[Content note: various slurs and insults]
Last post I thanked some of the people who have contributed to this blog. But once again, it’s time to honor some of the most important contributors: the many people who give valuable feedback on everything I write. Here’s a short sample of some of…most interesting. I’m avoiding names and links to avoid pile-ons. Some slightly edited for readability.
“A cowardly autistic cuckolded deviant Jew who uses his IQ to rationalize away wisdom”
“He’s part of the self-declared ‘Rationalish Community’. Imagine the ridiculous level of self-regard implied by that. Picture cb2 with a graduate degree. Scott Alexander, if brevity is the soul of wit, you’re a witless soulsucking fuck.”
“Dude sounds like a crackpot. Blaming Republicans for everything and hailing liberals for… well, that part isn’t clear exactly. Thanks for helping me find something to add to my “never read” collection.”
“The men tweeting about how bad the women’s march is are also the guys who didn’t get invited to parties + blamed it on feminism…I know a few men who make this seem like actual fact. Like that guy from Slate Star Codex.”
“I don’t know what I was expecting from a jew quack but I suppose reasonable fits the description.”
“Ross Douthat somehow manages to recommend a person with a theology less plausible than Catholicism”
“I refuse to read Slate Star Codex anymore. It has become the epitome of IYI (Intellectual Yet Idiot) “pragmatic”(i.e. spineless) centrism.”
“He wants his readers to adopt a strategy of misogynist sabotage.”
“Slate Star Codex is THE definition of ‘autism spiral into infertility and death'”
“Scott Alexander is a LessWrong cultist. He has ALWAYS been a tremendous asshole who thinks he’s Mister Fucking Spock.”
“Slate Star Codex is to cognitive dissonance what Goddard was to rocketry.”
“I used to really enjoy Slate Star Codex before joining the dark side, now I find the blog almost insufferably autistic.”
“Laughing my ass off as Slate Star Codex’s “The Anti-Reactionary FAQ” figuratively burns in the fires of Berkeley.”
“I’ve started to be bothered by clothes tags a little bit lately. I blame SSC for putting this idea in my head”
“Slate Star Codex was always a shill, but this was craven even for him”
“He *literally* thinks that humans are horses”
“This is entirely reductive statement from me but I think that in an important sense SSC is just the Scott Alexander ego inflation program. Some of the best blogs can function this way. However a reasonable about the disingenuous use of his explicitly stated preferences for objectivity and the unstated outcomes of his blog can be made. Is Scott a scientist promoting a radical new social program or perhaps he is interested in the cult of personality and trapping of psychiatric performance?”
“Sexist asses: It’s not us, females just genetically hate liberty.”
“You asexual twerp”
“Fucking tech-libertarian cockroaches everywhere preaching total derp. Deeply disappointing.”
“I see you reduced to making excuses for a career criminal [Hillary Clinton] because you’re afraid of change. I expected more from you, Scott. I expected you to remember hope. I never expected the Dark would take you. Enjoy this. The thousands of comments, the last remarks from departing readers. It will never be the same.”
“Honestly, every time I read Scott, I am super conflicted. I have never found a writer whom I agree with so consistently while finding their personality, as expressed through their writing, so intolerable. I always feel like I want to shout, “You’re exactly correct! Now the shut the fuck up!” and pop him one in the mouth.”
“Go figure, Slate Star Codex blog readers are politically *and* literally, a bunch of phags. Look @ weightlifting data [on the survey]; found the problem.”
“Scott isn’t really dogmatic about anything besides niceness, honesty, puns, and growth mindset.”
“Scott Alexander over at the popular blog Slate Star Codex is an interesting case study in classical liberalism; nowhere else will you find someone who better exemplifies the phenomenon of skirting within microns of the event horizon of Getting It before screaming ‘Nooooo’ and zooming off in some other direction; nor will you find many who choose a crazier direction in which to flee.”
“Basically imagine a guy drinking Soylent and having a flamewar about how in the future they will too be able to unfreeze his head and you’ve got a basic idea of the ideology at play here.”
“So we come to answering the question I asked at the beginning: What is it that allows men like Scott Alexander, men of some intelligence and sensitivity, to get so close to understanding, and fail so miserably, over and over? We can find the answer here at the end of his piece: we see that he stumbled, baffled, like a giraffe with a head injury loose in Manhattan, through the entire book, then through an entire long review, without comprehending its basic point.”
“Slate Star Codex: if you’re a man who is involved in tech and not interested in any legitimate philosophical or sociological inquiry, we’ve got you covered”
“He is riddled with all kinds of spooks and leftist ideology and it shows in his commentariat. This also doesn’t bode well for psychiatry if someone as emotionally weak as Alexander is allowed to become a psychiatrist.”
“The Slate Star Codex guy is a living fable against the idea that u can solve problems with pure tedious reason instead of ever reading a book”
“it’s basically one of the hubs for autistic people really into Bayesianism, so like half the posters could either transition or become Nazis. or both idk”
“Hey man I took your survey it made me feel all weird and insecure about my gender identity thanks a lot!”
“Anyway, I don’t mean to pick on Alexander, whose heart is in the right place, but he is a walking, talking, male prophylactic. If I absolutely did not want any grandchildren (say, high risk of insanity in the bloodline) I’d have Alexander teach my sons the birds & bees. He is a weirdo autistic who has no understanding of normal women based on the few writings on sexual politics of his I’ve read, which are filled with the usual libertard lonely-boy pablum about the awfulness of “slut shaming” in our society, and how if we could just get rid of that and any sort of gender roles and treat everyone the same, we’d be living in a flippin’ sexual Nirvana where our genitals would be as happily interoperable as any pair of USB ports. (Alexander, IIRC, is in a relationship a technically female but maybe not womyn-aligned webcam star with whom he may or may not actually be bumping uglies)”
“To be fair to Alexander, the million leaked credit cards #’s from ASHLEY MADISON from men who really think there any normal women out there trolling for one-off sex on the Internet shows the cluelessness out there is pretty broad.”
“Since people are sharing around a Slate Star Codex article let’s have a reminder that he’s a moral cripple”
“$500 Reward. Seeking the testimony of victims of Scott Alexander, human rights abuser. I am also willing to pay for the stories of the victims of any other ‘prominent’ ‘internet famous’ psychiatrists/human rights abusers.”
“I hate to go ad hom, but i can’t think of anyone who would benefit more from TRT and getting laid on the reg.”
“After reading Scott’s article to a friend of mine, he decided to get “Border Reaver” tattooed on his neck”
“So basically he’s an athiest jewish kikeiatrist named Schlomo Schlomovich who mingles with the social elite while still being afraid of antifa? I couldn’t have strung together that many ridiculous stereotypes at once if I tried honestly. This is fucking hilarious.”
“Discovering Scott Aaronson is way into Slate Star Codex is like finding spiders in my favorite flavor of ice cream. Slate Star Codex is ‘Well, actually…’ personified, with a dusting of evil. But mostly it bugs me that it passes for good writing.”
“id like to fight the guy who runs slate star codex, he’s a smarmy faggot”
“Why do people I otherwise like keep insisting to me that slate star codex is good”
“[Slate Star Codex] split off from Less Wrong because even massive faggots sometimes have standards. His clique don’t exactly get along with Yudkowsky and will point out that he’s basically running a cult. Nonetheless, Scott’s still a huge fag and sucks Eliezer’s dick when it comes to rationalism and his fucking gay “Sequences”, which he and his commenters will tell you to read as if it’s the fucking gospel.”
“Slate Star Codex, an extremely verbose blog that I have complicated feelings about.”
“YouTube Skeptics, Slate Star Codex rationalists, Stefan Molyneux and Ayn Rand all ruined “rationality” and ‘logic’ for me. Must be a horseshoe theory conspiracy of sorts.”
“The disturbing thing is that they’re all aware of the criticisms people level at them for their autism, but no matter how many times they’re inundated by people telling them they’re being inhuman spergs, they’re just like ‘Hmm…am I out of touch? No…it’s the normal people who are wrong.'”
“*making racist laser gun noises* computer, engage Near Mode and navigate me to slate star codex please”
“‘Bigoted shits’ is basically the Slate Star Codex demographic”
“[Scott] wants the SJWs to take over. He wants you to dawdle around appealing to ‘reason’ until the Commies have indoctrinated enough of the youth to allow PC Culture to permeate all things.”
“It’s cool to watch the slate star codex guy inch closer and closer to actually knowing something while his comment sections get stupider and stupider”
“Is it just me, or is the guy who runs slate star codex kind of a wanker?”
“But this is… just incredible. I read this SSC article last night, and my jaw dropped. What was I missing? How could Scott Alexander be so fucking stupid? I spent all day with a slow burning anger in my belly. This pure nonsense, from the “Red Tribe vs. Blue Tribe” guy, in the same week as McConnell holding millions of children hostage so he doesn’t accidentally upset the avowed racists over in the House, not to mention Stormy Daniels, McCabe’s loyalty test, Trump trying to fire Mueller, and all the other usual shit that I already forgot all coming to light? And you choose now—January 24, 2018 and not November 9, 2016—to equate George Soros and the Koch brothers not once but twice in an overlong Tumblr note that amounts to saying, “huh I just realized maybe I’m missing something but I still think all politically active people are retarded”? Have you read the news once in the last year, or do you just get summaries from the same place as your political theories—random fucking commenters on your blog? Or was I mistaken this whole time thinking that Scott both lived in America and wanted the world to get better not worse? Because this post would make way more sense if his political climate was actually recess on the fucking playground of a quarantined elementary school for experimental Nazi test tube babies in a bubble on the dark side of the fucking moon.”
“nobody has ever read a slate star codex article to the end”
“it’s basically one of the hubs for autistic people really into Bayesianism, so like half the posters could either transition or become Nazis. or both idk”
Whether or not they know it, I strongly suspect that this person has hit the nail on the head…
I think maybe [citation needed] on that horses thing.
>>>“Basically imagine a guy drinking Soylent and having a flamewar about how in the future they will too be able to unfreeze his head and you’ve got a basic idea of the ideology at play here.”
You know what. I like this one. Because I know this happened irl at a meetup.
Some of these are hilarious.
