I think it’s good and important to criticize things, and I don’t consider myself above criticism.
On the other hand, it’s also kind of freaking me out to hear that a bunch of people in a city I’ve been in for like an hour tops are organizing an event using a derisive nickname for me and calling me a pseudointellectual, especially since I just sort of stumbled across it by coincidence.
I’m not sure how to balance these different considerations, and probably my feelings aren’t as important as moving the engine of intellectual progress, but for the record I’m not really happy with the attempt made to balance them here.
I don’t know if I am supposed to defend myself, but I will just say that I am particularly tired of criticism of the Dark Ages post. I’ve found this to have been a bunch of Redditors talking about how a freshman history student would have been ashamed to make so many howling mistakes, and then a bunch of trained historians telling me they thought it was basically fine (for example, here’s a professional medieval historian saying he agrees with it entirely, here’s a Renaissance historian who thinks it’s fine, here’s a historian of early modern science who says the same—also, I got an email from a Dominican friar who liked it, which is especially neat because it’s like my post on the Middle Ages getting approval from the Middle Ages). I’m not saying this to make an argument from authority, I’m saying it because the people who disagree with me keep trying to make an argument from authority, and I don’t want people to fall for it.
And, okay, one more thing. My Piketty review begins ” I am not an economist. Many people who are economists have reviewed this book already. I review it only because if I had to slog through reading this thing I at least want to get a blog post out of it. If anything in my review contradicts that of real economists, trust them instead of me ” If you’re using errors in it to call me a pseudo-intellectual, I feel like you’re just being a jerk at this point. Commenters did find several ways I was insufficiently critical of Piketty’s claims, which I describe here ; I also added a correction note to that effect to the original post. The post was nevertheless recommend by an economist who said it was “the best summary I’ve ever read from a non-economist”. Again, I’m not saying this as an argument from authority, I’m saying it because I know from experience that the criticism is going to involve a claim that “it’s so bad that no knowledgeable person would ever take it seriously”, and now you’ll know that’s not true.
Rationalists have a tendency to sound a little bit like Spock, but in reality we are all human here. I’d say that doing a good job managing relationships with other humans, and learning to be kind, doesn’t just fall within the realm of rationalism—it’s crucial to our success! There are a number of things I love about Scott. To me he seems insightful and even-handed, but most relevant here is that he seems like a nice person. So I was not at all impressed the first time I heard Jordan, when he said:
“Alright so I just read the worst Slate Star Codex article I’ve ever read (a new low) and I’m now more determined than ever to host an event where I try to convince members of this community that Scott Alexander is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading.”
This was not followed by any explanation of what Scott had done wrong, or what a “pseudo-intellectual” is. Though reportedly it was meant to be facetious, I just couldn’t read it that way. If you’re going to criticize Scott, try at least not to make obvious mistakes that Scott himself wouldn’t make, such as sounding like a jerk.
That said, I am curious what Jordan has to say. For starters, which writers are sufficiently free from mistakes that they are “worth reading”, and what criteria qualify a person as “intellectual”?
I’m sure Scott has made mistakes. Personally, I make mistakes with shocking regularity. And I do think when Scott is talking about a subject where he has little expertise, the disclaimer at the top about that lack of expertise should not be in small text, and Scott may need more expressions of uncertainty (weasel words).
But I think there is a tension between correctness and popularity. The thing is, perfection is not only difficult, it’s time consuming. I have been known to review my own articles over a dozen times before posting them (and errors may still slip through). My carefulness in turn leads to a low posting frequency, which probably contributes to my unpopularity. If you want to be popular, you have to put out. Look at The Eliezer—I think his stuff is riddled with defects of various types, but he wrote fast and was popular. His stuff is at least mostly good enough to be worth reading, so I do.
I wonder if we could develop a process where the community’s best writers (and the occasional newcomer) could write “drafts” which would be posted semi-publicly in a “draft” area and then be edited by members trusted by the author (with expert input, if the subject matter demands expert input), before being reposted “publicly for reals this time”. Though if you ask me, priority one for improvement isn’t SSC, it’s The Sequences.
Your historian friends agreed with the global claim which I believe was fairly well established. From what I’ve heard talking to the interlocutor hosting this meetup (I am not he), it was *how* you extrapolated to that global claim from a local one that is being taken issue with. Notice that the historian on your blog also believes it is difficult to say to what degree Europe declined during the Dark Ages, although there are many possible markers. Notice that the reddit historian backing you is apologizing for your background rather than providing corroborative concrete evidence related to the structure of your argument. The Dominican Friar thing is nice and it’s understandable why you wouldn’t quote a private email, but it’s of course possible that they would make a similar mistake and taken without detail, it definitely seems like a pithy authority appeal.
As far as this meetup goes, from my discussions with the interlocutor, I’d expect mainly methodological criticisms, and criticisms of the rhetorical moves used to waive the limitations of the methodology. These are not the same as criticisms of the goals of SSC, or even the goals of a particular post. The substitutes recommended will be deeper reading of primary and secondary sources instead of *only* using SSC as a source (being that it’s tertiary and pop-sci), at the very least.
