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astralcodexten.substack.com isn’t a journalist (he’s a psychiatrist) but covers current events quite well, probably has as little bias as you can as a person, a

astralcodexten.substack.com isn’t a journalist (he’s a psychiatrist) but covers current events quite well, probably has as little bias as you can as a person, and is popular on HN.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> probably has as little bias as you can as a person Yesterday he wrote an article about being “anti-woke” on a college campus. It included recommendations such as what he called the “berserker strategy” which was to pick as many fights as possible on every social justice topic. Scott is anything but unbiased. He writes with flowery language that elicits a sense of faux humbleness and “both sides” journalism while subtlety pushing the reader to his desired conclusions on things like race and IQ. He’s famous for leaked e-mails where he admitted writing a lot about neoreactionaries because it gets more clicks, which has made him somewhat of a hero among those circles. He also admitted that he believes in “HBD” which is an alt-right euphemism for racist views on IQ. He may feel unbiased and objective due to his writing style, but he’s far from it if you’ve been following him and reading closely.
- jfiowejf 5y ago
  > subtlety pushing the reader to his desired conclusions on things like race and IQ. Pushing people towards believing the truth? The horror!
- holbrad 5y ago
  "He also admitted that he believes in “HBD” which is an alt-right euphemism for racist views on IQ." Good to see an unbiased take such as this. Let's look up what that means. First hit on google: "HBD IQ" (For me)(https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jttfuxoQpYsnNEAqG/suppose-hbd-is-true https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jttfuxoQpYsnNEAqG/suppose-hb...) "Human bio-diversity, the claim that distinct populations of humans exist and have substantial genetical variance which accounts for some difference in average intelligence from population to population" I mean I'm sure racists love the idea, but it doesn't exactly strike me as obviously 100% untrue.
  - staticman2 5y ago
    Are you an expert on the topic of genetics? If not why would you expect any claim revolving genetics to be "obviously 100% untrue" to you?
    - holbrad 5y ago
      You don't have to be an expert on a topic to see that something is either extremely unlikely or plausible. (Anyone can still be wrong in there conclusion mind you.) "There's a group of human's that can breath fire like a dragon" Just using some basic knowledge of evolution and genetics, that seems pretty unlikely. What would the evolutionary pressure be ? Would there be enough time for that development? No parallel's in other mammals etc. You can do the same to see if something is plausible. For this discussion specifically. We know there are physical difference's between populations (Height, drug tolerance, skin colour) These observable differences are caused by different genes. What are the chances that none of these differences in genes are in the brain ? Basically zero. So it's very plausible you'd find some differences. Just using some simple reasoning. (Reading a little bit about it, Sam Harris basically makes this exact point. It really is basic logic)
      - staticman2 5y ago
        The history of philosophy shows that what sounds logical tells us little about how the world physically works. There's nothing logical about time dilation or quantum physics. I mean, if the community around Astro Codex said upfront "We don't care about empiricism, we make things up based on what sounds logical to us" I would at least give them points for honesty. The guy who runs Astro Codex blog claims he is an empiricist.
        holbrad 5y ago
        It's nuanced. We are evolved creatures, with certain intuitions about things. You can point to domains about where it fails completely. (For understandable reasons) But that doesn't mean intuition is useless, in fact I'd say it's rather underused for how valuable it actually is. Parachutes and RCT's come to mind. Being empirical is really hard and rather un-natural for humans. It's a best effort thing. Current institution don't help as much as I'd like, it still takes many decades for information to propagate (And even longer for corrections where the consensus was wrong)
rstarast 5y ago
bishplsok 5y ago
[dead]
- deadpannini 5y ago
  Ironically, a brief passage by Scott Alexander (from the hit piece targeting him linked above) describes a very good reason to read content you disagree with, almost making the parent comment germane to the overall discussion. > Compare RationalWiki and the neoreactionaries. RationalWiki provides a steady stream of mediocrity. Almost nothing they say is outrageously wrong, but almost nothing they say is especially educational to someone who is smart enough to have already figured out that homeopathy doesn’t work. Even things of theirs I didn’t know – let’s say some particular study proving homeopathy doesn’t work that I had never read before – doesn’t provide me with real value, since they fit exactly into my existing worldview without teaching me anything new ... > The Neoreactionaries provide a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold in them ... The garbage doesn’t matter because I can tune it out.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    For more context, look up the leaked e-mails where Scott is caught admitting that he writes about neoreactionaries because it drives more clicks. Writing about it once or twice could have been interesting, but constantly returning to neoreactionary content over and over again to mine what he calls “nuggets of absolute gold” starts to become an endorsement. Scott’s entire writing style is based on tricks like faux-humbleness and pretending to present an unbiased “both sides” overview of a topic while planting seeds that lead the reader to a specific conclusion. To understand it, re-read his “Kolmogorov Complicity” essay: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-... He’s been telegraphing his intentions and strategies out in the open for anyone who’s been paying attention.
    - bishplsok 5y ago
      Said emails are in the link I posted above! It is, hilariously enough, literally someone trying to defend Scott by just reposting his emails in their entirety -- "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" indeed. If it's a hit piece, it's Scott writing a hit piece on himself.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