I tend to agree with the, “Scott is perpetually on the verge of being truly woke” crowd. This is without a doubt one of the best, most intellectually stimulating blogs on the internet, and it’s notable for being a place where thinkers with disparate views get on reasonably civilly. But it’s also frustrating sometimes because (from my point of view) Scott’s stuck on the fence a lot of the time. I can’t say I blame him though, he probably has a lot at stake irl.
Honestly, I hope he stays there. Whenever any writer I’ve followed became truly woke — or the equivalent for any other political persuasion — the wokeness shortly thereafter ate their brain and they stopped being worth following.
Man, now I want to read the Gay Sequences too.
I know I’m parsing it wrong, but can’t help reading this as “sure, he’s a jew quack, but hey, at least he’s reasonable”.
Or is “reasonable” a bad thing now? “Frankly quackery has gone to the dogs since they started letting the jews in, all this reasonableness is just taking the art out of the profession! Mark my word, next they’ll be taking the racism out of laser noises!”
“I refuse to read Slate Star Codex anymore. It has become the epitome of IYI (Intellectual Yet Idiot) “pragmatic”(i.e. spineless) centrism.”
–> wait, so did you actually get a review from Taleb himself? I doubt even his most ardent fans could imitate his voice so flawlessly.
Philosophical and sociological inquiry can only pique my interest if it was born on the wrong side of the sheets.
I’m not sure I believe this. The “reading to a friend part”, not the tattoo part. Are human vocal cords even capable of such extended usage? And and what about all hidden word duplication?
reading through the post again, i suddenly noticed the significance of the phrase ‘Some slightly edited for readability’, which must really have pissed off those who endlessly accuse SSC of being unreadable …
Personally, I think you should have published any names or links. I found myself laughing at many of the comments, though. My takeaway is that tribalists hate it when they can’t tell which team you play for.
Surely that degree of ad hominem means that you’re even more accomplished than what you have already demonstrated, or that your patient base is growing exponentially.
Honestly, that’s about the average degree of ad hominem by Internet standards. The real badge of honor is to have a professional journalist write a hit piece on you. Maybe next year…
Just keep in mind the Middle Eastern proverb:
The dog barks, the caravan passes.
The alt right trolls may be gnawing at Scott’s words from the bottom, but if criticism ever rains down on him from the top, it won’t be from that crowd. It’ll be more of the “the writers’s tone deaf response to the perspective of women”-style complaint. As it stands the mainstream kudos he’s received so far has leaned right. (Ezra Klein-ish Centrist plus Right – Ann Coulter, Steve Sailer, Commentary and National Review – gives an average of right-leaning.)
I saw this coming years ago: http://bit.ly/2dSz54I
Back then Scott was still small time enough to come over to my blog and chime in on something written about him. Now it seems there’s more than enough fodder in the comments section here, or on Twitter etc.
The comment section on that post is classic.
The comments are selected by Scott. It would be trivial to select more of the right-wing ones to burnish one’s progressive bona fides.
What political movement unironically calls themselves the “dark side”? I mean, I’m assuming there’s some irony going on but come on.
Dark Enlightenment, maybe. The movement that shall not be named.
Why are they not instead the Endarkenment? Because they like being contradictory? Because they really wanted an extra syllable?
Because that sounds silly, and they really, really want to be taken seriously.
(Except for nydwracu, which is why I like him.)
Probably meant as an acknowledgement that labeling yourself the “good guys” or on the “right side” doesn’t make it so
Groups adopting the negative labels applied to them by others isn’t terribly unusual.
The british “Tory” party unironically call themselves such despite the terms meaning:
The word “Tory” derives from the Middle Irish word tóraidhe; modern Irish tóraí; modern Scottish Gaelic Tòraidh: outlaw, robber or brigand, from the Irish word tóir, meaning “pursuit”, since outlaws were “pursued men”.
Their opposition used to be the Whigs.(party dissolved in the mid 1800’s) Whig was a term applied to horse thieves.
A large number of Dutch nobles presented a petition of grievances to the regent, Margaret, Duchess of Parma, in 1566. She was upset at having so many people do this, but her adviser allegedly said: “N’ayez pas peur Madame, ce ne sont que des gueux” (Fear not madam, they are only beggars).
The subsequent revolt used the insult to form their name: gueux de mer aka sea beggars aka watergeus (Dutch).
Still, in Dutch, ‘geuzennaam,’ which literally means beggar name, is used for an insult that is worn with pride.
The nasty context aside, “like a giraffe with a head injury loose in Manhattan” is just a delightfully colorful simile.
I love these posts. I bookmarked the last one when it was first posted and still pull it out sometimes when I need a laugh. I still think that one’s better, but there are some gems here. The blue tribe guy being upset that the “Red Tribe vs. Blue Tribe” author is not sufficently blue tribe is… *kisses fingers*.
“Now the shut the fuck up!” I think that should be “Now shut the the fuck up!”
“Because this post would make way more sense if his political climate was actually recess on the fucking playground of a quarantined elementary school for experimental Nazi test tube babies in a bubble on the dark side of the fucking moon.”
I’m definitely stealing this.
A shrink could have a field day with these comments.
I just love the viewpoint most of these comments are coming from: as if Scott would care what they think of him, his blog or his writing. These folks aren’t his audience, and they are upset about that (look at the number of compliments scattered about all the vitriol).
People can be so self-absorbed.
dude, he printed them
Not only did he print them – he cataloged them and saved them for a long time with the plan of printing them.
Being conscientious about data does not equal caring about the meaning of that data. I gather and care for data all the time. It doesn’t mean that I’m invested in what that data is.
What can you really deduce about a site from the observation that some of its critics are morons?
Honestly, nothing. There are always going to be some critics who are morons, irregardless of how the thing being criticized looks like.
I think you can deduce intellectual honestly and kindness from the way this post has been made, though.
Every time Scott posts something like this, I feel much the way one might upon seeing a Freak Show or observing a gang of boys beating up a homeless person who just tried to rob them.
It seems to go against Scott’s avowed ethos.
Well, it’s Cohen the Barbarian odds.
> He *literally* thinks that humans are horses”
I thought I had read every post for the last 3-4 years, but I’m apparently mistaken.
also if you’ve started a cult, Jordan Peterson has started a fucking country
No Country for Young Men
haha this is hilarious.
but by posting these you’re sort of begging to get trolled :).
I don’t know if the comments on future ssc articles will be marginally more entertaining or more stupid as a result. I guess they could be both.
This is a timely follow up to the mistake- v. conflict-theory post.
I do wish you had linked, because there were some of these that I would be interested in the context in which they were said.
So I threw this into a Markov Chain generator and here’s some gems that came out
I think I wanna throw this into Tensorflow when I get home.
Great tagline.
That should definitely be the next blogroll tag.
Horses that model their society after lobsters, though.
Hmm… I have to wonder why the Open Thread Commenters don’t get any hate here? Clearly, we aren’t doing enough.
Idea for a bumper sticker: ‘Centrists get it from all sides.’
Also, like you have the context and I don’t, but I didn’t read some of them as being necessarily negative:
I figured this was kinda what you were going for?
I mean that’s just cool
agreed. mostly in a good way though!
extremely verbose + I have complicated feelings about would probably better describe my feelings on LW and EY.
With SSC I can link to Meditations on Moloch or Niceness without feeling any need to put in any caveats.
When linking to LW posts by EY I feel the urge to say “he’s insightful but quite eccentric on some issues”
I think it’s because SSC, while containing weirdness, is a different brand of weirdness that I feel more comfortable with.
“Sexist asses: It’s not us, females just genetically hate liberty.”
Well actually…
Everyone hates some kinds of liberty.
“nobody has ever read a slate star codex article to the end”
Nice touch. 🙂
Wait, where was that in there?
The last one of course!
Well that’s an unfalsifiable assertion! Who could possibly get to the end of one of his posts?
This was all pretty convincing. I shall never read another word.
TIL zealots scared ****less by autistic people. I mean who isn’t right?
Keep it up Scott definitely doing something right 😀
If you need an idiosyncratic yet indulgent epithet such as “IYI (Intellectual Yet Idiot)”, there’s one man you can count on (unless something quite unexpected has occurred).
Perhaps relevant to the autism thing:
https://blog.simplejustice.us/2018/02/14/austism-doesnt-care-about-good-intentions/
Autistic lives matter!
Scott remains far too left wing / right wing to be taken seriously.
My favorite part of these is that you will see slam after slam about Scott ‘missing the point’, and it seems like this is a group with a legit bone to pick. But if you ever managed to track down these folks and ask what ‘the point’ dude missed was, they’d each be talking about something else.
Summary: It’s autistic. It’s obnoxiously leftist. It’s autistic. It’s obnoxiously right-wing. It’s autistic. It’s obnoxiously centrist. It’s autistic. It’s obnoxiously libertarian. Scott is too Spock-like. Scott is too emotionally fragile. I don’t agree with anything he ever says, so he’s evil. It’s autistic. I agree with almost everything he says, but he’s evil. It’s autistic. He never reads books. He spends too much time reading and reviewing books. It’s autistic. It’s part of the Less Wrong cult. It denounces Less Wrong as a cult. Did I mention it’s autistic?
Does he get Oppression Olympics points for suffering under ableism?
You left out how Scott is a misogynist who is under the thumb of feminists and panders to women in order to keep them barefoot and chained to the stove in the kitchen.
He also believes that they are, biologically speaking, horses. Important point.
Explains why my child is a centaur anyway (that was a fraught first few months – the combination of not being able to support his neck and being able to stand up just after birth cannot be a positive evolutionary combination…).
““After reading Scott’s article to a friend of mine, he decided to get “Border Reaver” tattooed on his neck””
Anyone know which article this refers to?
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/
Thanks!
Probably the review of Albion’s Seed
Those comments are like looking under a rock and seeing a writhing mass of creepy-crawlies. If those creepy-crawlies were 100% id and all thought they were three deviations smarter and more clever than they actually are. I don’t know of a better blog than SSC, and I’m glad Scott is willing to tolerate the insects. I wouldn’t be.
What do exactly you mean by toleration? These were written either by people he banned from here, or at least by people writing in a manner that, when practiced here, would certainly result in a ban. To tolerate things being said on Twitter or Unz.com comments is not his choice to make.
I think that most, if not all of these are not from SSC comments. The one that I looked up was on a blog.
