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Comment by memexy | Hacker News Reader

It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister (in fact the comments would take his ideas to their natural conclusion and I did not like what was in the comments and the people that were writing them).

If he did not intend his followers to attack anyone then he should not have named anyone or put any kind of contact information in his post. Only someone that deliberately wants people to contact and pressure the editor would have used the language that he did. He created plausible deniability by saying "he doesn't want anyone to be harmed" and then in the next sentence listed contact information with "suggestions".

If you really wanted a civil discussion, would you have used the type of language that he did?

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> It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister.

This reads to me like "his words were perfectly polite but I've decided that he must have intended a certain subtext and the subtext I believe that he intended is evil". Which ... I mean, you can certainly claim that, but when you're talking about the writings of somebody who used a lot of words to do his best to make his meaning clear in the text, accusation-via-subtext at least needs some sort of evidence to be a reasonable thing to do.

> If he did not intend his followers to attack anyone then he should not have named anyone or put any kind of contact information in his post.

The complaints form and the relevant editor are precisely how feedback is supposed to be given to news organisations. Some publications have a "Public Editor" position to handle such things, in which case they should have been contacted instead, but the NYT axed that position a while back.

I don't think his words were polite, in fact I think it was quite the opposite. If I wanted a civil discussion I would not have listed any contact information about anyone. I would have said, "I am archiving the blog until further notice because I need to think about what kind of content should be made publicly available because words have power and it's important to think about what information and inferences we make available to others through those words".

That seems like an "I would have said" based on your assumption that those "inferences" are the subtext that you believe to exist. I continue to believe that Scott did not believe any such subtext existed, so that would make no sense from his point of view.

I'm also unsure why you believe that providing the contact information of the correct person to contact given an issue with a potential article to be published by their department is a bad thing.

Are you sure you're not just starting with a belief that Scott is malicious and then reasoning backwards to find a way that his actions in this case could have been malicious? I'm quite probably missing something, but I find myself unable to follow your logic any other way.

We are all entitled to our beliefs. I merely outlined an argument for why I think how I do. Maybe Scott is a perfectly nice person but his writing is full of associations that say otherwise. I did not know anything about SSC when someone first introduced me to the blog, I did not even know who Scott was or what the blog was about but the more I read the more I noticed certain patterns. I did not start with a specific conclusion, I reasoned my way to one.

I already stated several times that if my intent was for civil discourse then I would not have used the language that was used in the letter because it is full of contradictions. It outlines victimhood and becomes a rallying cry for those that identify with Scott and that's exactly what has happened. Everyone discussing the post assumes the position of a victim. I think this is odd because if Scott is so smart then why is everyone making him out to be the victim? Even the logic used to justify Scott as a persona is contradictory, he's a victim and yet he's not a victim.

The letter is deceptive and that's why I attribute malice to it. It's intention and the words used are misaligned.

> We are all entitled to our beliefs. I merely outlined an argument for why I think how I do.

The point I'm trying to make here is that "It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister" does not, in fact, outline an argument. It merely asserts that "much of his writing" is "sinister" without making any argument for why - and you've now once again claimed "his writing is full of associations" ... without ever having named such an association.

There's no requirement to make such an argument, of course, but if you're simply going to state your beliefs with zero explanation then it would be preferable if you were up front about having chosen to do so rather than claim to have made an argument where none exists.

I didn't take very good notes but if you want to point me to the archive and posts you think are good I will be happy to go through them and outline what associations are being made and why.

I stopped reading SSC after I noticed certain patterns and decided I did not want those ideas rattling around in my head. So I gave you a high level impression / outline of what conclusions I reached without providing the actual trail of evidence that lead to it. If you want more precision then you will need to point me to specific posts of his so we can argue about them because even the people defending him are not providing any actual arguments for why his writing was good. They're providing very high level impressions shaped by an echo chamber.

> If you want more precision then you will need to point me to specific posts of his so we can argue about them

This was basically a random selection because I'm curious to hear what your objections actually are:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190102011649/https://slatestar...

