8 ms·

In defense of interesting writing on controversial topics

125 points by petulla 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
question000 6y ago
It keeps being falsely stated that the NYT "exposed" Mr. Scott's identity. As correctly states in the NYT Scott was using his name in connection with the blog for years. It really colors my judgment of him that he would attack the free press this way. It's funny a so called "rationalist" doesn't want to be attached to his own writings, because you know people might attack him and well that would hurt his feelings.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  The stated reason for protecting his identity is that he’s a practicing psychiatrist who regularly receives threats from people who disagree with their perceptions of his blog content (hardly mere “concern for his feelings”). In what way was he “attacking” the free press? TFA notes that he was positively metered (“to a fault”) in his dealings with the NYT. Moreover, what does doxxing him add to the story?
  - question000 6y ago
    Ok, if it's a problem he's a practicing psychiatrist, that's an ethical issue HE has created by doing the blog. I don't think the NYT is responsible for running his practice ethically. Don't make comments that jeopardize your business, then blame other people for "being irrational", when they correctly attribute those comments to you, it's simple accountability. Again the doxxing is a complete myth, everyone knew his name already, he just didn't want attention draw to the fact he's actually being paid a quarter million dollars to do what he's doing.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      He addresses most of your concerns in his own post on why he was shutting down his blog; rather than restating them here I suggest you go read it. Also, I find it particularly abhorrent that one oughtn’t be able to write about controversial topics anonymously, and at least a little ironic given that we’re both doing exactly that.
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        Pseudonymously. It would be difficult to match these accounts to real people but not impossible (dang probably has access to enough signal to make an educated guess).
      - damnyou 6y ago
        Using your first and middle name is not anonymous by any stretch of the imagination.
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    Isn't that a risk for every writer, not just a practicing psychiatrist?
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      As I understand it, if a patient Googles him and reads about his views it can affect the patient’s treatment. Even in the general “ordinary writers” case, writing pseudonymously is a well-established convention, and many people including the NYT are happy to protect one’s identity if they have the right politics.
      - arkitaip 6y ago
        That sounds like nonsense. Is his goal for his patients to never ever get hold of his opinions in case they might disagree with him?
        throwaway894345 6y ago
        I think the idea is that therapy should focus on the patient and anything that might distract the course of therapy is harmful to the patient (deprives them of effective therapy treatment).
        GavinMcG 6y ago
        Ideally. Or in case they might agree with him. The therapeutic relationship should be one where the therapist offers the patient a mirror/lens/toolbox regarding their own views and behavior, and a patient's beliefs about their therapist's biases one way or another can interfere with that.
        jcims 6y ago
        Seems incredibly plausible to me. Not that his patients would disagree with him, but that they would no longer trust him.
        Veen 6y ago
        The majority of the psychiatric community disagrees with you. They believe the patient should not form personal relationships with psychiatrists and therapists, including not being aware of a psychiatrist’s positions on political and social issues. They have patients with a wide range of views, some of whom rely on their treatment to maintain their psychological well-being and mental health. It can be dangerous for them to have that relationship disrupted by disagreements about orthogonal issues. Psychiatrists are not primarily concerned to protect themselves, although that is a factor; they are largely motivated by a desire to avoid endangering their patient by disrupting their treatment. You might want to argue that it’s Alexander’s fault for writing a semi-pseudonymous blog in the first place, but that doesn’t help his patients. And I might agree with the view that exposing him is justified if the article actually revealed something of public interest-that he was a Nazi or a pedophile, for example-but it doesn’t. It’s a thin tissue of spurious guilt by association and mischaracterization. The NYT have decided that any risk to Alexander’s patients is less important than naming him in a low-quality hit piece. What they have done is immoral.
- Applejinx 6y ago
  It's pretty understandable "a so called "rationalist" doesn't want to be attached to his own writings, because you know people might attack him" and that would hurt his aims. Post early 2000s fascism, I've taken to viewing stuff sort of functionally. Whether it's been through exposure to alt-righters, or exposure to using drug addicts (some of whom have died of it, by now), it strikes me as existentially important that many, many people will brazenly lie about stuff fundamental to their position, for advantage (as defined by them). As such, the LAST thing you can do is take people at face value and present them your own face value and intentions/needs. People are in conflict over many things, and people are really clever when they're not really childish: it strikes me that the easy ones to read are the ones so childish that they can't even comprehend anything being different from them, and so they lash out and make up ill-conceived demons to rant against. Those folks are easy to spot. It doesn't take much cognitive development to identify 'this, the other, is different from me' and to imaginatively populate their mental space with your version of their own drives and wishes. And what do you do then? You tailor what you yourself present, to what will get by their filters and produce the effect you want. And that's why people lie as much as they do. Almost by definition, rationalists are beyond the primitive level of cognition where everyone is just copies of them: otherwise, other rationalists would argue with them and criticize their position. So we're looking at positions being defended by people who're capable of interpreting the other, and either correctly identifying outside values or making up some 'SJW' phantasm (some of which is likely to actually exist!) that brainlessly lashes out against 'rationality'. So, practicing rationalists looking to get results will be MORE likely to lie than SJWs and QAnons and the like: and it's the most natural thing in the world to expect a great deal of sketchiness and calculating, in terms of how things are presented. The bottom line is: does the belief system seek a sort of postmodern coexistence with all manner of conflicting beliefs and scenarios? Or is it a One True System seeking to destroy opposing systems? If it's the latter, it's gonna be cloaked in layers of lies, and we see that in Dark Enlightenment thinking: it would be foolish to present it in starkest form, like the alt-right stuff one has to be 'pilled' into it rather than dumped in at the deep end.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Jun8 6y ago
Speaking of writing on controversial topics: here’s an entry to connection between rationality and polyamory mentioned but not discussed in this post https://putanumonit.com/2019/10/16/polyamory-is-rational/ https://putanumonit.com/2019/10/16/polyamory-is-rational/
- geofft 6y ago
