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."
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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 think this is a very good point that I don't see raised very often.
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.
> 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.
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).
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.
We are mostly stuck in eternal bikeshedding.
- 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.
> 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.)
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe some of his views just differ from yours?
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.
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...
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.