7 ms·

Who is Scott Alexander and what is he about?

65 points by jasoncrawford 6y ago

ketamine__ 6y ago
Why is HN so obsessed with this guy?
- lukasb 6y ago
  Because HN wants to believe that the same "throw away what's been done before and reason from first principles" approach that serves them well in engineering can be applied to social problems. (Spoiler: it can't.)
  - AssPirate 6y ago
    Ok retard, why not?
    - AssPirate 6y ago
      I'll be surprised if I'm not shadow banned already
      - ketamine__ 6y ago
        Why are you wasting time on this centralized platform. It's sooo outdated.
      - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
        This feels almost like a false flag sort of extreme comment, knowingly violating the rules, just to make it seem like Slate Star Codex supporters are this kind of discourteous, bro-y, insulting aggressive group. Maybe it’s not actually a false flag, but let’s be clear that it utterly doesn’t represent the kind of values most SSC readers subscribe to. While I don’t like the original comment’s criticism of why people like SSC, that in no way justifies this type of extremely inappropriate response, full stop.
  - jimrandomh 6y ago
    I don't think that's what Scott is doing. See this post (2017): https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/07/yes-we-have-noticed-the-skulls/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/07/yes-we-have-noticed-th...
- gweinberg 6y ago
  I haven't seen any other HN posts about him. But I think the reason he is "in the news" is that NYT decided to dox him for failing to ban badthinkers.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    He already published his identity. NYT didn't dox him and he later admitted be overreacted. Why does he deserve anonymity anyway? I don't get it. Edit: Nice to see I'm downvoted for pointing out the facts. I guess I'm a "badthinker" too.
    - chipsa 6y ago
      NYT decided to dox him. He decided that they were going to do so regardless of what he did, upended his own life to minimize the damage that'd occur when his name got released, and did so, in order to ensure that his real name and his pseudonym got linked on his own terms, not theirs. If NYT didn't decide to dox him, the entire second paragraph wouldn't have happened. He deserved pseudonymity for the same reason you or I deserve pseudonymity.
      - ketamine__ 6y ago
        > NYT decided to dox him. Scott published his identity long ago. Scott doxed himself I guess? > He deserved pseudonymity for the same reason you or I deserve pseudonymity. Why? Because you say so?
        notadev 6y ago
        What is your first and last name?
        dang 6y ago
        Would you please stop perpetuating this tedious flamewar? Not perpetuating flamewars, and especially not perpetuating them by getting nastier as you go along, is more important than how right you are or feel you are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- twaybtclong 6y ago
  Curtis Yarvin, the OG of the cancelled, writes about him a lot, so maybe that's why?
- DC-3 6y ago
  Because he's a very gifted writer and an insightful social critic whose modes of reasoning and analysis happen to align closely with those most familiar and natural to the average HN reader. (i.e. he does humanities, but for people who use phrases like 'Nash Equilibrium' and 'prior distribution' in the pub)
- kortilla 6y ago
  Perhaps you could read the article. It appears to answer that very question!
- Barrin92 6y ago
  because he's Oprah for nerds and there was a whole thing with him complaining about having his name publicly displayed in an article and people in tech whining about the mainstream press is the new hot thing.
motohagiography 6y ago
Nice summary. I've read most of those. Whether or not Alexander could use an editor would be an interesting piece unto itself. Much of his charm is in the nested parentheses and asides that would get cut, but a distilled version with higher production value could be a useful way to create examples of thoughtfulness and charitableness in public discourse. When I don't agree with him, I still like the sort of enemies he makes.
yewenjie 6y ago
Scott is also the author of the web fiction novel Unsong which is at the same time funny and intellectually intriguing. Here's an excerpt that always makes me laugh. 'According to Wilson, ritual magic is to Reality as the placebo effect is to humans. Tell a human that a sugar pill will cure their toothache, and the pill will make the toothache disappear. Tell Reality that a ritual will make rain fall, and the ritual will cause a downpour. In Wilson’s system, ambience wasn’t just the most important thing; it was the only thing. Doctors have long known how every aspect of the medical experience enhances placebo effect: the white coat, the stethoscope, the diplomas hung and framed on the wall – all subconscious reassurances that this is a real doctor prescribing good effective medicine. Likewise, the job of a ritual magician – or in Wilson’s terminology, placebomancer – was to perform a convincing wizard act. The grey robes, the flickering candles, incantations said on the proper day and hour, even shrines and holy places. They all added an extra element of convincingness, until finally Reality was well and truly bamboozled. ... For to get one’s magician’s license revoked was a terrible thing. Who would trust a placebo given by a doctor stripped of his medical diploma, dressed in street clothes, working out of his garage? A magician who lost his license would lose the ability to convince Reality of anything. The American Board of Ritual Magic, originally a perfectly ordinary example of regulatory capture, had taken on ontological significance. So nobody had been too worried when young apprentice magician Dylan Alvarez had pissed off one too many people, gotten expelled from the Board, and vowed revenge. He was just an apprentice, after all, and anyway he’d lost his license. Good luck convincing the universe of anything now. But Alvarez had realized that there are people without medical degrees who hand out convincing placebos. They just don’t do it by pathetically begging people to believe they’re doctors. They do it by saying they’re better than doctors, that they’ve discovered hidden secrets, that the medical establishment is in cahoots against them, but they’ll show the fools, oh yes, they’ll show them all. A good naturopath armed with a couple of crystals and a bubbling blue solution can convince thousands, millions, even in the face of mountains of contradictory evidence. Ambience, they realize, is really a subset of a stronger power. The power of narrative. The literary tropes declaring that, given A, B is sure to follow. ... Can you imagine a story where a man lies in wait to assassinate the five masters of the American Board of Ritual Magic even as they are plotting to kill him, confounds their ritual, bursts out of the trap-door to their wine cellar at the most theatrical possible moment, raises his staff made of a rare and exotic wood that grows only his far-off homeland – and then dies ignominiously, shot by a security guard before he even can even get a word in edgewise? No? You can’t imagine the story ending that way? Neither can Reality. That was Dylan Alvarez’s secret. He always tried to be the protagonist of whatever story he was in, and the protagonist never dies.'
l0b0 6y ago
I've been absolutely bingeing on his blog since discovering the podcast[1] during the 2020 Christmas break. The measured pace seems to make it much easier for me to absorb it without cognitive overload, at least the less extremely technical pieces. The podcasters make a great job of summarizing visuals, and mentioning ahead of time if a post is particularly visual. Scott is one of those rare bloggers who tries their damnedest to present a rational rather than emotional case, and the vast majority of the content is a breath of fresh air: - He's willing to change his mind when presented with sufficiently powerful evidence, rather than always doubling down. - He absolutely fries people faking scientific legitimacy, but only in particularly egregious cases. - He uses cautious language when presenting interesting but inconclusive data, rather than trying to blow things up as much as possible. [1] https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/ https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/