> Popular consensus believes 100% X, and absolutely 0% Y.

He already starts off with antagonism. Where is the data for this? How does he know what the popular consensus is? Why is he drawing such a sharp delineation between "popular" and their association with X and Y?

> A few iconoclasts say that X is definitely right and important, but maybe we should also think about Y sometimes.

Seems like he thinks he's an iconoclast and the people that associate with that will start to act out iconoclastically themselves and if you look at the comments you will notice that. They're modeling what Scott is outlining in the post.

> I can see why this pattern is tempting.

How clever of him to notice this pattern and point out it is tempting.

> If somebody said the US should allocate 50% of its defense budget to the usual global threats, and 50% to the threat of reptilian space invaders, then even though the plan contains the number “50-50” it would not be a “moderate” proposal.

He's making a really weird analogy. This is not what people argue about and he has created an extreme view that does not exist by comparing a position to "space invaders".

Anyway, I'm not reading further. I'm already convinced he's not making any worthwhile point here. He's using emotionally charged language to draw the reader in and make them identify with him. It's a poor tactic. It only works on people that don't notice it. And I think this is the most damning evidence against him, as a psychologist he should know this is what he's doing by making these statements. He doesn't speak / write like someone that has knowledge of human psychology. He speaks / writes like someone that uses knowledge of human psychology to confuse his audience.

Please note that Scott Alexander is a psychiatrist, not a psychologist.

The two professions are quite different.

Yes, thanks for pointing it out. Both types of professionals receive training in understanding the human psyche so my point remains unchanged

> A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are medical doctors, unlike psychologists, and must evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments, or strictly psychiatric. A psychiatrist usually works as the clinical leader of the multi-disciplinary team, which may comprise psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, and nursing staff. Psychiatrists have broad training in a bio-psycho-social approach to assessment and management of mental illness.

> A psychologist is a person who studies normal and abnormal mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior by experimenting with, and observing, interpreting, and recording how individuals relate to one another and to their environments.

Yes, I am aware of the difference.

I have a doctorate in psychology, which gives me a PhD. It does not qualify me to prescribe drugs and save the lives of people on airplanes, which is something that a psychiatrist could be reasonably asked to do.

While psychiatrists spent time understanding physical and mental disorders, psychologists spend time understanding cognitive and behavioural aspects of humanity and running experiments (most of which are extremely difficult to control).

They are completely different things, like.

Which part of my statement about being trained in the human psyche was incorrect? Also, I didn't ask about your credentials and they're irrelevant to whatever point you're trying to make. I have a graduate degree in math. Have we dispensed with the credentials now?

I feel like you may be getting upset, which I am sorry for.

I am mentioning my credentials because I have been complaining about people not distinguishing between psychologists and psychiatrists for many, many years. I am a little triggered by such comparisons.

The human psyche (incidentally not a word you ever hear in psychology (and potentially psychiatry) classes) is large, and psychologist and psychiatrists focus on very different things.

Like it's fine if you don't see a difference between the two subjects, but others do as they are very, very different.

I guess the closest analogy would be if I called you (a mathematician by training, i assume) a statistician.

Many people might not see the difference between the two roles, but I am relatively confident that you would.

"certain patterns" is still not an outline so it's hard for me to pick a set of posts.

But let's go with this one:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200202214359/https://slatestar...

since I suspect that will comfortably draw out our underlying disagreements (and if you don't know who Phedre no Delauney is, the Kushiel's Dart novels are fantastic and you've missed out).

From the post you link to:

"Why not assassinate prominent racist and sexist politicians and intellectuals?"

I would definitely qualify these kind of straw-men as a "certain pattern" of language designed to incite rather than for insight.

When it's a reply to somebody speaking of war and weapons and given as a disapproving extrapolation ad absurdum of that attitude, I don't see that it's intended to incite so much as to elucidate the idea that incitement is itself a bad thing.

andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment. If you have snippets that you think are worthwhile then feel free to post them. Associating assassination with people, even as a question, is sinister. A polite and kind person would not make that association or even ask the question because it implants the idea in the reader's mind and they start thinking antagonistically towards certain groups that he's suggesting should be "assassinated".

