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In the years that I've read him I noticed this is something that happens from time to time with Scott Siskinds (see 3 if you take offense to me using his name)

In the years that I've read him I noticed this is something that happens from time to time with Scott Siskinds (see 3 if you take offense to me using his name) texts, especially when he steps out of his zone of competence to opine on politics, science in general, AI etc. The simple, obvious answer that the establishment believes in is met with some snarky ridicule and on goes the article, with some very subtle rhetoric veiled in the irony ("rigour doesn't matter, all scientists have biases, you can't trust rigorous science if the wrong people do it" is the message behind [quote] Studies are going to be confounded by the allegiance of the researcher. When researchers who don’t believe something discover it, that’s when it’s worth looking into. [/quote] ). I often wondered why this is, because he seems like a very smart guy with interesting ideas sometimes, so it seemed kind of weird and conflicting. Then I learned he's trying to hide his beliefs about scientific racism and political views (1) while often writing in the tone of "pained centrist just wanting to understand things scientifically" and it made much more sense as (in the worst case) an old school propaganda technique of FUD in science and rigorous science to make the HBD go down better and (more charitably) as Mr. Siskind just being another bright-but-human person who when writing on things he has actual expertise on can be very well worth reading, but simply shouldn't be trusted on anything aside from this. Rationalwiki has a decent writeup on him (2) 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20210217195335/https://twitter.com/TopherTBrennan/status/1362108632070905857 https://web.archive.org/web/20210217195335/https://twitter.c... 2: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25874025 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25874025

wpietri 5y ago
Exactly. He's definitely smart, and so it was a mystery to me why his articles were so incredibly long and rambling. (I get that some people enjoy his prose regardless of content, but I'm not one of them.) Why would a smart person who in theory wants to convey important points be so obscurantist about them? I threw up my hands and put it down to a personality quirk. It was the Sandifer article "The Beigeness" that cleared it up for me: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to...
- wpietri 5y ago
  And I really object to the comment I'm replying to getting flagged. I get that some people will disagree, but flagging it as if it were somehow inappropriate is a misuse of flagging power.
- phreack 5y ago
  That was a very eye opening article that also cleared up what was bothering me about Scott's style. Thanks for sharing.
- pdonis 5y ago
  Unfortunately, while the Sandifer article does make some valid points about Scott Alexander's writing, it also deploys plenty of questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning itself. I'm personally not impressed by either article.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    You're welcome to make the case, of course. But you'll understand why your comment doesn't persuade as is.
    - pdonis 5y ago
      Well, a quick red flag in Sandifer's article is that she describes Slate Star Codex as "a crackpot blog that keeps giving cover to f---ing nazis". But what first got my attention (well, second, since the first thing was that Sandifer's article is as long and rambling as Alexander's is--both of them could have made what valid points they had with far fewer words) was this statement, a little earlier, about Scott Aaronson (referring to the comment in the blog post of Aaronson's that Alexander's article links to): > Aaronson was declaring that, as a shy and nerdy man, he was a member of "one of society's least privileged classes" in response to someone saying they were a rape victim. The reason this got my attention was that I had previously read the Aaronson post in question, and the comments, and I didn't remember any such thing. So I read through the post and comments again. The commenter that Aaronson was responding to when he talked about his personal history (the comment of his that Alexander quoted) did say she was a rape victim in that comment thread--but she said it after the quoted comment from Aaronson. Aaronson's quoted comment was in response to an earlier comment of hers, which did not say anything about her having been raped. So Sandifer lied in her article about a fact that was key to her argument. I understand this is just one example, but there isn't room here for a multi-thousand-word critique and I don't have time to write one anyway. But the example I have given is not the only questionable thing I saw.
_dain_ 5y ago
have you considered the possibility that he is simply correct about HBD?
- igorkraw 5y ago
  Depends what you and him exactly mean, but since he's talking about the neoreactionaries being correct, I'll assume he doesn't mean the scientific version which posits that race has no genetic basis (ctrl+F "race") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation but more this variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism. Even if it was correct, I think if there are no nefarious consequences being pushed for, I think people who want to argue HBD should rise to the challenge of explaining in plain english what they mean and what consequences they would draw from their assumption being correct, instead of hiding behind obfuscation. While I am not necessarily 100% aligned with groups like AntiFa chapters, BLM etc., at least they are honest about what they think and want to achieve.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Have you considered the long history of racist misuse of science and its "just asking questions" defenders?
  - blindmute 5y ago
    That has nothing to do with its veracity.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      That is clearly not the case. For hundreds of years people have energetically misused science to justify both their racist feelings and systemic racism. And other people have showed up to disingenuously defend that in many ways, including your evasive, just-asking-questions routine. There is no reason to think that activity has stopped. And indeed, the shift in the last 50 years to make overt racism moderately less socially acceptable suggests that we might see an increase in the amount of covert racism. So I feel no obligation to take the latest iteration any more seriously than I would the 1850s version. It's the same deal with perpetual motion machines or multi-level marketing schemes or religious door-knockers: the next one to come along could finally be the one that isn't horseshit. But that's not the way to bet. If you'd like to make the argument that your personal favorite scientific racism is better science than the scientific racism favored by other racists, feel free to take a swing at it. But just looking over your comment history, I'm not going to give it a lot of weight.
adamgordonbell 5y ago
This is a strange take. I thought it was a fascinating write up about how if you assume ESP doesn't exist then parapsychology research has something important to say about the replication crisis in social sciences. Going into how double blind solves all this means skipping the interesting bit: that parapsychology can be viewed as a control group for the scientific method.
- igorkraw 5y ago

