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divabot posted:Why is Scott so into neoreaction? Because they're wonderfully loving and tolerant people, evidence being not all of them told Justine Tunney to just gently caress off. Haha, his only actual point against feminism is literally "some neoreactionaries aren't transphobic but some feminists are!" So reasonable!
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Jul 13, 2015 00:53
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Why doesn't this guy just drop the charade and embrace his inner fash? He hangs out around fascists, he kind of sort of criticizes but not really fascist thought all the time, he seems completely obsessed with these neoreaction dorks. Everyone already knows he's a goddamn fascist, he cam give it up now.
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Jul 13, 2015 01:37
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Woolie Wool posted:Why doesn't this guy just drop the charade and embrace his inner fash? He hangs out around fascists, he kind of sort of criticizes but not really fascist thought all the time, he seems completely obsessed with these neoreaction dorks. Everyone already knows he's a goddamn fascist, he cam give it up now.
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Jul 13, 2015 05:17
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Woolie Wool posted:Why doesn't this guy just drop the charade and embrace his inner fash? He hangs out around fascists, he kind of sort of criticizes but not really fascist thought all the time, he seems completely obsessed with these neoreaction dorks. Everyone already knows he's a goddamn fascist, he cam give it up now. quote:ozymandias says: quote:Scott Alexander says: 
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Jul 13, 2015 05:41
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quote:I would prefer to discourage that kind of thing rather than start a toxoplasma of rage thing. What the hell is this supposed to mean? He thinks people are angry at him because of a protozoic infection?
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Jul 13, 2015 05:47
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Political Whores posted:What the hell is this supposed to mean? He thinks people are angry at him because of a protozoic infection? Memetics: the pseudoscience that lets you pretend your opponents are possessed by evil space viruses
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Jul 13, 2015 05:51
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Memetics: the pseudoscience that lets you pretend your opponents are possessed by evil space viruses But let me guess, they aren't subject to evil memes, they're perfectly rational. I wonder if I can get to OM 5 and fly if I purge myself of negative memes.
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Jul 13, 2015 05:54
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Political Whores posted:But let me guess, they aren't subject to evil memes, they're perfectly rational. I wonder if I can get to OM 5 and fly if I purge myself of negative memes. Pretty much. My opponents are controlled by an evil memeplex the neo-reactionaries have dubbed Cthulhu. I, however, reach all my conclusions through empiricism and reason and modify my beliefs based on reality. When they agree it's scary hiveminding, but when me and my friends agree it's just Rational Minds Seeking Best Solutions. Duh.
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Jul 13, 2015 05:59
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So they have their own stupid ideas around "toxoplasma?" Because it sounded to me like he just grabbed at a big word that sounded spooky and bad that he had heard before but didn't remember very well and shoved it in.
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Jul 13, 2015 07:13
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Political Whores posted:What the hell is this supposed to mean? He thinks people are angry at him because of a protozoic infection? He's referring to this blog post.
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Jul 13, 2015 07:20
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Political Whores posted:What the hell is this supposed to mean? He thinks people are angry at him because of a protozoic infection? Basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc, but with a million more words wrapped around it.
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Jul 13, 2015 08:22
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I think a large part of the fundamental problem with SSC is that he follows from LessWrong in (a) fearlessly exploring philosophical ideas (which he ignores all history of and so makes up his own words and categorisations for things) but then (b) gets upset when people take him seriously and assume he understands what he's saying and means the really obvious horrible implications of his statements. Because out here in the real world, if you say "2+2" over and over, people are going to assume you mean 4. And if you want to say they added 2+2 and got 666, the burden of proof is back on you. So he likes the neoreactionaries because they are as lacking in knowledge as him ("Moldbug has read 15,000 books but for some reason none of them were written by Foucault"), which is what he means by "ignore the object-level ghastliness, I like them personally". I mean, Yudkowsky's a man of two or three books (Jaynes is not bad and was a pretty awesome guy in many ways, but you've never heard of his version of Bayesian philosophy because basically it made no impact outside thermodynamics and nobody else much cares) and beyond that doesn't believe a word he didn't write personally. But he's prepared to get out there and be thought of as seriously hosed up. Scott is aware enough to realise people are thinking badly of him and daring to say so. edit: and Scott really doesn't understand that when he's merely saying words and spinning ideas, the people who say they find them dangerous and threatening, find them dangerous and threatening because they have actually been threatened with harm leading directly from words like that in real life: that his "exploration of concepts" is literally other people's "fighting words indicating immediate real danger". That is, their horror at him is utterly rational. Again, people have explicitly said this to him in the comments, and elsewhere: when someone says "yo, this is a serious real-life problem for me, I'm already treated like my life is inherently not worth living, what can you do for me", he utterly fails to perceive that this is about a real-life threat that actually happens and instead details why threatening their life and health is entirely reasonable. And let me remind you, he's a doctor. That post is an excellent example of the tone argument utterly failing to be worth the effort in real life. divabot has a new favorite as of 17:01 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 08:38
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What kind of doctor is this guy? How can someone so bad at reasoning be expected to diagnose and treat things? If I were seeing this guy for care and then discovered this blog, I would be terrified.
