In defense of interesting writing on controversial topics
slowboring.com
slowboring.com
I think this is a very good point that I don't see raised very often.
I have some friends with whom I could debate the James Damore memo, where Jordan Petersen is making some points based in reason and science, the extent to which “Defund the Police” is honest vs hyperbolic, or under what circumstances saying “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” is sensible vs incendiary.
I have other friends with whom those discussions would be impossible. It is this group that we could probably learn more from each other, but the heat from the conversation vastly exceeds the light (for everyone, not just me).
We are mostly stuck in eternal bikeshedding.
That feels to me like a lot more than bikeshedding (assuming there's an answer other than "zero point zero zero")
My current view on this is that it makes more sense to see it as a distribution of personality types and that gender is a red herring. It takes a fairly specific type of person to pursue computer science and coding for intrinsic reasons, and it is difficult enough that it takes some degree of intrinsic motivation to do well enough at it for it to be profitable. As it stands, the salary draw is already as high as it probably can be (in fact, I believe salaries to be in a bubble) in the US at least, and there are enough scholarships, programs, and free resources that almost anyone who is even somewhat motivated and not socio-economically crushed at the onset can start the process with some degree of ease and the expectation of high rewards at the end.
Hence the extrinsic draw of the profession is already as strong as you could expect. There is still cultural stigma, but that is being erased naturally since programmers have a high socio-economic status for the most part and indoor activities are more and more popular and mainstream. The only real problem left is intrinsic motivation, and if it is tied to your personality type as per my hypothesis, I don't see how you could meaningfully change it. Or to be more precise, the mechanisms of change that are available to us are already well underway.
> there are enough scholarships, programs, and free resources that almost anyone who is even somewhat motivated
This might be the hinge upon which we could pivot though. Does everyone really have the at-home internet access, quiet location to focus for 60-90 minutes at a time, with a desk, screen, and keyboard such that adding a Raspberry Pi is enough to get started? I can literally reach out and touch my 2 27" monitors, my work laptop, my personal computer, a KVM switch, and a Mac for each of my primary-school age kids, each with their own 27" 4K monitor, keyboard, chair, etc. That, coupled with my career as a model of what "normal" is, makes it a lot more likely that they'll end up in computing than the average Cambridge, MA schoolkid.
I don't think anything of what I described is "intrinsic" to them. If that's the case, there's chance for intervention to beneficially change things (rather than simply over-riding intrinsic preferences, which I think is bad.)
> and not socio-economically crushed at the onset
This is another one, of course, partially touched on above, and definitely inter-related.
To be perfectly clear, I am not making a by-the-bootstraps argument, just trying to look at the situation as objectively as my biases allow me to. It might be far, far easier for the scion of a tidy bourgeois home to make it, but unless they have the right personality type they are still highly likely to fail eventually. They'll go further than a student with the same personality type but fewer resources, but the roadblock will still appear later in the sequence, possibly at the very end. Conversely, a disadvantaged kid with the right personality type will typically have the possibility to get to the launchpad zone towards a better life. At the very least, the conditions and probability distributions have never been better compared to other careers and aspirations.
What could change this is to have better opportunities for mediocre coders, but it appears to be going the opposite way. Due to the extrinsic rewards there is now a glut of such employees that might pop their own code-monkey bubble soon while leaving the outrageous tech salaries for the higher tranches intact for at least a bit longer (if there is in fact a separate bubble as well for the latter).
I've been finding more and more that I have to bite my tongue around people, even that I know also. The most upsetting part is when you see otherwise intelligent people fall into fallacious anti-patterns. One such anti-pattern that I see right now is black and white reasoning. For instance disagreeing with something being labelled racist means you support racism. Essentially, if you can shift the conversation from a complex topic (is this action racist) to a simple one (we shouldn't be racists) then it becomes easier to form an opinion and castigate your opponent.
I have to wonder how much of this is the person on the other side trying to copout of a topic which they haven't thought about, versus the influence of twitter-like agitprop. I think it's likely a fusion of both.
You might be surprised to learn that it's often neither. This stuff is rooted in the decades-long academic tradition of critical race theory.