  I think this gets to a much more interesting question about Rationality, which, if applied properly and carefully, can loop back into the NYT's question about things like racism and sexism. Think about Chesterton's saying about the fence: > In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. Rationalists are the more modern type of reformer here (and so are hackers, founders who like to disrupt things, etc., so this worldview also tends to be popular on this site). Absent a convincing argument from first principles as to why the fence should exist, they think it's clear that it shouldn't. The sort of reformer that Chesterton calls "intelligent" I would perhaps rather call wise, in that this isn't a matter of personal cognitive capacity. (In fact, people who are more intelligent are probably better at being the "more modern" type of reformer, simply because they can more easily formulate those arguments!) They trust that someone else has put up that fence for a reason, and they aren't interested in relitigating it from first principles every time a reformer wanders by. The truly wise reformer also knows that this only works if there's a good reason to believe the argument exists, whether or not they know the argument themselves. They have to be working in a framework where fences don't get constructed without reason in the first place. Which is a fine approach at scale: you can't scale understanding all the arguments yourself (which is why they don't want to relitigate every single one), but you can scale building a society where someone has made those arguments before building up any fences. In order to do this, they have to at least occasionally listen to the "more modern" reformers, especially when they do come back and say, look, I found out why people originally thought the fence was a good idea, and here's why I think they were wrong to do so. Society at large tends to be more like the second type of reformer, but perhaps without that depth of wisdom. When they look at some norm in society (be it monogamy, or particular ways to phrase things, or as the article says, whether it's acceptable to eat coffee beans instead of brewing them), they tend to be unwilling to deeply question it, because they trust (rightly or wrongly) that the rest of society has converged on it for a reason. They get annoyed at children who ask "Why" all the time, and they certainly don't do so themselves. Rationalists tend to be more like the first type of reformer. If you can't explain why the norm of monogamy is good, it's probably bad. If your argument is "It makes me feel bad," they say you should question those feelings - see the linked story at the end about "polyhacking," i.e., arguing yourself into being polyamorous because your own emotions don't make sense from first principles. (They've even invented a new term, "compersion," for a feeling which is the opposite of jealousy - you could argue that they've invented a new emotion, seeing as not enough people felt it for it to have a name already.) Both approaches have their upsides and downsides, and I would be skeptical of either approach taken to its extreme. And it's the "more intelligent type of reformer" that controls society at large (certainly that is the position of institutions like the NYT), so there's a lot of merit in the "more modern type of reformer" pushing back on these assumptions quite aggressively. Still, there is a little bit of a point the NYT has: there are a few ideas that society objects to because they are both wrong and rather personally harmful to segments of society. (Were they potentially right and harmful, this would be a much more difficult conversation.) If you make a first-principles argument against monogamy, and it turns out you're wrong, you're merely weird; if you make a first-principles argument against the equal dignity of the races, and it turns out you're wrong, you've probably hurt a lot of people in the process. So society at large is extraordinarily uninterested in hearing those first-principles arguments, being firmly convinced that there is a reason why that fence exists and that relitigating it won't yield a different result. From that angle, it makes sense to consider a movement that says "All our norms are up for debate" as potentially harmful (and, more importantly, potentially not actually as much in service of the cause of finding truth / doing the right thing as it claims to be). In the other direction, this also explains why the Grey Tribe has "vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up," quoting the Slate Star Codex post linked in the NYT article (which references another Chesterton work, as it happens). To the more modern type of reformer, the gender-checking gate in front of romantic partnership obviously has no point, needs to be torn down, and really the problem is all the people defending the gate because it historically existed. Which, yes, they're right about that! But the Blue Tribe knows that if you actually want gay rights to happen, you've got to play by the rules of the "more intelligent" reformer - who is wrong in this case - and affirmatively argue for taking down the fence instead of simply questioning it.
throwaway894345 6y ago
This article was much better (more interesting, enlightening) than the NYT hack job. The whole “how can we tenuously paint this person as a racist?” thing the media (or rather “half a dozen outlets”) is doing is dull and creepy. Interestingly not long ago Yglesias was writing the disingenuous articles, so I’m really happy to see he’s turned a corner, and he deserves praise for doing so.
- elicash 6y ago
  What did he ever write that you think was disingenuous? Maybe some of his views just differ from yours?
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    His views have always differed somewhat from mine, but that doesn’t make him disingenuous. Rather, I think he used to write very charitably toward his tribe and very uncharitably toward other tribes (dealing in caricatures, demonizing, exaggerating, snarking, finding nothing praiseworthy, etc). He seems much more humble and earnest nowadays, even while I still often disagree with him.
    - elicash 6y ago
      I don't think he's changed at all. He's still incredibly snarky and even sarcastic in a way I don't like, particularly on Twitter, but I don't think has ever had those other traits you're labeled him with.
      - baytrailcat 6y ago
        In the twitter-verse, Matt is well known for his occasional "hot takes". But he is among the people who pushes the envelope ever so lightly all time and is still tolerated by woke twitter and I am glad for his role. He made out somewhat OK from the recent Harper letter controversy.
        6y ago
grey-area 6y ago
I knew before reading the article this would be a defence of views which hold other lives to be worth less than the author (racism), because they felt the need to be so abstract. Nobody is going to ostracise you if you hold interesting views on string theory, or economics, or local government ,or free love, or many other controversial topics on which society has a settled opinion. However if you hold views which require the submission of others to your will or hold other lives to be worth less than yours you can expect to be ostracised from society because those views are inimical to the functioning of the society which lets you express them and simply enforces consequences for doing so. The consequences for such behaviour are neither surprising nor unjust.
- Bostonian 6y ago
  "I knew before reading the article this would be a defence of views which hold other lives to be worth less than the author (racism)" People like Charles Murray have not asserted this, to my knowledge. He supports race-neutral policies, such as a universal basic income. The assumption that all talents or personality traits are equally distributed among all demographic groups is not necessary to support equality under the law.
  - api 6y ago
    Murray may not have asserted this, but by the time his ideas make it to the street level you get racist tiki torch marches and cops murdering black people in public. A thinker cannot simply wash their hands of the manifestation of their ideas, especially once that manifestation becomes stupidly obvious. Sometimes an unrelated example helps: Marxists do this all the time when they hand wave away the awful history of Communism. “Marx advocated evolution toward communism, not dictatorship.” Okay, maybe so, but virtually every large scale society to attempt to adopt Marxism ends up as some kind of totalitarian state that oppresses people at huge scale. At some point it’s reasonable to conclude that there is something very wrong with Marxism. Maybe Murray didn’t intend to help resurrect Naziism, but he played a central role in doing so. Back to the Rationalists, this is one of my huge problems with them and it’s evident in that paragraph about BLM. They reason in an absolute vacuum. They never seem to look down at the street to see what their ideas are doing down there.