What I meant by “tolerate” was that he is willing to continue SSC despite (what would be for me at least) the psychological burden of public vilification. Furthermore, his tolerance is such that he is willing to even draw attention to that abuse with this post.
His examples aren’t necessarily representative. And anyone who posts on the Internet and gets noticed at all will get hate directed their way. There’s no reason to believe the burden is any higher than all those other people.
I find it interesting that many of these “critics” seem to dislike the personality that comes across and not so much the content. I probably wouldn’t read this blog, despite its great content, if that content weren’t presented with so much epistemic humility. Basically the ratio between insight and ego has to be worth it (and for most writers it usually isn’t).
1. The plebs are certainly wrong.
2. Seeking the truth is nigh-inhuman. Truth is meant to be told, not discovered.
Damn, buddy. Would you like a hug?
These are my absolute favouritest, and i endorse the both of them. Also i’m adding “get hilarious hate mail” to my list of life goals.
I think you’d get more recommendations from SSC commenters to read the gospels than the Sequences. Wiser and more brief.
That may be true now, but in the beginning there was really was an awful lot of “Read the Sequences.” It seems to have faded.
Spotted a few weeks ago.
Seeing the blog title so many times made me have a Berenstein/Berenstain moment, where I realized that while I’d always thought of this as the Star Slate Codex blog, it had in actuality always been the Slate Star Codex blog.
I blame the resulting feeling of horror squarely on the author. 7/10, would continue visiting through a bookmark directly to the archives again.
…
… I had that exact moment upon reading this reply. The hell? 0_o
It took paying Scott money for an ad to realize I’d been getting it backwards for years.
I blame Marty McFly. If he hadn’t dropped that sports almanac . . .
I salute you for writing “in actuality” instead of “actually”. Never use one word where two will do!
(only half-joking)
I have to edit stuff like that out of my posts all the time. Bad habits from school, I think, where filling pagecount was rewarded more than making a clear point.
1d4 sanity points.
There was weight lifting in the last survey? I don’t remember it and can’t find it in the Excel file. If it is in an older survey / Excel file, please give me pointers, I am curious.
I’m seeing a lot of people congratulating Scott with comments of the form “you’re pissing off both sides, you must be doing something right”. I’m here to remind y’all that the conclusion does not follow from the premise. There’s nothing remarkable, useful, or valuable in pissing off both sides. (I’m not unsympathetic, mind you; much as I disagree with Scott on, well, basically everything, I know that verbal aggression hurts, and that the congratulations are a nod of support, and support is valuable; still, this is a rationalist blog, so let’s keep things rational; there are other ways to express emotional support than with incorrect syllogisms).
Suppose there are two sides to a debate, A and B. First, consider the case where one of them is correct (say, A). Then to piss off both sides clearly means you’re wrong; you’ve just created a new, incorrect, side C. (This happens all the time.)
Suppose that A and B are both wrong, but not equally wrong. A is closer to the truth. Pissing off both sides equally means you’re too much of a B-ist. Were you correct, you’d be annoying B-ists a lot and A-ists just a little.
Suppose that A and B are both completely, utterly wrong. It still does not follow that your new position C is right. Pissing off A and B would be a necessary condition to being right, but not a sufficient one. There is a very large number of incorrect positions other than A and B; given human creativity, the number is probably infinite, and the predictive power of “you’re pissing off both A and B” is infinitely small.
Is pissing off A and B at least an impressive feat of rhetoric? No. It’s super easy to piss off a lot of people; you just have to do things that violate all of their values (like the Discordian’s hot dog on a Friday). Even Donald Trump managed to piss off both sides of his culture. It would be much harder to: prove which side is correct and why; convince people from one side to see things from a different POV; change people from one side to the other; not piss off a lot of people (n.b. all these are different things).
Yep. I see what you mean. And I also consider Scott to usually be wrong in a third way.
And I still stand by my comment. Because in the situation we actually have, A and B are indeed extremely wrong, and more to the point, are both equally devoted to rooting out every last trace of beauty and goodness in the world – and every scrap of energy they spend on being pissed off at Scott is a scrap of energy they are not spending on burning down the world and pissing in the ashes. If nothing else, he makes for an excellent lightning rod for destructive forces, and I do think he deserves some credit for that.
There is also the fact that the reason why they both hate him so much is that he has, at least, trace elements of goodness in his thinking, even if he’s usually a bit misguided in applying it. So while his pissing off both sides is not, in itself, proof that he’s on to something, the fact that he’s on to something is the reason why he’s pissing off both sides – it’s just that putting it the other way sounds funnier.
Sooo…. when are you transitioning?
“See, he pissed off both sides” is not rationality. It’s a type of virtue signalling.
It’s also sour grapes most of the time. In a place like SSC, one’s goal is not to piss off other people. People say that to convince themselves that something that they didn’t want is really something they wanted. If pissing off both sides actually meant anything positive, then by conservation of expected evidence failing to piss off both sides would be negative and nobody believes that.
(Trolls also often say that. In the case of trolls it’s different because their goal is to piss off other people; when they say it they’re just trying to justify trolling.)
I kinda feel like a rational analysis isn’t required for a post about hate mail.
“I kinda feel like a rational analysis isn’t required …”
I’m new, but even I know you don’t say those words here. A rational analysis is always required. If somebody says “get out of the way!” in a loud, urgent voice, that is the ideal moment to discuss the implied agency intrinsic to the phrase “the way,” and whether it is purely coincidence that “the way” has spiritual significance in a variety of faith tradtions, etc.
Wrong on all counts; the proper line of inquiry is to demand the Bayesian calculations that led to this dubious shout; of course, before this can be done, the shout needs to be re-contextualized in terms of motion vectors.
This is either a beautiful troll or just a beautifully literal comment. You’re not wrong, I think it’s just their way of expressing support.
Two sides being unequally wrong doesn’t work like that. It is less a case of “A being more right than B” than it is that A is right about some things but wrong about others, while B is wrong about some things, but right about others. Pissing off both sides does not imply you are too much of a B-ist, even if A is right about slightly more things, it just means that the things you are pissing them off about happen to be things that they are wrong about.
You’re also failing to point out that emotions are not rational, and how upset a person gets is not directly proportional to how many things you disagree with them about; you might disagree with A about only one, minor point, while you disagree with B about almost everything, but the one thing you disagree with A about is a sacred cow that they will become disproportionately angry over, so whether or not they are “equally” annoyed at you tells you basically nothing.
Everything you said here is correct, up until you get to “the predictive power of “you’re pissing off both A and B” is infinitely small.”
It’s true that pissing off both A and B is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for being right. It would therefore be extremely careless to accept “pissing off both A and B” as proof that position C is right. But as evidence? Meeting a necessary condition for something to be true is certainly evidence for that thing being true, and if you can gather a large enough preponderance of such evidence, it’s fair to treat that thing as true. And considering that (again due to the near infinite limits of human creativity) you are never likely to find definitive proof for or against most social issues, a preponderance of evidence is usually all you have to go on. Therefore, the predictive power of “you’re pissing off both A and B” is actually pretty strong. In this example, you already know that both A and B are utterly wrong, and pissing them off is a necessary condition for being right, so you know that, at the very least, you are on the right track. I know that, in the absence of any stronger evidence, I would gladly bet on someone who meets only a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for being right. It might not be the safest bet, but the odds would still be in my favor.
You’ll also note that none of the comments you’re mentioning say anything along the lines of, “you’re pissing off both sides, so you must be right.” They’re saying, “you’re pissing off both sides, so you must be doing something right.” Couldn’t you, very easily, rephrase “doing something right” as “meeting a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for being right”? How about rephrasing it as, “you’re pissing off both sides, so you must be on the right track”?
All that said, I agree with Jiro; those comments are much more likely to be social signaling than an attempt to make a rational argument. But even if they were trying to make a rational argument, I think your attempt to break down that argument doesn’t quite work.
I’m not sure about that. Pissing off both sides is at least evidence that you’re approaching an issue without leaning on conventionally partisan framing, and in today’s hyper-partisan culture I think that’s pretty valuable in itself. I’ve started seeking it out, at least.
It’s also evidence of being just that gigantic a prick, but I think we can rule that out in Scott’s case.
I feel you are making a mistake in who exactly is being pissed off. No one is celebrating offending people with different opinions, they are celebrating offending the type of people who want to shut down debate altogether. These are people who will never be satisfied with a platform unless it is only available to their viewpoints. If are trying to have actual discourse and you have not offended these people you are doing it wrong, because it is the discourse itself that is offensive to them, not the opinions stated.
In general, you make a good argument. In this particular case however we have other evidence: that Scott writes a lot of things he tries to make evidence-based, that he has admitted errors several times in the past, and that he does things like signal epistemic status. So this is independent evidence that Scott is trying to aim for the truth, and evidence that Scott has pissed off a variety of people from across the political spectrum means something different in the context of this other evidence.
Yes : inducing an emotional response does not demonstrate factual correctness. Something akin to, arguments are not soldiers.
But you’re shadowboxing. Disagreement is not necessary for pissing someone off. Factual correctness isn’t the point here. Object-level disputes are not the source of these disagreements.
Reductio ad absurdum: The school shooter pissed off both sides of the aisle.
You appear to annoy people from all political directions. In this day and age, I’d consider that high praise.
Speaking from the Catholic side:
Ross Douthat somehow manages to recommend a person with a theology less plausible than Catholicism
😀
If the “Soros is not the same as the Evil Brothers!” bitch (gender-neutral term of opprobrium here, let me hasten to add: however they identify, they are a lil’ bitch) wants to fight me, go right ahead; the guy through his foundation is interfering in the internal affairs of my country (giving donations to the pro-abortion side in our ongoing debate to repeal the Eighth Amendment) and I don’t like it any more than Lil’ Bitch would like if I started trying to get their local laws changed because I didn’t agree with them.
“‘Bigoted shits’ is basically the Slate Star Codex demographic”
A true description, as you may see from the foregoing 🙂
eh, American evangelicals have been pulling the same crap for years feeding money to Youth Defense.