65 points by jasoncrawford 6y ago

ketamine__ 6y ago

Why is HN so obsessed with this guy?

lukasb 6y ago
Because HN wants to believe that the same "throw away what's been done before and reason from first principles" approach that serves them well in engineering can be applied to social problems. (Spoiler: it can't.)
- AssPirate 6y ago
  Ok retard, why not?
  - AssPirate 6y ago
    I'll be surprised if I'm not shadow banned already
    - ketamine__ 6y ago
      Why are you wasting time on this centralized platform. It's sooo outdated.
    - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
      This feels almost like a false flag sort of extreme comment, knowingly violating the rules, just to make it seem like Slate Star Codex supporters are this kind of discourteous, bro-y, insulting aggressive group. Maybe it’s not actually a false flag, but let’s be clear that it utterly doesn’t represent the kind of values most SSC readers subscribe to. While I don’t like the original comment’s criticism of why people like SSC, that in no way justifies this type of extremely inappropriate response, full stop.
- jimrandomh 6y ago
  I don't think that's what Scott is doing. See this post (2017): https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/07/yes-we-have-noticed-the-skulls/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/07/yes-we-have-noticed-th...
gweinberg 6y ago
I haven't seen any other HN posts about him. But I think the reason he is "in the news" is that NYT decided to dox him for failing to ban badthinkers.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  He already published his identity. NYT didn't dox him and he later admitted be overreacted. Why does he deserve anonymity anyway? I don't get it. Edit: Nice to see I'm downvoted for pointing out the facts. I guess I'm a "badthinker" too.
  - chipsa 6y ago
    NYT decided to dox him. He decided that they were going to do so regardless of what he did, upended his own life to minimize the damage that'd occur when his name got released, and did so, in order to ensure that his real name and his pseudonym got linked on his own terms, not theirs. If NYT didn't decide to dox him, the entire second paragraph wouldn't have happened. He deserved pseudonymity for the same reason you or I deserve pseudonymity.
    - ketamine__ 6y ago
      > NYT decided to dox him. Scott published his identity long ago. Scott doxed himself I guess? > He deserved pseudonymity for the same reason you or I deserve pseudonymity. Why? Because you say so?
      - notadev 6y ago
        What is your first and last name?
      - dang 6y ago
        Would you please stop perpetuating this tedious flamewar? Not perpetuating flamewars, and especially not perpetuating them by getting nastier as you go along, is more important than how right you are or feel you are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
twaybtclong 6y ago
Curtis Yarvin, the OG of the cancelled, writes about him a lot, so maybe that's why?
DC-3 6y ago
Because he's a very gifted writer and an insightful social critic whose modes of reasoning and analysis happen to align closely with those most familiar and natural to the average HN reader. (i.e. he does humanities, but for people who use phrases like 'Nash Equilibrium' and 'prior distribution' in the pub)
kortilla 6y ago
Perhaps you could read the article. It appears to answer that very question!
Barrin92 6y ago
because he's Oprah for nerds and there was a whole thing with him complaining about having his name publicly displayed in an article and people in tech whining about the mainstream press is the new hot thing.