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I have to wonder if the NYT piece had much traction at all outside of the few internet communities who knew it was coming. The piece is not great, but ironically that’s what propelled it to widespread popularity. With a single article, the NYT writer managed to steal the focus of an entire community and get his otherwise uninteresting article spread far and wide across the internet. More clicks for him. That said, I do think there is plenty of room for criticism of internet rationalist communities. There are a lot of people riding the coattails of blogs like SSC to use rationalism as a tool to lend credibility to their flawed assumptions. However, the audience for criticisms of rationalist communities is very small. Self-described rationalists seem interested on contrarian takes about everything but themselves.
spoonjim 6y ago
I can’t believe the anti-Semitism at the NYT is so unapologetic that they gladly doxxed a Jewish man in this climate of hate and violence. Blood is on their hands.
ohduran 6y ago
> And critically by “highly recommend it to you” I do not mean “I agree with all the takes.” I think contemporary society is willing itself into a state of incredible stupidity by people wanting to evaluating the worthwhileness of reading something purely on the basis of whether or not it’s correct. I think this is a very good point that I don't see raised very often.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I find myself self-censoring on controversial topics far more often than I think is healthy for deep, mutual understanding. I have some friends with whom I could debate the James Damore memo, where Jordan Petersen is making some points based in reason and science, the extent to which “Defund the Police” is honest vs hyperbolic, or under what circumstances saying “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” is sensible vs incendiary. I have other friends with whom those discussions would be impossible. It is this group that we could probably learn more from each other, but the heat from the conversation vastly exceeds the light (for everyone, not just me).
  - Bakary 6y ago
    What I see as the underlying problem is that most of those topics are fairly limited in scope. They are interpreted as controversial and potentially mind-expanding topics, but they are only controversial in the sense that sports teams are controversial. There might be mutual understanding, but it probably won't be that deep. We are mostly stuck in eternal bikeshedding.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      As an example: to what extent could we influence the gender balance of computer science graduates (or appropriately-skilled entry-level applicants) with upstream efforts? That feels to me like a lot more than bikeshedding (assuming there's an answer other than "zero point zero zero")
      - Bakary 6y ago
fao_ 6y ago
Interestingly enough, the blog author skips over the modern concept of Humanism as applied and mixed into Rationality. I was pleasantly surprised by the actions of the newspaper, New Humanist -- it is a Rationalist publication but mixes in Intersectional analysis seamlessly to provide quality journalism without accidentally moving towards the "Nazi" or "Racist" side of the spectrum as many other supposedly "Rationalist" newspapers do, by acknowledging that at a certain point it is not appropriate or rational to implicitly support these ideologies through trying to obtain a purely "Rationalist" understanding of the world, and that one's own rational understanding must be tempered by learning from the experienced of the systemically oppressed, otherwise you risk eliminating them from the "equation", and your consideration. It's a very worthwhile newspaper to read, it is high quality and I cannot recommend it enough. > I’m happy someone is pursuing these questions, but I don’t find the contemplations of these extreme scenarios to be particularly enlightening. Indeed. As a final note, it is worth it to know that Scott Alexander only decided he disliked the article from the NYT, not when he found out they were going to "out" him, but when he realised it was going to have a critical lens! Highly amusing!
- zaphar 6y ago
  As a final note, it is worth it to know that Scott Alexander only decided he disliked the article from the NYT, not when he found out they were going to "out" him, but when he realised it was going to have a critical lens! Highly amusing! I have seen absolutely no evidence to support this sentence. Nor do you present any yourself in this post. Pure unsubstantiated rumor is rarely productive or useful.
  - fao_ 6y ago
    Interesting that you didn't bother looking for it. I'm not sure how you can "see" something if you don't look :) Anyway, the note is copied pretty much verbatim from the Rational Wiki page on him: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander Which links here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200623184053/https://twitter.com/melissamcewen/status/1275493977672777733 https://web.archive.org/web/20200623184053/https://twitter.c... It links to the bottom of the thread in question. The gist of it is that, Scott Alexander communicated and had an open dialogue with the reporter, he knew that his name was going to be published (At the least, he didn't demand anonymity). The reporter initially had a positive take on SSC. The person in the linked tweet spoke to the reporter and introduced them to a different perspective, and put them in contact with other people with a slightly negative perspective of the blog. As soon as the reported started contacting those people, however, Scott suddenly had a problem with his name being published, and the blog was deleted.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
motohagiography 6y ago
The hit piece is dramatic, but does it matter? 10 years ago I used to read the weekend NYTimes as a ritual, now I don't know anyone who bothers and would even be a bit suspicious of someone who did because their social and professional lives have become a game of musical chairs of denunciations. I don't think defending interesting writing on controversial topics needs a defense, it just needs privacy. His conclusion is sufficient. "But something about the internet is making people into infantile conformists with no taste or appreciation for the life of the mind and frankly I’m sick of it."
- OskarS 6y ago
  The fact that you would be suspicious of someone who regularly reads The New York Times says more about you than it does people who read The New York Times.
  - motohagiography 6y ago
    One could think that, but if I said we could rationally form insights into someones psychological make up by going through their pornHub history, few would disagree, and yet if I imply their choice of lifestyle pornography yields similar tells, it's just me? I'm not sure I'd agree. :) Like any symbolic luxury good, it's an expression of alignment to what someone perceives to be power. It signals their beliefs about the world. Do they just enjoy it? Sure, but they enjoy it because it reinforces the story they tell themselves about their identity. It's like if they read USA Today or even Slate Star Codex. Today's NYT is written to arouse sentiments I prefer to keep at arms length.
    - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
      One of my least favorite trends in rationalist communities is taking extremely weak signals and using mental gymnastics to amplify those signals into some more dramatic conclusion. Apply overt formal writing style combined with some cleverly disguised fallacies (“few would disagree...”) and the piece has an air of faux sophistication and manufactured consensus. Meanwhile, you’re arguing that you can draw sweeping conclusions about a person simply because they read a certain publication. Ironic, given the rationalist community’s original embrace of exploring a wide array of perspectives and writings rather than letting pre-conceived biases dominate one’s thinking. I think you’re projecting your own habit of tying your identity to the material you read. Plenty of people read NYT articles without aligning themselves with the NYT, without thinking of themselves as part of the NYT community, and without building an identity around being an NYT reader. Plenty of people read NYT articles even though they disagree with them. Simply reading the NYT doesn’t turn someone into a self-described NYT person in the way that many people thinking reading SSC turns them into a rationalist.
godelzilla 6y ago
"Interesting" is a subjective term. TBH I don't find pseudo-science and reactionary politics to be very interesting. Why not stick with Dianetics?
debo_ 6y ago