astralcodexten.substack.com isn’t a journalist (he’s a psychiatrist) but covers current events quite well, probably has as little bias as you can as a person, and is popular on HN.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> probably has as little bias as you can as a person Yesterday he wrote an article about being “anti-woke” on a college campus. It included recommendations such as what he called the “berserker strategy” which was to pick as many fights as possible on every social justice topic. Scott is anything but unbiased. He writes with flowery language that elicits a sense of faux humbleness and “both sides” journalism while subtlety pushing the reader to his desired conclusions on things like race and IQ. He’s famous for leaked e-mails where he admitted writing a lot about neoreactionaries because it gets more clicks, which has made him somewhat of a hero among those circles. He also admitted that he believes in “HBD” which is an alt-right euphemism for racist views on IQ. He may feel unbiased and objective due to his writing style, but he’s far from it if you’ve been following him and reading closely.

jfiowejf 5y ago
> subtlety pushing the reader to his desired conclusions on things like race and IQ. Pushing people towards believing the truth? The horror!
holbrad 5y ago
"He also admitted that he believes in “HBD” which is an alt-right euphemism for racist views on IQ." Good to see an unbiased take such as this. Let's look up what that means. First hit on google: "HBD IQ" (For me)(https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jttfuxoQpYsnNEAqG/suppose-hbd-is-true https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jttfuxoQpYsnNEAqG/suppose-hb...) "Human bio-diversity, the claim that distinct populations of humans exist and have substantial genetical variance which accounts for some difference in average intelligence from population to population" I mean I'm sure racists love the idea, but it doesn't exactly strike me as obviously 100% untrue.
- staticman2 5y ago
  Are you an expert on the topic of genetics? If not why would you expect any claim revolving genetics to be "obviously 100% untrue" to you?
  - holbrad 5y ago
    You don't have to be an expert on a topic to see that something is either extremely unlikely or plausible. (Anyone can still be wrong in there conclusion mind you.) "There's a group of human's that can breath fire like a dragon" Just using some basic knowledge of evolution and genetics, that seems pretty unlikely. What would the evolutionary pressure be ? Would there be enough time for that development? No parallel's in other mammals etc. You can do the same to see if something is plausible. For this discussion specifically. We know there are physical difference's between populations (Height, drug tolerance, skin colour) These observable differences are caused by different genes. What are the chances that none of these differences in genes are in the brain ? Basically zero. So it's very plausible you'd find some differences. Just using some simple reasoning. (Reading a little bit about it, Sam Harris basically makes this exact point. It really is basic logic)
    - staticman2 5y ago
      The history of philosophy shows that what sounds logical tells us little about how the world physically works. There's nothing logical about time dilation or quantum physics. I mean, if the community around Astro Codex said upfront "We don't care about empiricism, we make things up based on what sounds logical to us" I would at least give them points for honesty. The guy who runs Astro Codex blog claims he is an empiricist.
      - holbrad 5y ago
        It's nuanced. We are evolved creatures, with certain intuitions about things. You can point to domains about where it fails completely. (For understandable reasons) But that doesn't mean intuition is useless, in fact I'd say it's rather underused for how valuable it actually is. Parachutes and RCT's come to mind. Being empirical is really hard and rather un-natural for humans. It's a best effort thing. Current institution don't help as much as I'd like, it still takes many decades for information to propagate (And even longer for corrections where the consensus was wrong)

rstarast 5y ago

bishplsok 5y ago

[dead]

deadpannini 5y ago
Ironically, a brief passage by Scott Alexander (from the hit piece targeting him linked above) describes a very good reason to read content you disagree with, almost making the parent comment germane to the overall discussion. > Compare RationalWiki and the neoreactionaries. RationalWiki provides a steady stream of mediocrity. Almost nothing they say is outrageously wrong, but almost nothing they say is especially educational to someone who is smart enough to have already figured out that homeopathy doesn’t work. Even things of theirs I didn’t know – let’s say some particular study proving homeopathy doesn’t work that I had never read before – doesn’t provide me with real value, since they fit exactly into my existing worldview without teaching me anything new ... > The Neoreactionaries provide a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold in them ... The garbage doesn’t matter because I can tune it out.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  For more context, look up the leaked e-mails where Scott is caught admitting that he writes about neoreactionaries because it drives more clicks. Writing about it once or twice could have been interesting, but constantly returning to neoreactionary content over and over again to mine what he calls “nuggets of absolute gold” starts to become an endorsement. Scott’s entire writing style is based on tricks like faux-humbleness and pretending to present an unbiased “both sides” overview of a topic while planting seeds that lead the reader to a specific conclusion. To understand it, re-read his “Kolmogorov Complicity” essay: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-and-the-parable-of-lightning/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-... He’s been telegraphing his intentions and strategies out in the open for anyone who’s been paying attention.
  - bishplsok 5y ago
    Said emails are in the link I posted above! It is, hilariously enough, literally someone trying to defend Scott by just reposting his emails in their entirety -- "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" indeed. If it's a hit piece, it's Scott writing a hit piece on himself.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]