I was about to write "This but unironically" and then I saw who it was that had commented this and realized you probably weren't being totally ironic either
Ya I agree Mao's poetry isn't half bad and that line about women holding up half the sky? Shame it turned out that it was more like their legs holding up half the sky when you hear about what he was like with women. Hey you know who's an even better writer than Mao? ... Jesus Christ.
What did Jesus write?
Mao's poetry is pretty good, but it's not his poetry that everyone reads. It's his political works. He's clearly doing something right.
> Hey you know who's an even better writer than Mao? ... Jesus Christ.
Nah, he didn't do any of the work and insists on getting all the credit - what a jerk! Also, talk about needing an editor - that Old Testament had how many revisions and it's _still_ unclear about what order the world was created in? Come on, bro!
>Nah, he didn't do any of the work and insists on getting all the credit - what a jerk!
We believe it's all divinely inspired!
>Also, talk about needing an editor - that Old Testament had how many revisions and it's still unclear about what order the world was created in?
Oh come on, Proust has characters walking around in book 6 that died in book 3, you don't see me complaining about it.
Lol, that's not the point dumbass. Gospels are written by four dudes, and most of the epistles are traditionally attributed to Paul. Jesus didn't write anything, no matter if you're a Christian or an atheist biblical scholar.
This is precisely the point we're making. Scott Alexander is “a dumb guy's idea of a smart guy”, similar to Jordan Peterson, because people impressed by his “insights” are the ones who severely lack basic, low-level, widely accessible knowledge.
This is not some esoteric scholarly depths we're talking about. This is basic liberal arts shit, y'know social sciences and humanities 101 stuff.
Of course you'd say Jesus was a “writer”, failing miserably at trying to be witty, because you don't read.
Pick up a book, I dare you. Literally any fiction that isn't *Harry Potter* or any nonfiction that isn't Malcolm Gladwell. You'll be amazed how quickly you'll outgrow Scott Alexander's inane, kindergarten level word vomit.
If I couldn't read I would probably be owned but I wasn't. We believe Christ is the divine author of the Gospels and every word is divinely inspired. As for the mortal authors you're not telling me anything I don't know.
isn't inspiration supposed to be carried out by the holy spirit? although attributing it to the entire trinity does make more sense -- no one person could have inspired so many contradictions!
btw, it's pretty comical to see a christian using popularity to defend someone. have you forgotten the inspired word?
"And he said to them, 'You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.'"
Well now you're pulling me out of troll mode but IMO since God, being-as-such, is only a being-in-particular when it's Christ as opposed to the other two parts of the trinity, it seems incorrect to speak of the others as being like to an author with a body and a name, but we could speak in that way with Christ who, besides being a *particular individual*, partakes in the same activity of that inspiration carried out by the holy spirit, since it's all one thing too. And yes you're right. I am not a fan of Scooter and I just felt like tweaking the community a little because I think it can get a little own-farts-sniffing. I would say Scooter is a serviceable and very limited writer. Similarly, while I'm ideologically opposed to Ayn Rand, I think people go over the top when they speak about her as the worst writer in the world. She had a certain skill for pulp writing. Her narratives are readable. She wouldn't be so charming to teenagers if this wasn't the case. She's not a master, but a realistic apprisal of the opponent's abilities can aid one in constructing the counter ...
> I just felt like tweaking the community a little
Being wrong *ironically* isn't useful for grounding anyone who was allegedly getting carried away.
"serviceable and very limited writer"? Could that also be described as repeatedly falling into tired tropes, say, 9 of them? Do you even disagree in a significant way with the post and comments?
ah, i see. all three persons inspired those gallons of anti-semitic fuel in john, but only christ can rightly be called the author. so glad to have that theological matter sorted.
i think scott's popularity partly derives from his needlessly obscure prose. his underlying points are usually dead-simple, but his readers get a sense of intellectual accomplishment just from managing to understand him.
but also, and more importantly, there's a fucking horde of online reactionaries who are desperate to read defenses of their garbage opinions. it doesn't take much in the way of writing skills to stand out among the ppl willing to serve that end.
Firstly, have you never considered the possibility of something popular being bad?
Secondly, this is not a community of bloggers. Why would we expect to be popular online without doing anything to seek out that popularity?
Thirdly, why is 'needs an editor' the part you decided to focus on? Most high-quality writing that comes out these days is edited, so it's not exactly a stretch to say that Scott could benefit from such a thing - it's arguably the least mean and most actionable criticism on the card.
>Firstly, have you never considered the possibility of something popular being bad?
Clearly he's doing something right.
>Secondly, this is not a community of bloggers. Why would we expect to be popular online without doing anything to seek out that popularity?
He should give you some comment-writing tips, and then you can really take him down.
>Most high-quality writing that comes out these days is edited
Wow, sounds like he's even better than high-quality then.
> Clearly he's doing something right.
Yeah, he's really good at fascist apologia. Great at convincing people his shit takes are worth forking over money for. Incredible at making his readers think he's saying something clever.
What the fuck is this argument? 'He's doing something right' is not an appropriate response to someone listing all the things that he's doing wrong!
“Please don’t base your opinions of me on people claiming that I have
view X, in fact, it is slander to claim that I have view X. However, I
should note that view X is probably true and I will spend most of my
time defending it.”
I’m thankfully not familiar with much of the rationalsphere on
lesswrong or whatever, but by the gods I’ve seen an astounding
amount of people in Quora’s so called “High IQ” community that parrot
these exact tropes.
From the first imgur link:
> (Middle school) I remember pointing out errors in our textbook's derivation of the Earth's escape velocity that were introduced by neglecting higher order terms in a Binomial theorem expansion (that was introduced without explanation).
What do escape velocity and the binomial theorem have to do with each other? I'd be inclined to guess that a middle-school textbook would present the formula for escape velocity without proof. High-school physics might derive it, but that's just [applying the conservation of energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity#Overview). Don't get me wrong, I've seen some bad explanations in middle-school science books, but this juxtaposition is just weird.
**Escape velocity**
[Overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity#Overview)
>The existence of escape velocity is a consequence of conservation of energy and an energy field of finite depth. For an object with a given total energy, which is moving subject to conservative forces (such as a static gravity field) it is only possible for the object to reach combinations of locations and speeds which have that total energy; and places which have a higher potential energy than this cannot be reached at all. By adding speed (kinetic energy) to the object it expands the possible locations that can be reached, until, with enough energy, they become infinite.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
“Dismisses entire fields of knowledge out of hand despite clearly not knowing even basic concepts”
Not featured: ‘Probably should have actually read the thing he cited/linked to’
The thesis is buried in the middle somewhere. It’s eugenics.
“A series of unconnected stories that turn out to be a gish gallop”
“Please don’t base your opinions of me on people claiming that I have view X, in fact, it is slander to claim that I have view X. However, I should note that view X is probably true and I will spend most of my time defending it.”
He would hate this, he hates bingo boards according to his old livejournal.
“In spite of all the evidence I just listed for X, I’m going to arbitrarily decide that Y is true instead”
I’m thankfully not familiar with much of the rationalsphere on lesswrong or whatever, but by the gods I’ve seen an astounding amount of people in Quora’s so called “High IQ” community that parrot these exact tropes.
“Literally Moloch” is missing
[deleted]