Misapplication of that theory it might or might not be. But in the spirit of the topic of the article posted here, it might be worth looking at the academic origins of this movement.
Here's a nice summary article https://spectator.us/topic/anti-racism-really-means-debate-w...
You might or might not agree with the ideas proposed therein. I certainly have mixed feelings about it. But you can't dismiss a movement as illegitimate without at least trying to understanding it.
That said, people who really buy into critical race theory can be difficult to debate or discuss with, much like any other "extreme" or "total" view of the world. But you must respect the fact that, for many, this is not an academic debate but a life-or-death fight for justice, equality, and freedom.
Don't dismiss what you don't understand. Feel free to disagree, but don't dismiss it.
I'm not dismissing postmodernity and associated schools of thought, rather I'm dismissing lazily shoe-horning your opponents ideas into a more simplistic, easier to attack strawman. It might sound like postmodernism, but it definitely is not.
Postmodern critical theory is about deconstruction, context and narrative structures -- the absolute opposite of black and white thinking and strawmaning. The latter is what I am dismissing.
The sorts of bad faith strawmen I am referring to are about as close to postmodernism as new age woo peddlers' arguments are to quantum mechanics. It's debasing to the true theory to even call them misapplications. To your point, I dismiss this sort of behavior because I understand it.
On the same line, the tumultuous times in which french moralists such as La Rochefoucauld lived certainly helped them sharpen their remarks.
And that's exactly why I read the comment forums on Hacker News and elsewhere.
- CNN/MSNBC viewership ratings were constant throughout the proceedings.
- FOX viewership ratings were high for opinion commentary before, during breaks, and after, but dropped to nominal any time house impeachment managers presented evidence.
Fox viewership quite literally tuned out the opposing viewpoint, while MSNBC/CNN viewership did not.
If “contemporary society” is learning self-government on the job as we transition to a relatively post-toil socio-economy, how can mistakes be mostly constructive so it’s safe to learn?
> “It only remains for men to create a good organization for the state... and to arrange it in such a way that their self-seeking energies are opposed to one another, each thereby neutralising or eliminating the destructive effects of the rest... As hard as it may sound, the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils (so long as they possess understanding).” — Kant, Political Writings : https://books.google.com/books?id=v7v3CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT79&lpg=P...
‘Possessing understanding’ cannot be parenthetical.
If you think that, you're a partisan that has tuned out the opposing viewpoint :-)
I mean, the reason MSNBC/CNN viewership didn't tune out during the time "house impeachment managers presented evidence" was because that was already their own viewpoint.
It is factual that viewers of one channel tuned out during an opposing viewpoint, viewers of the other two channels did not tune out during an opposing viewpoint.
Your assertion may be why MSNBC/CNN didn't tune out during house presentations, but doesn't explain why they didn't tune out during defense presentations.
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Meanwhile, research on "approach-avoidance" behavioral patterns suggests there is a partisan difference in the degree of partisanship one needs one's sources to exhibit:
There's also good evidence that this kind of "selective exposure" is disproportionately powerful among Republicans. "One study found that adding the FNC logo to a news story increased the probability that Republicans would choose to read the story by 25 percentage points, whereas adding CNN’s logo or NPR’s logo reduced the chance by 10 points," Grossmann and Hopkins write. "No equally strong effects occurred among Democrats."
http://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2009/iyengar-redmedia-bluem...
The concern I'm raising is not that, but this:
"Thus, as the audience become polarized over matters of politics and public policy, rational media owners stand to gain market share by injecting more rather than less political bias into the news (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2006). ... A further implication of voters’ increased exposure to one-sided news coverage is an ‘‘echo chamber’’ effect—the news serves to reinforce existing beliefs and attitudes."
The system needs a way to systematically correct for this.
That's the case with the Fox audience too: your assertion doesn't explain why they tuned out during defense presentations as well.
In any case, I didn't intend to make an assertion whether this is a one side problem, but highlight that not all participants are exposing themselves to all information. Borrowing the most neutrally or bi-partisan phrased positioning of the problem from the research I linked above:
"Republicans preferred to read news reports attributed to Fox News and to avoid news from CNN and NPR. Democrats and liberals exhibited exactly the opposite syndrome—dividing their attention equally between CNN and NPR, but avoiding Fox News. This pattern of selective exposure based on partisan affinity held not only for news coverage of controversial issues but also for relatively 'soft' subjects such as crime and travel."
