Scott’s name came up in Arnold’s Fantasy Intellectual Teams. Then I saw a reference to a post from him about Fermi’s Paradox (why no ETs visible?) on his blog Shtetl-Optimized.
So I’ve left a few comments there. His recent post: Standing up Sans Backbone
I continue to believe passionately in the centrality of good journalism to a free society. I’ll continue to talk to journalists often, about quantum computing or whatever else. I also recognize that the NYT is a large, heterogeneous institution (I myself published in it twice); it’s not hard to imagine that many of its own staff take issue with the SSC piece.
**Writing what you believe is true does require backbone.
Do you really always do that?
When I was working, I would censure myself, a bit, to avoid the Woke police (PC-nazis). By not telling all the truth I believed, tho I was able to avoid telling things I thought were untrue.
In retirement, I’m more free – it looks like Scott Alexander is, too.
“I continue to believe passionately in the centrality of good journalism to a free society.” Good journalism doesn’t include 2 years of hyping a false “Russian Collusion” hoax, no matter how much the eyeball owning readers want it to to be true.
Hate is fanned, often in the past and still today, by bad journalists giving out Fake News.
A grand anticlimax: the New York Times on Scott Alexander
14 good issues with the NYT hit piece on Scott Alexander, including #4
The piece makes liberal use of scare quotes. Most amusingly, it puts scare quotes around the phrase “Bayesian reasoning”!
**[New here for a couple weeks – Trump supporter, tho.]
Thanks for a good note explaining your views; your list of issues was excellent.
At ASKblog (Arnold S Kling), my comment agreed with the reporter that SSC is too long, tho I used voluble rather than the more accurate “astoundingly verbose.” Because it’s more detail than I usually want.
The popularization of “steelman” arguments is great – I think Astral Codex 10 will continue in that mode. Perhaps even more. I also understand that comprehensive steelman arguments require a LOT more space, so I’m OK with just 80% of the key steelman, especially if it can be summarized in 20% of the time.
On ASKblog Smug and Stupid
**OT from credit, but very apropros of the title “Smug and Stupid”.
NYT has admitted it printed a lie untruth in their prior coverage of the fire extinguisher caused death of Police Officer Sicknick.
Neo has details:
https://www.thenewneo.com/2021/02/15/officer-sicknicks-death-the-only-surprise-here-is-that-the-ny-times-actually-issued-any-sort-of-retraction-at-all-even-a-mild-one/
Many, like often honest but Trump-disapproving Andrew McCarthy, were sort of “happy” to blame Trump, and Trump supporters, for the death, and believed the NYT false report based on unnamed “officials”.
The Dem media has long been feeding the public horse manure untruths from “officials”, and I expect that to continue. What honest people need to do is suspect EVERY anonymous “official” who says something bad about Reps to be incompletely truthful, if not false.
Arnold (AS Kling) like Scott Alexander, Number One Pick likes complexity
Here’s the NYT Hit Piece (from archive).
**In Scott’s reply, he notes that he quit his job and started another. It looks like he’s migrating into a more professional pundit place. I truly wish him well, and there’s clearly a big market available for Dems who are willing to question, honestly, the dishonesties so often seen by Democrats. Tho that market is more Reps and Independents rather than Dem true believers.
The NYT did get something right about the “voluble” amount of text. When I took the time to read him, Scott was excellent in arguments, but so soo soooo loooooong.
Magazine long form long, tho with much higher density of info than most magazines. With about 80% of the words in too much detail about the 20% of the less common cases or uses. I like Arnold’s too brief style much more.
This kerfluffle with the Times will help Scott.
Open question for Arnold – would Scott’s letter reply count as a “win”?
I’m seriously having trouble figuring out which intellectuals are actually doing wins.
I don’t find Charles Murray nor Scott nor Arnold convincing on UBI rather than a National Service job offer to help poor people get out of poverty. To me, UBI is to make endless poverty more comfy, but never leave it.
It’s no surprise Scott voted for cancel culture Dems – I think Arnold did too, but in any case all arguments should be looked at on their own terms. Scott is among the best to do this. Zvi does this, too (plus comments!), FIT might help Zvi move up faster than without it, and is the kind of good FIT result we hope for.
For me, results are far far more important than style. But style is not unimportant.