> Well-known books like Toby Ord’s “The Precipice” and Philip Tetlock’s “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction” are important parts of the rationalist firmament. Aside: I was pretty into the roguelikes that descend from the Moria/Angband line for the better part of a decade. I'd frequently get to know people in that community and, after some light googling, realise they were famous in some other field. I learned about Toby Ord through a terrific game he wrote called Sil [0], which is a nearly-unrecognizable fork of NPPAngband that sticks tightly to the theme of the Silmarillion. It's a very tight game, and it oozes atmosphere--especially neat considering there is no sound, and only an ASCII-character terminal-like display. This was also how I first discovered Nick Bostrom and "Superintelligence"; Toby Ord was a postdoc of Bostrom's at the time, and following the chain I stumbled into this work. I guess roguelikes might appeal to rationalists in particular; there's a lot to reason about in there, but sometimes random things happen and there's just nothing you can do :) [0] http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/index.html http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/index.html
- anatoly 6y ago
  Interesting; I learned about Toby Ord through a terrific interactive fiction (IF) game he wrote called All Things Devours [0], highly recommended (and very friendly to someone mostly unfamilair with IF as a genre, as I was). [0] http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/devours/reviews.html http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/devours/reviews.htm...
jmull 6y ago
The article claims the nytimes story is like this: > Scott Alexander’s blog is popular with some influential Silicon Valley people. > Scott Alexander has done posts that espouse views on race or gender that progressives disapprove of. > THEREFORE, Silicon Valley is a hotbed of racism and sexism. But this just isn't accurate. The first sentence is right. The second is part of the profile (though not the entire point). And the stated conclusion is not in the article at all. I hadn't noticed "rationalists" of this particular type before today. I'm not impressed. This part is pretty bad: > Metz is very interested to paint Alexander as racist, by writing for example that “in one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in ‘The Bell Curve.’” Metz doesn't call Alexander a racist. The author feels Metz paints Alexander as a racist simply by raising an association with well known accused racist Charles Murray. Yet... if that inference is generally clear, then why did Alexander choose to make a point about UBI by associating himself with Charles Murray? My guess is the author feels attacked by the nytimes (or maybe the "tribe" the nytimes belongs to) and is fighting back (Fighting a little dirty, too, since it seems to be portraying the story inaccurately.)
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  The self-described rationalist community made their mind up about the article long before it was published, or even written. I think you’re right that the rationalist communities feel like they need to defend themselves and fight back, while refusing to even consider anything that could be viewed as criticism of their community. The modern self-described rationalist communities feel more like a place for people who have built their personal identities around the idea of being intellectual non-conformists than for people who genuinely want to discuss topics from different perspectives.
- mimikatz 6y ago
  The article is worse than you are portraying it. They go out and tie Murray to Alexander then in the next sentence remind the reader Murray is a racist. "In one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in “The Bell Curve.” In another, he pointed out that Mr. Murray believes Black people “are genetically less intelligent than white people.”" You say "Metz doesn't call Alexander a racist", but that sentence is clearly trying to get his readers to think that.
analog31 6y ago
>>> Compared to the mass public, the biggest difference between rationalists and everyday Americans is almost certainly that Americans are very religious. Oddly enough, the people I've known from the past generation who were the most skillful and verbose rationalists were all educated at Catholic universities. I'm not sure they were all still religious by the time I met them. My uncle could demolish any idea or argument.
throwaway4516 6y ago
Yglesias’s piece is much better than the Times’, and much better than other takes, but he’s still missing a few things. 1. Scott is worth reading. 2. Sometimes Scott tackles controversial topics and takes positions I disagree with, but we should not stop reading everything he writes because of that. 3. One controversial topic Scott sometimes writes about is race, and in particular race science, by which I mean the genetic correlations between race and traits like IQ. 4. Scott chose to write under a quasi-pseudonym, Scott Alexander, most of the time, precisely because he didn’t want his controversial takes to affect the rest of his life and community. 5. In building his blog, Scott appealed to and courted several different groups. The most important groups for the purpose of this discussion are Rationalists, neoreactionaries, so-called race realists, and tech people. 6. Some of the tech people he appealed to are prominent, and they would eventually support him both publicly and privately. 7. At the same time and independent of Scott, America has undergone a shift in its appraisal of both technology and race, and American society has become more polarized for reasons that are too complex to explore here. 8. Technology is seen as more important in American society, and many of its effects are now interpreted as potentially harmful. This has raised the profile of tech leaders in the public eye, and has made the media more critical of them. (They can be important, or they can be ignored by the critical press, but they cannot expect to be both.) 9. Race-baiting became common during the Trump years, even as critical race theory went more mainstream among liberals. 10. If Scott had simply written a blog that was popular among tech people, the mainstream media would have covered him with a puff piece. 11. Scott repeatedly convinced journalists not to profile him, however, because he did not want the increased attention. (Did he know where it would lead?) 12. If Scott had simply moderated a comment section where race realism was widespread, he would have been just another wing nut on the Internet, deserving no notice outside the SPLC. But Scott did both. 13. I personally believe Scott saw the contradictions and strategic flaws in his choices. He had built a blog that was both influential among famous people, widely read by “race realists”, and written under a quasi-pseudonym. 14. Which brings us to the media. They write stories about important and famous people, because their readers want to know about those people. Journalists don’t care about those important and famous people as people; they care about them as stories. As decision makers who may affect the rest of us. 15. The best stories are surprising, and when something is surprising, sometimes it is surprising because it has been kept hidden, because it is shameful. 16. Scott was hiding something. Not just his full name, but the extent to which his blog was enmeshed with neoreactionary movements and so-called race realism. 17. Scott is still hiding things; he is giving a distorted version of events. (And to re-iterate, I will continue to read his posts although I see him being disingenuous about these issues.) He says he has only spoken with Thiel once. Yes, but Scott worked at a startup funded by Thiel, Metamed. Scott is close with one of Thiel’s mentees, Balaji Srinivasan. Both Balaji and Thiel funded the startup of Curtis Yarvin/Mencius Moldbug, even as Scott discussed Yarvin’s writings in depth on his popular blog. 18. Some of his prominent tech supporters were aware of Scott’s interest in race science and continued to support him publicly. Others were probably not aware. 19. That is the root cause that resulted in Scott receiving the coverage he did. It was not about Scott. It was not because of any personal animosity that the Times or its reporters bear towards him. It is because he managed to bring prominent tech people and race scientists together on one blog for years, and keep it hidden, until it blew up in his face, because it was, in fact, a big story.