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Jul 13, 2015 11:18
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divabot posted:Again, people have explicitly said this to him in the comments, and elsewhere: when someone says "yo, this is a serious real-life problem for me, I'm already treated like my life is inherently not worth living, what can you do for me", he utterly fails to perceive that this is about a real-life threat that actually happens and instead details why threatening their life and health is entirely reasonable. And let me remind you, he's a doctor. That post is an excellent example of the tone argument utterly failing to be worth the effort in real life. So let me see if I understand. An autistic (?) person sends him an ask saying they're uneasy about Singer's advocacy for post-natal abortions and his response is to waffle about how no, that's totally fine, because disabled lives are worth less than able-bodied lives? And... he doesn't see the problem there? No wonder he likes the neo reactionaries so much: he's got one foot on the 'everyone unlike me is inherently worth less' bandwagon already.
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Jul 13, 2015 11:29
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Jack Gladney posted:What kind of doctor is this guy? How can someone so bad at reasoning be expected to diagnose and treat things? If I were seeing this guy for care and then discovered this blog, I would be terrified.
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Jul 13, 2015 11:33
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potatocubed posted:So let me see if I understand. An autistic (?) person sends him an ask saying they're uneasy about Singer's advocacy for post-natal abortions and his response is to waffle about how no, that's totally fine, because disabled lives are worth less than able-bodied lives? I think this is Ozy sort of describing why this was a bad answer, though frankly their reply is itself well into your-real-life-danger-is-my-pure-hypothetical gibbertopia. Cingulate posted:Scott is obviously pretty smart. Seriously, if you do not see that this guy is way above average, most likely including for doctors, you're not being honest. The problem really isn't that he doesn't have enough brains, but that he's using it wrong. Much of the point of this thread is that it turns out IQ isn't enough in real life, and you also need some loving sense.
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Jul 13, 2015 11:36
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Wales Grey posted:Basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc, but with a million more words wrapped around it. One of the worst things Dawkins ever did was hypothesize about meme evolution. I understand why it's an interesting concept to think about, but anybody calling memes "thought-germs" has taken an already tenuous metaphor and just loving run that poo poo into the ground. Awful, awful science.
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Jul 13, 2015 11:57
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Political Whores posted:One of the worst things Dawkins ever did was hypothesize about meme evolution. I understand why it's an interesting concept to think about, but anybody calling memes "thought-germs" has taken an already tenuous metaphor and just loving run that poo poo into the ground. Not to mention that the 'meme' was theorised in various forms pretty consistently pre-Dawkins. He's late to a party he didn't even know existed. And it's been put it in far less dodgy terms than strictly Darwinian evolution.
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Jul 13, 2015 12:02
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J_RBG posted:Not to mention that the 'meme' was theorised in various forms pretty consistently pre-Dawkins. He's late to a party he didn't even know existed. And it's been put it in far less dodgy terms than strictly Darwinian evolution. So it's no surprise SSC uses it! But yeah, semiotics is a field that's been around for a lot longer than The Selfish Gene has.
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Jul 13, 2015 12:06
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Let's discuss the "insights" Scott gleaned from NRx and Moldbug. Is that whole "Moloch" concept actually something insightful or novel?
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Jul 13, 2015 12:41
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divabot posted:I think this is Ozy sort of describing why this was a bad answer, though frankly their reply is itself well into your-real-life-danger-is-my-pure-hypothetical gibbertopia. Literally "It's really important that people join our cause, so stop saying stupid poo poo that makes us look bad." I mean, that's one of many reasons why his answer was bad but I think it's telling that the go-to rebuttal is not 'your opinion is awful' but rather 'people can see your awful opinions, and that's bad'.
