comes up with for them to say is still ridiculous and a mockery.
If you deploy 50 extra IQ points while doing a backwards jump in level 4-2 you can totally clip through the wall and save a whole frame rule
Wow, it’s almost like he’s a completely fucking racist tool whose mask slips off more and more each day
If only someone could hold Scott’s face directly to this sentence and force his eyelids open a la A Clockwork Orange and ask “but what about the principle of charity, Scott? What about it?” repeatedly, until he was forced to answer honestly. Then we could maybe get a breakthrough, like that secret of our success post where he accidentally reasoned himself into a corner and was forced to conclude that figuring out everything from first principles with Bayes’ theorem is a terrible game plan for dealing with reality, and then shuddered and never thought about that conclusion again.
this will be SO easy to simulate.
He just missed the first two words, what’s the big deal? KAWM.
This guy is so dumb. Galileo was an empiricist and got most things right. Aristotle was a rationalist and got most things wrong
And sorry Scott, “data driven” is not empiricism. It’s mostly motivated reasoning that ignores compounding factors
Which Scott? Which Scott?!?!
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