125 points by petulla 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

It keeps being falsely stated that the NYT "exposed" Mr. Scott's identity. As correctly states in the NYT Scott was using his name in connection with the blog for years. It really colors my judgment of him that he would attack the free press this way. It's funny a so called "rationalist" doesn't want to be attached to his own writings, because you know people might attack him and well that would hurt his feelings.

throwaway894345 6y ago
The stated reason for protecting his identity is that he’s a practicing psychiatrist who regularly receives threats from people who disagree with their perceptions of his blog content (hardly mere “concern for his feelings”). In what way was he “attacking” the free press? TFA notes that he was positively metered (“to a fault”) in his dealings with the NYT. Moreover, what does doxxing him add to the story?
- question000 6y ago
  Ok, if it's a problem he's a practicing psychiatrist, that's an ethical issue HE has created by doing the blog. I don't think the NYT is responsible for running his practice ethically. Don't make comments that jeopardize your business, then blame other people for "being irrational", when they correctly attribute those comments to you, it's simple accountability. Again the doxxing is a complete myth, everyone knew his name already, he just didn't want attention draw to the fact he's actually being paid a quarter million dollars to do what he's doing.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    He addresses most of your concerns in his own post on why he was shutting down his blog; rather than restating them here I suggest you go read it. Also, I find it particularly abhorrent that one oughtn’t be able to write about controversial topics anonymously, and at least a little ironic given that we’re both doing exactly that.
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      Pseudonymously. It would be difficult to match these accounts to real people but not impossible (dang probably has access to enough signal to make an educated guess).
    - damnyou 6y ago
      Using your first and middle name is not anonymous by any stretch of the imagination.
- arkitaip 6y ago
  Isn't that a risk for every writer, not just a practicing psychiatrist?
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    As I understand it, if a patient Googles him and reads about his views it can affect the patient’s treatment. Even in the general “ordinary writers” case, writing pseudonymously is a well-established convention, and many people including the NYT are happy to protect one’s identity if they have the right politics.
    - arkitaip 6y ago
      That sounds like nonsense. Is his goal for his patients to never ever get hold of his opinions in case they might disagree with him?
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        I think the idea is that therapy should focus on the patient and anything that might distract the course of therapy is harmful to the patient (deprives them of effective therapy treatment).
      - GavinMcG 6y ago
        Ideally. Or in case they might agree with him. The therapeutic relationship should be one where the therapist offers the patient a mirror/lens/toolbox regarding their own views and behavior, and a patient's beliefs about their therapist's biases one way or another can interfere with that.
      - jcims 6y ago
        Seems incredibly plausible to me. Not that his patients would disagree with him, but that they would no longer trust him.
      - Veen 6y ago
        The majority of the psychiatric community disagrees with you. They believe the patient should not form personal relationships with psychiatrists and therapists, including not being aware of a psychiatrist’s positions on political and social issues. They have patients with a wide range of views, some of whom rely on their treatment to maintain their psychological well-being and mental health. It can be dangerous for them to have that relationship disrupted by disagreements about orthogonal issues. Psychiatrists are not primarily concerned to protect themselves, although that is a factor; they are largely motivated by a desire to avoid endangering their patient by disrupting their treatment. You might want to argue that it’s Alexander’s fault for writing a semi-pseudonymous blog in the first place, but that doesn’t help his patients. And I might agree with the view that exposing him is justified if the article actually revealed something of public interest-that he was a Nazi or a pedophile, for example-but it doesn’t. It’s a thin tissue of spurious guilt by association and mischaracterization. The NYT have decided that any risk to Alexander’s patients is less important than naming him in a low-quality hit piece. What they have done is immoral.
Applejinx 6y ago
It's pretty understandable "a so called "rationalist" doesn't want to be attached to his own writings, because you know people might attack him" and that would hurt his aims. Post early 2000s fascism, I've taken to viewing stuff sort of functionally. Whether it's been through exposure to alt-righters, or exposure to using drug addicts (some of whom have died of it, by now), it strikes me as existentially important that many, many people will brazenly lie about stuff fundamental to their position, for advantage (as defined by them). As such, the LAST thing you can do is take people at face value and present them your own face value and intentions/needs. People are in conflict over many things, and people are really clever when they're not really childish: it strikes me that the easy ones to read are the ones so childish that they can't even comprehend anything being different from them, and so they lash out and make up ill-conceived demons to rant against. Those folks are easy to spot. It doesn't take much cognitive development to identify 'this, the other, is different from me' and to imaginatively populate their mental space with your version of their own drives and wishes. And what do you do then? You tailor what you yourself present, to what will get by their filters and produce the effect you want. And that's why people lie as much as they do. Almost by definition, rationalists are beyond the primitive level of cognition where everyone is just copies of them: otherwise, other rationalists would argue with them and criticize their position. So we're looking at positions being defended by people who're capable of interpreting the other, and either correctly identifying outside values or making up some 'SJW' phantasm (some of which is likely to actually exist!) that brainlessly lashes out against 'rationality'. So, practicing rationalists looking to get results will be MORE likely to lie than SJWs and QAnons and the like: and it's the most natural thing in the world to expect a great deal of sketchiness and calculating, in terms of how things are presented. The bottom line is: does the belief system seek a sort of postmodern coexistence with all manner of conflicting beliefs and scenarios? Or is it a One True System seeking to destroy opposing systems? If it's the latter, it's gonna be cloaked in layers of lies, and we see that in Dark Enlightenment thinking: it would be foolish to present it in starkest form, like the alt-right stuff one has to be 'pilled' into it rather than dumped in at the deep end.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Jun8 6y ago