It's terrible and dreadful writing (it elicits terror and dread in the reader).

Should people ask taboo questions? Yes, they should ask such questions in private conversations with people they trust. When the interpretation is out of your hands then you need to be really careful what information you are making available to the public / audience. It's clear he doesn't think through the logic and wants to come across as smart. It's juvenile. Adults speak with intent and they address people directly and respectfully. I have never seen any adult conversations on SSC, I've only ever seen people that are peacocking their intelligence.

Let me quote perhaps the most important part of the essay and the part that I believe truly defines this ethos.

-- begin quote

When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that transgender was really, really dumb. That they were looking for attention or making it up or something along those lines.

Luckily, since I was a classical liberal, my reaction to this mistake was – to not bother them, and to get very very angry at people who did bother them. I got upset with people trying to fire Phil Robertson for being homophobic even though homophobia is stupid. You better bet I also got upset with people trying to fire transgender people back when I thought transgender was stupid.

And then I grew older and wiser and learned – hey, transgender isn’t stupid at all, they have very important reasons for what they do and go through and I was atrociously wrong. And I said a mea culpa.

But it could have been worse. I didn’t like transgender people, and so I left them alone while still standing up for their rights. My epistemic structure failed gracefully. For anyone who’s not overconfident, and so who expects massive epistemic failure on a variety of important issues all the time, graceful failure modes are a really important feature for an epistemic structure to have.

-- end quote

I read the humility and desire to not to harm even when you're wrong inherent in that passage as the exact opposite of "peacocking intelligence" - and I find your choice to use PUA terminology to describe the behaviour to be either unintentionally gross or deliberately unkind depending on whether or not you were aware that was what you were doing.

Yes. I was aware of my characterization and the word peackocking (to make a vainglorious display; strut like a peacock) was used before it was co-opted by PUA community (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/peacocking).

Let's rewrite that paragraph and use fewer emotionally charged words.

As a younger person I thought transgenderism was about seeking attention. But being trained in the liberal arts I decided to question this assumption and not act antagonistically towards them because of my personal interpretation of their situation.

As I got older I realized my initial assumption about attention seeking was incorrect and I took responsibility for and corrected my beliefs.

I guess it could have turned out differently if I hadn't been trained in the liberal arts. So I'm glad my training included keeping an open mind and accepting people different from me and with different life circumstances.

Same exact content, none of the emotional baggage and vainglory.

Notice all the words I took out because I knew they would elicit negative reactions in the reader: stupid, dumb, mistake, very very angry, upset, homophobic. He repeated those words enough times that a perceptive reader would have picked up on the subtext of him trying to distance himself from those negatively valenced words. He's not trying to educate the reader, he's trying to put distance between himself and certain associations. That's why it's not good writing. It's about him, it's not about the reader. And in his attempt to "peacock" he's putting associations into the reader's mind that are detrimental to the reader's thought processes all the while elevating himself as a paragon of goodness. As the term "peacock" suggests, his writing is vainglorious.

That rewrite completely loses the point though.

The point is not "accepting people different than me", it's "having suitable principles to still fight in favour of people I might otherwise rightly or wrongly dislike".

You completely removed the part where he not only didn't act antagonistically towards them but actively opposed other people doing so as well.

And that part was the single most important part, and the principle he was arguing in favour of.

If you think your rewrite was the same exact content, then I'm afraid I don't think you understood what he was saying at all.

> If you think your rewrite was the same exact content, then I'm afraid I don't think you understood what he was saying at all.

Bingo!

He's obviously not a very good writer. I don't need to argue for freedom of speech and equal rights and justice for all because in my world those are givens. I don't need to justify to myself or others why those truths are self evident. Nor do I need to recount a story about being young and stupid. Everyone used to be young and stupid, that's also a given. There is no need to write it on a blog and show how you're so much better than what you used to be. Let your actions show how you are better. I don't need to be told when I can infer directly from someone's actions whether they're good or not. Words are deceptive, actions are truthful.