motohagiography 6y ago

Nice summary. I've read most of those. Whether or not Alexander could use an editor would be an interesting piece unto itself. Much of his charm is in the nested parentheses and asides that would get cut, but a distilled version with higher production value could be a useful way to create examples of thoughtfulness and charitableness in public discourse. When I don't agree with him, I still like the sort of enemies he makes.

yewenjie 6y ago

Scott is also the author of the web fiction novel Unsong which is at the same time funny and intellectually intriguing. Here's an excerpt that always makes me laugh. 'According to Wilson, ritual magic is to Reality as the placebo effect is to humans. Tell a human that a sugar pill will cure their toothache, and the pill will make the toothache disappear. Tell Reality that a ritual will make rain fall, and the ritual will cause a downpour. In Wilson’s system, ambience wasn’t just the most important thing; it was the only thing. Doctors have long known how every aspect of the medical experience enhances placebo effect: the white coat, the stethoscope, the diplomas hung and framed on the wall – all subconscious reassurances that this is a real doctor prescribing good effective medicine. Likewise, the job of a ritual magician – or in Wilson’s terminology, placebomancer – was to perform a convincing wizard act. The grey robes, the flickering candles, incantations said on the proper day and hour, even shrines and holy places. They all added an extra element of convincingness, until finally Reality was well and truly bamboozled. ... For to get one’s magician’s license revoked was a terrible thing. Who would trust a placebo given by a doctor stripped of his medical diploma, dressed in street clothes, working out of his garage? A magician who lost his license would lose the ability to convince Reality of anything. The American Board of Ritual Magic, originally a perfectly ordinary example of regulatory capture, had taken on ontological significance. So nobody had been too worried when young apprentice magician Dylan Alvarez had pissed off one too many people, gotten expelled from the Board, and vowed revenge. He was just an apprentice, after all, and anyway he’d lost his license. Good luck convincing the universe of anything now. But Alvarez had realized that there are people without medical degrees who hand out convincing placebos. They just don’t do it by pathetically begging people to believe they’re doctors. They do it by saying they’re better than doctors, that they’ve discovered hidden secrets, that the medical establishment is in cahoots against them, but they’ll show the fools, oh yes, they’ll show them all. A good naturopath armed with a couple of crystals and a bubbling blue solution can convince thousands, millions, even in the face of mountains of contradictory evidence. Ambience, they realize, is really a subset of a stronger power. The power of narrative. The literary tropes declaring that, given A, B is sure to follow. ... Can you imagine a story where a man lies in wait to assassinate the five masters of the American Board of Ritual Magic even as they are plotting to kill him, confounds their ritual, bursts out of the trap-door to their wine cellar at the most theatrical possible moment, raises his staff made of a rare and exotic wood that grows only his far-off homeland – and then dies ignominiously, shot by a security guard before he even can even get a word in edgewise? No? You can’t imagine the story ending that way? Neither can Reality. That was Dylan Alvarez’s secret. He always tried to be the protagonist of whatever story he was in, and the protagonist never dies.'

l0b0 6y ago

I've been absolutely bingeing on his blog since discovering the podcast[1] during the 2020 Christmas break. The measured pace seems to make it much easier for me to absorb it without cognitive overload, at least the less extremely technical pieces. The podcasters make a great job of summarizing visuals, and mentioning ahead of time if a post is particularly visual. Scott is one of those rare bloggers who tries their damnedest to present a rational rather than emotional case, and the vast majority of the content is a breath of fresh air: - He's willing to change his mind when presented with sufficiently powerful evidence, rather than always doubling down. - He absolutely fries people faking scientific legitimacy, but only in particularly egregious cases. - He uses cautious language when presenting interesting but inconclusive data, rather than trying to blow things up as much as possible. [1] https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/ https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/