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Comment by yorwba | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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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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