I don't put words like "very stupid", "angry", "I'm afraid", "fearful", etc. in my writing because I don't identify with those things and I don't want anyone reading my words to identify with them either. If I intend to say something then I say it without flowery language about my youth or emotionally charged words because I reserve those words for private conversations with people that I trust.

> I don't need to argue for freedom of speech and equal rights and justice for all because in my world those are givens.

The article was about somebody who was arguing that using falsified numbers about rape statistics was not only acceptable feminism but was actually a good thing and that anybody who disagreed with that deserved to be destroyed.

Speaking as somebody who believes that the truth is quite sufficient justification for feminism to win, and that lying serves only to hand our enemies means to attack us, I believe that sadly we live in a world where that argument does need to be made.

I would prefer to live in a word where these arguments don't need to be made. I would prefer to live in a world where those truths are self evident.

But we don't yet, as both Adria Richards and David Shor have found out to their detriment. So making the argument that we should continues to be valuable.

Then there are better ways to make those arguments. Recounting stories about being "young and stupid" is not one of those ways.

I am entirely fine with you believing that there are better ways to make those arguments - in fact, given any specific argument is almost certain to be imperfect, one would assume that there are.

But I would note that "there are better ways to make those arguments" is quite a distance from your original position.

What was my original position? More precisely, what did you think was my original position?

Yes, and you provided an example of such associations with "youth", "stupidity", "anger", "fear", "transphobia", "homophobia", "atrocity", "anger at others", "anger with self", "dislike of others", "opposition to others", etc.

> When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that transgender was really, really dumb. That they were looking for attention or making it up or something along those lines.

> And then I grew older and wiser and learned – hey, transgender isn’t stupid at all, they have very important reasons for what they do and go through and I was atrociously wrong. And I said a mea culpa.

> The point is not "accepting people different than me", it's "having suitable principles to still fight in favour of people I might otherwise rightly or wrongly dislike".

> You completely removed the part where he not only didn't act antagonistically towards them but actively opposed other people doing so as well.

What word other than "sinister" would you use to characterize the cluster of words I quoted which are implicit in the writing I quoted?

> andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment.

But do you have a dispute for the counterpoint from mst? If so, what is it?

Which counterpoint? Several such points have been made already. Do you have a specific one in mind?

You apparently know which one it was, and can look up the response. It isn't a very long response either.

I'm not going to quote it here, because it gives you a chance to talk about it at me rather than with the original person who brought up the counterpoint.

So then you weren't asking the question in good faith. When I asked you to clarify you dodged the question. I wouldn't ask if I knew, I asked because I didn't know what you were referring to.

If you want me to talk to you then make a direct point instead of confused remarks about what I know and don't know and conversations I had with other people that were unrelated to you.

> So then you weren't asking the question in good faith.

Yes, I was.

> When I asked you to clarify you dodged the question. I wouldn't ask if I knew, I asked because I didn't know what you were referring to.

If you didn't know what I was referring to, then you didn't know who you were referring to when you said the following: >> andrewprock already found an example and I agree with his assessment.

> If you want me to talk to you

I have no desire for you to talk to me: that was exactly why I asked you to respond to the other person and not me.

You aren't missing anything, there is no logic here, only ideology.

I choose to extend the same assumption of good faith and principle of charity that I believe Scott would.

It would feel, to me, inappropriate to do otherwise while defending him.

I will defend anyone who wants to speak and discuss things openly, but I will do so according to my principles, not theirs, and there is no hypocrisy in doing so. If you would defend a Christian's or Muslim's right to their beliefs without giving away all your possessions or travelling to Mecca then you are in the same boat. The values I would hold in a perfect world can be impediments in this one, especially when they are used to push orthogonal values.

More importantly though, I like Scott, but I think he is preposterously naive and friendly to a fault. And I think that has been weaponised against him countless times in the past, and is being weaponised against him now. And nothing makes me angrier than seeing friendly, charitable people being taken down by the vindictive and unscrupulous.