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Jul 13, 2015 12:47
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Merdifex posted:Let's discuss the "insights" Scott gleaned from NRx and Moldbug. Is that whole "Moloch" concept actually something insightful or novel? Well, the market as source of all problems is a reasonable claim to make (even if alternatives are unlikely at this civilisational stage - something which, to give him his credit, I think Scott covered usably well in this essay). Smerdis of Tlon's essay Abrechnung mit Reaktion sets out a not-entirely-implausible non-insane case for this being The Problem. I've known Smerdis a coupla decades, he's a top fellow, a classical scholar (well, a lawyer by day, but a classicist in his heart) who considers anything after about 1700 dangerously modern. If anyone was going to be a prime candidate for neoreaction it'd be him. He thinks they're hilariously awful too, and his essay pisses them the hell off. There are many things wrong and holes to be picked in this text, but at least it's saner than anything NRx produces.
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Jul 13, 2015 14:34
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Merdifex posted:Let's discuss the "insights" Scott gleaned from NRx and Moldbug. Is that whole "Moloch" concept actually something insightful or novel? That "This is a concept I think is important/dangerous/influential so I will personify it as a God" poo poo is some Middle School social studies assignment poo poo. Neo-Reactionary: How silly of you to think that there's an inherent march of progress in the universe. Where do you find atoms of progress in the world? Neo-Reactionary: CTHULHU ALWAYS SWIMS LEFT! THE LEFT MEMEPLEX WILL DESTROY US ALL
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Jul 13, 2015 15:49
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Of course Tumblr has already captured Scott:jonomancer posted:Yeah, i read Slatestarcodex. His writing seems to alternate between brilliant and really aggravatingly naiive. And sometimes he has to use pages and pages of very advanced Logic in order to reach a conclusion that other people seem to have figured out by going outside and talking to people. But at his best he invents some really useful tools for cutting through bullshit, like the concept of the “bravery argument”. nostalgebraist answers with a reflection that doesn't contain pithy lines for me to bask in the glory of being smart enough to find and quote, but is worth a look. tl;dr Scott is more terrifyingly naive than malicious.
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Jul 13, 2015 16:53
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Merdifex posted:Let's discuss the "insights" Scott gleaned from NRx and Moldbug. Is that whole "Moloch" concept actually something insightful or novel? It's a pretty common rhetorical and literary trope. It's throughout Dante, Bunyon, Homer, etc. Most of the essay itself is nothing that Mary Midgley (and others, I'm sure) hasn't said more concisely, accurately, and just plain better, plus with, you know, actual references because she's a biologist, and without all the stuff about memes because she things Dawkins is a tool.
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Jul 13, 2015 17:14
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Cingulate posted:Scott is obviously pretty smart. Seriously, if you do not see that this guy is way above average, most likely including for doctors, you're not being honest. The problem really isn't that he doesn't have enough brains, but that he's using it wrong. What does smart even mean if you're dead wrong most of the time?
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Jul 13, 2015 17:42
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I'd like to propose the word snart to describe people like Scott Alexander, the LW crowd, Mencius Moldbug et al., i.e., folks who are seemingly well-educated and have expansive vocabularies, who appear to employ logic and reason, but who are actually face-meltingly stupid. Also, Urban Dictionary tells me that snart means sneezing and farting at the same time so there you go
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Jul 13, 2015 18:09
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neonnoodle posted:I'd like to propose the word snart to describe people like Scott Alexander, the LW crowd, Mencius Moldbug et al., i.e., folks who are seemingly well-educated and have expansive vocabularies, who appear to employ logic and reason, but who are actually face-meltingly stupid.
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Jul 13, 2015 18:39
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neonnoodle posted:I'd like to propose the word snart to describe people like Scott Alexander, the LW crowd, Mencius Moldbug et al., i.e., folks who are seemingly well-educated and have expansive vocabularies, who appear to employ logic and reason, but who are actually face-meltingly stupid. Sounds about right. They're often fairly well educated and know how to talk/write in a manner that makes them appear smart at first glance, but most of what they're saying is straight out of their rear end.
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Jul 13, 2015 18:41
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neonnoodle posted:I'd like to propose the word snart to describe people like Scott Alexander, the LW crowd, Mencius Moldbug et al., i.e., folks who are seemingly well-educated and have expansive vocabularies, who appear to employ logic and reason, but who are actually face-meltingly stupid. ITT: sharts.
