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[flagged]

user982 1y ago
The last decade has hammered in that you ignore the cranks at your own peril, because closing your eyes doesn't make them disappear.
- kmoser 1y ago
  Ignoring them only works when everyone ignores them from the beginning. Once they gain traction, it's no longer an option.
- throwaway29812 1y ago
  [dead]
n2d4 1y ago
What makes Scott a crank?
- timmytokyo 1y ago
  https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/scott-alexander-siskind-slate-star-codex.html?m=1 https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/scott-alexander-siskind...
  - dogleash 1y ago
    That person is way too far down the rabbit hole themselves to give a decent criticism of Alexander. When someone's #1, heavy-hitting, come-out-swinging criticism amounts to "his group is not as smart as they think they are" then they're already done. They've cooked themselves. I read that paragraph and heard it in the mean girl voice they thought they were hiding. #2 is that his wrong ideas are immoral. #3 is that #2 draws the wrong crowd. It's not like I don't get the point. It's just written for an audience that already deep in that corner of the blogosphere. I'm sure they pump their fists at such a clean summing-up of why they hate him. But my eyes are glazing over.
  - ralfd 1y ago
    This seems to boil down to that Elizabeth Sandifer, a self described "middle-aged trans anarchist", believes https://www.astralcodexten.com https://www.astralcodexten.com is "fertile grounds for white nationalist recruitment". This is just wrong and anyone can visit the blog to see for themselves.
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      Yes, read the comments on ACX where Steve Sailer of VDARE dog-whistles as loudly as he can. Read Scott’s glowing review of _Albion’s Seed_.
  - rendang 1y ago
    This is just a preaching-to-the-choir description of the fact that Siskind does not hold 100% to egalitarian leftism. Unless you're already a doctrinaire egalitarian leftist, I don't see why reading this would change your opinion of him by a millimeter
    - timmytokyo 1y ago
      Yeah, I guess it's true that people who (1) like eugenics and "human biodiversity" (i.e., race science), and (2) think neoreactionism is "edgy and cool" are not egalitarian or leftist.
      - rendang 1y ago
        Not necessarily, egalitarian cultures like N Europe practice eugenics through selective abortion of the disabled.
    - jrflowers 1y ago
      > Unless you're already a doctrinaire egalitarian leftist, I don't see why reading this would change your opinion of him by a millimeter It seems possible that if someone wasn’t familiar with Scott’s position on race science, they could read about his position on race science and then have that influence their opinion of him. Out of curiosity, are you lumping everybody into two groups? The way your sentence was worded it sounds like there are on one hand people that believe in race science, and on the other hand “doctrinaire egalitarian leftists”. If the only qualification required to be a “doctrinaire egalitarian leftist” is “not believing in race science”, then you’ve kind of just said “Unless [you don’t believe in race science], I don’t see why reading this would change your opinion of him by a millimeter”, which might actually kind of underscore some people’s issue with him.
      - rendang 1y ago
        [flagged]
        jrflowers 1y ago
- homefree 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - sanderjd 1y ago
    I have noticed this too. I've only ever read him off and on, and I get the feeling that he must have written something during one of the periods I wasn't reading his still at all that got him "canceled", but I have no idea what it was.
    - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
      When the American Left split into progressive and liberal camps in the mid 2010s, the rationalist and adjacent communities underwent a huge internal conflict. Scott and a lot of his orbit tend to stay on the liberal side which these days is called and often calls itself "centrist". The aftermath of the split has had pretty huge effects in most Western spaces. A lot of the progressive left is really angry at the centrist left wing and many centrists think the progressive left is misguided and hate on them. The hate that Scott gets is largely a fallout from this schism.
      - sanderjd 1y ago
        He seems to get more hate than more mainstream people on the more centrist side of that split... Granted, they do all get hate, and your description does resonate. But he still seems to be an outlier.