I think he put in the contact information because he very much did want people to contact the NYT, and for them to make clear their displeasure with the policies of the organization. I think his genuine hope was that this would cause them to change their policies in the future, both for him and for others. So yes, he wants to "pressure the editor", but in a manner that is applicable to their job rather than as any sort of personal attack.

> If you really wanted a civil discussion, would you have used the type of language that he did?

Maybe, it depends on how aware I was of my audience. If my intended audience was the primary public posters on SSC, I can see saying just what he said. If I remembered in my fluster that 98% of the readers who never post might react differently, then probably not. If you picture Scott (as I do) as a really bright semi-autist who communicates online primarily with self-declared "rationalists", it doesn't seem impossible that he might forget in the heat of the moment (this had to be a stressful decision for him) that some percentage of his audience is going to interpret his words counter to his stated intent, even if that intent is real.

(I appreciate your response, by the way. I don't think you needed to delete your earlier comments. Yeah, they'll be flagged and downvoted, then we'll vouch for them to recover them and vote them back up. As long as you try to phrase things politely, there are enough people here who'll stand up for you even if we disagree with your conclusion.)

I appreciate your response as well. I deleted the original comments not because of the downvotes but because I noticed I was attracting discussions I did not want to participate in.

I think your interpretation is valid but I still think his writing caused harm even if it was inadvertent and someone should have pointed these things out to him much sooner but the SSC echo chamber did not allow for dissenting opinions so it had to be NYT journalist to make these things obvious to him and he did not respond well.

It is notable that, having dicussed things at length, memexy's postition was refined from "coded writing" and "very sinister" to

> Then there are better ways to make those arguments.

which, yes, there quite possibly are. There are always better ways to make any given argument.

But memexy's claim that Scott's work was bad because

> I don't need to argue for freedom of speech and equal rights and justice for all because in my world those are givens.

fails, in my opinion, to understand that there are many people for whom, sadly, those things aren't givens and that arguing that they should be is a lot of Scott's thing.

I would love to live in a world where those things are givens.

I appreciate Scott for making principled arguments for why, ideally, we would live in a world where those things are givens, and I appreciate Scott for, however imperfectly, trying to move us towards such a world as best he can.

(note, this is my (opinionated) summary of the thread that ensued from my sibling comment; if unsure whether I've captured things accurately, please read that whole thread and draw your own conclusions)

I did not make such a concession and I'm quoting you so the record is clear (quote is from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786584)

> I [mst] am entirely fine with you [memexy] believing that there are better ways to make those arguments - in fact, given any specific argument is almost certain to be imperfect, one would assume that there are.

> But I [mst] would note that "there are better ways to make those arguments" is quite a distance from your original position.

You [mst] made that conclusion, I did not. So I would appreciate it if you refined the phrasing to properly reflect the understanding that you are reaching the conclusion, not me.

I will also note the sophistic device being used here by mst of jumping up the thread to shortcircuit the evaluation of the actual evidence. This is quite deceptive.

My actual final response (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786943) is now hidden away behind "more" button and unlikely to be visible so posting it here for visibility.

Yes, and you [mst] provided an example of such associations with "youth", "stupidity", "anger", "fear", "transphobia", "homophobia", "atrocity", "anger at others", "anger with self", "dislike of others", "opposition to others", etc.

> When I was young and stupid, I used to believe that transgender was really, really dumb. That they were looking for attention or making it up or something along those lines.

> The point is not "accepting people different than me", it's "having suitable principles to still fight in favour of people I might otherwise rightly or wrongly dislike".

> You completely removed the part where he not only didn't act antagonistically towards them but actively opposed other people doing so as well.

What word other than "sinister" would you use to characterize the cluster of words I quoted which are implicit in the writing I quoted?

I said "refined", not "concession".

I have explicitly encouraged poeple to read the rest of the thread.

Your choice to characterise my doing so as a "sophistic device" and "deceptive" is your own.

I continue to encourage people who are unsure if my attempted summary is appropriate to read the whole of the original thread and draw their own conclusions.