I intended to relay a concerning metric illustrating this problem, to motivate a step back and ask what can be done to address that "‘Possessing understanding’ cannot be parenthetical."
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> If you think that, you're a partisan that has tuned out the opposing viewpoint :-)
FWIW, I watched exhaustively, and on Fox News.
Though I have a deep knowledge of the relevant pop culture and players, mostly because it's forced down our throats anyway...
> But even more so, social media incentivizes the wrong kind of reading. Today you read someone from a rival school of thought in order to find the paragraph or sentence that, when pulled out of context and paired with a witty Twitter quip, will garner you lots of little hearts. I’m as guilty of doing this as anyone. A lot of very smart people have poured a lot of time and energy into making you want to collect those little hearts.
> That said, the way you learn things and get smarter is to read strong writers and try to understand what they’re saying [...] and why it is people believe that.
Maybe some of his views just differ from yours?
I don't think defending interesting writing on controversial topics needs a defense, it just needs privacy. His conclusion is sufficient. "But something about the internet is making people into infantile conformists with no taste or appreciation for the life of the mind and frankly I’m sick of it."
Like any symbolic luxury good, it's an expression of alignment to what someone perceives to be power. It signals their beliefs about the world. Do they just enjoy it? Sure, but they enjoy it because it reinforces the story they tell themselves about their identity. It's like if they read USA Today or even Slate Star Codex. Today's NYT is written to arouse sentiments I prefer to keep at arms length.
Meanwhile, you’re arguing that you can draw sweeping conclusions about a person simply because they read a certain publication. Ironic, given the rationalist community’s original embrace of exploring a wide array of perspectives and writings rather than letting pre-conceived biases dominate one’s thinking.
I think you’re projecting your own habit of tying your identity to the material you read. Plenty of people read NYT articles without aligning themselves with the NYT, without thinking of themselves as part of the NYT community, and without building an identity around being an NYT reader. Plenty of people read NYT articles even though they disagree with them. Simply reading the NYT doesn’t turn someone into a self-described NYT person in the way that many people thinking reading SSC turns them into a rationalist.
You're less rational than you think.
It’s ironic that rationalists spend so much energy criticizing people who won’t tolerate the out group, while simultaneously being intolerant of what they define as the out group.
When groups get into happy death spirals, it's often easier to just start a new one.
Without the months of speculation and build-up and the seeming desire for everyone to write their own nit-picks of what the article got wrong (while deliberately ignoring what it might have gotten right), this article likely wouldn’t have received much traction at all.
Besides, I don't see any "let's stragetically be hush about it, so the article goes unnoticed" ever working.
The mere publishing of the article, with no reaction, would be enough to have personal consequences for the blogger.
At least with the big commotion, the shittiness of NYT publishing it has come under scutiny too.
So the reaction might be strategically good too.
It wouldn't need much popularity to do damage. A modestly popular article exposing the guy would be enough for him to have personal consequences. People have been cancelled (from their jobs) for less.
On the other hand, the big reaction might stop the next such bullying, or at least make the next journalist consider that they're doing something scummy and tacky.
Non-comformist means outside the mainstream.
There's no infinite variety outside the mainstream, and even if there was, it doesn't matter in its entirety (nobody will call you a non-conformist for writing about butterflies, even if it's not mainstream).
What most matters is the subset of the variety of topics directly opposed by conformist views.
So, that's what non-comformists explore primarily. And that's the value in having non-conformists.
Not some variety of millions of irrelevant viewpoints on this and that - but as a counter-voice to what's promoted 24/7 on all mainstream sources.
Essentially it falls into a few categories.
- The free-speech crowd: while I appreciate that they go against the mainstream media and the neoliberal consensus, they tend to default to invoking values and symbolic victories without much in way of an actual plan or policy proposals. Essentially a new form of the aestheticization of politics in a different context. From Trump to Parler, it all feels very postmodern in a way and keeps changing randomly.
