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Comment by memexy | Hacker News Reader

Suppose I have a big following. Suppose I know that some of those followers are prone to exaggerating some things that I "suggest". If you know those two facts, would you have written the same letter?

I'm not saying your interpretation is incorrect. I'm saying, knowing what I know about SSC, I know that certain people would interpret his letter differently and cause problems for the editor and the original jouranlist and that seems to be exactly what happened. A vocal minority took up his cause and shaped the discourse around him being a victim and the editor and journalist being evil.

Even in this thread, any kind of actual discussion is almost impossible. The general opinion is very skewed by very specific interpretations of Scott's persona.

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> Suppose I have a big following. Suppose I know that some of those followers are prone to exaggerating some things that I "suggest". If you know those two facts, would you have written the same letter?

By your standards, any form of activism is a harassment campaign unless you can control the actions of every single individual in your group. I see this line of argument a lot recently, but frankly it’s nonsense.

> Even in this thread, any kind of actual discussion is almost impossible. The general opinion is very skewed by very specific interpretations of Scott's persona (which I don't think is actually valid because in my opinion he was not a benevolent person).

We’re talking about non-debatable facts here. You keep saying that the blog take down post “suggested” people to harass NYT. That post is there in plain view, and it clearly does not.

Yeah, that's how the left operates now. There are no facts, the only truth is they only operate in good faith and their opponents only operate in bad faith. Therefore anything they say or do is just and anything their opponents say or do is evil.

Peaceful marches become nazi rallies while arsonist riots are stirring protests. Scott Alexander is nice to the point of stupidity, but he is the enemy therefore his actions are inherently nefarious, while the nyt - who recently accused Noam Chomsky and a black academic of white supremacy - become saints harassed by evil incels.

A hacker news thread about it spends god knows how long arguing about the definition of ad hominem, and even though the leftist is just plain fundamentally incorrect they refuse to back down and accuse others of bad faith for not buying their fantasy definition.

What you argue for matters as much as how you do it. I don't see anything wrong with criticizing people who advocate for racism. Peaceful marches for racism doesn't make racism just, you know.

I don't see any problem with criticising racism either, I just object to the attempts to paint them as violent while in the next breath pretending the Floyd riots were peaceful.

There were marches for George Floyd.

Looting was really just about ... looting.

I don’t think it’s appropriate or fair to say “Floyd riots”, though I’ve said that too at points.

Feel free to disagree.

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