If you really wanted people to read the whole thread you would not have shortcircuited the process and replied upstream. That is what I mean by sophistic and deceptive. It was disingenuous of you to assume I would approve. You should have asked if you wanted to summarize my points and we could have come to an agreement but instead you did something (posting upstream and summarizing and pretending to speak for me) to derail the conversation and actual conclusion (which was actually inconclusive).

I was civil throughout this discussion and I don't appreciate how you ended it.

> If you really wanted people to read the whole thread you would not have shortcircuited the process and replied upstream.

And yet, I explicitly said: this is my (opinionated) summary of the thread that ensued from my sibling comment; if unsure whether I've captured things accurately, please read that whole thread and draw your own conclusions.

You are welcome to claim that my explicit invitation to people - in a situation where, as you say, your last comments are 'hidden away behind "more" button' - is deceptive, but given I was actively encouraging people to read things upstream that would otherwise have been, as you said, 'hidden away', I personally do not consider my actions to have been deceptive in the least.

As for 'civil', it seems to me that this conversation has, in and of itself, made very clear to anybody reading it that you and I have significantly different definitions of that concept, and how to interpret this fact can only be left as an exercise to the reader.

Where was I "un"-civil by your definition and conception of civility? Again, you [mst] are making vague provocations and insinuations and continuing to carry the conversation into a direction that is unproductive and trying to paint me in a poor light. By turning this into a meta-argument you have derailed the original conversation.

I used to just walk away from such conversation but realized I'm letting the bullies win when I do that. By walking away I'm letting sophistry become a viable strategy. We will continue this as long as you want. I am not backing down and will continue to argue my position and provide reasons for what I believe and why.

You have consistently used bad faith and misleading tactics to derail the entire conversation. Every time I have assumed good faith you have thwarted it. Every time I have extended an explanatory provision you have used it against me by quoting me out of context, and then tried to put words in my mouth and pretended to not have done so. Whereas I have taken no such actions and have always quoted you in context.

My actions have been civilized. Yours have been otherwise.

I stand by my choice to invite people to read the entire thread and draw their own conclusions.

In case it wasn't clear I will spell it out. That choice was not what was being contended. It was your behavior of bad faith actions that I was contending. You tried to bias the actual argument and paint me in a certain way by quoting me out of context, which I rightfully called out.

I encourage people to read as well and reach their own conclusions without me putting words in their mouth or biasing their reasoning as you did in your shortcircuit post. Because rational and reasoned argument requires each individual to weigh the evidence and then respond with compelling arguments for refuting or accepting them.

FWIW: there is at least one HNer (me) who has read both subthreads and completely agrees with your assessment of the situation. 'mst is engaging in those time-honored tactics of the online troll - mischaracterise, redirect, disengage. Unfortunately these bad faith discussions are all too common recently and it's sad to see HN swallow the bait.

Even more reason to stand up for what's right. And I appreciate your encouragement. I want more people to act in good faith so I try to model the type of argument I want to see more of through actual actions.

hello! friendly invite to say hi on reddit if you like :) /u/foobanana

I am sorry that you consider genuine attempts to get real answers to be trolling with no explanation as to twhy.

I continue to stand by my choice to invite people to read the entire thread and draw their own conclusions.

Don't apologize. Stop using such tactics. I already pointed out what you did, how you did it, and why it was disingenuous. If you were sincere you would not have quoted me out of context, you would not have tried to bias the group opinion, and you would not have shifted the blame as you are doing now.

You should just stop because you are no longer making any points.

"I am sorry", in this case, was meant in its plain meaning of "I feel sorrow about this being the case".

Not everything is a tactic. Sometimes people just mean what they say.

> I am sorry that you consider genuine attempts to get real answers to be trolling with no explanation as to twhy.

That's called shifting the blame because you're shifting the responsibility and consequences of your actions onto someone else. That is not how one begins an apology. An apology begins as "I am sorry. I will reflect and consider the feedback given and do better next time. Please feel free to give further feedback if you feel like it and I will consider it and improve my behavior".

It wasn't an apology, as I already said in the comment you're responding to.

Not to all people, and not necessarily to the commenter you are responding to.

