I think posts like this exhibit the same thought terminating cancel culture behaviour that you are supposedly complaining about, in a way that is often inaccurate or uncharitable.
For example, take the mention of scott alexander:
It reports, for example, that Scott Alexander attended the conference, and links to the dishonest New York Times smear piece criticizing Scott, as well as a similar hitpiece calling Robin Hanson creepy.
Now, compare this to the actual text of the article:
Prediction markets are a long-held enthusiasm in the EA and rationalism subcultures, and billed guests included personalities like Scott Siskind, AKA Scott Alexander, founder of Slate Star Codex; misogynistic George Mason University economist Robin Hanson; and Eliezer Yudkowsky, founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (Miri).
Billed speakers from the broader tech world included the Substack co-founder Chris Best and Ben Mann, co-founder of AI startup Anthropic.
Now, I get the complaint about the treatment of robin hanson here, and I feel that “accused of misogyny” would be more appropriate (outside of an oped). But with regards to scott alexander, there was literally no judgement call included.
When it comes to the NYT article, very few people outside this sphere know who he is. Linking to an article about him in one of the most well known newspapers in the world does not seem like a major crime! People linking to articles you don’t like is not cancel culture. Or if it is, then I guess I’m pro cancel culture, because the word has lost all meaning.
It feels like you want to retreat into a tiny, insular bubble where people can freely be horribly unpleasant to each other without receiving any criticism at all from the outside world. And I’m happy for those bubbles to exist, but I have no obligation to host your bubble or hide out there with you.
Linking to hitpieces is not cancel culture, but if your objection to some group is “look at all these bad people they associate with,” and then you link to poorly reasoned and educated hitpieces, that is bad.
I think the NYT’s criticisms of Scott were basically fair even if some of the details were off, but I don’t think you can reasonably imply that someone linking to it while writing a scathing criticism of groups and views Scott is associated with is linking it just because it is in the NYT. They are obviously trying to get the reader to draw negative inferences about Scott and people and movements associated with him.
I think posts like this exhibit the same thought terminating cancel culture behaviour that you are supposedly complaining about, in a way that is often inaccurate or uncharitable.
For example, take the mention of scott alexander:
Now, compare this to the actual text of the article:
Now, I get the complaint about the treatment of robin hanson here, and I feel that “accused of misogyny” would be more appropriate (outside of an oped). But with regards to scott alexander, there was literally no judgement call included.
When it comes to the NYT article, very few people outside this sphere know who he is. Linking to an article about him in one of the most well known newspapers in the world does not seem like a major crime! People linking to articles you don’t like is not cancel culture. Or if it is, then I guess I’m pro cancel culture, because the word has lost all meaning.
It feels like you want to retreat into a tiny, insular bubble where people can freely be horribly unpleasant to each other without receiving any criticism at all from the outside world. And I’m happy for those bubbles to exist, but I have no obligation to host your bubble or hide out there with you.
Linking to hitpieces is not cancel culture, but if your objection to some group is “look at all these bad people they associate with,” and then you link to poorly reasoned and educated hitpieces, that is bad.
I think the NYT’s criticisms of Scott were basically fair even if some of the details were off, but I don’t think you can reasonably imply that someone linking to it while writing a scathing criticism of groups and views Scott is associated with is linking it just because it is in the NYT. They are obviously trying to get the reader to draw negative inferences about Scott and people and movements associated with him.