        Karrot_Kream 1y ago
        He was considered a core, visible member of the rationalist community from well before the split. For better or for worse he is considered a figurehead of the movement. With the acrimony of the split there was no way he was going to escape unscathed no matter which side he ended up on just by sheer visibility of his writing.
        sanderjd 1y ago
- jrflowers 1y ago
  Well, for one thing, that comment is in response to a link to a blog post that Scott wrote about how The Feudalism Blogger’s old posts about how feudalism is good were better than The Feudalism Blogger’s new posts about how feudalism is good. He sort of panders to an audience that fancies themselves much smarter than the average person, and as such categorically demand opinions that average people do not hold — no matter how sensible they might be. To accommodate that requirement he repackages existing (more usually conservative/libertarian) cultural gripes by pairing them with some light criticism and branding it as some sort of enlightened centrist/Third Way perspective. This sort of practice in general has lost some of its illusory appeal in recent years since so many previously “politically inscrutable” rich and influential folks dropped their centrist/apolitical trappings and came out as staunchly right-wing. That being said there are quite a few readers that still want to play the “Are they right wing? Are they left wing? Are they something magical and ascendant?” game, and audience capture is a real phenomenon, so the entrenched players have no reason for introspection or change.
- evil-olive 1y ago
  pretending that there's a legitimate, good faith, reasonable-people-can-disagree debate about "race & IQ" is one of the most obvious giveaways. from January 2025 [0]: > Richard Lynn was a scientist who infamously tried to estimate the average IQ of every country. a bit of additional context from Wikipedia [1]: > Richard Lynn was a controversial English psychologist and self-described "scientific racist" who advocated for a genetic relationship between race and intelligence. He was the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, a white supremacist journal. he claims that Lynn's work is still "hotly debated" and links to an article in "Aporia Magazine" which is published by the "Human Diversity Foundation" [2]: > The Human Diversity Foundation (HDF) is a far-right company founded in 2022 to publish "race science" through the Aporia Magazine and Mankind Quarterly. It also publishes Edward Dutton's The Jolly Heretic podcast. Key persons of the HDF including its founder support remigration and white nationalism. the role that Alexander plays reminds me of the attempts in the early 2000s to "teach the controversy" [3] about evolution vs. creationism. there is no actual scientific debate, but people with a political axe to grind want to shift the Overton window and give the impression that there is one. 0: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-learn-to https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-le... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Diversity_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Diversity_Foundation 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy
- blactuary 1y ago
  The things he says about race and gender, for starters
cassepipe 1y ago
[flagged]
- TimorousBestie 1y ago
  I’ve read LessWrong on and off since 2014. Read SSC and ACX semi-regularly. Scott’s a crank. He writes convincingly, he understands charisma and style, but he just can’t hold his own in an intellectual exchange. Just last week he and Tyler Cowen of Marginial Revolution got into a dispute over USAID and DOGE and the degree to which Scott fails over and over again to read otherwise simple sentences is staggering.
  - sph 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      I’m responding to > For what it's worth, I don't think anyone familiar with Scott Alexander's writings would characterize him as a crank. with a counter-example. I don’t particularly care about the meta-point they are attempting to make.
  - cassepipe 1y ago
    > He writes convincingly, he understands charisma and style, but he just can’t hold his own in an intellectual exchange. Yes, it's convincing because he actually cares to craft a reasoning that you can follow for yourself and definitely not charisma and style This is just a biased retelling of what happened. Scott responded to Cowen's response. So it's just like... your opinion, man. I encourage anyone to just go read the exchange and decide for themselves.

