[Note: scroll down and start at the paragraph just before the blockquote, and read to the end, for the tl;dr/conclusion of this comment.]
My friend and I are each critiquing a set of ideas, respectively, which happen to come from Scott. My disagreements with Scott I see as at odds with themes in his writing on discourse he himself created. For example, several posts I’m at odds with Scott wrote are part of the Community and Cooperationsequence put together from SSC posts. The rest of them are related to discourse norms specific to the rationality or similar intellectual communities (e.g., New Atheism). I should state at the event these are opinions we will express, separate from each other as individuals.And on that basis, attendees may change their mind about some ideas from SSC. But neither my friend nor I expect that to be the likely outcome. To be fair, Scott himself often builds upon his own ideas sequentially. He doesn’t do it along a single theme in as short a period as Eliezer did when he wrote the Sequences. But if one could disagree with a set of ideas that were intended to be read as such with the Sequences, which doesn’t seem like it’d be out of question on LW, I don’t know why the same standard shouldn’t apply to posts by Scott either.
My friend thinks Scott has systematic biases, which I think is a tougher case to make, but he is well-aware with the audience he is facing it’s an uphill battle.
While my friend doesn’t think Scott’s writing is particularly good, I disagree. I think he’s as a good a writer as most to be found online, and occasionally much better. I did say both of us disagree with Scott in systematic ways. I don’t think Scott is systematically biased. But I believe he has overstated the value of some discourse norms, or that they’re generalized to too many types of circumstances. But I didn’t state Scott’s writing is bad in particular (i.e., his writing style), which is distinct from the content of some of his writing. That’s what both of us will be addressing. For example, neither of us take issue with any of Scott’s posts on psychiatry.
The title of this post, and of the event, and leaving up top the line about the pseudo-intellectual, have made it appear as if that is all this event will be about. Perhaps that was a mistake. However, that is what my friend called the event when he set it up, and that is the tone he set for the event. So I thought to include those parts to accurately represent what this event might be like. The tone of it is meant to be facetious, but the edge of that humour has apparently been lost.
My friend is certainly no fan of Scott (I think he is a conflict theorist, but I’m unsure). I think he just as a chip on his shoulder, as many of us attending do, which is what we’ll be putting to the test when he is in the hot seat, and we challenge his conjectures (shminux corroborates this state of affairs in this comment). I myself certainly didn’t mean to imply Scott was bad as a person. I just think he is wrong about some stuff. I do wish that his status within the rationality community didn’t make it feel so hard among rationalists to express significant disagreement with Scott. But going by Scott’s comment, he doesn’t share that attitude.
Since neither of us is calling Scott a bad person, it’s inaccurate to say we’ve organized an event for people to coordinate around him being bad. Most of the attendees think Scott is a rationalist par excellence. In Vancouver, the SSC meetup is actually bigger than the rationality meetups (at least in terms of regular attendance to events, though there might be more a unified culture among local rationalists). Scott is held in higher regard than Eliezer among a lot of Vancouverites. So that’s an odd state of affairs that several local community members are open to hearing out a voice critical of Scott. This event is coming from a place of rationalists seeing it as test of their epistemic virtue and mettle, and a form of comfort zone expansion, in the face of a presentation they expect to walk away from still in disagreement with the theses presented. Both my friend and I are coming into this meetup very much being perceived as filling the role of Devil’s Advocates.
What this is meant to be about, then, is organizing an event to criticize multiple, distinct sets of ideas from a single author/blogger (Scott), from different speakers (myself and my friend), who will be speaking to a single audience who are fans of that blogger. The goal is for us to rise to a challenge given to us by the audience, local community members: to convince them some overarching themes from SSC spread out over multiple, thematically related posts. My friend and I will be coming at this from two different angles, as I laid out in another comment, quoted below:
Right, if it wasn’t clear in the OP, the statement “Scott Alexander is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading” is a claim from a friend who is doesn’t self-identify as part of the rationality community, but is involved in local hangouts and occasionally attends meetups. I should clarify he will be expounding upon on in his opinion “SSC bungles history and philosophy in general [much of the time], and the history and philosophy of science in particular.”
I don’t personally believe Scott is a ‘pseudo-intellectual.’ I think my friend believes something like how Scott has such a degree of influence over so many people that, like it or not, he has found himself as a sort-of intellectual in an age when bloggers wield more influence over public opinion, and accordingly, he should take more intellectual responsibility to not misrepresent the history of ideas. He will be making a case along these lines. Like others in this thread, I’m looking forward to how my skeptic friend will try to convince us of his definition of ‘intellectual’ or ‘pseudo-intellectual,’ and that Scott fits the bill for the latter, since he’s facing such an uphill battle. I personally believe that to call Scott a pseudo-intellectual is erroneous as he doesn’t fit a conventional and common-sensical definition of ‘intellectual’ in the first place, nor self-identifies as one.
So the claims about SSC being a pseudo-intellectual who misrepresents history, intellectual and other; and my claim about how discourse norms from SSC are over-applied within communities which closely follow SSC, are from two different people. Our thematic disagreements with SSC have little in common.