Speaking of writing on controversial topics: here’s an entry to connection between rationality and polyamory mentioned but not discussed in this post https://putanumonit.com/2019/10/16/polyamory-is-rational/ https://putanumonit.com/2019/10/16/polyamory-is-rational/

geofft 6y ago
I think this gets to a much more interesting question about Rationality, which, if applied properly and carefully, can loop back into the NYT's question about things like racism and sexism. Think about Chesterton's saying about the fence: > In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. Rationalists are the more modern type of reformer here (and so are hackers, founders who like to disrupt things, etc., so this worldview also tends to be popular on this site). Absent a convincing argument from first principles as to why the fence should exist, they think it's clear that it shouldn't. The sort of reformer that Chesterton calls "intelligent" I would perhaps rather call wise, in that this isn't a matter of personal cognitive capacity. (In fact, people who are more intelligent are probably better at being the "more modern" type of reformer, simply because they can more easily formulate those arguments!) They trust that someone else has put up that fence for a reason, and they aren't interested in relitigating it from first principles every time a reformer wanders by. The truly wise reformer also knows that this only works if there's a good reason to believe the argument exists, whether or not they know the argument themselves. They have to be working in a framework where fences don't get constructed without reason in the first place. Which is a fine approach at scale: you can't scale understanding all the arguments yourself (which is why they don't want to relitigate every single one), but you can scale building a society where someone has made those arguments before building up any fences. In order to do this, they have to at least occasionally listen to the "more modern" reformers, especially when they do come back and say, look, I found out why people originally thought the fence was a good idea, and here's why I think they were wrong to do so. Society at large tends to be more like the second type of reformer, but perhaps without that depth of wisdom. When they look at some norm in society (be it monogamy, or particular ways to phrase things, or as the article says, whether it's acceptable to eat coffee beans instead of brewing them), they tend to be unwilling to deeply question it, because they trust (rightly or wrongly) that the rest of society has converged on it for a reason. They get annoyed at children who ask "Why" all the time, and they certainly don't do so themselves. Rationalists tend to be more like the first type of reformer. If you can't explain why the norm of monogamy is good, it's probably bad. If your argument is "It makes me feel bad," they say you should question those feelings - see the linked story at the end about "polyhacking," i.e., arguing yourself into being polyamorous because your own emotions don't make sense from first principles. (They've even invented a new term, "compersion," for a feeling which is the opposite of jealousy - you could argue that they've invented a new emotion, seeing as not enough people felt it for it to have a name already.) Both approaches have their upsides and downsides, and I would be skeptical of either approach taken to its extreme. And it's the "more intelligent type of reformer" that controls society at large (certainly that is the position of institutions like the NYT), so there's a lot of merit in the "more modern type of reformer" pushing back on these assumptions quite aggressively. Still, there is a little bit of a point the NYT has: there are a few ideas that society objects to because they are both wrong and rather personally harmful to segments of society. (Were they potentially right and harmful, this would be a much more difficult conversation.) If you make a first-principles argument against monogamy, and it turns out you're wrong, you're merely weird; if you make a first-principles argument against the equal dignity of the races, and it turns out you're wrong, you've probably hurt a lot of people in the process. So society at large is extraordinarily uninterested in hearing those first-principles arguments, being firmly convinced that there is a reason why that fence exists and that relitigating it won't yield a different result. From that angle, it makes sense to consider a movement that says "All our norms are up for debate" as potentially harmful (and, more importantly, potentially not actually as much in service of the cause of finding truth / doing the right thing as it claims to be). In the other direction, this also explains why the Grey Tribe has "vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up," quoting the Slate Star Codex post linked in the NYT article (which references another Chesterton work, as it happens). To the more modern type of reformer, the gender-checking gate in front of romantic partnership obviously has no point, needs to be torn down, and really the problem is all the people defending the gate because it historically existed. Which, yes, they're right about that! But the Blue Tribe knows that if you actually want gay rights to happen, you've got to play by the rules of the "more intelligent" reformer - who is wrong in this case - and affirmatively argue for taking down the fence instead of simply questioning it.

throwaway894345 6y ago

This article was much better (more interesting, enlightening) than the NYT hack job. The whole “how can we tenuously paint this person as a racist?” thing the media (or rather “half a dozen outlets”) is doing is dull and creepy. Interestingly not long ago Yglesias was writing the disingenuous articles, so I’m really happy to see he’s turned a corner, and he deserves praise for doing so.

elicash 6y ago
What did he ever write that you think was disingenuous? Maybe some of his views just differ from yours?
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  His views have always differed somewhat from mine, but that doesn’t make him disingenuous. Rather, I think he used to write very charitably toward his tribe and very uncharitably toward other tribes (dealing in caricatures, demonizing, exaggerating, snarking, finding nothing praiseworthy, etc). He seems much more humble and earnest nowadays, even while I still often disagree with him.
  - elicash 6y ago
    I don't think he's changed at all. He's still incredibly snarky and even sarcastic in a way I don't like, particularly on Twitter, but I don't think has ever had those other traits you're labeled him with.
    - baytrailcat 6y ago
      In the twitter-verse, Matt is well known for his occasional "hot takes". But he is among the people who pushes the envelope ever so lightly all time and is still tolerated by woke twitter and I am glad for his role. He made out somewhat OK from the recent Harper letter controversy.
      - 6y ago

grey-area 6y ago

I knew before reading the article this would be a defence of views which hold other lives to be worth less than the author (racism), because they felt the need to be so abstract. Nobody is going to ostracise you if you hold interesting views on string theory, or economics, or local government ,or free love, or many other controversial topics on which society has a settled opinion. However if you hold views which require the submission of others to your will or hold other lives to be worth less than yours you can expect to be ostracised from society because those views are inimical to the functioning of the society which lets you express them and simply enforces consequences for doing so. The consequences for such behaviour are neither surprising nor unjust.

Bostonian 6y ago
"I knew before reading the article this would be a defence of views which hold other lives to be worth less than the author (racism)" People like Charles Murray have not asserted this, to my knowledge. He supports race-neutral policies, such as a universal basic income. The assumption that all talents or personality traits are equally distributed among all demographic groups is not necessary to support equality under the law.
- api 6y ago
  Murray may not have asserted this, but by the time his ideas make it to the street level you get racist tiki torch marches and cops murdering black people in public. A thinker cannot simply wash their hands of the manifestation of their ideas, especially once that manifestation becomes stupidly obvious. Sometimes an unrelated example helps: Marxists do this all the time when they hand wave away the awful history of Communism. “Marx advocated evolution toward communism, not dictatorship.” Okay, maybe so, but virtually every large scale society to attempt to adopt Marxism ends up as some kind of totalitarian state that oppresses people at huge scale. At some point it’s reasonable to conclude that there is something very wrong with Marxism. Maybe Murray didn’t intend to help resurrect Naziism, but he played a central role in doing so. Back to the Rationalists, this is one of my huge problems with them and it’s evident in that paragraph about BLM. They reason in an absolute vacuum. They never seem to look down at the street to see what their ideas are doing down there.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