- The intellectual dark web: these spend most of their time hinting at controversy and reiterating their stance as free thinkers, but it rarely goes beyond questioning SJW ideology and arguing for just a more optimistic version of the current form of capitalism. (Pinker, for example) It's frustrating because it really seems like they could band together to produce some great things.
- Various self-help authors or commentators whose career is based on debates, media production, and who essentially promote the same ideas as the dark web, but in a more packageable format and with a focus on personal improvement and subscription or ad based revenue generation. (Shapiro, JBP)
- Rationalists: spend most of their time discussing lifestyle differences and AI. The latter is obviously very important, but they don't really address current problems and prefer to talk about Bayesian statistics in their own zone, or provide thrill-seeking to tech workers. It's unclear what they even achieve with all that rationality other than discussing it. HPMOR is great, though.
- The modern day far-left: those who aren't aligned with the mainstream and who don't pursue idpol are mostly in a state of disarray, in small numbers, a mirror version of the commentators described above, or subject to tankism
All in all, many of them are doing better than me on the front of ideas but it's not very motivating.
But there's no real endgame anyone has, it's just a pushback against "mainstream media and the neoliberal consensus" aka, the establishment, modern big tech, bipartisan monoculture, and so on.
An endgame would require some positive vision for the future (whether it includes adopting some elements from the past or inventing new ones). But there might not be any.
History creates those visions (that is, historical forces, changes in material conditions, new opportunities, demographic changes, etc) not will alone. The thinkers thinking the visions usually come later (and even if they come before the historical changes, they're ignored, until the landascape is ready for their ideas).
Timing aside - and does timing matter as much now as it did back when news papers were still a thing? - Metz's article carefully doesn't say, but very strongly implies, that SSC and its community serve as a "transmission belt" using privileged access to trendsetters in the tech industry to deliver fascist ideas into that industry's main stream of thought.
Will that become part of the post-Russiagate narrative being developed around the industry as a whole, not least by the NYT itself? I don't know. But it could. And, as someone who wishes for nothing more than to have a time portal open from 2347 into his living room just long enough for a history of the 20th century to fall out, this is the sort of stuff I find really interesting and diverting to think about.
edit: On reflection, one wonders what the NYT's perspective on Hacker News would be. I think there's a reasonable chance we'll get to find out. And that would be interesting, too!
There are no standards or penalties for using logical fallacies in media writing.
As a journalist, all you need to do is craft your wording to imply a connection to be able to smear your target (or to make a nice click-worthy article with hot-takes). Here's a few different tactics that you can use:
-does your target have at least 1 or 2 members of its community who have said something outside the norms of the present?
-is there anybody who is within 2-3 degrees of relationship between the leadership at the site that sometimes say things outside the norms of the present?
-are there members of the community who are part of another community that doesn't have sufficient equal representation along identity lines? (i.e. this is a tech community, tech underrepresents some minorities, therefore, this site is racist)
-does the racial/gender makeup of the community not align with the broader US population?
What changed is that the views in them no longer had any durable meaning or predictive power. The necessary ingredient in news has always been conflict, this is what makes a story a story, but when you can fabricate infinite conflict by applying a hyperbolic (ideological) lens to some second hand facts, it (cheaply) produces an approximation of news, but without any importance or value because the conflict is manufactured. So-called "fake news," was less about fabricated events so much as it was about fake conflict.
Net-net, dropping mainstream news some years ago has improved my overall quality of life tremendously.
Am I reading this right, that you'd consider dissociating from somebody over their associations... because their associations include news sources that discuss dissociation on the basis of one's associations?
I still know more people who trust the NYT than who flat out don't trust it. Even among those who have grown slightly weary (and wary) of it, there's still a weight to the brand name they just can't shake off. It's been the paper of record for their entire lives. So, if someone's only exposure to Alexander is him being called a racist in the gray lady, it unfortunately makes it harder to get them to read his fascinating, thoughtful, sometimes atonal, occasionally dubious, always worth thinking about articles.
They didn't call him a racist. They pointed out where he aligned himself with racists and where he didn't. They left out him saying he likes eugenics.[1]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200228054021/https://slatestar...
Aside: I was pretty into the roguelikes that descend from the Moria/Angband line for the better part of a decade. I'd frequently get to know people in that community and, after some light googling, realise they were famous in some other field.