Some ambiguity from my post might be about how I use ‘we’ to refer to my friend and I as if we’ll be doing the whole event together, as opposed to it being separated into two mostly unrelated halves.
What we’re not trying to do is coordinate a hack job to oust someone from the community. Nor are we trying to unilaterally ruin their reputation locally. It’s being recorded for those who can’t attend who want to watch after. Also, there will likely be a transcription. If it helps, I can ensure the transcription is released before the video, if that’s strongly preferred. However, multiple people have expressed an interest in watching a video recording of the live event, so that will also probably go ahead.
I think it’s an antisocial move to put forth a predictably inflammatory thesis (e.g., that an esteemed community member is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading) and then preemptively refuse to defend it. If the thesis is right, then it would be good for us to be convinced of it, but that won’t happen if we don’t get to hear the real arguments in favor. And if it’s wrong, then it should be put to bed before it creates a lot of unproductive social conflict, but that also won’t happen as long as people can claim that we haven’t heard the real arguments in favor (kind of like the motte-and-bailey doctrine).
I don’t doubt your sincerity in that you’re doing this because you don’t believe the thesis yourself, but your friend does. But I don’t think that makes it okay. If your friend, or at least someone who actually believes the thesis, is not going to explain why it should be taken seriously, then it’s bound to be net negative for intellectual progress and you shouldn’t post it.
It appears that you are somehow commenting as a deleted user. The database suggests your account was deleted during LW 1.0. I don’t know the reason for why your account might have been deleted, but I can restore access to it if you want, otherwise I will remove your login privileges.
I think it’s best to restore it, I would have just used my throwaway otherwise and I discovered that I could still log in by a fluke. Although I was enjoying being anonymous while it lasted. Why aren’t deleted accounts just taken off of the database entirely? That seems like a holdover from using Reddit as the forum engine.
I was clarifying my intentions, but my friend, who is the main draw for the event, does intend to defend the thesis Scott is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading. The real arguments will be up in a little over a week though.
Then I think the post should have waited until those arguments were up, so that the discussion could be about their merits. The problem is the “hyping it up to Be An Internet Event”, as Ray put it in a different subthread; since the thing you’re hyping up is so inflammatory, we’re left in the position of having arguments about it without knowing what the real case for it is.
… since the thing you’re hyping up is so inflammatory, we’re left in the position of having arguments about it without knowing what the real case for it is.
Are we, though? Must we have arguments about it? What reason is there for us not to say something like, “this raises red flags but we’ll consider and discuss it properly after it takes place; make sure to document it properly and exhaustively, to signal to us all that you are acting in good faith”, and then say no more for now?
Can’t speak for all the mods, but this is roughly my model of the situation. I don’t think there is currently any action necessary, I don’t think it was a mistake to post here about the meetup (after it had already been planned), but do think that the meetup sends a lot of red flags, but we can discuss its effects further after it actually happened.
That is the type of response I’ve gotten from you, Scott, and the LW mods, for which I’m grateful. To be clear, in this thread I made clear our intent to indeed document all this properly and exhaustively, which we would have done anyway for posterity, but, in light of the comments, we will also do to signal our good faith.
[Note: scroll down and start at the paragraph just before the blockquote, and read to the end, for the tl;dr/conclusion of this comment.]
My friend and I are each critiquing a set of ideas, respectively, which happen to come from Scott. My disagreements with Scott I see as at odds with themes in his writing on discourse he himself created. For example, several posts I’m at odds with Scott wrote are part of the Community and Cooperation sequence put together from SSC posts. The rest of them are related to discourse norms specific to the rationality or similar intellectual communities (e.g., New Atheism). I should state at the event these are opinions we will express, separate from each other as individuals. And on that basis, attendees may change their mind about some ideas from SSC. But neither my friend nor I expect that to be the likely outcome. To be fair, Scott himself often builds upon his own ideas sequentially. He doesn’t do it along a single theme in as short a period as Eliezer did when he wrote the Sequences. But if one could disagree with a set of ideas that were intended to be read as such with the Sequences, which doesn’t seem like it’d be out of question on LW, I don’t know why the same standard shouldn’t apply to posts by Scott either.
My friend thinks Scott has systematic biases, which I think is a tougher case to make, but he is well-aware with the audience he is facing it’s an uphill battle.
While my friend doesn’t think Scott’s writing is particularly good, I disagree. I think he’s as a good a writer as most to be found online, and occasionally much better. I did say both of us disagree with Scott in systematic ways. I don’t think Scott is systematically biased. But I believe he has overstated the value of some discourse norms, or that they’re generalized to too many types of circumstances. But I didn’t state Scott’s writing is bad in particular (i.e., his writing style), which is distinct from the content of some of his writing. That’s what both of us will be addressing. For example, neither of us take issue with any of Scott’s posts on psychiatry.