(the group famous for going to pro-choice protests with their own strawman-signs, posing as protestors and then publishing the photos claiming them to be shots of actual protestors)
https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/why-american-pro-life-dollars-are-pouring-into-ireland/266981/
Oh yeah, but in this case (and others) I think what’s sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. I see a lot of comment disapproving of all the (alleged) vast Conservative Christian American money/talking points going to Irish groups and being imported into the debate, but nothing about groups like the Soros Foundation which promotes reproductive rights worldwide giving money to the other side.
So if foreign influence is unwanted, it doesn’t matter if it’s “but we agree with this guy” or not, it all should be identified and either “you can’t use this money, you have to give it back” or “okay, we’re going to rewrite the law on this”. And why the hell is Amnesty Ireland sticking its oar in? Abortion is now a sacred and inviolable human right, forget all about the work on political prisoners and against torture?
The “sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander” case that strikes me is people complaining that the Russians tried to influence a U.S. election but having no problem with the U.S. President trying to influence a British election.
I think the Russian thing is more about levels of duplicity.
Trump or Putin weighing in with public comments about how british people should vote is “influence” but is open and honest and above board. People will still complain but not as much.
Some american or russian 3 letter agencies quietly feeding money into campaigning for one side or anonymous international ad campaigns to influence voters is more problematic.
Ditto for foreign billionaires or foreign wealthy churches.
Of course the US has a long long history of doing far worse when it comes to influencing foreign nations governments but people aren’t often keen on symmetry with that kind of stuff.
Oh I agree. Though a couple of the articles I came across talked about some of the big campaign groups from both sides both arguing that foreign funding should be allowed. My guess is they both think they have the larger foreign support and would thus benefit more.
From what I can gather AI’s shift looks like it may have been sort of gradual thing as more focus was put on things like countries where women are basically their husbands property -> women imprisoned related to that or campaigning about that-> on to womens reproductive rights -> decriminalization of abortion
Since it’s hard to campaign that a womans husband shouldn’t have the right to tie a woman down and rape her until she’s had as many kids as he wants… buuuuut it’s all cool if you guys have decided you’re now going to keep her locked up because you think she might seek an abortion.
The issues a group focuses on shapes the kind of people who join them which shapes the group in a feedback loop and focusing on non-controversial womens rights will tend to lead an organization into more controversial areas like abortion.
Since it’s hard to campaign that a womans husband shouldn’t have the right to tie a woman down and rape her until she’s had as many kids as he wants… buuuuut it’s all cool if you guys have decided you’re now going to keep her locked up because you think she might seek an abortion.
What a shame women in Ireland don’t have access to contraception!
Oh wait – they do. And there are still, God help us, bad cases of abuse and violence every day, but I don’t remember the last time anyone was tied to a bed, raped into a state of continuous pregnancy, and locked up to keep them from getting away.
Indeed, I imagine it’s more the case Amnesty Ireland don’t have any really serious human rights abuses to be investigating so they need to go “Okay, Irish women don’t have unrestricted abortion! We must jump in on this!”
The tied down bit was a reference to a somewhat famous case a few years ago of a woman literally strapped to a bed until the baby was viable and could be cut out by cesarean.
Which is all kinds of unpleasant mental image.
I don’t believe that one involved her being tied up and raped first but there are some other famous cases of locking up of the woman for fear she would go get an abortion that did involve raped women who were then locked up to prevent them going abroad for an abortion…. one of which was so horrifying to the public that it basically led to some changes to the law.
I always wondered if a good anti-money-in-politics meme would be ‘Keep Soros and the Koch Brothers out of it!”
You’re pissing off the right people, Scott. I can’t think of a more laudatory collection of insults and attacks.
Scott doesn’t claim these attacks are representative. It could be he’s pissing off 95% the wrong people, 5% the right people, and he’s cherrypicking.
I see we have an early contender for the next edition.
Nothing from Objectivists? Nothing about “whim worshipping” or “the prior certainty of consciousness”?
Sometimes you write something really long just to use that perfect ending.
> “Slate Star Codex is to cognitive dissonance what Goddard was to rocketry.”
Wow, so Robert H. Goddard, who I’d never heard about, is also considered the father of rocket science, the same title Ciolkovskij holds? You were right, Scott, it is possible to learn something from reading the troll responses.
Update: it turns out you could learn about Goddard from a non-troll comment though: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psychedelicists-so-weird/#comment-352688
Wow, so Robert H. Goddard, who I’d never heard about, is also considered the father of rocket science, the same title Ciolkovskij holds?
Goddard for the West, because who ever heard about or cares about the Eastern Europeans, and the Nazi connections of von Braun are slightly embarrassing. I only heard of Goddard by reading American sources as a child (how a door-to-door salesman representing the World Book Encyclopedia ended up in rural Ireland is something I can’t quite figure out, but he successfully sold a set of these to my parents) 🙂
You mentioned von Braun, now I have to link Tom Lehrer.
America’s favorite ex-Nazi rocket scientist wasn’t even the German father of rocketry; that would be Herman Oberth; Goddard still precedes him. Ciolkovskij (usually Romanized Tsiolkovsky) is in fact known for the “rocket equation”, but he didn’t actually build rockets.
Everything you need to know about rockets in a 4.5 minutes song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lArXlincfNA
The best formulation, in my opinion, is that Tsiolkovsky* is the father of theoretical rocket science (as originator of the rocket equation, etc.), while Goddard is the father of experimental rocket science (actually building and testing/measuring rocket engine designs, demonstrating that they work in vacuum, and so forth).
Thanks to the usual factors, one gets called “the father of rocket science” and the other ignored in popular culture depending on what popular culture you’re dealing with. (With the French and the Germans having their own rocketry culture heroes, of course.)
*The usual in-English Romanization of the Russian Циолко́вский, and never mind that his father was a Pole named Ciołkowski.
I’m kinda curious which book review the “giraffe with a head injury in Manhattan” comment was referring to.
Manufacturing Consent
FYI I for some reason thought the source of that quote might be worth reading. I chased it down, it wasn’t.
Yeah, comments like this are rarely worth reading in full. That’s why I was more wondering which review sparked something like this, instead of wondering where the rest of the comment was.
“it’s basically one of the hubs for autistic people really into Bayesianism, so like half the posters could either transition or become Nazis. or both idk”
So both transsexuals and the Nazis were drawn from the subset of autistic people really into Bayesianism?
I’ve been reading the wrong sociologists…
Just because all autistics into Bayesianism are latent nazis or transsexuals doesn’t mean all transsexuals or nazis were autistics into Bayesianism.
Which, come on. That’s really basic Bayes. … Oh no. Guess I have to be a girl now.
weirdly that does seem to sorta describe some of the darksiders.
But then they include a neo-nazi-friendly, racist, gay, jewish guy who’s married to a black guy so weird overlaps seem par for the course.
Honestly, extreme ideologies draw misfits.
That doesn’t make them wrong per se, but generally if you are heavily opposite-of-autistic and very sensitive to social cues you are going to pick a mainstream ideology. It’s why so many libertarians went alt-right even though fascism is about 150 degrees away from libertarianism.
Is the alt-right entirely fascist, even? Quite a few in the alt-right don’t seem to want white supremacy, but race segregation, which is not the same thing.
A decent number of libertarians seem think that they can avoid having big government by having people come together in communities with similar values. You can turn this into support for race segregation just by adding the belief that different races have very different values.
I’m highly skeptical that values are genetic, or that gene-based values would map to skin color if they’re real, but I can still see where they’re coming from. People merely need to believe in race to segregate into groups that don’t get along and cause all the problems of diversity.
Values in the sense of worshiping Zeus are very unlikely to have a genetic component. Values in the sense of having a preference for moral systems which make you feel e.g. secure or empowered or tied to your community might, though.
> “He *literally* thinks that humans are horses”
wut?
“He *literally* thinks that humans are horses”
The only sense I could make out of that one was referencing Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, and the Houyhnhnms, but I may be doing that person too much credit.
IIRC this was after https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/06/notes-from-the-asilomar-conference-on-beneficial-ai/ compared technological unemployment for humans with technological unemployment for horses.
So, this is one of those cases where the word “literally” is not literal. Heh.
So it’s “he literally used a metaphor”?
(I could have sworn we discussed, or mentioned, or alluded to something about Houyhnhnms on here before, but maybe it’s my ancient and confused memory leading me astray!)
Sounds like you need more clover in your diet 🙂
Yeah this one was a particularly startling assertion.
I know that literal is used a synonym for figurative, but it still hurts my brain.
He’s just trying to one-up Peterson. “So you’re saying women are lobsters who should be boiled in pots?”
My exact response to this on Discord was “Scott, you idiot, humans are lobsters“
I watched Lanthimos’s The Lobster last night, or as JBP calls it The Human.
the adrenaline tho
It’s funny how so much of this is not only completely true, but the reasons I enjoy reading this blog!
I still don’t think tracking these is a good idea.
Hopefully much more so, because the current state of USB ports is a total mess.
Yeah, the bit where sex only works when one party is doing a handstand and then it still doesn’t work is going to be annoying.
What’s a cb2 ? I usually try to stay up on the latest insults, but this one eludes me 🙁
Probably a robot: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/930051-robots-and-artificial-intelligences
As an /r/drama aficionado, it sounds very much like someone from the /r/drama subreddit referring to /r/circlebroke2.
So I went to r/circlebroke2, and I’m perplexed. My best guess is it’s some kind of meta-meta-mockery of the perceived Redditor mainstream.
I believe the first was r/circlejerk, which was straightforward mockery of mainstream Reddit, then r/circlebroke was made when something happened in r/atheism (probably this http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-this-moment-i-am-euphoric) and people on r/circlejerk found that event so ridiculous that instead of mocking it they just boggled at it in the spinoff subreddit. Both r/circlejerk and r/circlebroke have had a bunch of alternate versions and meta versions made over the years.
tag urself, i’m the clothes tags guy
I’m every instance of “autism”. I’m also the racist laser gun noises.
I’m the horse.
We are all horses.
Wait, you are not a gorilla?
Speak for yourself!
@moscanarius
I’m undercover, to study Jane Goodall in her natural environment.
You may have difficulties, because she usually hangs out with the chimpanzees.
It turns out gorillas can’t tell Jane Goodall from Dian Fossey.
Dian Fossey is actually Jane Goodall in disguise. Layers upon layers.
In countries with no horses, donkeys are called horses.
I thought you were a person. Are people horses?