wpietri 5y ago

Exactly. He's definitely smart, and so it was a mystery to me why his articles were so incredibly long and rambling. (I get that some people enjoy his prose regardless of content, but I'm not one of them.) Why would a smart person who in theory wants to convey important points be so obscurantist about them? I threw up my hands and put it down to a personality quirk. It was the Sandifer article "The Beigeness" that cleared it up for me: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to...

wpietri 5y ago
And I really object to the comment I'm replying to getting flagged. I get that some people will disagree, but flagging it as if it were somehow inappropriate is a misuse of flagging power.
phreack 5y ago
That was a very eye opening article that also cleared up what was bothering me about Scott's style. Thanks for sharing.
pdonis 5y ago
Unfortunately, while the Sandifer article does make some valid points about Scott Alexander's writing, it also deploys plenty of questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning itself. I'm personally not impressed by either article.
- wpietri 5y ago
  You're welcome to make the case, of course. But you'll understand why your comment doesn't persuade as is.
  - pdonis 5y ago
    Well, a quick red flag in Sandifer's article is that she describes Slate Star Codex as "a crackpot blog that keeps giving cover to f---ing nazis". But what first got my attention (well, second, since the first thing was that Sandifer's article is as long and rambling as Alexander's is--both of them could have made what valid points they had with far fewer words) was this statement, a little earlier, about Scott Aaronson (referring to the comment in the blog post of Aaronson's that Alexander's article links to): > Aaronson was declaring that, as a shy and nerdy man, he was a member of "one of society's least privileged classes" in response to someone saying they were a rape victim. The reason this got my attention was that I had previously read the Aaronson post in question, and the comments, and I didn't remember any such thing. So I read through the post and comments again. The commenter that Aaronson was responding to when he talked about his personal history (the comment of his that Alexander quoted) did say she was a rape victim in that comment thread--but she said it after the quoted comment from Aaronson. Aaronson's quoted comment was in response to an earlier comment of hers, which did not say anything about her having been raped. So Sandifer lied in her article about a fact that was key to her argument. I understand this is just one example, but there isn't room here for a multi-thousand-word critique and I don't have time to write one anyway. But the example I have given is not the only questionable thing I saw.

_dain_ 5y ago

have you considered the possibility that he is simply correct about HBD?

igorkraw 5y ago
Depends what you and him exactly mean, but since he's talking about the neoreactionaries being correct, I'll assume he doesn't mean the scientific version which posits that race has no genetic basis (ctrl+F "race") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation but more this variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism. Even if it was correct, I think if there are no nefarious consequences being pushed for, I think people who want to argue HBD should rise to the challenge of explaining in plain english what they mean and what consequences they would draw from their assumption being correct, instead of hiding behind obfuscation. While I am not necessarily 100% aligned with groups like AntiFa chapters, BLM etc., at least they are honest about what they think and want to achieve.
wpietri 5y ago
Have you considered the long history of racist misuse of science and its "just asking questions" defenders?
- blindmute 5y ago
  That has nothing to do with its veracity.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    That is clearly not the case. For hundreds of years people have energetically misused science to justify both their racist feelings and systemic racism. And other people have showed up to disingenuously defend that in many ways, including your evasive, just-asking-questions routine. There is no reason to think that activity has stopped. And indeed, the shift in the last 50 years to make overt racism moderately less socially acceptable suggests that we might see an increase in the amount of covert racism. So I feel no obligation to take the latest iteration any more seriously than I would the 1850s version. It's the same deal with perpetual motion machines or multi-level marketing schemes or religious door-knockers: the next one to come along could finally be the one that isn't horseshit. But that's not the way to bet. If you'd like to make the argument that your personal favorite scientific racism is better science than the scientific racism favored by other racists, feel free to take a swing at it. But just looking over your comment history, I'm not going to give it a lot of weight.

adamgordonbell 5y ago

This is a strange take. I thought it was a fascinating write up about how if you assume ESP doesn't exist then parapsychology research has something important to say about the replication crisis in social sciences. Going into how double blind solves all this means skipping the interesting bit: that parapsychology can be viewed as a control group for the scientific method.

igorkraw 5y ago