I have to wonder if the NYT piece had much traction at all outside of the few internet communities who knew it was coming. The piece is not great, but ironically that’s what propelled it to widespread popularity. With a single article, the NYT writer managed to steal the focus of an entire community and get his otherwise uninteresting article spread far and wide across the internet. More clicks for him. That said, I do think there is plenty of room for criticism of internet rationalist communities. There are a lot of people riding the coattails of blogs like SSC to use rationalism as a tool to lend credibility to their flawed assumptions. However, the audience for criticisms of rationalist communities is very small. Self-described rationalists seem interested on contrarian takes about everything but themselves.

spoonjim 6y ago

I can’t believe the anti-Semitism at the NYT is so unapologetic that they gladly doxxed a Jewish man in this climate of hate and violence. Blood is on their hands.

ohduran 6y ago

> And critically by “highly recommend it to you” I do not mean “I agree with all the takes.” I think contemporary society is willing itself into a state of incredible stupidity by people wanting to evaluating the worthwhileness of reading something purely on the basis of whether or not it’s correct. I think this is a very good point that I don't see raised very often.

sokoloff 6y ago
I find myself self-censoring on controversial topics far more often than I think is healthy for deep, mutual understanding. I have some friends with whom I could debate the James Damore memo, where Jordan Petersen is making some points based in reason and science, the extent to which “Defund the Police” is honest vs hyperbolic, or under what circumstances saying “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” is sensible vs incendiary. I have other friends with whom those discussions would be impossible. It is this group that we could probably learn more from each other, but the heat from the conversation vastly exceeds the light (for everyone, not just me).
- Bakary 6y ago
  What I see as the underlying problem is that most of those topics are fairly limited in scope. They are interpreted as controversial and potentially mind-expanding topics, but they are only controversial in the sense that sports teams are controversial. There might be mutual understanding, but it probably won't be that deep. We are mostly stuck in eternal bikeshedding.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    As an example: to what extent could we influence the gender balance of computer science graduates (or appropriately-skilled entry-level applicants) with upstream efforts? That feels to me like a lot more than bikeshedding (assuming there's an answer other than "zero point zero zero")
    - Bakary 6y ago

fao_ 6y ago

Interestingly enough, the blog author skips over the modern concept of Humanism as applied and mixed into Rationality. I was pleasantly surprised by the actions of the newspaper, New Humanist -- it is a Rationalist publication but mixes in Intersectional analysis seamlessly to provide quality journalism without accidentally moving towards the "Nazi" or "Racist" side of the spectrum as many other supposedly "Rationalist" newspapers do, by acknowledging that at a certain point it is not appropriate or rational to implicitly support these ideologies through trying to obtain a purely "Rationalist" understanding of the world, and that one's own rational understanding must be tempered by learning from the experienced of the systemically oppressed, otherwise you risk eliminating them from the "equation", and your consideration. It's a very worthwhile newspaper to read, it is high quality and I cannot recommend it enough. > I’m happy someone is pursuing these questions, but I don’t find the contemplations of these extreme scenarios to be particularly enlightening. Indeed. As a final note, it is worth it to know that Scott Alexander only decided he disliked the article from the NYT, not when he found out they were going to "out" him, but when he realised it was going to have a critical lens! Highly amusing!

zaphar 6y ago
As a final note, it is worth it to know that Scott Alexander only decided he disliked the article from the NYT, not when he found out they were going to "out" him, but when he realised it was going to have a critical lens! Highly amusing! I have seen absolutely no evidence to support this sentence. Nor do you present any yourself in this post. Pure unsubstantiated rumor is rarely productive or useful.
- fao_ 6y ago
  Interesting that you didn't bother looking for it. I'm not sure how you can "see" something if you don't look :) Anyway, the note is copied pretty much verbatim from the Rational Wiki page on him: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander Which links here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200623184053/https://twitter.com/melissamcewen/status/1275493977672777733 https://web.archive.org/web/20200623184053/https://twitter.c... It links to the bottom of the thread in question. The gist of it is that, Scott Alexander communicated and had an open dialogue with the reporter, he knew that his name was going to be published (At the least, he didn't demand anonymity). The reporter initially had a positive take on SSC. The person in the linked tweet spoke to the reporter and introduced them to a different perspective, and put them in contact with other people with a slightly negative perspective of the blog. As soon as the reported started contacting those people, however, Scott suddenly had a problem with his name being published, and the blog was deleted.

deleted 6y ago

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motohagiography 6y ago

The hit piece is dramatic, but does it matter? 10 years ago I used to read the weekend NYTimes as a ritual, now I don't know anyone who bothers and would even be a bit suspicious of someone who did because their social and professional lives have become a game of musical chairs of denunciations. I don't think defending interesting writing on controversial topics needs a defense, it just needs privacy. His conclusion is sufficient. "But something about the internet is making people into infantile conformists with no taste or appreciation for the life of the mind and frankly I’m sick of it."

OskarS 6y ago
The fact that you would be suspicious of someone who regularly reads The New York Times says more about you than it does people who read The New York Times.
- motohagiography 6y ago
  One could think that, but if I said we could rationally form insights into someones psychological make up by going through their pornHub history, few would disagree, and yet if I imply their choice of lifestyle pornography yields similar tells, it's just me? I'm not sure I'd agree. :) Like any symbolic luxury good, it's an expression of alignment to what someone perceives to be power. It signals their beliefs about the world. Do they just enjoy it? Sure, but they enjoy it because it reinforces the story they tell themselves about their identity. It's like if they read USA Today or even Slate Star Codex. Today's NYT is written to arouse sentiments I prefer to keep at arms length.
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    One of my least favorite trends in rationalist communities is taking extremely weak signals and using mental gymnastics to amplify those signals into some more dramatic conclusion. Apply overt formal writing style combined with some cleverly disguised fallacies (“few would disagree...”) and the piece has an air of faux sophistication and manufactured consensus. Meanwhile, you’re arguing that you can draw sweeping conclusions about a person simply because they read a certain publication. Ironic, given the rationalist community’s original embrace of exploring a wide array of perspectives and writings rather than letting pre-conceived biases dominate one’s thinking. I think you’re projecting your own habit of tying your identity to the material you read. Plenty of people read NYT articles without aligning themselves with the NYT, without thinking of themselves as part of the NYT community, and without building an identity around being an NYT reader. Plenty of people read NYT articles even though they disagree with them. Simply reading the NYT doesn’t turn someone into a self-described NYT person in the way that many people thinking reading SSC turns them into a rationalist.

godelzilla 6y ago

"Interesting" is a subjective term. TBH I don't find pseudo-science and reactionary politics to be very interesting. Why not stick with Dianetics?