Neigh all.
IMHO, great but less funny than last time. I think these would be better if you included less people that were confused or disappointed and more that were enraged or pleased (for the wrong reasons). I still chuckle to “beautiful reactionary butterfly” from the last one on occasion.
My favorite assessment is still this one:
Beep, boop.
I haven’t watched much Star Trek — are Vulcans passionate about prevalence of paperclips? 😛
“Scott isn’t really dogmatic about anything besides niceness, honesty, puns, and growth mindset.”
Is this even an insult, or am I so steeped in Scott Kool-Aid that my perception of “normal” is beyond saving?
Puns. It's an insult.
The joke is that you could read “dogmatic about” as “dogged in his pursuit of,” which isn’t generally an insult. You should read the first three that way and you could read the fourth, but you should also read it as dogmatic in his criticism of growth mindset research, which is an insult.
It was only intended as a gentle ribbing!
I wrote that on my reddit account (along with a recommendation to check out the blog), so I’m pretty sure/hoping Scott just took it as funny and not serious criticism.
I read that and went ‘… wait, this shouldn’t be on this list, should it?’. It doesn’t come across as hostile to me at all.
Would be a great blog tagline.
Excellent choice of ending.
I didn't read the ending, because I couldn't get through the long comment just before it. I hope that's OK!
Working as intended
Completely related: I’d love to know if US-based SSC readers disproportionately own pressure cookers relative to the US average.
How am I supposed to can things without a pressure cooker?
Relaxed
…you don’t own a large pot and know how to boil water?
I mean, it depends on what you’re canning…
Yep, depends on what you are canning, apparently:
https://www.thespruce.com/boiling-water-bath-versus-pressure-canning-1327438
Yeah, that works for high-acidity stuff like pickles and most fruit jam, but for low-acidity stuff like salsa you need a pressure cooker or you’re risking botulism.
Most of what I can is high-acid, but every so often I want to do something different.
Personally I’m a yes vote. Throw in a sous vide machine, a thermomix, induction stovetop, salt shaker of MSG, and unhealthy obsession with Nathan Myhrvold. That completes my fulfillment of the stereotypical “tech nerd cooks dinner”.
No pressure cooker. A sous vide machine that I’m not using, my first few tries having produced results my family didn’t much like. Half an induction stovetop–my wife is less fond of gadgets than I am. No MSG. And I’ve never heard of Nathan Myhrvold.
The Intellectual Ventures guy. Known for scientific foodieism, owning a Difference Engine, and patent trolling.
Pft, where’s your air fryer pleb
(I only have a combo rice cooker/slow cooker with steam basket accessory.)
I suspect that it’d be higher than American average, but not an awful lot more than the Reddit average.
Same for bidets.
I do dig my pressure cooker. Interested in getting a sous-vide set-up. This year’s goal is actually some indoor seed growing, though….
You can pry my gas stovetop from my cold dead hands.
I have an Instapot, but only because my mom bought it for me, and I’m pretty sure SSC’s not her kind of thing. So far I’ve mostly used it to make lentils (which cook just fine on the stovetop but I guess its nice that the pressure cooker speeds it up?)
I use my pressure cooker at least once a week for my beans. I used to boil my beans on the stovetop, that would take hours (even after soaking!) and I had to constantly add additional water.
Pressure cooker gets unsoaked pinto beans done in 1.5 hours and preserves the cooking liquid. Verrrrryyyyyyyyy useful for me!
Same deal here, with it being a gift from a bud with a passing interest in SSC.
I’m still in the “What’s the point of cooking bacon in 2 minutes if I have to let it depressurize for another 15!?” phase, so I haven’t used it much. How do the lentils turn out?
The first time I didn’t add enough liquid (I use water, chicken broth, or vegetable broth) and they got too dry.
Other than that though they’ve been really good! It should be noted that I’m generally a big fan of lentils in general. I normally chop onions and carrots, dump lentils, chopped veggies, and broth in the pot, cook for the time in the instruction manual. Takes probably 40 minutes total excluding cleanup (as opposed to stovetop cooking takes over an hour total, depending on the stove.)
I have made two things that were significantly sped up — a pot roast in probably 2 hours total (including clean up) and split pea soup when I bought mixed peas and lentils instead of just lentils — cooked in the same time as lentils vs. several hours when my mom makes it (though my mom’s turns out a bit better).
My pot has a manual release valve which depressurizes in as little as a minute, although the escaping steam/liquid can make a bit of a mess — probably less of a problem for bacon, so see if yours has that option?
“Slate Star Codex, an extremely verbose blog that I have complicated feelings about.”
Same.
Agreed. High praise if I’ve ever heard one.
Agreed, That one made me laugh out loud.
I concur.
Could we make a headline out of it? Sounds like great advertisement.
+1
These are great but did you change the wording on them?
Google searches for some of the better ones (in quotes) don’t yield hits.
EDIT – ah, they’re edited. That’s pretty weak – like a plea for the comments to leap to the author’s defense without the ability to read the full context of the quotes. Very hug-box behavior.
There’s a very good reason that he didn’t simply provide links and I wouldn’t be surprised if he changed the wording on every single one to prevent exactly what you tried.
If you really want to find a big pile of Scott haters, a large fraction of those probably originated from sneerclub on reddit. (You know you’ve made it on the internet when you have your own hate club)
Believe me, the bar for that is set very low.
Seriously – this is a terrible post.
It’s like a links post minus the links. “Oooh, look at all this tantalizingly great writing – sucker! Not going to tell you where to find it!”
The last time we got one of these posts I got to learn about a bunch of sites that I now read regularly.
Right? “names have been changed to protect the innocent! so have words! but they all hate me, and I swear I remember the gist of it!”
Motherfucker, I put work into reaming an idiot a new ass!
I’m glad we’re able to talk about sneerclub.
(…does sneerclub talk about sneerclub?)
It seems like bad form for someone with as large a platform as Scott to make it easy for his fans to harass people who insult him, even if those people are vile. (Certainly, most SSC readers won’t harass anyone– but with as many readers as Scott has, even a very small percentage of harassers can overwhelm the authors of a small blog.)
ACTUALLY it’s a major ALPHA power move. What those cucks actually said isn’t even important enough to quote literally.
It’s pathetic and transparent – “oh yeah, well I’ll post this on my blog and my thousands of readers will show you”.
Let’s count the ways it’s calculated:
Post criticisms from the left and right to make the commentariat react like trained seals with “well, if he gets criticized from the right and left he must be 100% correct”
Further get the comments on his side by posting insulting things said about the commenters
Post contradictory insults so people think “both of those people must be wrong since they contradict each other!”
Making a list of things insulting people have said about you and stewing over it is not alpha – at all. Avoiding confrontation by changing the wording so people don’t find the originals is especially cowardly.
After this comment, I can’t make up my mind if you’re the
AmazingCORRECTION: Awesome Jon in disguise or he was you in disguise all along.Post criticisms from the left and right to make the commentariat react like trained seals
Well, at least you think we’re trained!
It’s true that that I hain’t been reading SSC for that long, but I don’t see where all the references to autism are coming from. I guess I’ll have to read more carefully….
It's saying that the people who disagree with you think weirdly and should be discounted, I guess.
It seems to be coming mostly from the red-pill right here, but I actually expected it more from the feminist left. (Of course, a social-justice activist should know better than to use an imputed congenital mental illness as an insult, but social-justice activists do a lot of things that they should know better than, especially on the Internet, and I've seen them do this thing too often.)
I was surprised it was so consistently right wing with so little SJW.
Some of them I find genuinely difficult to identify what side of the scale they are on; it’s the general “wahhh, he says stuff I don’t like!” without identifying what they do like so it could equally be from a very right-wing or very left-wing offended person.
Left wing criticism of SSC is rarely so deliciously-written as to get featured here. Most of them have just stopped engaging with anything LW completely, although the Mistake vs. Conflict Theory post got a few more ruffled feathers than usual.
Yeah, the profoundly ignorant characterization of Marxism ruffled *my* feathers, and I'm not even a Marxist! But Marxist insults are too long-winded and/or jargony, so nothing interesting came of that.
Get real! Good Marxist insults are everywhere:
SSC = Slimy Shills of Capitalism
“Scott Alexander is a pro-imperialist (sci. Alexander), anglocentric, petite bourgeousie fear-monger.”
Maybe that was too long winded…
I had a student who would go around writing “Communism will rise” and “1453 was the worst year ever” throughout the school. Very menacing.
See, “Scott Alexander is a pro-imperialist (sci. Alexander), anglocentric, petite bourgeousie fear-monger” is boring to me, as would be a traditional (hah) SJ buzzword insult, e.g. “Scott is a privileged cishet white man too blinded by his class advantages that he suspiciously ends up empathizing with the tribbles of concerns those of his own demographics have, compared to the true tribulations of the oppressed.” Boring!
There’s something to be said for how the best “feedback” comes from either a “strange but true” observation (the Nazis or trans one, my personal favorite for this year), or from a clever use of low-class signalling on a dissonant subject. Both are styles that dril utilizes, of course.
Something like “look at what the headcase wypipo have done to the blagosphere! his conceited self-projections on others could be seen on the moon.”
@JohnBuridan
Bah, what's Marxist about that? That's just anti-capitalist. Anybody could have written that!
OK, that sounds more Marxist. That contains class analysis! But it also uses jargon, so who knows what it means?
But maybe I'm not allowing myself to notice any counterexamples. If it doesn't either use Marxist jargon or circumlocutions (necessarily long-winded) that describe Marxist concepts without jargon, then I'm not going to recognize it as Marxist, even if the writer happens to be a Marxist. So the problem may be on my end.
Or perhaps kabbalistic. Alexander tried to conquer the known world, Scott Alexander tries to impose his western ways of understanding the world upon it, this is not a coincidence, etc.
In general, I just assumed that anything that didn’t specifically call him out as “Jew” or “Autistic” probably came from the SJW side. Still less SJW condemnation than I expected, but without bothering to count, I’d say it was only about 60/40 in favor of the redpill side. SJWs are generally pretty good at plausible deniability/passive aggressiveness when they make insults, so they aren’t quite as easy to identify.