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Jul 13, 2015 19:01
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DStecks posted:What does smart even mean if you're dead wrong most of the time? He
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Jul 13, 2015 20:30
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neonnoodle posted:I'd like to propose the word snart to describe people like Scott Alexander, the LW crowd, Mencius Moldbug et al., i.e., folks who are seemingly well-educated and have expansive vocabularies, who appear to employ logic and reason, but who are actually face-meltingly stupid. DStecks posted:What does smart even mean if you're dead wrong most of the time? And yet, IQ means something. Yes, you can follow this up with a bunch of sentences containing words like "sufficient" vs. "necessary" etc, but it's really not a controversial point I think.
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Jul 13, 2015 23:03
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Cingulate posted:The point I'd like to emphasize is: you need to be pretty smart to be catastrophically wrong. Your average 1-SD-beyond-the-mean-IQ stupid person will hold a number of extremely dumb ideas superficially, but to actually come up with, for example, a halfway-coherent rationale for, say, reintroducing the monarchy, one needs, if at all, one SD above the mean. We are fools for thinking the Intelligence Quotient test measures Intelligence, instead of some mystical quality that makes you better than other people even while being wrong.
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Jul 13, 2015 23:49
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Jack Gladney posted:What kind of doctor is this guy? How can someone so bad at reasoning be expected to diagnose and treat things? If I were seeing this guy for care and then discovered this blog, I would be terrified. SSC is a clinical psychologist at a hospital. He appears to have decent opinions within his own area of expertise. (Then again, that last post is over 2 years old at this point, and I wouldn't be surprised if a year from now Scott started solemnly debating a hip new NeoReactionary-approved psychology called "let the weak-minded kill themselves".) Much more concerning is that he was at some point a teacher: Mr. Alexander, unpopular English teacher posted:...this dates from my time as a schoolteacher. The man who believes that poor people are inherently dumber than rich people possibly taught your kids — and he fuckin hated them. And judging from the dang-kids-with-their-Pokemon-and-their-Gameboys comment, and the bit where he talks about doing silly dances to hold their attention, he probably taught kids between 8 and 10 years old. SSC uses hyperactive young children to condemn all students as incurious, spastic irritants and paint the entire education system as a failure. So like, it could be much worse. He could be a pediatric psychiatrist.
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Jul 13, 2015 23:50
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Oh, so Scott was the terrible teacher in a British children's novel. Good, cool. I hope he left because Matilda played a hilarious prank on him and despite his best efforts, Gryffindor got the House Cup.
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Jul 14, 2015 00:52
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Protip: when all of the classes you teach have the same problem, look for the element that all of them have in common.
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Jul 14, 2015 01:07
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Jack Gladney posted:Protip: when all of the classes you teach have the same problem, look for the element that all of them have in common. If you think somebody you know is an rear end in a top hat, they probably are. If you think everybody you know is an rear end in a top hat, it's probably you.
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Jul 14, 2015 01:20
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Jack Gladney posted:What kind of doctor is this guy? How can someone so bad at reasoning be expected to diagnose and treat things? If I were seeing this guy for care and then discovered this blog, I would be terrified. Political Whores posted:One of the worst things Dawkins ever did was hypothesize about meme evolution. I understand why it's an interesting concept to think about, but anybody calling memes "thought-germs" has taken an already tenuous metaphor and just loving run that poo poo into the ground. potatocubed posted:Literally "It's really important that people join our cause, so stop saying stupid poo poo that makes us look bad." DStecks posted:What does smart even mean if you're dead wrong most of the time?
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Jul 14, 2015 08:07
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If you somehow think Scott has opinions anywhere close to the worst few percentiles of doctor-held opinions, if you think he's particularly awful concerning what doctors think - then I wish I had your optimism in how terrible doctors, or people in general, are. This thread is not an example of disproportionally awful ideas. It's a thread of ideas whose level of awfulness is completely average - it's just that they're awful in new and exciting ways, and at times a bit more interestingly elaborated. You know, somebody out there is doing all of the actual raping and baby-murdering and voting republican, while somehow considering themselves in the right, and it's not Scott, or even Moldbug. They're just bad in funny ways.
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Jul 14, 2015 08:14
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Tiggum posted:What does "smart" mean at all? What's the objective measure of intelligence?
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Jul 14, 2015 08:16
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