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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Here I'll out myself as on the "loathing" side of Scott Alexander receptivity so I can ask: what was the SSC take on COVID? In what ways were they ahead of the curve?

(I'll have no trouble believing they were; COVID really seems to have scrombled everyone's brains).

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I'm honestly curious, what could make one loathe SSC? Overall it seems pretty anodyne even if you're not into the whole rationalist milieu.

Seconding this, I honestly find it hard to understand having strong feeling one way or another on such a neutral essayist. Though perhaps it's quite telling that I consider him to be "neutral"?

I do not think that's telling. I think a lot of good people think that S.A. is benign. Part of it might be whether or not you're a "read the comments" kind of person; part of it may be whether or not you pay attention to who he's linking to and referencing (or whether you care about that kind of thing). Some of it is overt; he's taken active stands on some issues that are, if nothing else, not neutral. But I'm only rattling those things off so you can understand how someone could come to a different conclusion about SSC than you do. I think what's going on with SSC is subtle enough that it's dangerous to make judgements about people simply based on whether they get value out of SSC.

I've probably read < 10 of his posts and on the whole he did seem extremely benign. He had a large body of work so perhaps I just had a huge sampling bias. I meant to specifically ask for some criticism you had of SSC as a self described person on the 'loathing' side of things as purely a point of curiosity. It's a strong word and I'm specifically curious how someone who to me seemed so benign gained your condemnation.

Honestly I've said about as much about SSC itself as I want to. I don't think it's productive to debate whether SSC is good or bad, because that's not the issue here. I don't think S.A. deserves being outed because he presides over a community I happen to find problematic; I think he's not being outed, since he's been operating in the open for years.

Late to the thread commenter here, but geez, being asked "what criticisms do you have" and deflecting with this response makes me wonder why you're trying to hide the reason(s) you dislike him...

I think anatoly was in the right ballpark, to put it mildly.

Someone's a culture warrior because they don't share someone else's taste in blogs? Which one is supposed to be the culture warrior?

I wouldn’t put it that way; that’s why I said Anatoly was in the ballpark.

The original characterization and the comment manage to be rude, condescending and passive-aggressive all at once. It's straight up explaining to someone what their own motivations and tastes are. I honestly don't understand what the ballpark is supposed to be, the whole sport seems awful.

Committed culture warriors often seem to loathe SSC. From their perspective, it gives too much credence and attention to obviously evil ideas, and the author is in thrall to the worst elements of the Other Side (than the one the culture warrior is coming from).

That many people especially admire SSC for even-handedness, which they see as false, is especially infuriating to them.

Is that what I am? A "committed culture warrior"? Could you say more about what that means?

Well, does the rest of the comment ring true to why you think you loathe SSC? I can't reach into your head. Maybe you just really dislike his punctuation. Or, more plausibly, think he has an insufferably smarmy tone.

FWIW I've been admiring your HN posts for many years. When I see your handle in an HN discussion, my learned expectation is of knowledge and insight.

While I wouldn't pick the exact word "loathe", the thing that really did it for me when I was reading SSC a while back was finding that one of the regular commenters who Scott engaged with positively had written a book that talked about how Obama should have stuck to jobs that were more "genetically suitable" for him. There were plenty of comments about this person being "controversial" on the blog so it isn't likely that Scott just didn't know.

Two weeks or so ahead of the "mainstream" (whatever that is) in realizing it will likely be a huge deal for the world. That said, there were plenty of other larger outlets (like Vox) that were also ahead of the curve in the same sense.

Vox published both "not going to be a pandemic" and "flu is worse" in early February.

Vox was pretty mixed, I think reflecting some internal disagreement. Ex:

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fe... was dismissive: "The public concern from Silicon Valley leaders or companies has not been discriminatory, but the extreme caution some are taking does raise questions about the appropriate level of response. There’s always a chance that the coronavirus could get out of control in tech’s backyard, but to a large extent, people’s individual power to control that is limited, and some may see measures like no-handshake rules as a step too far."

Similarly the now-deleted "is this going to be a deadly pandemic: no" tweet https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1242537366620966912

On the other hand, Kelsey Piper's https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/6/21121303/coronav... was good and timely, and Dylan Mathews' https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/4/21117505/new-cor... was also pretty good.

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