After clarifying that what I said wasn't an apology memexy continues to criticise me because it didn't fit their standards of apology.

I accept that my phrasing was not entirely clear but given having made what I meant explicit and still being attacked I'm unsure that my mistakes were the primary problem in this case.

As was mentioned in another comment, memexy is in Phase 1 - mischaracterize

> his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister.

You mean I've been reading SSC wrong all this time and missed out on secret messages encoded in kabbalistic puzzles?

There is always subtext. There is no need for mystical allusions. You are welcome to go back and re-read his writing with a more critical eye and decide for yourself what you notice.

Proof I was right - you don't like SA therefore his writing is bad and it has a secret evil message (never mind you couldn't even understand his point when you tried to write like him in another thread) and a 'critical' reading would validate your view, which is entirely unfalsifiable.

Which of my points is unfalsifiable? And where did I try to write like him?

Your attempt to rewrite the 'when I was young and stupid' excerpt, where you missed half the point of the piece, excised most of the words and declared him clearly not a good writer. Despite his writing being the reason he was even getting a nyt profile in the first place. It can't be that his writing speaks to people in a way you don't get, he's obviously a bad writer and all of those public intellectuals who are supporting him are... Not critical enough?

As for unfalsifiable, you claim there are dog whistles in every second sentence SA writes, and dog whistles are, by definition, unfalsifiable. You can claim anyone can see it if they look critically enough because if someone suggests they have looked critically and found nothing, you can simply claim they didn't do it right and mosey on. Dog whistles are also, by the way, fundamentally incompatible with the principle of good faith you claim to want to prosper. It's an interesting conceit, I'll give you that.

> As for unfalsifiable, you claim there are dog whistles in every second sentence SA writes, and dog whistles are, by definition, unfalsifiable. You can claim anyone can see it if they look critically enough because if someone suggests they have looked critically and found nothing, you can simply claim they didn't do it right and mosey on. Dog whistles are also, by the way, fundamentally incompatible with the principle of good faith you claim to want to prosper. It's an interesting conceit, I'll give you that.

I don't know what a "dog whistle" is or what it's used for. I explained exactly what I meant by "coded" and I made a point about emotionally charged language by rewriting quoted texts to demonstrate good writing vs bad writing.

It's all clearly stated in all my posts. You are welcome to actually quote me and demonstrate directly instead of mis-directing and mis-characterizing what I said / wrote as being a "dog whistle".

Look up the definition of dog whistles then, and discover they mean 'talking in coded language that means one thing to an outside audience and another to the inner circle'. Pretending you don't understand a decades old political term so you can ignore an argument is also not going to engender the good faith dialogue you claim to desire, by the way.

And what was your point about emotionally charged language? Aside from that you don't like it?

It's good to know I re-invented a concept that had been in politics for over a decade. Independent discoveries are always fun. I was just making observations but it's good to know what I observed is called dog whistling. So that's a correct assessment then. Scott's writing is full of dog whistles.

Yes what a remarkable cavalcade of coincidence your life is. And why look at that, you were so busy marvelling over your ability to engage left wing dialogue in the past five years without ever hearing of dog whistles that you plum forgot to address anything I said! What a lark. Let's just pretend I said SA's writing is full of dog whistles and didn't say 'dog whistles, aka coded language, is entirely unfalsifiable and in direct opposition to the principle of good faith argument' - after all, we are already pretending to be engaging arguments in good faith.

> Look up the definition of dog whistles then, and discover they mean 'talking in coded language that means one thing to an outside audience and another to the inner circle'.

I wasn't pretending. You said what I described is called a "dog whistle". I have no problem with using that phrase.

Very well, perhaps now you have been enlightened you would care to address my point?

Which of your points do you want addressed?

My point about emotionally charged language is that it's deceptive. It's a trick some people use the draw in the reader and get them to identify with the writer instead of the argument they're making. So when I see emotionally charged language I rewrite it in my mind to use neutral words so that I can see without emotional bias what argument the writer is making and reason about it objectively. Emotionally charged language is a sophistic device, it's used to obscure and confuse instead of enlighten.

