I assume you’re talking about internet figures in the greater LW-memeplex. If so, I think this is a bad idea.
Tidy reasons this may have low-to-moderate value:
It’s already easy to find the public positions of an internet figure.
Reasons are more important than conclusions. Unless you think you can present the arguments better than the original source, you’ll just end up simply linking to the original source, which is, again, easy to find.
Messy reasons this might have negative value:
As a rule, no online community has ever suffered from a lack of introspection. I’m so very sick of hearing groups talk about themselves. In particular, talking about prominent group figures is extremely off-putting to newcomers.
It will become a source of emotional stress for those quoted. “Popular-online-writer” is a world apart from being a real public figure. Empirically, the latter handle third-party discussion of themselves poorly.
Realistically, this will not guard against drama involving the unfair attributions of positions. If somebody wants to pattern match so-and-so to a particular archetype, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
I love my favorite blogs, but gaining an audience is a quality-quantity game, with an emphasis on quantity. Why give particular attention to the conclusions of a figure who have been selected in this way?
I’m not intending it to be LW-focused at all (except perhaps by accident of userbase). Other public figures I recall seeing misrepresented include Eric S Raymond, Orson Scott Card and Larry Summers.
It’s already easy to find the public positions of an internet figure.
ESR wrote a blog post suggesting that the Haitian people really did summon up the Voudon god Ogun to kill off all the white Frenchmen.
I know that the blog post in question suggests that they really did perform a ritual for that purpose, and that the ritual had a significant effect on the mental state of the participants, but ESR does not believe that the ritual was effective in summoning any kind of god. The blog post doesn’t make that last part explicit, but if pressed I could find a slashdot comment where he does say so explicitly.
I don’t think it’s easy to do this.
(The RW line could be considered not-completely-false, because one can summon a god without the god answering. And it might even be honest, if the writer didn’t understand where ESR was coming from. But to the extent that people read it and think that ESR believes that Ogun was successfully summoned, that line isn’t true.)
I’m also not interested in arguing over whether or not that ritual ever took place. I don’t think anyone’s particularly interested in that. I think some people are interested in making fun of ESR, and I’m interested in making it as easy as possible to debunk those people when they say things that aren’t true. So I don’t need to present ESR’s arguments, I just want to say “no, you’re misrepresenting his conclusions”.
I assume you’re talking about internet figures in the greater LW-memeplex. If so, I think this is a bad idea.
Tidy reasons this may have low-to-moderate value:
It’s already easy to find the public positions of an internet figure.
Reasons are more important than conclusions. Unless you think you can present the arguments better than the original source, you’ll just end up simply linking to the original source, which is, again, easy to find.
Messy reasons this might have negative value:
As a rule, no online community has ever suffered from a lack of introspection. I’m so very sick of hearing groups talk about themselves. In particular, talking about prominent group figures is extremely off-putting to newcomers.
It will become a source of emotional stress for those quoted. “Popular-online-writer” is a world apart from being a real public figure. Empirically, the latter handle third-party discussion of themselves poorly.
Realistically, this will not guard against drama involving the unfair attributions of positions. If somebody wants to pattern match so-and-so to a particular archetype, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
I love my favorite blogs, but gaining an audience is a quality-quantity game, with an emphasis on quantity. Why give particular attention to the conclusions of a figure who have been selected in this way?
I’m not intending it to be LW-focused at all (except perhaps by accident of userbase). Other public figures I recall seeing misrepresented include Eric S Raymond, Orson Scott Card and Larry Summers.
I’ve read enough ESR that when RationalWiki says
I know that the blog post in question suggests that they really did perform a ritual for that purpose, and that the ritual had a significant effect on the mental state of the participants, but ESR does not believe that the ritual was effective in summoning any kind of god. The blog post doesn’t make that last part explicit, but if pressed I could find a slashdot comment where he does say so explicitly.
I don’t think it’s easy to do this.
(The RW line could be considered not-completely-false, because one can summon a god without the god answering. And it might even be honest, if the writer didn’t understand where ESR was coming from. But to the extent that people read it and think that ESR believes that Ogun was successfully summoned, that line isn’t true.)
I’m also not interested in arguing over whether or not that ritual ever took place. I don’t think anyone’s particularly interested in that. I think some people are interested in making fun of ESR, and I’m interested in making it as easy as possible to debunk those people when they say things that aren’t true. So I don’t need to present ESR’s arguments, I just want to say “no, you’re misrepresenting his conclusions”.
The list of misrepresented public figures is the list of public figures.