I can answer the meta-level question. My friend Jordan wasn’t intending to write this up, as he was only going to be presenting to the local rationality group. I’m trying to get more rationality meetups/events to happen in Vancouver, so after Jordan made a Facebook event for this for the local rationality groups, I invited more people online, including here on LW. On the event invitation pages, there have been multiple requests to people who won’t be present to either take notes, record it on video, and/or have a web presence for people to follow along online. There is already going to be at least ten people at the event in person. There might only be 30 people in the local rationality community, so it’s significant. We haven’t even invited everyone we might want to yet.
I’m also helping run the local university effective altruism (EA) club this year. My friend who has a background in film and I are going to upload recordings of speaker talks given to the club by experts on various fields related to EA. But we haven’t done that before. So I thought what with the multiple requests to put up the product of this event online, this would be a good practice run before we did more official-looking videos for the university club.
Every time I asked Jordan if he was okay with these escalations of how public this event was, he okayed it. Since it was going to be a colloquiam-style event, and people online wanted to see it, I figured we’d take questions online. So I made this post.
Jordan has been hanging out with the Vancouver rationality community for several months, or maybe over a year now. He also knows people outside the community who also read SSC, as it’s a popular blog. Apparently he’s disliked SSC, told people about it one by one, realized that took too long, and has been planning a simple meetup about it for months. And he finally set it up. Even before I posted about it on LW, locally it definitely took on the feel of what the rationalist equivalent of a sporting event would be like. It has the feel of some kind of epistemic wresting match to me. I don’t know how it wound up that way.
Who Jordan considers a real intellectual is a question he’ll have to answer. I just think SSC is a neat blog. I’d actually be more critical of how SSC fans, rationalists and effective altruists have taken SSC memes like the virtue of silence, or blaming everything on Moloch, to stifle conversation the way the “politics is the mind-killer” meme is often overused. It seems readers use them in a stronger fashion Scott originally intended. He has never struck me as the sort to state things as if they’re set in stone (e.g., he hardly writes in the sweeping tone Eliezer often wrote the Sequences in).
I’d actually be more critical of how SSC fans, rationalists and effective altruists have taken SSC memes like the virtue of silence, or blaming everything on Moloch, to stifle conversation the way the “politics is the mind-killer” meme is often overused.
This feels really disingenuous to me, given statements like “Scott Alexander is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading.” and ” SSC bungles history and philosophy in general, and the history and philosophy of science in particular”
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. As I stated in the OP:
For a long time I myself have felt SSC is subtly but crucially wrong about some discourse norms and memes which have become rote in the rationality and effective altruism communities, and stymie much intellectual progress in both.
I also stated in the coming days between now and the event, I’ll be writing up some posts about the SSC posts I referenced myself.
While I can’t speak for my fellow presenter, in the week between now and then I’m going to try to write up some posts responding to Scott at length, which should make it easier to ask myself more pointed questions.
I’m a member of the rationality community myself, and intended to pursue this project in accordance with community norms. That was also before many people stated their preference for someone in my shoes to do so here in the comments. I still intend to do so. But I thought I’d make this post a week before the event to field questions fans of SSC and other community members might have regarding significant disagreement with SSC.
I can answer the meta-level question. My friend Jordan wasn’t intending to write this up, as he was only going to be presenting to the local rationality group. I’m trying to get more rationality meetups/events to happen in Vancouver, so after Jordan made a Facebook event for this for the local rationality groups, I invited more people online, including here on LW. On the event invitation pages, there have been multiple requests to people who won’t be present to either take notes, record it on video, and/or have a web presence for people to follow along online. There is already going to be at least ten people at the event in person. There might only be 30 people in the local rationality community, so it’s significant. We haven’t even invited everyone we might want to yet.
I’m also helping run the local university effective altruism (EA) club this year. My friend who has a background in film and I are going to upload recordings of speaker talks given to the club by experts on various fields related to EA. But we haven’t done that before. So I thought what with the multiple requests to put up the product of this event online, this would be a good practice run before we did more official-looking videos for the university club.
Every time I asked Jordan if he was okay with these escalations of how public this event was, he okayed it. Since it was going to be a colloquiam-style event, and people online wanted to see it, I figured we’d take questions online. So I made this post.
Jordan has been hanging out with the Vancouver rationality community for several months, or maybe over a year now. He also knows people outside the community who also read SSC, as it’s a popular blog. Apparently he’s disliked SSC, told people about it one by one, realized that took too long, and has been planning a simple meetup about it for months. And he finally set it up. Even before I posted about it on LW, locally it definitely took on the feel of what the rationalist equivalent of a sporting event would be like. It has the feel of some kind of epistemic wresting match to me. I don’t know how it wound up that way.
Who Jordan considers a real intellectual is a question he’ll have to answer. I just think SSC is a neat blog. I’d actually be more critical of how SSC fans, rationalists and effective altruists have taken SSC memes like the virtue of silence, or blaming everything on Moloch, to stifle conversation the way the “politics is the mind-killer” meme is often overused. It seems readers use them in a stronger fashion Scott originally intended. He has never struck me as the sort to state things as if they’re set in stone (e.g., he hardly writes in the sweeping tone Eliezer often wrote the Sequences in).
This feels really disingenuous to me, given statements like “Scott Alexander is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading.” and ” SSC bungles history and philosophy in general, and the history and philosophy of science in particular”
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. As I stated in the OP:
I also stated in the coming days between now and the event, I’ll be writing up some posts about the SSC posts I referenced myself.
I’m a member of the rationality community myself, and intended to pursue this project in accordance with community norms. That was also before many people stated their preference for someone in my shoes to do so here in the comments. I still intend to do so. But I thought I’d make this post a week before the event to field questions fans of SSC and other community members might have regarding significant disagreement with SSC.