Is the article a fair and much-needed outside piece of criticism that we should take seriously? We talk a bigger game about accepting and integrating outside criticism than many communities. Maybe this is our chance to really put that into practice?
A “fair and much-needed outside piece of criticism” would arguably take advantage of its outside perspective to point out community taboos and blind spots. Reading about your blind spots should, almost per definition I guess, make your reading stumble in strange and unpredicted ways. But the NYT article is depressingly predictable in its attempt to discredit reputation by alluding to vague links to right-wing positions and figures. The predictability reaches almost comical levels where the author isn’t even shy to quote the very sentences that Scott already highlighted and tagged as “These are the sentences that can be taken out of context to discredit me if you are insincere. Please don’t do it. But honestly, we all know you will do it. So whatever.”
But apart from the politics and the signaling games, it still seems like a worthy exercise to look for object-level claims in the article. I found one:
Slate Star Codex was a window into the Silicon Valley psyche. There are good reasons to try and understand that psyche, because the decisions made by tech companies and the people who run them eventually affect millions.
A “fair and much-needed outside piece of criticism” would arguably take advantage of its outside perspective to point out community taboos and blind spots. Reading about your blind spots should, almost per definition I guess, make your reading stumble in strange and unpredicted ways. But the NYT article is depressingly predictable in its attempt to discredit reputation by alluding to vague links to right-wing positions and figures. The predictability reaches almost comical levels where the author isn’t even shy to quote the very sentences that Scott already highlighted and tagged as “These are the sentences that can be taken out of context to discredit me if you are insincere. Please don’t do it. But honestly, we all know you will do it. So whatever.”
But apart from the politics and the signaling games, it still seems like a worthy exercise to look for object-level claims in the article. I found one:
That might be a valid point.