I learned about Toby Ord through a terrific game he wrote called Sil [0], which is a nearly-unrecognizable fork of NPPAngband that sticks tightly to the theme of the Silmarillion. It's a very tight game, and it oozes atmosphere--especially neat considering there is no sound, and only an ASCII-character terminal-like display.
This was also how I first discovered Nick Bostrom and "Superintelligence"; Toby Ord was a postdoc of Bostrom's at the time, and following the chain I stumbled into this work.
I guess roguelikes might appeal to rationalists in particular; there's a lot to reason about in there, but sometimes random things happen and there's just nothing you can do :)
[0] http://www.amirrorclear.net/flowers/game/devours/reviews.htm...
> Scott Alexander’s blog is popular with some influential Silicon Valley people. > Scott Alexander has done posts that espouse views on race or gender that progressives disapprove of. > THEREFORE, Silicon Valley is a hotbed of racism and sexism.
But this just isn't accurate. The first sentence is right. The second is part of the profile (though not the entire point). And the stated conclusion is not in the article at all.
I hadn't noticed "rationalists" of this particular type before today. I'm not impressed.
This part is pretty bad:
> Metz is very interested to paint Alexander as racist, by writing for example that “in one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in ‘The Bell Curve.’”
Metz doesn't call Alexander a racist. The author feels Metz paints Alexander as a racist simply by raising an association with well known accused racist Charles Murray. Yet... if that inference is generally clear, then why did Alexander choose to make a point about UBI by associating himself with Charles Murray?
My guess is the author feels attacked by the nytimes (or maybe the "tribe" the nytimes belongs to) and is fighting back (Fighting a little dirty, too, since it seems to be portraying the story inaccurately.)
I think you’re right that the rationalist communities feel like they need to defend themselves and fight back, while refusing to even consider anything that could be viewed as criticism of their community.
The modern self-described rationalist communities feel more like a place for people who have built their personal identities around the idea of being intellectual non-conformists than for people who genuinely want to discuss topics from different perspectives.
"In one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in “The Bell Curve.” In another, he pointed out that Mr. Murray believes Black people “are genetically less intelligent than white people.”"
You say "Metz doesn't call Alexander a racist", but that sentence is clearly trying to get his readers to think that.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20200228054021/https://slatestar...
You didn't read the article, yet you want to infer the reason why Alexander did something?
If you actually read the article, he chose Murray because his opinon it fit a particular quadrant in a box chart, namely the "Pessmistic Cooperative" view on poverty. He also "associated" himself in that same diagram with Bernie Sanders, Lenin and School Lunches.
I hope you take this as a learning experience. Please read the article before jumping to conclusions.
> I hope you take this as a learning experience.
Frankly, I think I'm learning to not bother to engage "rationalists" on the internet.
I'm not sure if you are implying that I'm a "rationalist", but if you are, you're jumping to conclusions again. You have a glaring habit of making pretty bad assumptions and I really hope you change yourself. It's a very bad trait that appears to be pretty common in your responses.
I've never heard of this blog before this article or even rationalism, but your question made me curious about why he chose to refer to Murray. But instead of just jumping to conclusions and assuming things like you, I actually bothered to read the article. This is something you didn't do. Honestly, you should learn from this.
I guess if you’re interested, go back, read it again, and think about it in relation to the article. If not, that’s cool too.
Think about Chesterton's saying about the fence:
> In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
Rationalists are the more modern type of reformer here (and so are hackers, founders who like to disrupt things, etc., so this worldview also tends to be popular on this site). Absent a convincing argument from first principles as to why the fence should exist, they think it's clear that it shouldn't.
The sort of reformer that Chesterton calls "intelligent" I would perhaps rather call wise, in that this isn't a matter of personal cognitive capacity. (In fact, people who are more intelligent are probably better at being the "more modern" type of reformer, simply because they can more easily formulate those arguments!) They trust that someone else has put up that fence for a reason, and they aren't interested in relitigating it from first principles every time a reformer wanders by.