The title of this post, and of the event, and leaving up top the line about the pseudo-intellectual, have made it appear as if that is all this event will be about. Perhaps that was a mistake. However, that is what my friend called the event when he set it up, and that is the tone he set for the event. So I thought to include those parts to accurately represent what this event might be like. The tone of it is meant to be facetious, but the edge of that humour has apparently been lost.
My friend is certainly no fan of Scott (I think he is a conflict theorist, but I’m unsure). I think he just as a chip on his shoulder, as many of us attending do, which is what we’ll be putting to the test when he is in the hot seat, and we challenge his conjectures (shminux corroborates this state of affairs in this comment). I myself certainly didn’t mean to imply Scott was bad as a person. I just think he is wrong about some stuff. I do wish that his status within the rationality community didn’t make it feel so hard among rationalists to express significant disagreement with Scott. But going by Scott’s comment, he doesn’t share that attitude.
Since neither of us is calling Scott a bad person, it’s inaccurate to say we’ve organized an event for people to coordinate around him being bad. Most of the attendees think Scott is a rationalist par excellence. In Vancouver, the SSC meetup is actually bigger than the rationality meetups (at least in terms of regular attendance to events, though there might be more a unified culture among local rationalists). Scott is held in higher regard than Eliezer among a lot of Vancouverites. So that’s an odd state of affairs that several local community members are open to hearing out a voice critical of Scott. This event is coming from a place of rationalists seeing it as test of their epistemic virtue and mettle, and a form of comfort zone expansion, in the face of a presentation they expect to walk away from still in disagreement with the theses presented. Both my friend and I are coming into this meetup very much being perceived as filling the role of Devil’s Advocates.
What this is meant to be about, then, is organizing an event to criticize multiple, distinct sets of ideas from a single author/blogger (Scott), from different speakers (myself and my friend), who will be speaking to a single audience who are fans of that blogger. The goal is for us to rise to a challenge given to us by the audience, local community members: to convince them some overarching themes from SSC spread out over multiple, thematically related posts. My friend and I will be coming at this from two different angles, as I laid out in another comment, quoted below:
What we’re not trying to do is coordinate a hack job to oust someone from the community. Nor are we trying to unilaterally ruin their reputation locally. It’s being recorded for those who can’t attend who want to watch after. Also, there will likely be a transcription. If it helps, I can ensure the transcription is released before the video, if that’s strongly preferred. However, multiple people have expressed an interest in watching a video recording of the live event, so that will also probably go ahead.
I think it’s an antisocial move to put forth a predictably inflammatory thesis (e.g., that an esteemed community member is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading) and then preemptively refuse to defend it. If the thesis is right, then it would be good for us to be convinced of it, but that won’t happen if we don’t get to hear the real arguments in favor. And if it’s wrong, then it should be put to bed before it creates a lot of unproductive social conflict, but that also won’t happen as long as people can claim that we haven’t heard the real arguments in favor (kind of like the motte-and-bailey doctrine).
I don’t doubt your sincerity in that you’re doing this because you don’t believe the thesis yourself, but your friend does. But I don’t think that makes it okay. If your friend, or at least someone who actually believes the thesis, is not going to explain why it should be taken seriously, then it’s bound to be net negative for intellectual progress and you shouldn’t post it.
Meetup hasn’t happened yet. Should the refutations be given on your time frame?
It appears that you are somehow commenting as a deleted user. The database suggests your account was deleted during LW 1.0. I don’t know the reason for why your account might have been deleted, but I can restore access to it if you want, otherwise I will remove your login privileges.
I think it’s best to restore it, I would have just used my throwaway otherwise and I discovered that I could still log in by a fluke. Although I was enjoying being anonymous while it lasted. Why aren’t deleted accounts just taken off of the database entirely? That seems like a holdover from using Reddit as the forum engine.
We still use the account data for spam-detection and a bunch of related things. So that’s why we keep the data around. Will restore your account.
Ha, if it’s any condolence I did delete the account myself three-ish years ago.
I was clarifying my intentions, but my friend, who is the main draw for the event, does intend to defend the thesis Scott is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading. The real arguments will be up in a little over a week though.
Then I think the post should have waited until those arguments were up, so that the discussion could be about their merits. The problem is the “hyping it up to Be An Internet Event”, as Ray put it in a different subthread; since the thing you’re hyping up is so inflammatory, we’re left in the position of having arguments about it without knowing what the real case for it is.
Are we, though? Must we have arguments about it? What reason is there for us not to say something like, “this raises red flags but we’ll consider and discuss it properly after it takes place; make sure to document it properly and exhaustively, to signal to us all that you are acting in good faith”, and then say no more for now?
Can’t speak for all the mods, but this is roughly my model of the situation. I don’t think there is currently any action necessary, I don’t think it was a mistake to post here about the meetup (after it had already been planned), but do think that the meetup sends a lot of red flags, but we can discuss its effects further after it actually happened.
That is the type of response I’ve gotten from you, Scott, and the LW mods, for which I’m grateful. To be clear, in this thread I made clear our intent to indeed document all this properly and exhaustively, which we would have done anyway for posterity, but, in light of the comments, we will also do to signal our good faith.