If "critical eye" means you're attempting to read his work through a critical theory lens then it would have been helpful had you mentioned that in advance so that those of us using other lenses could've been aware that you were doing so. Much confusion might thereby have been avoided.

It's incumbent upon whoever is confused to ask clarifying questions instead of making insinuations about the inadequacy of the person making the argument.

If you were confused then you should have asked clarifying questions instead of arguing with incomplete information.

So are you operating on a critical theory lens or not?

I don't know what critical theory is and what it is used for. I use basic reasoning and back up what I say. I used the word critical as in "critical thinking" (unrelated to any actual academic theory of criticality). It's quite simple really. I'm not motivated to make a point other than clarify my own reasoning and I expect the same in return. When someone doesn't return the favor and act in kind then I assume they're operating in bad faith and they have no intention of making an actual argument to clarify but instead they seek to obscure and confuse.

You have demonstrated several times and very clearly you were not interested in a reasoned argument even though I gave you the benefit of the doubt by outlining what I thought and engaged every one of your examples in good faith. You did no such thing and went out of your way to shape and bias the discourse in your favor. So I'm no longer interested in arguing with you or making any more attempts to clarify my reasoning.

If you want to engage further then you can reach me by email or on keybase. I'm no longer interested in being a prop for your performance in front of a group.

FYI : )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory

"Critical theory is the reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures. With origins in sociology as well as in literary criticism, it argues that social problems are influenced and created more by societal structures and cultural assumptions than by individual and psychological factors. Maintaining that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation,[1] critical theory was established as a school of thought primarily by the Frankfurt School theoreticians Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Erich Fromm, and Max Horkheimer. The latter sociologist described a theory as critical insofar as it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them."[2]

In sociology and political philosophy, the term Critical Theory describes the Western-Marxist philosophy of the Frankfurt School, which was developed in Germany in the 1930s and draws on the ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Though a "critical theory" or a "critical social theory" may have similar elements of thought, the capitalization of Critical Theory as if it were a proper noun particularly stresses the intellectual lineage specific to the Frankfurt School"

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/

Thanks.

Yes, actually. It's a theme that Scott is annoyingly fond of, in his fiction and non-fiction. Unsong is entirely about kabbalistic puzzles as you know. Scott and others before him were enamored with the ideas of Leo Strauss. You can read more about Strauss' ideology of hidden truths that only the brilliant and/or worthy can perceive at the link below.

Scott Alexander uses the Kolmogorov post to have plausible deniability for his discussion of "race science". There's a reason writing "HBD" was banned in the comments section and it's that it was giving the game away to too many people. (discussion of HBD is not banned, it's simply not permitted for that string to appear - i wonder why that might be)

http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2014-06.html#drury-on-strauss

Have you missed this post?

http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/10/23/kolmogorov-complicity-a...

> There's a reason writing "HBD" was banned in the comments section

The reason is that most people who casually reference "HBD" have no idea what they're talking about, and end up grossly misrepresenting the actual science as cover for unrelated ideas like ethno-nationalism or bigoted views about other groups. Tabooing "HBD" is a legitimate way of forcing everyone to unpack whatever it is that they actually have in mind; in many ways, it is the opposite of playing dog whistle politics.

I don't know what HBD is, care to explain?

"I don't know what HBD is, care to explain?"

Yup, pretty much.

> "I don't know what HBD is, care to explain?"

> Yup, pretty much.

How do you propose I respond to your answer? I asked for clarification and you replied with a troll response. How would you respond if I did the same?

Sorry about that. The point is, at least by now, HBD is a thoroughly confusing term that gets used in many, sometimes mutually contradictory ways. The SSC community has spent many years trying to handle the multiple sides of the many "nature vs. nurture" debates that are also referenced in OP's article, and ultimately decided that the 'HBD' term itself was not very helpful to that end. To ask for a "clarifying definition" of HBD given these circumstances is indeed rather pointless.

Ok. That's a reasonable answer and I recommend assuming good faith next time and not trolling.

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