The truly wise reformer also knows that this only works if there's a good reason to believe the argument exists, whether or not they know the argument themselves. They have to be working in a framework where fences don't get constructed without reason in the first place. Which is a fine approach at scale: you can't scale understanding all the arguments yourself (which is why they don't want to relitigate every single one), but you can scale building a society where someone has made those arguments before building up any fences. In order to do this, they have to at least occasionally listen to the "more modern" reformers, especially when they do come back and say, look, I found out why people originally thought the fence was a good idea, and here's why I think they were wrong to do so.
Society at large tends to be more like the second type of reformer, but perhaps without that depth of wisdom. When they look at some norm in society (be it monogamy, or particular ways to phrase things, or as the article says, whether it's acceptable to eat coffee beans instead of brewing them), they tend to be unwilling to deeply question it, because they trust (rightly or wrongly) that the rest of society has converged on it for a reason. They get annoyed at children who ask "Why" all the time, and they certainly don't do so themselves.
Rationalists tend to be more like the first type of reformer. If you can't explain why the norm of monogamy is good, it's probably bad. If your argument is "It makes me feel bad," they say you should question those feelings - see the linked story at the end about "polyhacking," i.e., arguing yourself into being polyamorous because your own emotions don't make sense from first principles. (They've even invented a new term, "compersion," for a feeling which is the opposite of jealousy - you could argue that they've invented a new emotion, seeing as not enough people felt it for it to have a name already.)
Both approaches have their upsides and downsides, and I would be skeptical of either approach taken to its extreme. And it's the "more intelligent type of reformer" that controls society at large (certainly that is the position of institutions like the NYT), so there's a lot of merit in the "more modern type of reformer" pushing back on these assumptions quite aggressively.
Still, there is a little bit of a point the NYT has: there are a few ideas that society objects to because they are both wrong and rather personally harmful to segments of society. (Were they potentially right and harmful, this would be a much more difficult conversation.) If you make a first-principles argument against monogamy, and it turns out you're wrong, you're merely weird; if you make a first-principles argument against the equal dignity of the races, and it turns out you're wrong, you've probably hurt a lot of people in the process. So society at large is extraordinarily uninterested in hearing those first-principles arguments, being firmly convinced that there is a reason why that fence exists and that relitigating it won't yield a different result. From that angle, it makes sense to consider a movement that says "All our norms are up for debate" as potentially harmful (and, more importantly, potentially not actually as much in service of the cause of finding truth / doing the right thing as it claims to be).
In the other direction, this also explains why the Grey Tribe has "vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up," quoting the Slate Star Codex post linked in the NYT article (which references another Chesterton work, as it happens). To the more modern type of reformer, the gender-checking gate in front of romantic partnership obviously has no point, needs to be torn down, and really the problem is all the people defending the gate because it historically existed. Which, yes, they're right about that! But the Blue Tribe knows that if you actually want gay rights to happen, you've got to play by the rules of the "more intelligent" reformer - who is wrong in this case - and affirmatively argue for taking down the fence instead of simply questioning it.
Maybe this was true 5-10 years ago but my sense is that "rationalists" have grown up (sometimes literally -- they were in their early 20s, now they're in their late 20s, early 30s). Scott Alexander doesn't seem like this "modern type of reformer" to me and I think a lot of people are on the same trajectory as him.
I think this is a phase of personal development and it usually ends by 30. Also, plenty of the people I'd put into this category ("modern type of reformers") are not grey tribers, they're blue-tribers. "Abolish the police," "open the borders" is exactly this kind of reform.
The difference between the blue tribers and the grey tribers -- when it comes to naive calls for reform -- is that the former are more emotional and the latter are more analytical. Neither of them are wise.
> In the other direction, this also explains why the Grey Tribe has "vague annoyance that the question of gay rights even comes up," quoting the Slate Star Codex post linked in the NYT article (which references another Chesterton work, as it happens). To the more modern type of reformer, the gender-checking gate in front of romantic partnership obviously has no point, needs to be torn down, and really the problem is all the people defending the gate because it historically existed. Which, yes, they're right about that! But the Blue Tribe knows that if you actually want gay rights to happen, you've got to play by the rules of the "more intelligent" reformer - who is wrong in this case - and affirmatively argue for taking down the fence instead of simply questioning it.
