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Beigeness, or How to Kill People with Bad Writing: The Scott Alexander Method
- coldtea 6y agoTeenage-level writing of the modern tired "everybody who considers, or, worse, holds, conservative or non-liberal ideas is fascist" variety. Very badly written at that, with a snarky tone and bad faith. Here's a typical example: "The claim that he’s troublingly invested in racist bullshit is straightforward and, frankly, uninteresting; anyone trying to dispute it has a disingenuous agenda most likely involving racist bullshit." "damned if you do, damned if you don't" style "argument". Another part: "This is in its own demented way actually an impressive feat of writing. “I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup” gives, after all, an impressive illusion of actually arguing something. It feels convincingly like an essay—I mean, it’s really long and everything. It gives the strong sense that it analyzes things and moves towards a conclusion. " The post is full of non-arguments of the sort. Above this part, it has just analysed an essay ad-absurdum (it speaks of this, it speaks of that) to make the claim that it's not really a formal argument or some scientific paper. No shit Sherlock, it's an essay. As such, it uses metaphors, quotes, examples, arugments, a conversational tone, etc., to make its point(s). Whether it succeeds in that, it's up to the reader, after they take what they read into consideration. It's not supposed to be some constructive proof. And pointing to all the individual trees doesn't mean that they don't constitute a forrest. That's exactly what a forrest is: a collection of individual trees in the same place.