Scott Alexander's email shows staunch support for scientific-racism a.k.a. “HBD”

I don’t know what the full context of their conversation was because it isn’t included. But I find it really offensive when people pretend that intelligence and athletic ability amongst a whole host of other things do not exist along a spectrum and are not genetically influenced. Their implication is that it’s a moral failing. Someone with say an IQ of 80 is going to have an extremely hard life through no fault other than genetics and the harsh environment that we as a society give them.

Burt was a crypto-fascist, in exactly the evasive way that a lot of people on SSC were. "Fascist? Use what's between your ears when you talk. It's not the 1930s and I'm not literally Mussolini!"

He wasn't in the College Republicans, because he wasn't interested in organizations. This was also before Eliezer Yudkowsky and his Rationalists. So Burt described himself as an Objectivist instead. Funny how "Objectivist" and "Rationalist" both carry the connotation of always being right!

Burt wasn't against the gays, he just thought it was natural to destroy them. People in the US would rise up and destroy them. The end. He also solely referred to them as "fags" and "fudge-packers," and he wouldn't tolerate being called out on it because "are you really afraid of a word?"

Burt also wasn't against Black people, he just thought that The Bell Curve was right. He would also only listen to gangsta rap for pleasure. Because, you see, female vocalists obviously sing for men, and he wasn't interested in romance, while male vocalists obviously sing for women, and he wasn't gay. So gangsta rap was the only music for men like him. It was, objectively, the best music.

He read a lot of history books, but only military history and conservative political theory. He spent a lot of time painting wargaming miniatures in his room. His fiction reading mostly centered on quasi-fascist detectives who did most of their talking with their fists. (It was, of course, the only correct literature for men to read -- "fine literature" was for women.) His cinematic interests focused on Rutger Hauer's trashiest 80s schlock. He demonstratively carried a blackjack.

Comically, he ridiculed "degenerate" modern art. He also insisted on absurd linguistic prescriptivism. For example, he would assert to anyone who would listen that Indian people are spelling their names not according to the rules of correct English spelling.

And the reason why I know this in such detail is that he was constantly telling everyone how right-thinking he was, at length and in great detail. This was his only conversation mode. When US invaded Iraq, he followed me for about two hours praising the US for making a move on "Maddas" (he seemed constitutionally unable to pronounce the name "Saddam" properly -- it wouldn't have been disparaging enough). He would come along to a group dinner and start telling the present company how women should dress to avoid harassment, seemingly for the pleasure of watching people be uncomfortable.

To be honest, out of all the shitty experiences in my life, being forced by circumstance to share a house with Burt is likely the most traumatic and lasting. The furrow of pseudo-intellectual troglodyte conservatism that Scott Alexander and his followers are ploughing is remarkably similar, to a comical level of eccentric detail, such as overstated disdain for poetry and other kinds of absurd, arch gestures of distaste. And their bizarre prolixity.

I am beginning to sympathize with SA's insistence on privacy. In my mind, he is a huge disservice to his medical profession. If I had a therapist, I would try very hard to make sure it wasn't someone like Scott Alexander.