We're getting pretty close to gay rights these days. Personally, I think Will & Grace had more to do with that than either kind of reformer. Americans have become more comfortable with homosexuality as they became exposed to gay people who are "normal". In other words, the perception of gay people has shifted from hustlers and tortured married men looking for sex in dive bars to well-dressed, polite lawyers.
Reformers played some role in that process but I think it's a mistake to view progress like this as the result of "winning an argument".
But rationalists didn't invent the word compersion.[1] And people felt schadenfreude before there was a word for it.
2. But, interestingly enough, if you read about the Kerista Commune that coined the term (a hippie commune, more or less, in the Haight in the 1970s onwards), among their precepts is this:
> 12. Rational Approach to All Things -This includes mystical and emotional phenomena; No acceptance of lapsing into irrational self-identity.
and later version of their precepts included these:
> 3. Rationality - Using reason and logic are basic approaches in all conversation, behavior, and inquiry; no acceptance of strong feelings, mystical intuition or unreasonable statements are being truth of any truth.
> 4. The Search for Truth through the Elimination of Contradictions - Working definition of truth: a very large body of premises which do not contradict each other. Contradictions between stated beliefs and actions, between two people's different versions of the same event, or anything else are encountered and analyzed to discover the most accurate picture of reality.
They were certainly a separate group from the present-day Rationalists linked to Yudkowsky et al., but I think their approach to handling their own feelings may have been very similar, and they definitely took the counter-culture approach of not finding society's previous acceptance of a norm of any value in evaluating the worth of that norm. I suspect the "Polyhacking" document would not have been out of place among the Keristans.
(As for schadenfreude, it's true that English doesn't have a native word for it, but it's certainly well-documented as an emotion throughout history - Psalm 35 talks about enemies who sneer, rejoice wrongfully, and maliciously wink, while saying, "Aha, aha!" One modern translation identifies what they do as gloating, which seems to be substantially similar. And apparently Aristotle had a term for it, epichairekakia: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...)
Vicarious joy is well documented throughout history though. And compersion is just vicarious joy in a specific context.
Oddly enough, the people I've known from the past generation who were the most skillful and verbose rationalists were all educated at Catholic universities. I'm not sure they were all still religious by the time I met them. My uncle could demolish any idea or argument.
That said, I do think there is plenty of room for criticism of internet rationalist communities. There are a lot of people riding the coattails of blogs like SSC to use rationalism as a tool to lend credibility to their flawed assumptions.
However, the audience for criticisms of rationalist communities is very small. Self-described rationalists seem interested on contrarian takes about everything but themselves.
1. Scott is worth reading.
2. Sometimes Scott tackles controversial topics and takes positions I disagree with, but we should not stop reading everything he writes because of that.
3. One controversial topic Scott sometimes writes about is race, and in particular race science, by which I mean the genetic correlations between race and traits like IQ.
4. Scott chose to write under a quasi-pseudonym, Scott Alexander, most of the time, precisely because he didn’t want his controversial takes to affect the rest of his life and community.
5. In building his blog, Scott appealed to and courted several different groups. The most important groups for the purpose of this discussion are Rationalists, neoreactionaries, so-called race realists, and tech people.
6. Some of the tech people he appealed to are prominent, and they would eventually support him both publicly and privately.
7. At the same time and independent of Scott, America has undergone a shift in its appraisal of both technology and race, and American society has become more polarized for reasons that are too complex to explore here.
8. Technology is seen as more important in American society, and many of its effects are now interpreted as potentially harmful. This has raised the profile of tech leaders in the public eye, and has made the media more critical of them. (They can be important, or they can be ignored by the critical press, but they cannot expect to be both.)
9. Race-baiting became common during the Trump years, even as critical race theory went more mainstream among liberals. 10. If Scott had simply written a blog that was popular among tech people, the mainstream media would have covered him with a puff piece.
11. Scott repeatedly convinced journalists not to profile him, however, because he did not want the increased attention. (Did he know where it would lead?)
12. If Scott had simply moderated a comment section where race realism was widespread, he would have been just another wing nut on the Internet, deserving no notice outside the SPLC. But Scott did both.