One obviously SJW one that stuck out was the “He’s ‘Well, Actually…’ personified” comment, since that’s basically SJW code for “anyone correcting me when I’m wrong.” (See also: Any use of “Sealioning” that doesn’t actually involve the Sealion following the original speaker to some other platform and/or sending them personal messages.)
It’s like a Markov Chain of offended Tumblr.
While both the feminist left and the redpill right are generally aware that it is offensive to call people autistic as an insult, only one of those groups positively revels in being gratuitously offensive for no reason.
Indeed, but I wasn't expecting that particular insult. But now that they've thought of it, sure, they'll use it. Whereas the other side should eventually learn better. So in conclusion, I probably shouldn't have been so surprised.
only one of those groups positively revels in being gratuitously offensive for no reason
So what do the redpill right do?
Ozy, I’ve seen a few too many feminist left persons wallowing in calling opponents (perceived or actual) all the names under the sun to think there’s much of a difference along the lines of “yes, but the other guys like doing this, our guys only do it because, um, some reason?”
(Congratulations on the new arrival!)
A while back in a community I’m part of we had a member who would basically adopt every crusade The Guardian newspaper adopted. Lets call her J.
J started ranting on the mailing list about how utterly unacceptable “cunt” is as an insult (that weeks guardian crusade) and that [person she hated] using “cunt” as an insult was baaaasically the entire reason the community had <50% female represenation.
until someone came back with "your position might be more credible if you'd not called Bill [another person she hated] a cunt 17 times on the public IRC last night."
Because for the majority it's not really about moral principles, it's just another stick to beat people they hate with.
Someone who spent all yesterday complaining how calling anything "stupid" is ableist because trump called something stupid… will happily turn around tomorrow and call the guy they're arguing with a "stupid fucking retarded faggot" without the slightest hint of shame.
Because they're only invested in it to the point that they can use it as a club.
The difference is that the feminist left et al aren’t just insulting people “gratuitously … for no reason”. Most of them genuinely believe that this is an effective or necessary tactic for winning a very important battle whose outcome is still in doubt.
They are wrong about everything but feminism (etc) being important, but they seem to me to be sincere. The ones who seem to be doing it just for the lolz, I agree with Ozy that those are coming mostly from the right. I suspect this is because they believe the battles they care about are irrevocably lost and there is nothing for it but to have some fun while they can, and I think they are wrong about that, but whatever the reason the insults are gratuitous and thus extra-annoying.
I think this is largely true of “alt-right trolls” as well.
I think a lot of the louder voices on the alt-right are sincere, but I also think that, of the people who’re just stirring shit up for the lulz, most of them are, or are pretending to be, on the right at the moment.
I mean, surely we can acknowledge that in the majority of cases, neither the far right or the far left are making a general argument towards autistic traits, they’re just trying to pin a low-status symbol on their opponents. As another comment pointed out, nerd and geek have lost their impact, and autistic works as a rough proxy for the same concept. It’s probably not that useful to try to analyze what similarities to autism they’re basing it off of, because that’s a post-hoc justification they’re adding on after they’ve already created the label.
I do think this is an actual recruiting tactic by a certain type of alt-right extremist; you start by getting people to say racist things as a joke or as a “troll” and then gradually get more and more extreme and mixing in more and more actual racism in with the memes, and eventually you can really radicalize people.
A well known professor and author of a recent book that was highly praised by the mainstream media recently implied that libertarians are all just a bunch of confused autistics.
That’s an exaggeration, but I’d say libertarianism, with its de-emphasis of communitarian ideals, probably does appeal more to people further towards the autistic end of the spectrum than many other ideologies.
Doesn’t make it wrong.
It does make it prone from suffering from the same flaw that doomed communism: assuming that people will behave in a way that is theoretically optimal (for individuals and/or society).
Like this?
Is there a good replacement for the word “autistic”?
I mean, if you want to call someone socially inept, you can just say that without throwing around psychological labels.
“Socially inept” lacks bite and it’s too limited. It’s not always about social situations, sometimes it’s about theory of mind, or about a certain style of reasoning, etc.
Since the DSM-V did away with it, can we reclaim “Asperger’s”, maybe? “Aspergic”, perhaps. Sounds pretty good to me.
Why not just use the old-fashioned n-word? “Nerdy”.
Hasn’t got enough bite to it anymore. Every hipster in Portland with an Atari T-shirt thinks of himself as a nerd.
Surely they’ll be burning those Atari T-shirts in effigy now that it’s known that during his Atari days Nolan Bushnell liked to wear rude T-shirts, use a hot tub, and have sex (possibly not all three at the same time; T-shirts in a hot tub were a faux pas then)
Why not just use the old-fashioned n-word? “Nerdy”.
“Nerd” has been appropriated by mainstream society at this point. It’s not an insult anymore, and has also been pretty watered down as an identity. Autistic has kind of taken its place, though if people want to avoid that there are other terms (neckbeard is a popular one) with similar low-status implications.
See half of tumblr if you doubt many feminists revel in offense. It is true that the redpillers tend to view offense as usually good as such, while the feminists tend to view offense as only good against outgroups. But it’s quite common for such people to view autistics and/or Jews as outgroups.
It’s not exactly a mental illness and I didn’t read the autistic references as derogatory though the notes themselves were. Maybe I tend to read things too much how I want to perceive them, who knows 🤔
I think autistics do relate to the world differently and it’s my impression as well that this blog’s audience is heavily composed of those on the spectrum.
I’m interested in how Scott Alexander views the label though. Not just whether it has merit for himself but whether he thinks it’s a useful categorization.
I would add that I’m pretty sure I was raised by an aspergers mother and it messed me up pretty badly. So I’m kind of emotionally invested in the label.
I almost wrote ‘mental condition’ instead of ‘mental illness’, but I decided that I was going for a more mainstream view. (I find the while concept of mental illness rather suspect, although I can see why our culture needs it.)
I agree that the boundaries of what is and isn’t “sick” are very socially constructed but I’ve found that labels can also be very useful in guiding self reflection by articulating specific behaviors and possible causes that often go unnoticed by a person themselves.. In this sense we are like fish who ask “what is water?” until someone defines water and draws our attention to it.
For example, I used to think (and was told) I have borderline personality disorder (BPD). My analytical brain wanted to understand myself better so I read a lot about this condition which re-shaped the way I viewed my behaviors (the meanings I gave them, the feelings I felt afterwards) and helped me take control of my new behaviors. I have since concluded that BPD isn’t actually an accurate description of me – but it was so damn helpful in making my life better.
Sorry – I like talking about myself it seems 😊
@ajar:
A label can certainly be useful, but it can be useful whether it's a label for a ‘condition’ or for an ‘illness’. The DSM has the habit of not counting something as a mental illness unless it causes impairment in function or distress, and this is sensible when it comes to saying that something should be treated or cured, but it also means that you sometimes don't get a label even when one would still be helpful.
seek and ye shall find
I wasn't seeking; as I said, I've seen plenty of it elsewhere already!
Autism as metonymy for nonconformance to social norms is probably more insulting for the (traditionalistic, pro established social order) right than the (social norms questioning) left.
You would think so, but I think most people with any exposure to political conversations have ample experience to the contrary.
A similar example would be something like “virgin neckbeard” or “needs to get laid”: shaming someone for their sexuality seems antithetical to some of the supposed core principles of the identity left (which I happen to agree with, in this case). And yet, I doubt there’s a person here who hasn’t seen those insults leveled 1000x over from fairly influential leftish voices.
You may be projecting the fact that you’re both 1) not an idiot and 2) intellectually honest onto the on-paper principles we’re talking about. The vast majority of people (on either side) have no such constraints in their statements and behavior. Which is why I think theorizing like this, which depends on modeling people as intellectually capable and honest, is sort of naive.
This is uncharitable. As someone who is actually diagnosed with a milder case of it, I think it largely means not instinctively “getting” human behavior and instead having a rationalistic analysis of it as if one would explain the behavior of a different species. When we do this, we sound like not entirely human when talking about human behavior as something observed from a distance and not just felt inside you and people you instinctively-empathically “get”.
I would much prefer to not be (mildly) autistic. But on the other hand, only (at least mildly) autistic people are capable of observing and describing human behavior as something akin to a science and it is probably useful, because 1) even most neurotypicals will not “get” all aspects of it 2) further predictive theories can be built on top that that will actually outpace intuition at some point. The classic case is marketing psychology.
If I understand it properly, when it comes from feminist-left it largely means the lack of compassionate empathy. That someone slightly autistic may not “get” that “kill all white men” is not to be meant literally, but just venting. When it comes from the red-pilled right, it largely means not “getting” that behind a facade of egalitarianism people are actually pretty comfortable living in hierarchies and mostly they want to be high status or power, not equal status or power, and egalitarianism is not much more than propaganda. So they say autistic people tend to believe what other people say too much and take them too seriously.
That actually seems like a very good analysis!
This is accurate, IMO, and I’d like to add some stuff to it:
The use of “autistic” as a slur (likely on the rise because “nerd” isn’t the insult it used to be) serves to pathologize a kind of mindset one looks down on, like you said: taking things literally, being explicit and detailed, relying less on intuition when interpreting the behavior of others etc. – i.e. the sort of thing that’s called autism when it gets extreme enough to cause serious problems.
The implication is that this behavior is just the result of a deficiency (some ability is just not there) and in no part because of different values or insights.
Some reasons why this criticism (well, the implied criticism behind the insult…) is bad:
*Because of cognitive biases, signaling, hidden motives, hypocrisy, post-hoc rationalizations and everything in that idea cluster, reyling on only our intuitive faculties to comprehend our own and others’ behaviors (especially people you don’t know) is a seriously bad idea. Explicit reasoning isn’t a substitute just for those who lack better ways, it’s an indispensible complement.
*Holding people to (unrealistic?) standards for rationality and consistency isn’t the same thing as not understanding how they really work. Of course people are hypocrites to some extent and don’t mean what they say, but expecting them not to act like that is a way to get better behavior out of them. It upholds important social norms.
*Our intuition’s ability to understand others is seriously overrated. It simply does not work very well in a modern society, as contemporary politics and online culture shows (and, maybe, the more exclusively you rely on it the less you notice its flaws because you don’t calibrate well). Normal people misunderstand each other grievously all the freaking time, IRL and especially online. It takes explicit knowledge of things like typical mind bias, outgroup homogeneity bias, rounding off to the nearest cliché, the curse of knowledge and the transaprency illusion etc, etc, to be able to communicate about abstract and/or complex topics well.