Once we can see them, it’s too late – where are the aliens? Fermi’s Paradox, good interaction with Robin Hanson
Robin proposes, plausibly I think, that if you give a technological civilization 10 million or so years—i.e., an eyeblink on cosmological timescales—then either
the civilization wipes itself out, or else
it reaches some relatively quiet steady state, or else
if it’s serious about spreading widely, then it “maxes out” the technology with which to do so, approaching the limits set by physical law.
**
I think a version of the Dark Forest is likely, and sad – look at how much humans enjoy HATING different humans because … reasons. (I’m thinking Dems who hate Trump & now Trump-supporters).
Recently I’ve been thinking about the Moon, again.
It might be that the extra instability of sun + moon ocean tides accelerated key evolution changes by some percentage, like 20-40%. So such “big-moon” blessed water planets like Earth both have faster evolution AND are far far rarer than similar planets with much smaller moons.
[This was the first post of yours I read. Then your earlier one which I’ll comment on now, hopefully spelling excellent correctly.]
To all Trumpists who comment on this blog
The violent insurrection now unfolding in Washington DC is precisely the thing you called me nuts, accused me of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” for warning about since 2016. Crazy me, huh, always seeing brownshirts around the corner? And you called the other side violent anarchists? This is all your doing. So own it. Wallow in it. May you live the rest of your lives in shame.
**[#3 comment] This is the post, with the last comments, which I’ve been thinking about for a week. Tho not this reply.
Calvin #305 “the burning, yelling rage. It’s called hate. Sure, you attempt to justify it, maybe saying it’s okay because it’s okay to hate Nazis.”
Why were the Nazis so bad? Because they dehumanized other people, Jews, Gypsies, and political opponents – which allowed them to justify using violence against those they insulted and felt superior to.
Scott #306 “I retract and apologize not because I was wrong about Trump, or because Trump supporters did nothing to merit my hate.”
You should be repeating some action or result that merits.
Like “He left Top Secret documents on an illegal server outside of the gov’t” (not Trump tho)
or “He obstructed justice to let off his Sec. of State for her illegal server” (not Trump)
or “He illegally spied, worse than Nixon, on the other side’s candidate” (still not Trump).
At least Anon #306 does blame Trump for Fentanyl overdosed, Covid positive, meth using George Floyd’s death by police restraining him, brutally tho in accordance with then-current (since revoked) police manual procedures for refusing to go into the squad car because he “can’t breathe”.
Really? That’s Trump’s fault?
Or the Chinese Communist Party virus from Wuhan, probably created partly from funding by the US – those deaths are Trump’s fault?
We should all hate the FDA and the CDC, full of career bureaucrats (mostly voting Dem) far more than Trump for this.
“The violent insurrection now unfolding in Washington DC is precisely the thing you called me nuts, accused me of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” for warning about since 2016.”
You’ve really been warning of brownshirts since 2016 – and NEVER saw Trump supporters being violent until 2021?
Far more than many of the BLM protests, the capitol protest against a stolen election was “mostly peaceful”.
5 people died: 3 Trump supporters of heart attacks or problems in crowd crush.
1 Trump supporter shot in the neck, to death, despite being an unarmed female (trespassing and attempting to enter thru a window). No imminent threat. No attempt to arrest her.
Ashli Babbitt was more clearly killed by police, tragically and somewhat unjustly (not innocent) than was George Floyd. [Had the police not come Floyd would likely have died, more peacefully, from overdose – like thousands of others, under Trump and under Obama.)
5th person who died – Police Officer Sicknick. There’s no evidence of head trauma, no video of him being hit with a fire extinguisher. Did you believe Trump supporters killed him, thanks to NYT lies? / (unnamed) law enforcement officials?
They’re still not sure what killed him, but after the protest riot, he went to the police station, and only the next day went to the hospital, where he died. Maybe a blood clot.
[3 years ago I almost died of a blood clot in my heart – no good reason why. Now on meds, walking instead of running in my retirement].
Glenn Greenwald will be getting more Rep publicity if he continues being truthful:
“Condemning that [Jan 6] riot does not allow, let alone require, echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious than it actually was. There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists…
Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost seven weeks ago.”
Are you going to echo false claims?
Tom Grey - Families, Freedom, Responsibility 