The actually not even really a hatchet job NYT piece on SlateScott that mostly just called him a weird little guy has nonetheless created a festering psychic wound that oozes to this day. Here manifests as an interview with the author on LW. See also: discussion on reddit.
My favorite section, talking about how people are mad that be brought up Scott’s notorious race stuff™️:
CM: That’s great. That’s a valid position. There are other valid positions where people say, we need to not go so close to that, because it’s dangerous and there’s a slippery slope. The irony of this whole situation is that some people who feel that I should not have gone there, who think I should not explore the length and breadth of that situation, are the people who think you should always go there.
Reporter: “Uhmm it seems like y’all flirt with racism an awful lot tbh.”
Zach: “And that’s actually my position.”
God reporting on these creeps must have been such a nightmare
Wait. Why the fuck is that weirdo talking to Cade Metz? What the hell is going on here!?!
Unbelievable kill shot, how the fuck did Davis leave it on this? Some secret agenda to hand Metz a fuckin’ victory wreath? Does he think this makes Metz look bad?
CM: What his argument to me was is that it violated the ethics of his profession. But that’s his issue, not mine, right? He chose to be a super-popular blogger and to have this influence as a psychiatrist. His name—when I sat down to figure out his name, it took me less than five minutes. It’s just obvious what his name is. The New York Times ceases to serve its purpose if we’re leaving out stuff that’s obvious. That’s just how we have to operate. Our aim—and again, the irony is that your aim is similar—is to tell people the truth, and have them understand it. If we start holding stuff back, then that quickly falls apart.
I get that out front Davis’s whole thing is total transparency, but if that’s really all that’s going on here, how did it not end on something utterly banal? How is this orbital homerun the end of the conversation?
A rat scoring an own goal shouldn’t be surprising, and a rat, especially ZMD, not understanding how to edit should also not be surprising.
loved how Metz is literally just explaining his job in terms that make obvious sense, and the commenters go off to construct a stupendous conspiracy theory
also, like. we have the email where Scott confesses that he started SSC to promote reactionary ideas and race science. Zack has even posted about said email.
deleted by creator
minor point of order (and a little riff): they are talking about their job at the Times, which might be a whole other kettle of fish going by their recent track record
I feel like “giving everyone their due” is one thing, as long as it’s tempered by the recognition that not every perspective is due equal respect, or that certain perspectives are due a large disclaimer about how factual consensus completely disagrees.
I’d really like to know the back story on this interview too. I realize weirdness isn’t exactly distinctive when it comes to rationalists, but Zack is in a league of his own.
the comments are even dumber
The amount of hand-wringing about “why is it so important to trace how these people are connected to Peter Thiel or Elon or other incredibly wealthy right-wing ideologues who have a measurable impact on people’s lives.”
Why can’t the journalists just join our special club where we talk about changing the world in the most disconnected way imaginable. It’s like they think we’re trying to take over the world or something.
You can’t have it both ways. Either you’re completely publicly irrelevant or you’re of public interest, and if you’re making yourself a public figure you shouldn’t be shocked when the public takes an interest in who you are, why you say the things you do, and who you associate with.
no, haven’t you heard? Great minds discuss IDEAS not PEOPLE. You’re basically a Vogue cover article if you even dare delve into networks of powerful people beyond taking them at face value.
On a historical analogy, Scott’s case seems quite analogous to the historical case of Baruch Spinoza.
JFC
Fun to see gwern in there presumably telling a fib. I wonder what really happened when Metz “ghosted” him? I particularly enjoyed, this time, watching whatever uppers he’s on these days kick in (or wear off?) about halfway through writing the footnote he added to that comment.
It’s “fun” to see them fail to grasp that a journalist (or outsider) doesn’t need to have read all their blogposts, and that “who talks to who” is basic journalism.
If only you read those glorious posts you would be enlightened, and if you somehow still disagree then you are either a liar, an NPC, or have not read them carefully enough, which I can prove by using shibboleths on our communities accepted doctrine.
It always boggles the mind when people fail to grasps others as being real.
It is very, very funny to see what is clearly “I have no interest in discussing this with you” get interpreted as “I am too evil and/or low-IQ to recognise the truth of your obviously correct ideas”. They really throw a fit when discussion isn’t 100% on their terms. They’re not even good sophists!
and that “who talks to who” is basic journalism.
It’s always interesting to note when an apparently natural convention has metastasised and begun to sprout weird, ugly, distensions that no longer make sense. Sure, when the stakes are ideas, it’s important to stick to ideas and not over-focus on personalities! In fact you can take that principle fairly far, as when holding onto your ideals in the teeth of conflict which can abase you and cause you to lose all moral compass. But never talk about personalities? And in a big way we live in the century of metastasised conventions - the internet, but also everything else, both accelerates and robs us of any behavioural compass but strange and constantly shifting conventional guides for getting along (have a terrifying conversation with almost anyone in Gen Z for proof of that). In the same way “in-group/out-group” is hopelessly inadequate to capture this dynamic, but it’s another convention that this lot of have chosen to metastasise (and, paradoxically, it now looms larger in the rules governing their thinking than almost anywhere).
For them, it’s all become a strange conspiracy of the elect in which nobody knows who’s in charge and nobody is actually the elect, hence this constant bizarre resort to the counter-conspiracy whenever their strange values come into conflict with the outside: they no longer have a tool for reality-testing their values, because the rest of the world is either wrong or the enemy
you know, I still don’t actually know who gwern is and what they’re like. the amount of times I’ve seen gwern links pop up from some questionable origins has thus far left it in my “yeah no fuck this” pile of places on the internet to go to
I particularly enjoyed, this time, watching whatever uppers he’s on these days kick in (or wear off?) about halfway through writing the footnote he added to that comment.
wow that remark is one massive cause of missing the blatantly fucking obvious, and/or intentionally being obtuse about it
e: then again, these are the people that put their SP into logorrhea and then only after dumping like 90% do they sometimes realize they might need it in other areas too
Usually I’d agree with Zack, you should definitely not give everyone’s (e.g. the rationalists’) point of view a forum. Luckily they are very good at shooting themselves in the foot.