[flagged]

The last decade has hammered in that you ignore the cranks at your own peril, because closing your eyes doesn't make them disappear.

kmoser 1y ago
Ignoring them only works when everyone ignores them from the beginning. Once they gain traction, it's no longer an option.
throwaway29812 1y ago
[dead]

n2d4 1y ago

What makes Scott a crank?

timmytokyo 1y ago
https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/scott-alexander-siskind-slate-star-codex.html?m=1 https://miniver.blogspot.com/2024/01/scott-alexander-siskind...
- dogleash 1y ago
  That person is way too far down the rabbit hole themselves to give a decent criticism of Alexander. When someone's #1, heavy-hitting, come-out-swinging criticism amounts to "his group is not as smart as they think they are" then they're already done. They've cooked themselves. I read that paragraph and heard it in the mean girl voice they thought they were hiding. #2 is that his wrong ideas are immoral. #3 is that #2 draws the wrong crowd. It's not like I don't get the point. It's just written for an audience that already deep in that corner of the blogosphere. I'm sure they pump their fists at such a clean summing-up of why they hate him. But my eyes are glazing over.
- ralfd 1y ago
  This seems to boil down to that Elizabeth Sandifer, a self described "middle-aged trans anarchist", believes https://www.astralcodexten.com https://www.astralcodexten.com is "fertile grounds for white nationalist recruitment". This is just wrong and anyone can visit the blog to see for themselves.
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    Yes, read the comments on ACX where Steve Sailer of VDARE dog-whistles as loudly as he can. Read Scott’s glowing review of _Albion’s Seed_.
- rendang 1y ago
  This is just a preaching-to-the-choir description of the fact that Siskind does not hold 100% to egalitarian leftism. Unless you're already a doctrinaire egalitarian leftist, I don't see why reading this would change your opinion of him by a millimeter
  - timmytokyo 1y ago
    Yeah, I guess it's true that people who (1) like eugenics and "human biodiversity" (i.e., race science), and (2) think neoreactionism is "edgy and cool" are not egalitarian or leftist.
    - rendang 1y ago
      Not necessarily, egalitarian cultures like N Europe practice eugenics through selective abortion of the disabled.
  - jrflowers 1y ago
    > Unless you're already a doctrinaire egalitarian leftist, I don't see why reading this would change your opinion of him by a millimeter It seems possible that if someone wasn’t familiar with Scott’s position on race science, they could read about his position on race science and then have that influence their opinion of him. Out of curiosity, are you lumping everybody into two groups? The way your sentence was worded it sounds like there are on one hand people that believe in race science, and on the other hand “doctrinaire egalitarian leftists”. If the only qualification required to be a “doctrinaire egalitarian leftist” is “not believing in race science”, then you’ve kind of just said “Unless [you don’t believe in race science], I don’t see why reading this would change your opinion of him by a millimeter”, which might actually kind of underscore some people’s issue with him.
    - rendang 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - jrflowers 1y ago
homefree 1y ago
[flagged]
- sanderjd 1y ago
  I have noticed this too. I've only ever read him off and on, and I get the feeling that he must have written something during one of the periods I wasn't reading his still at all that got him "canceled", but I have no idea what it was.
  - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
    When the American Left split into progressive and liberal camps in the mid 2010s, the rationalist and adjacent communities underwent a huge internal conflict. Scott and a lot of his orbit tend to stay on the liberal side which these days is called and often calls itself "centrist". The aftermath of the split has had pretty huge effects in most Western spaces. A lot of the progressive left is really angry at the centrist left wing and many centrists think the progressive left is misguided and hate on them. The hate that Scott gets is largely a fallout from this schism.
    - sanderjd 1y ago
      He seems to get more hate than more mainstream people on the more centrist side of that split... Granted, they do all get hate, and your description does resonate. But he still seems to be an outlier.
      - Karrot_Kream 1y ago
        He was considered a core, visible member of the rationalist community from well before the split. For better or for worse he is considered a figurehead of the movement. With the acrimony of the split there was no way he was going to escape unscathed no matter which side he ended up on just by sheer visibility of his writing.
        sanderjd 1y ago
jrflowers 1y ago
Well, for one thing, that comment is in response to a link to a blog post that Scott wrote about how The Feudalism Blogger’s old posts about how feudalism is good were better than The Feudalism Blogger’s new posts about how feudalism is good. He sort of panders to an audience that fancies themselves much smarter than the average person, and as such categorically demand opinions that average people do not hold — no matter how sensible they might be. To accommodate that requirement he repackages existing (more usually conservative/libertarian) cultural gripes by pairing them with some light criticism and branding it as some sort of enlightened centrist/Third Way perspective. This sort of practice in general has lost some of its illusory appeal in recent years since so many previously “politically inscrutable” rich and influential folks dropped their centrist/apolitical trappings and came out as staunchly right-wing. That being said there are quite a few readers that still want to play the “Are they right wing? Are they left wing? Are they something magical and ascendant?” game, and audience capture is a real phenomenon, so the entrenched players have no reason for introspection or change.
evil-olive 1y ago
pretending that there's a legitimate, good faith, reasonable-people-can-disagree debate about "race & IQ" is one of the most obvious giveaways. from January 2025 [0]: > Richard Lynn was a scientist who infamously tried to estimate the average IQ of every country. a bit of additional context from Wikipedia [1]: > Richard Lynn was a controversial English psychologist and self-described "scientific racist" who advocated for a genetic relationship between race and intelligence. He was the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, a white supremacist journal. he claims that Lynn's work is still "hotly debated" and links to an article in "Aporia Magazine" which is published by the "Human Diversity Foundation" [2]: > The Human Diversity Foundation (HDF) is a far-right company founded in 2022 to publish "race science" through the Aporia Magazine and Mankind Quarterly. It also publishes Edward Dutton's The Jolly Heretic podcast. Key persons of the HDF including its founder support remigration and white nationalism. the role that Alexander plays reminds me of the attempts in the early 2000s to "teach the controversy" [3] about evolution vs. creationism. there is no actual scientific debate, but people with a political axe to grind want to shift the Overton window and give the impression that there is one. 0: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-learn-to https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-le... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Diversity_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Diversity_Foundation 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy
blactuary 1y ago
The things he says about race and gender, for starters

cassepipe 1y ago

[flagged]

TimorousBestie 1y ago
I’ve read LessWrong on and off since 2014. Read SSC and ACX semi-regularly. Scott’s a crank. He writes convincingly, he understands charisma and style, but he just can’t hold his own in an intellectual exchange. Just last week he and Tyler Cowen of Marginial Revolution got into a dispute over USAID and DOGE and the degree to which Scott fails over and over again to read otherwise simple sentences is staggering.
- sph 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    I’m responding to > For what it's worth, I don't think anyone familiar with Scott Alexander's writings would characterize him as a crank. with a counter-example. I don’t particularly care about the meta-point they are attempting to make.
- cassepipe 1y ago
  > He writes convincingly, he understands charisma and style, but he just can’t hold his own in an intellectual exchange. Yes, it's convincing because he actually cares to craft a reasoning that you can follow for yourself and definitely not charisma and style This is just a biased retelling of what happened. Scott responded to Cowen's response. So it's just like... your opinion, man. I encourage anyone to just go read the exchange and decide for themselves.