8 ms·

Can you point to any examples that you found particularly annoying?

astrange 6y ago
"Against murderism" was the last time it came up, I think? In context I believe it was supposed to be anti-anti-Trumpism, or at least that you should talk to Trumpists more rather than deplatform them. The reason I don't remember is that the effect of reading his essays is that they're so long you forget why he wrote them and what you were thinking before you started it.
- konjin 6y ago
  >The reason I don't remember is that the effect of reading his essays is that they're so long you forget why he wrote them and what you were thinking before you started it. Honest question: how do you read books if a 10k word article is too long?
  - sunpar 6y ago
    I read many books but skip many long blog entries. Blogs tend to be in sore need of editing, and most the books that make it to print are in general far higher quality. The main strength blogs have to me are time to print, which makes them more “real time” than books.
  - dohnuts1919 6y ago
    I'm not OP, but I find it easier to read a 50k word book than 10k blog article. The latter had better be really good (and many of Scott's are) if I'm going to make it to the end. It's probably something about the nature of reading on a screen, on a device that's capable of fifty zillion other things at the press of a button. When I'm reading a book, there's only the book. Less willpower is required to maintain my focus. Long blog posts are much easier to read if I send them to my Kindle, but I rarely bother. Edit: a word
  - astrange 6y ago
    Reading them feels different, right? Books have pages so you can go back and forth, they have editors, and so on. More importantly, dense literary works exist but usually pop essay books are trying to prove a point. SSC essays usually try to make you forget you had a point, and instead go up a meta level in service of his extremely evenhanded let's-all-be-friends persona. Which conflicts with the pretty bad comment section that always wants to sit around discussing culture war. (Which exists but is not worth quite as much time as they want to put into it.)
ZeroGravitas 6y ago
Not the OP, but I'm from the demographic that should really enjoy Scott Alexander's work and generally do but he definately has some weird right-wing tendencies. For example, he appears to genuinely believe that recycling is a scam that was dreamt up by the New York mafia and that it's basically failed and been given up on. Ironically his main source for this seems to be old New York Times opinion pieces by a contrarian/libertarian. His own cite of his comment about how there's a thin line between feminism and literally Voldemort is another good example. Yeah he's edited it and seems to be going for "it's just a joke bro", but if you live in the kind of bubble where you casually condemn the whole of "feminism" as an evil then you've probably got a weirdly fascistic friend group and/or auudience. Talking of which, he mentioned that all his smart friends were really concerned about authoritarianism stemming from campus politics, much more so than they worried about Trump. His smart friends are either very dumb, or again weirdly fascist. I think I originally started reading his stuff because he had informed and humorous takedowns of some extremist libertarian/fascist ideas like neoreaction and dark enlightenment, but I guess to know that much about the topics probably is a reflection of the circles he's moving in. Yeah it's great that he mostly disagrees with them, but he seems fairly zen about it, like it's just their opinion man. Not like actual evils, like feminists, recycling or political correctness on campus, which get him a bit more worked up.
- blueflow 6y ago
  I dislike that you call people dumb or facist because they made a different judgement than you did, in regards of the "Is Trump worse than campus authoritarianism". Other people are able to feel differently about things.
  - hobs 6y ago
    Well in the context of fascism one of those things is an authoritarian government leader that praised dictators and tried to take over the government and another is a paid activity that's voluntary. If you want to make obviously dumb claims about fascists, you might get called out.
    - 6y ago

"Against murderism" was the last time it came up, I think? In context I believe it was supposed to be anti-anti-Trumpism, or at least that you should talk to Trumpists more rather than deplatform them. The reason I don't remember is that the effect of reading his essays is that they're so long you forget why he wrote them and what you were thinking before you started it.

konjin 6y ago
>The reason I don't remember is that the effect of reading his essays is that they're so long you forget why he wrote them and what you were thinking before you started it. Honest question: how do you read books if a 10k word article is too long?
- sunpar 6y ago
  I read many books but skip many long blog entries. Blogs tend to be in sore need of editing, and most the books that make it to print are in general far higher quality. The main strength blogs have to me are time to print, which makes them more “real time” than books.
- dohnuts1919 6y ago
  I'm not OP, but I find it easier to read a 50k word book than 10k blog article. The latter had better be really good (and many of Scott's are) if I'm going to make it to the end. It's probably something about the nature of reading on a screen, on a device that's capable of fifty zillion other things at the press of a button. When I'm reading a book, there's only the book. Less willpower is required to maintain my focus. Long blog posts are much easier to read if I send them to my Kindle, but I rarely bother. Edit: a word
- astrange 6y ago
  Reading them feels different, right? Books have pages so you can go back and forth, they have editors, and so on. More importantly, dense literary works exist but usually pop essay books are trying to prove a point. SSC essays usually try to make you forget you had a point, and instead go up a meta level in service of his extremely evenhanded let's-all-be-friends persona. Which conflicts with the pretty bad comment section that always wants to sit around discussing culture war. (Which exists but is not worth quite as much time as they want to put into it.)

ZeroGravitas 6y ago

Not the OP, but I'm from the demographic that should really enjoy Scott Alexander's work and generally do but he definately has some weird right-wing tendencies. For example, he appears to genuinely believe that recycling is a scam that was dreamt up by the New York mafia and that it's basically failed and been given up on. Ironically his main source for this seems to be old New York Times opinion pieces by a contrarian/libertarian. His own cite of his comment about how there's a thin line between feminism and literally Voldemort is another good example. Yeah he's edited it and seems to be going for "it's just a joke bro", but if you live in the kind of bubble where you casually condemn the whole of "feminism" as an evil then you've probably got a weirdly fascistic friend group and/or auudience. Talking of which, he mentioned that all his smart friends were really concerned about authoritarianism stemming from campus politics, much more so than they worried about Trump. His smart friends are either very dumb, or again weirdly fascist. I think I originally started reading his stuff because he had informed and humorous takedowns of some extremist libertarian/fascist ideas like neoreaction and dark enlightenment, but I guess to know that much about the topics probably is a reflection of the circles he's moving in. Yeah it's great that he mostly disagrees with them, but he seems fairly zen about it, like it's just their opinion man. Not like actual evils, like feminists, recycling or political correctness on campus, which get him a bit more worked up.

blueflow 6y ago
I dislike that you call people dumb or facist because they made a different judgement than you did, in regards of the "Is Trump worse than campus authoritarianism". Other people are able to feel differently about things.
- hobs 6y ago
  Well in the context of fascism one of those things is an authoritarian government leader that praised dictators and tried to take over the government and another is a paid activity that's voluntary. If you want to make obviously dumb claims about fascists, you might get called out.
  - 6y ago