debo_ 6y ago

> Well-known books like Toby Ord’s “The Precipice” and Philip Tetlock’s “Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction” are important parts of the rationalist firmament. Aside: I was pretty into the roguelikes that descend from the Moria/Angband line for the better part of a decade. I'd frequently get to know people in that community and, after some light googling, realise they were famous in some other field. I learned about Toby Ord through a terrific game he wrote called Sil [0], which is a nearly-unrecognizable fork of NPPAngband that sticks tightly to the theme of the Silmarillion. It's a very tight game, and it oozes atmosphere--especially neat considering there is no sound, and only an ASCII-character terminal-like display. This was also how I first discovered Nick Bostrom and "Superintelligence"; Toby Ord was a postdoc of Bostrom's at the time, and following the chain I stumbled into this work. I guess roguelikes might appeal to rationalists in particular; there's a lot to reason about in there, but sometimes random things happen and there's just nothing you can do :) [0] http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/index.html http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/sil/index.html

anatoly 6y ago
Interesting; I learned about Toby Ord through a terrific interactive fiction (IF) game he wrote called All Things Devours [0], highly recommended (and very friendly to someone mostly unfamilair with IF as a genre, as I was). [0] http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/devours/reviews.html http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/devours/reviews.htm...

jmull 6y ago

The article claims the nytimes story is like this: > Scott Alexander’s blog is popular with some influential Silicon Valley people. > Scott Alexander has done posts that espouse views on race or gender that progressives disapprove of. > THEREFORE, Silicon Valley is a hotbed of racism and sexism. But this just isn't accurate. The first sentence is right. The second is part of the profile (though not the entire point). And the stated conclusion is not in the article at all. I hadn't noticed "rationalists" of this particular type before today. I'm not impressed. This part is pretty bad: > Metz is very interested to paint Alexander as racist, by writing for example that “in one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in ‘The Bell Curve.’” Metz doesn't call Alexander a racist. The author feels Metz paints Alexander as a racist simply by raising an association with well known accused racist Charles Murray. Yet... if that inference is generally clear, then why did Alexander choose to make a point about UBI by associating himself with Charles Murray? My guess is the author feels attacked by the nytimes (or maybe the "tribe" the nytimes belongs to) and is fighting back (Fighting a little dirty, too, since it seems to be portraying the story inaccurately.)

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
The self-described rationalist community made their mind up about the article long before it was published, or even written. I think you’re right that the rationalist communities feel like they need to defend themselves and fight back, while refusing to even consider anything that could be viewed as criticism of their community. The modern self-described rationalist communities feel more like a place for people who have built their personal identities around the idea of being intellectual non-conformists than for people who genuinely want to discuss topics from different perspectives.
mimikatz 6y ago
The article is worse than you are portraying it. They go out and tie Murray to Alexander then in the next sentence remind the reader Murray is a racist. "In one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in “The Bell Curve.” In another, he pointed out that Mr. Murray believes Black people “are genetically less intelligent than white people.”" You say "Metz doesn't call Alexander a racist", but that sentence is clearly trying to get his readers to think that.

analog31 6y ago

>>> Compared to the mass public, the biggest difference between rationalists and everyday Americans is almost certainly that Americans are very religious. Oddly enough, the people I've known from the past generation who were the most skillful and verbose rationalists were all educated at Catholic universities. I'm not sure they were all still religious by the time I met them. My uncle could demolish any idea or argument.

throwaway4516 6y ago

Yglesias’s piece is much better than the Times’, and much better than other takes, but he’s still missing a few things. 1. Scott is worth reading. 2. Sometimes Scott tackles controversial topics and takes positions I disagree with, but we should not stop reading everything he writes because of that. 3. One controversial topic Scott sometimes writes about is race, and in particular race science, by which I mean the genetic correlations between race and traits like IQ. 4. Scott chose to write under a quasi-pseudonym, Scott Alexander, most of the time, precisely because he didn’t want his controversial takes to affect the rest of his life and community. 5. In building his blog, Scott appealed to and courted several different groups. The most important groups for the purpose of this discussion are Rationalists, neoreactionaries, so-called race realists, and tech people. 6. Some of the tech people he appealed to are prominent, and they would eventually support him both publicly and privately. 7. At the same time and independent of Scott, America has undergone a shift in its appraisal of both technology and race, and American society has become more polarized for reasons that are too complex to explore here. 8. Technology is seen as more important in American society, and many of its effects are now interpreted as potentially harmful. This has raised the profile of tech leaders in the public eye, and has made the media more critical of them. (They can be important, or they can be ignored by the critical press, but they cannot expect to be both.) 9. Race-baiting became common during the Trump years, even as critical race theory went more mainstream among liberals. 10. If Scott had simply written a blog that was popular among tech people, the mainstream media would have covered him with a puff piece. 11. Scott repeatedly convinced journalists not to profile him, however, because he did not want the increased attention. (Did he know where it would lead?) 12. If Scott had simply moderated a comment section where race realism was widespread, he would have been just another wing nut on the Internet, deserving no notice outside the SPLC. But Scott did both. 13. I personally believe Scott saw the contradictions and strategic flaws in his choices. He had built a blog that was both influential among famous people, widely read by “race realists”, and written under a quasi-pseudonym. 14. Which brings us to the media. They write stories about important and famous people, because their readers want to know about those people. Journalists don’t care about those important and famous people as people; they care about them as stories. As decision makers who may affect the rest of us. 15. The best stories are surprising, and when something is surprising, sometimes it is surprising because it has been kept hidden, because it is shameful. 16. Scott was hiding something. Not just his full name, but the extent to which his blog was enmeshed with neoreactionary movements and so-called race realism. 17. Scott is still hiding things; he is giving a distorted version of events. (And to re-iterate, I will continue to read his posts although I see him being disingenuous about these issues.) He says he has only spoken with Thiel once. Yes, but Scott worked at a startup funded by Thiel, Metamed. Scott is close with one of Thiel’s mentees, Balaji Srinivasan. Both Balaji and Thiel funded the startup of Curtis Yarvin/Mencius Moldbug, even as Scott discussed Yarvin’s writings in depth on his popular blog. 18. Some of his prominent tech supporters were aware of Scott’s interest in race science and continued to support him publicly. Others were probably not aware. 19. That is the root cause that resulted in Scott receiving the coverage he did. It was not about Scott. It was not because of any personal animosity that the Times or its reporters bear towards him. It is because he managed to bring prominent tech people and race scientists together on one blog for years, and keep it hidden, until it blew up in his face, because it was, in fact, a big story.