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It seems to me that simplifying the entire Scott Aaronson affair was necessary, since it was just a brief part of this article. I thought their choice of simpli
by baddox 6y ago
It seems to me that simplifying the entire Scott Aaronson affair was necessary, since it was just a brief part of this article. I thought their choice of simplification was reasonable and in good faith, but of course others might disagree (and unfortunately, whether we agree or disagree is likely to be effected by our overall level of agreement with the article).
- zozbot234 6y agoYou can simplify, and then you can say Scott wrote an angry "screed" that misrepresents 99% of feminists and ignores the plight of vulnerable women in its bourgeois defense of the privileged, nerdy intellectual class. (The article doesn't actually say "bourgeois", but the dogwhistles are crystal-clear.)
- mst 6y agoI confess that any description of anything that uses the word "screed" will tend to seem to me to be in bad faith. Largely because every time I've dug into the origins of such a description, it has indeed been in bad faith.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- whatshisface 6y agoThere's simplifying, and then there's misrepresenting. Simplifying it would be calling it "crippling anxiety exacerbated by uncritical childhood exposure to radical literature."
- adamsea 6y agoThe article isn’t about Scott Aaronsen. Also I mean your phrase “uncritical childhood exposure to radical literature” is .... weird. “Childhood exposure to radical literature”? “radical literature” almost sound like a disease.
- whatshisface 6y agoJust because he wasn't the subject doesn't mean it's okay to make materially false statements about him... >Also I mean your phrase “uncritical childhood exposure to radical literature” is .... weird. Well, I'm not qualified to write for the New Yorker, but surely they could have written a sentence that wasn't false. Maybe you could read a more detailed account on The Atlantic, and decide for yourself how it could be summarized. (Seriously, the "dating market," does not come up even once.) https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the-blog-comment-that-achieved-an-internet-miracle/384539/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/01/the-blo...
- adamsea 6y agoThat's a great article! FYI it mentions Andrea Dworkin though -- not Judith Butler, who you mentioned earlier. Not an expert but think they're fairly different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin I dunno, just seems like emotions are running high. To be fair, mine included. Sigh ...
- whatshisface 6y agoI think the association with Butler came from somewhere else* . The Dworkin reference was a positive one in Aaronson's original post. If you're really interested in digging through all the details, the original post by Aaronson that sparked the whole thing was called "comment 171." You may come away from it with different ideas than I, but you'll definitely come away from it with different ideas than the New Yorker. ;) * I admit that the "somewhere else" could have been my imagination.
- adamsea 6y agoI think we have to make a variety of assumptions to draw any conclusions about what the author of the New Yorker article intended. There’s too little info in the article to go on.