Re. strawman: maybe this is a good essay, but I was referencing Dumblydorr's assertion that if someone else had written this essay it would be considered medioc

Re. strawman: maybe this is a good essay, but I was referencing Dumblydorr's assertion that if someone else had written this essay it would be considered mediocre/not make it to the top of HN, and your response that this is irrelevant, since the author _is_ in fact PG. I'm not sure where the no-true Scottsman is? > I can’t really see what you are trying to accomplish by insisting there is something called a ‘good’ essay, whose hallmark is it’s persuasiveness in the absence of knowledge about the author. Really? This seems entirely non-controversial to me. It's more-or-less "don't judge a book by its cover". Maybe I was over-emphasizing _how_ important this is ("hallmark" is probably too strong), but all-else-equal, a text being able to rely on the arguments made within as opposed to who the author is seems positive. And I think there's _obviously_ metrics by which you can judge an essay's good-ness beyond its author. [SSC][0] is a good example. I think he writes very interesting essays that captivate and convince people on their own. The only "reputation" he had when he started was that he was psychiatrist. Recently he's gotten a bit more popular, but still, his reputation is just "someone who writes good essays". Are you suggesting it's dangerous that SSC writes good, convincing essays, despite the fact that he's not some well-known figure? If you have no previous knowledge of a cult, getting convinced by their writing seems to be more about getting convinced by bad arguments than it is about attempting to consider arguments directly. And once you're already in a cult, I think it's a very common feature to have members rely only on the reputation of the cult leader without trying to think critically about the actual things they're saying. Like, let's say someone gets indoctrinated into a cult. You could say "Yeah, see, if they had just discounted the cult leader due to their reputation instead of trying to actually read what they had to say, they wouldn't have gotten indoctrinated." I guess? But they could have also used more scrutiny in examining the arguments? And if the reader isn't using scrutiny to examine the arguments, why do we think they're going to make good decisions about whose reputation to trust? [0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/ https://slatestarcodex.com/