*Refusing to conform to certain social norms is often because of intentional defiance rather than ignorance (but the two aren’t entirely independent).
*Empathy doesn’t scale well and can’t deal with far-reaching, complex or abstract decisions on its own.
I think as a trait mild autism and aspergers could have evolutionary advantages and some contemporary advantages in creative and focused applications. I find the label meaningful because I see the major problem of autism not as the social awkwardness or overly rational approach, but a form of blindness to other peoples mental/emotional worlds that can be very detrimental to a person who is in a dependent relationship with the autistic person and does not have autism (a partner or child). This is the aspect of autism that is often ignored by those who are anti-label and pro-“this is just a form of unique”… I think recognizing that one has autism can make one aware of their gaps and thus more able to learn adaptations that assist the well-being of those close people in their lives…
I disagree that even mild autism is in any sense evolutionary advantageous. Humans are a social species. Autists are asocial. Not being able to relate to most people is what leads to high rates of depression and suicide. It could plausibly be good on a societal level, but for the majority of autists, not on a personal level.
We’re so lucky. In modern times this is the consequence of being asocial. For most of human history, if you couldn’t get along well with a tribe, you’d probably starve to death.
@ Wrong Species
I disagree. I think a higher functioning autistic person would be likely to innovate on existing technologies and “think outside the box” on some important to survival occasions. Since, they’d be less likely to notice certain social dynamics that might preclude other people from trying something unconventional, perhaps the social blindness would be an asset in not limiting them. Also in being blind to social cues, a person may already feel ostracized and less likely to care if they ostracize themselves further by innovating and doing things unconventionally that end up increasing the odds of their (and those around them) survival.
I think that our individualistic society makes it harder for autistic people to connect and stay connected. Back to the big problem I noted above about autistic people being blind to the emotional and mental worlds of others. This may not pose a major problem if they are part of a big “family” or tribe where their inabilities are compensated for by the presence of others. Take a man-wife (or any romantic partnership style) relationship. In a tribe it doesn’t matter if the autistic person understands the mental world of his partner. The partner is surrounded by people who can compensate. So it the child who’s autistic parent can’t read their emotions and respond adequetely – if there’s someone else nearby who can respond adequetely.
But most of use live in a different type of world. The partners and children of an autistic person are likely to feel neglected, disconnected and hurt, giving rise to tension and further problems. But this could be alevieated in a more communal society, where no single individual is the main provider of emotional connection.
Ps. I’m not advocating this “utopia,” just trying to suggest that autism is more of a liability in some environments than others.
Tribal loyalty encouraging “cooperate” over “defect” historically overrode the individual evolutionary disadvantage. The “simple-minded” and asocial were simply given the solitary jobs nobody else wanted to do because said jobs were non-social, and so they did not starve, and were allowed to sit in the corner not participating as the “odd relative.”
The evolutionary disadvantage in terms of reproductive appeal might stay, but it wouldn’t necessarily be a survival issue.
The down side to “you can choose your own family” over “blood trumps all” is that people no longer feel obligated to tolerate, much less take care of the inconvenient as much as they might have in the past.
People on the spectrum are not asocial. They merely have a different-y type of social need. For someone with ASD, they may need a whopping 5 minutes of social interaction a week. And on their terms. For another, they may need lots of social interaction.. but only with those people. For others, they may need the same sort of generic social interactions NT people need, but only in this space and only with those people and only for 1.2 hours. The confusion (sometimes revulsion) of not only the sheer volume of social expectations, but the means and methods of those interactions, make a person on the spectrum just seem to be asocial.
I also think people are confusing “cooperative” with “community” in this discussion. I can cooperate with someone without necessarily being a part of their community. It’s called going to work.
Autists are not asocial. I’m mildly autistic and I’m deep enough in one of the rationalist subcultures that the majority of my social group is at least somewhat autistic.
We don’t have problems with interacting with each other the way we have with neurotypical people, and while most of us have other brain weirdness that causes problems (most of us are trans and ~everyone has ADHD at a minimum), we do get better in a lot of ways once our social needs start getting met.
I think the issue is not as much individualism as informality. Look at how a ball worked 100 years ago. Formal rules how to dress, etiquette, how talk, dance, there were actual courses and teachers for it and books, it was learnable.
Then we went informal largely from the sixties and now we have all sorts of subcultures relying on unwritten rules.
Much of the #metoo problems also come from no longer having a formal etiquette of courting.
In many other things things got better for autistic people. You know how we were always the nerds bullied by the jocks because were weak because to get stronger one had to participate in team sports. Now Rippetoe gave formal rules how to get strong even in a home gym. So that is solved. You could even skimp on the equipment, buy nothing but a barbell, and just deadlift, clean, OHP. So that is OK.
The rise of computer programming as a viable career was also very helpful.
But we need formal rules of dressing, partying (balls), courting, dating. Etiquette.
BTW the only straight male dating advice book I know that both sides of the culture war (say, blue and red pillers) consider okay is Mark Manson’s Models: Attract Women Through Honesty. Maybe we could settle on it as the formal ruleset. Honesty is easy for autistic people.
@nameless1
I think you are right. Removing explicit and universal rules (cuz rules are oppressive, everyone is different, etc.) had this side effect of making the world full of implicit rules that change with the wind at the will of whoever is on top, or at no will at all. Nobody knows what is reasonable to expect from others, or what would be an appropriate reaction to anything, as there is no accepted standard for it anymore. Not good for anyone, but even worse for atypical people.
(Incidentaly, this is also the best situation possible for manipulative immoral people to pray upon everyone else)
Outpace? probably not.
Arrive at some particular insights more easily than those using who have an intrinsic understanding of “standard” human behavior, almost certainly. But that is a different thing.
I can guarantee you, autistic individuals are not the only ones capable of observing human behavior from a distance.
Yeah, Nancy Maclean just did that:
https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/13/democracy-in-chains-author-nancy-maclean
I never catch ‘the the’, but find ‘that that’ borderline annoying. Good job making me notice.
The word “autistic” has replaced the word “pedantic” in common parlance. It no longer refers to the medical condition.
I have a personal theory that the Internet, by its very form, pushes people towards acting like autistic people act. So the word might be broadly used for a reason – everyone really is acting more and more autistic.
In a medium without body language or facial expression being readily available, where people have to put /s to denote sarcasm?
makes sense.
That’s the short of it, yes. A thousand thousand distinct facts presented with mercyless crystal clarity, all without access to the wider context that might soften them? Sounds like both autism and the Internet to me. :/
It had to happen. ‘Geek’ and ‘nerd’ no longer have strong negative associations or stigma. Maybe ‘autist’ and ‘autistic’ will become destigmatized and we can move onto another word.
Perhaps the insults will just become gradually more based on actual scientific evidence. The next one may be “thing-oriented.”
If a criticism is that SSC people can’t model typical human beings very well, using the term “autism” may be more meaningful than using a random epithet. It still may not be correct, but it isn’t content-free either.
I think the other replies are missing the fact that Scott actually talks about autism-type things quite a lot. See the “bothered by shirt tags” comment, too – hypersensitivity to minor touch irritations is a classic autism-spectrum symptom. Scott is on record as experiencing that himself and I have to imagine that the comments quoted here were at least partially referencing that.
I believe that Scott actually has self-identified as non-neurotypical (but he doesn’t make it a point of emphasis).
I cannot point to a specific post or comment of his that is the genesis for this belief, and so I am uncertain how well grounded it is. However, I have stated this belief multiple times and not been corrected, which is a point in its favor.
Perhaps the post about how he would unconsciously react differently to patients than many other therapists and that this would in turn influence his patients?
No, well before that, I think. 2 years or more.
And much more explicit, in my recollection. Perhaps a link to his tumblr or his old blog.
I’m not sure exactly how OCD and noise-sensitivity play into discussion of “neurotypical” (and autism specifically) but he has discussed these in a few posts, for example: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/07/concept-shaped-holes-can-be-impossible-to-notice/ and https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/11/going-loopy/
Its a way to call somebody an idiot when they’re smarter than you are. At least online.
Nobody can call Scott Alexander or the user base here unintelligent. But if he disagrees with them on an issue involving people, that makes him/the commenter stupid. But they aren’t stupid. Wait, but autism/aspergers is basically the socially stupid while not being stupid disorder. Hence, the insult.
edit while being too late to edit—yes, this is a rather rude comment. But this is the mentality behind it.
A way to call someone stupid when they are smarter than you are. That sounds useful. I like it. ‘Clever sillies’ is too dumb, ‘wisest fool in Europe’ too James I. Thanks.
I was in the last one of these 😀 given that I was manic, on a sleep deprivation bender, and probably playing with either ritalin or benadryl when I wrote it (shhh, bby, nootropics are ok), I think the reward testimonial is…weird?
Scott reminds me of some of my favorite creators. Bafflingly, maddeningly flawed, clearly using writing as a form of therapy. Like Steven Moffat, or Aleister Crowley, or Philip K Dick, or…me. Except I hope I miss the point far less and wank over my insecurities far less than Moffat, at least. This is a compliment, make no mistake. it will be telling to see what parts of it are selectively printed next year.
In terms of actual testimonials: I won a $200 bet from Scott in the throes of said manic phase. I believed Trump would win the election, my bottom line heuristic being that eight years of D always leads to the next president being R. Was it more than that? Yes. But that was so easy everyone was trying to be too smart to miss it, even Nate Silver. So I am not only better at predicting things far closer to X-risks, but I am probably the only person to have, in a sense, monetized the Stop Crying Wolf article.
So a psychiatrist and rationalist centrist gets beat in an intellectual pissing contest started by a verifiably, self-admittedly psychotic escaped mental patient using half his brain and half his effort on the subject of his own blog. I suppose I could rest my case, but…
Scott has mentioned a wish to do adversarial collaborations. I am sure he is the epitome of masculine courage and psychiatric ethics. Perhaps I could find an MMA gym willing to host us?
No one cares about your babble tho.
My babble caused Scott…somebody, the paypal was different…to transfer $200 to my account. So I think you are probably a minority here.