13. I personally believe Scott saw the contradictions and strategic flaws in his choices. He had built a blog that was both influential among famous people, widely read by “race realists”, and written under a quasi-pseudonym.
14. Which brings us to the media. They write stories about important and famous people, because their readers want to know about those people. Journalists don’t care about those important and famous people as people; they care about them as stories. As decision makers who may affect the rest of us.
15. The best stories are surprising, and when something is surprising, sometimes it is surprising because it has been kept hidden, because it is shameful.
16. Scott was hiding something. Not just his full name, but the extent to which his blog was enmeshed with neoreactionary movements and so-called race realism.
17. Scott is still hiding things; he is giving a distorted version of events. (And to re-iterate, I will continue to read his posts although I see him being disingenuous about these issues.) He says he has only spoken with Thiel once. Yes, but Scott worked at a startup funded by Thiel, Metamed. Scott is close with one of Thiel’s mentees, Balaji Srinivasan. Both Balaji and Thiel funded the startup of Curtis Yarvin/Mencius Moldbug, even as Scott discussed Yarvin’s writings in depth on his popular blog.
18. Some of his prominent tech supporters were aware of Scott’s interest in race science and continued to support him publicly. Others were probably not aware.
19. That is the root cause that resulted in Scott receiving the coverage he did. It was not about Scott. It was not because of any personal animosity that the Times or its reporters bear towards him. It is because he managed to bring prominent tech people and race scientists together on one blog for years, and keep it hidden, until it blew up in his face, because it was, in fact, a big story.
I was pleasantly surprised by the actions of the newspaper, New Humanist -- it is a Rationalist publication but mixes in Intersectional analysis seamlessly to provide quality journalism without accidentally moving towards the "Nazi" or "Racist" side of the spectrum as many other supposedly "Rationalist" newspapers do, by acknowledging that at a certain point it is not appropriate or rational to implicitly support these ideologies through trying to obtain a purely "Rationalist" understanding of the world, and that one's own rational understanding must be tempered by learning from the experienced of the systemically oppressed, otherwise you risk eliminating them from the "equation", and your consideration.
It's a very worthwhile newspaper to read, it is high quality and I cannot recommend it enough.
> I’m happy someone is pursuing these questions, but I don’t find the contemplations of these extreme scenarios to be particularly enlightening.
Indeed.
As a final note, it is worth it to know that Scott Alexander only decided he disliked the article from the NYT, not when he found out they were going to "out" him, but when he realised it was going to have a critical lens! Highly amusing!
As a final note, it is worth it to know that Scott
Alexander only decided he disliked the article from the
NYT, not when he found out they were going to "out" him,
but when he realised it was going to have a critical
lens! Highly amusing!
Anyway, the note is copied pretty much verbatim from the Rational Wiki page on him: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander
Which links here: https://web.archive.org/web/20200623184053/https://twitter.c...
It links to the bottom of the thread in question. The gist of it is that, Scott Alexander communicated and had an open dialogue with the reporter, he knew that his name was going to be published (At the least, he didn't demand anonymity). The reporter initially had a positive take on SSC. The person in the linked tweet spoke to the reporter and introduced them to a different perspective, and put them in contact with other people with a slightly negative perspective of the blog. As soon as the reported started contacting those people, however, Scott suddenly had a problem with his name being published, and the blog was deleted.
That said your link does not in fact substantiate your statement that I can see. It is speculation on twitter also with no substantiation. Rumors frequently have a long chain where links in the chain use previous links as substantiation. It's why rumor is so unproductive in the first place. It poses as fact but if you chase it far enough frequently ends up being false or misleading.
No, all of the statements are there, they're first-hand accounts. The rest can easily be derived from given evidence.
They state first that they talked to the reporter, who had a positive bent.
They state that the reporter became increasing interested in a second perspective on SSC.
Third, it is a fact that Scott Alexander knew that the reporter was doing the article, and did not request anonymity (Otherwise the reporter would not have disclosed his name at any stage). So it can be seen that anonymity was not of interest to Scott when the reporter started out on the article.
Four, Scott Alexander deleted the site immediately after the reporter started seeking out opposing views. He did not do this at any time beforehand, when it would have been more prudent to do so.