The article is plainly written and well written and allows people to decide for themselves what the intentions of Scott Siskind may be. Contra to the insinuati

The article is plainly written and well written and allows people to decide for themselves what the intentions of Scott Siskind may be. Contra to the insinuation that Cade Metz smears Siskind by unfairly associating him with Nick Land, Metz's article lays the evidence and allows readers to infer what that evidence may or may not mean. For me, the concluding 3 paragraphs of the article sum up what Slate Star Codex (now "Astral Codex Ten") may be > I assured [Kelsey Piper] my goal was to report on the blog, and the Rationalists, with rigor and fairness. But she felt that discussing both critics and supporters could be unfair. What I needed to do, she said, was somehow prove statistically which side was right. This is ad absurdum at its finest. Proving whether an idea is correct using statistical analysis makes sense for many empirical matters. But proving whether proponents of extreme views (e.g. in the article, the idea that women are biologically not as capable as men to work as programmers) by using statistical analysis is a moral failure driven by scientificism. (I'm going to decline rehearsing the debates about whether women are biologically or culturally inhibited from programming.) > When I asked Mr. Altman, of OpenAI, if the conversation on sites like Slate Star Codex could push people toward toxic beliefs, he said he held “some empathy” for these concerns. But, he added, “people need a forum to debate ideas.” This really sounds unfortunately like John Matze's position on Parler. Slate Star Codex is not the same kind of gathering ground Parler was, but given the next paragraph, the comparison is not inapt. > In August, Mr. Siskind restored his old blog posts to the internet. And two weeks ago, he relaunched his blog on Substack, a company with ties to both Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator. He gave the blog a new title: Astral Codex Ten. He hinted that Substack paid him $250,000 for a year on the platform. And he indicated the company would give him all the protection he needed. If Slate Star Codex is somewhere self-described "Rationalists" can civilly and safely debate whether intelligence is statistically correlated to race and gender and these are "[t]he People Inventing the Future", then it's not surprising Horowitz would seek to protect that forum under the shelter of Substack. However, it's slightly alarming to hear that Altman defends the promulgation of such ideas because "people need a forum to debate ideas". Too many of these ideas seep into the discussions even here on Hacker News. Failing to object to immorality and immoral arguments cannot be corrected only by rationalism and statistics because Nature, at its core, is amoral. Many dumb people are moral. Many dumb people are immoral. By the same token many smart people are immoral, too. The real problem is when you realize that many smart people are, in fact, both immoral and dumb. The article's last paragraph gives the lie to the controversy that has raged in tech circles surrounding publishing Siskind's name. > In his first post [on Astral Codex Ten], Mr. Siskind shared his full name.