Interestingly enough that sort of comment would get you banned from the reddit. Which is rapidly JBP-ifying.
JBP? Whats that? Also I think your babble is interesting, so stick around I guess. 😛
Jordan B Peterson. A lot of these young men are really so insecure because they believe they have no idea how to act in public. It’s a lie, and they’re telling it to themselves. You ever been outside? No one has a damn idea how to act in public. So he has the salt and pepper and a decent shirt thing going on, and he softly barks “Clean your room! be assertive! play less WoW!” and they’re like “daddy ha– wait, I mean, excellent advice sir!”
And so people who have the idea that empathy is calculated rather than felt are looking up to a psychiatrist who believes that sincerely (it’s both, what’s my copay?) lol…and it’s turning into “how do I meet women, how do I deal with delusions of grandeur, why am I not as rich and happy and laid as Yud (pbuh) clearly is?” over there, almost every thread for a week it was. And it’s screwed up.
The advice I would give these men is simple: you are 18, you are paying rent. You have a part time job, you can do better, but for now you will be okay. Go downstairs. Say nothing. Haul off, punch your father in the face. Go for a KO or a knockdown if possible. Congratulations, you have now taken initiative, however stupid and ill-advised. Your ships are burned, but you are a man, whatever the hell that is. Figure it out from here, good luck, have fun.
I am actually half serious about this. There are experts everywhere, and they are all either Claudius or Polonius. These blogs are Hamlet. Nuke Denmark, become Conan, it fucking stinketh. No one knows anything, and learning that before you turn 30 would show me up.
Oh, and the point I’m making is that my psychotic idiot blather beliefs PAY RENT. L2LW. Gah.
OK I’m interested now. If you punch your father in the face where’s the insurance money gonna come from?
I have no idea. I’m not your dad.
So in general you recommend burning bridges in order to assert your sense of self or masculinity, even when the cost means leaving yourself potentially weaker? Or I guess its more like forcing self reliance is the best path?
When people are seeking advice on how to be a complete person from a psychiatrist who yearly airs his insecurities in the form of anonymous writings left by trolls, I tend to consider recommending the sort of thing that men who are already baked would rightly reject.
I don’t always recommend it. But when I do, there’s some dipshit saying “marry her while you still can” and another saying “join the army”, but I’m the irresponsible lunatic.
Life advice for distraught young men from a Ph.D. clinical psychologist who’s spent three decades coming up with life strategies for how responsible people should act in the world or from a verifiably, self-admittedly psychotic escaped mental patient…
Flip a coin, I guess?
@Conrad Honcho
Just check your character sheet. If it says “Lawful”, go with JBP. If it says “Chaotic”, go with the mental patient. If it says Neutral… RE-DO YOUR CHARACTER AND BE MORE DECISIVE THIS TIME.
(uhh, this is the shitposting post, right?)
And if you think alignment is silly but you’re Temur on good days and Sultai on bad ones?
Be sad that there aren’t enemy-color dragonlords.
playing with either ritalin or benadryl when I wrote it (shhh, bby, nootropics are ok)
Ritalin is a nootropic now? And “playing” with stuff is a great way to end up with it playing with you. (Jaundiced adult shakes head at yet another young idiot who thinks they are the first one to discover rule and taboo-breaking, drugs are fun – in the initial stages at least – and no there will never be consequences, don’t you know I am immortal and invulnerable, I’m young!)
Scott reminds me of some of my favorite creators. Bafflingly, maddeningly flawed, clearly using writing as a form of therapy. Like Steven Moffat, or Aleister Crowley, or Philip K Dick, or…me.
Hey! Comparing anyone to Moffat is not a compliment!
Go home, go to sleep, sober up, drink some tea or other means of getting hydrated, and calm down junior, watching all this running around on a sugar high is wearing on us old ‘uns.
I’m thirty lol. Half that was sarcastic or tongue in cheek. Here’s a tip: you want to convincingly pass for older and condescendingly-lovable-grump or whatever, you need to throw a (fuck) *G* (pretend a * is an angle bracket) in there somewhere, or perhaps an *EG* if you want to look humorless and tryhard, or a *VBEG* if you’re just a Canadian Soccer Mom on Ritalin. :p
final edit: or maybe you didn’t because the markup on this is godawful and the reason I drink now
And HPMOR is a simulation of a nootropic that runs in basiliskspace, or whatever the kids are smoking these days.
Wow.
Can we ban this “AwesomeJon” person? Their shtick is tired and unfunny, and they’re adding nothing of use to the comments. (In other words: They aren’t nice, they aren’t telling anything I recognize as truth, and they certainly aren’t necessary. I’d use the report function, but it’s always been broken for me.)
Can we ban you?
Okay, because of that, I’m going to have to second this…
“I don’t recognize it as true so it isn’t.” Epistemic status: st00pid
@andrewflicker:
Don't feed him. If the Report button isn't working (and my understanding is that it does nothing), then perhaps a private email to Scott?
I’m thirty lol.
Still junior to my cranky crone self 🙂
And while I am a grump, I am certainly not lovable. Also not Canadian, a mom (soccer or otherwise) or on Ritalin, but keep trying, you may hit something if you fling enough word salad around!
It’s ok Deiseach, we still love you, despite the lamentable lack of Ritalin-fueled soccer.
Remember that if you guess something won’t happen with an 80% probability, you will be wrong 20% of the time. Trump winning is consistent with Trump being unlikely to win.
Making bets during a psychotic episode isn’t a reliable way to make money, which is what really counts.
He was very likely to win from day one. But sure, statistics or some shit. you win
He lost the popular vote and had a slim margin in the electoral college.
non sequitur? u mad?
For the record, any attempt to prove that I am a pea brain and Scott is a political scientist of note should assume that *betting* is a *terrible* way to make money.
Why the surprise? Even the best informed can get it wrong sometimes, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and even the biggest m0r0n can eventually get a lucky hunch. This is all specially true in those cases where nobody has much info, or when the amount of info is overwhelming and half of the content is false anyways (like elections).
You got the upper hand once; fine. Maybe you were right, but maybe you were just lucky. Somehow you believe this means your opponent is a worse predictor than you in every other instance?
Try the following: bet against Scott everytime on what you call “the subject of his own blog”, and see how many times you win. If this sounds too much (as you may agree with Scott sometimes), then bet against him everytime you disagree. If you keep winning, you may be onto something; otherwise, sorry, your one victory is just part of the background noise.
There are good reasons why people don’t make bets like that quite apart from anything relating to confidence in being correct.
Not sure I understand you, but also not sure it would change my point. Could you explain any better?
If you mean people are careful about the possibility of losing money, my point stands; he could still could make a one-sided, metaphorical bet, where he does not lose actual money. Or maybe bet to give one cent to the first beggar he sees after he loses, something of the sort.
I should have been clearer: if he is so confident Scott is such a big ignoramus as he implies in his comment, he could just come here every time Scott makes a prediction, state his opinion on why Scott is nuts, and let the future decide. Granted, maybe he also agrees with Scott sometimes; so let’s have him state that explicitly too, and judge his success rate on the predictions he makes against Scott. If he is right and Scott is off-base, that would show up after a few events. If, however, he got his one victory (of which he is clearly proud) either through luck or superbly superior info on that specific subject, and on nothing else – that will show up too. We would know where he actually stands.
But of course, he is not gonna do any of that.
I’m trying to think of a writer of which you couldn’t say this. Assuming you’re the type of reader to get maddened by flaws in general, my own maddening tends to be more specific.
Well, SOMEONE is wrong. Maybe we can determine your true political identity if you let us know which one hurt the worst.
Hmm, so are you far too liberal or far too conservative? The world may never know.
I actually had to laugh at this… it’s pretty much the standard string of people offended by someone not sharing their opinion, except “their opinion” seems to be a random sample of all possible opinions.
Sounds like a good sign to me!
Agreed. There is no blog worth reading that doesn’t have this pattern of ‘praise’
Don’t forget that he is also too libertarian and a racist, sexist SJW.
The one about Goddard was quite clever.
Hmm… could you explain that one to me? Surely it wasn’t calling Scott a founding figure of cognitive dissonance, which must be old as humanity, so what was it getting at?
Goddard did not invent rockets, but he made them much better. Basically.
Personally, I find it comforting that in an era of rabid political polarization, both the left and the right can come together and conclude that whatever else he may be, is is certainly Jewish to an unacceptable degree.
-_-
Jews are disproportionately represented on the globalist side of the globalist-nationalist divide (think the green and purple sides of the compass), so whether your enemy is the woke SJW left or the capitalist right, you can find lots of Jews to hate.
Scott actually has been critical of both of those, but antisemites are kind of focused. The problem is that while only about 1% of America really hates Jews, that 1% *really really* hates them. Like anyone else, they engage in lots of motivated reasoning, with critics of Israel rarely noticing the large Jewish SJW contingent, and critics of ZOG rarely noticing Breitbart or Stephen Miller.
Reminds me of the hate mail commonly received by the never-Trump right–a mix of antisemitism, red pill anti-SJW, and SJW anti-right nonsense. Megan McArdle, Jonah Goldberg, and Ben Shapiro all get very similar hate mail, though without the specific anti-rationalist stuff.
I think you always get about equal amounts of hate from both directions. The further left you are, the more attention you get from people who are even further left. Likewise on the right. It’s a fallacy to thing you are centrist or neutral just because people call you both a leftist and a rightist.
I don’t see anyone calling Andrew Anglin a leftist, say, so clearly at some point that peters out.
That said, a lot of attacks on conservatives come from further out right, and a lot of attacks on liberals come from further out left. There’s the globalist-nationalist divide too…
Well you can only go so far on the bell curve before there are almost no people to the right of you. But I have definitely seen very far right figures being called out for being too moderate. The actual hardcore Nazis really dislike the regular white nationalists. Who in turn really hate the regular conservatives.
You can get hate from both the right and the left at any point along the political spectrum, but the terminology changes. People do occasionally call Hillary Clinton right-wing or Gary Johnson left-wing, but the people attacking Bernie Sanders from the left call him a liberal — it’s just that once you get woke enough that becomes an insult meaning “milquetoast, excessively accommodating, insufficiently leftist”, as in “liberals get the bullet too”. On the other side of the aisle, Pat Buchanan gets called a cuckservative but never a hippie.