One thing I will say here that I think shouldnât be controversial:
At the very least the Cade Metz NYT on Scott fairly clearly did not give readers a misleading impression (whether or not it gave the reader that impression in a fair way.): the article does not state âScott Alexander is a hardcore white nationalistâ, or even, in my view, really give people that impression. What it does give the reader as an impression is that he is highly skeptical of feminism and social justice, his community of followers includes white nationalists, and he is sympathetic to views on race on which Black people are genetically intellectually inferior. All these things are true, as anyone who reads Thorstadâs blogpost can verify. But more importantly, while I understand not everyone reads Scott and his blog commentators religiously, all these things are fairly obviously true if youâve followed Scottâs writing closely. (As I have; I used to like it a great deal, before disagreement on exactly this stuff very gradually soured me on it.*) I think it is a failure of community epistemics that a lot of people jumped to âthis is a smearâ before really checking, or suspending judgment.
*I actually find this whole topic very emotionally upsetting and confusing, because I think I actually have a very similar personality to Scott and other rationalists, and seeing them endorse what to me is fairly obvious evil-Iâm talking here about reactionary political projects here, not any particular empirical beliefs-makes me worried that I am bad too. Read everything I say on this thread with this bias in mind.
One thing I will say here that I think shouldnât be controversial:
At the very least the Cade Metz NYT on Scott fairly clearly did not give readers a misleading impression (whether or not it gave the reader that impression in a fair way.): the article does not state âScott Alexander is a hardcore white nationalistâ, or even, in my view, really give people that impression. What it does give the reader as an impression is that he is highly skeptical of feminism and social justice, his community of followers includes white nationalists, and he is sympathetic to views on race on which Black people are genetically intellectually inferior. All these things are true, as anyone who reads Thorstadâs blogpost can verify. But more importantly, while I understand not everyone reads Scott and his blog commentators religiously, all these things are fairly obviously true if youâve followed Scottâs writing closely. (As I have; I used to like it a great deal, before disagreement on exactly this stuff very gradually soured me on it.*) I think it is a failure of community epistemics that a lot of people jumped to âthis is a smearâ before really checking, or suspending judgment.
*I actually find this whole topic very emotionally upsetting and confusing, because I think I actually have a very similar personality to Scott and other rationalists, and seeing them endorse what to me is fairly obvious evil-Iâm talking here about reactionary political projects here, not any particular empirical beliefs-makes me worried that I am bad too. Read everything I say on this thread with this bias in mind.