Maybe these criticisms once brought to light won’t be enough to brand you as a “pseudo-intellectual”, but people who do not take these kinds of criticisms into account will read your disclaimers against your expertise, yet would still be left with the inability to understand how these affect the soundness of your claims, because supposedly, they too, are not domain experts. I think such refutations, if valid and pondered, could be educational and sanity-raising for everyone in the SSC blogosphere.
I think it’s good and important to criticize things, and I don’t consider myself above criticism.
On the other hand, it’s also kind of freaking me out to hear that a bunch of people in a city I’ve been in for like an hour tops are organizing an event using a derisive nickname for me and calling me a pseudointellectual, especially since I just sort of stumbled across it by coincidence.
I’m not sure how to balance these different considerations, and probably my feelings aren’t as important as moving the engine of intellectual progress, but for the record I’m not really happy with the attempt made to balance them here.
I don’t know if I am supposed to defend myself, but I will just say that I am particularly tired of criticism of the Dark Ages post. I’ve found this to have been a bunch of Redditors talking about how a freshman history student would have been ashamed to make so many howling mistakes, and then a bunch of trained historians telling me they thought it was basically fine (for example, here’s a professional medieval historian saying he agrees with it entirely, here’s a Renaissance historian who thinks it’s fine, here’s a historian of early modern science who says the same—also, I got an email from a Dominican friar who liked it, which is especially neat because it’s like my post on the Middle Ages getting approval from the Middle Ages). I’m not saying this to make an argument from authority, I’m saying it because the people who disagree with me keep trying to make an argument from authority, and I don’t want people to fall for it.
And, okay, one more thing. My Piketty review begins ” I am not an economist. Many people who are economists have reviewed this book already. I review it only because if I had to slog through reading this thing I at least want to get a blog post out of it. If anything in my review contradicts that of real economists, trust them instead of me ” If you’re using errors in it to call me a pseudo-intellectual, I feel like you’re just being a jerk at this point. Commenters did find several ways I was insufficiently critical of Piketty’s claims, which I describe here ; I also added a correction note to that effect to the original post. The post was nevertheless recommend by an economist who said it was “the best summary I’ve ever read from a non-economist”. Again, I’m not saying this as an argument from authority, I’m saying it because I know from experience that the criticism is going to involve a claim that “it’s so bad that no knowledgeable person would ever take it seriously”, and now you’ll know that’s not true.
Yeah, that feels pretty ugly to me too. Sorry you have to face this crap.
Rationalists have a tendency to sound a little bit like Spock, but in reality we are all human here. I’d say that doing a good job managing relationships with other humans, and learning to be kind, doesn’t just fall within the realm of rationalism—it’s crucial to our success! There are a number of things I love about Scott. To me he seems insightful and even-handed, but most relevant here is that he seems like a nice person. So I was not at all impressed the first time I heard Jordan, when he said:
“Alright so I just read the worst Slate Star Codex article I’ve ever read (a new low) and I’m now more determined than ever to host an event where I try to convince members of this community that Scott Alexander is a pseudo-intellectual not worth reading.”
This was not followed by any explanation of what Scott had done wrong, or what a “pseudo-intellectual” is. Though reportedly it was meant to be facetious, I just couldn’t read it that way. If you’re going to criticize Scott, try at least not to make obvious mistakes that Scott himself wouldn’t make, such as sounding like a jerk.
That said, I am curious what Jordan has to say. For starters, which writers are sufficiently free from mistakes that they are “worth reading”, and what criteria qualify a person as “intellectual”?
I’m sure Scott has made mistakes. Personally, I make mistakes with shocking regularity. And I do think when Scott is talking about a subject where he has little expertise, the disclaimer at the top about that lack of expertise should not be in small text, and Scott may need more expressions of uncertainty (weasel words).
But I think there is a tension between correctness and popularity. The thing is, perfection is not only difficult, it’s time consuming. I have been known to review my own articles over a dozen times before posting them (and errors may still slip through). My carefulness in turn leads to a low posting frequency, which probably contributes to my unpopularity. If you want to be popular, you have to put out. Look at The Eliezer—I think his stuff is riddled with defects of various types, but he wrote fast and was popular. His stuff is at least mostly good enough to be worth reading, so I do.
I wonder if we could develop a process where the community’s best writers (and the occasional newcomer) could write “drafts” which would be posted semi-publicly in a “draft” area and then be edited by members trusted by the author (with expert input, if the subject matter demands expert input), before being reposted “publicly for reals this time”. Though if you ask me, priority one for improvement isn’t SSC, it’s The Sequences.
Your historian friends agreed with the global claim which I believe was fairly well established. From what I’ve heard talking to the interlocutor hosting this meetup (I am not he), it was *how* you extrapolated to that global claim from a local one that is being taken issue with. Notice that the historian on your blog also believes it is difficult to say to what degree Europe declined during the Dark Ages, although there are many possible markers. Notice that the reddit historian backing you is apologizing for your background rather than providing corroborative concrete evidence related to the structure of your argument. The Dominican Friar thing is nice and it’s understandable why you wouldn’t quote a private email, but it’s of course possible that they would make a similar mistake and taken without detail, it definitely seems like a pithy authority appeal.
As far as this meetup goes, from my discussions with the interlocutor, I’d expect mainly methodological criticisms, and criticisms of the rhetorical moves used to waive the limitations of the methodology. These are not the same as criticisms of the goals of SSC, or even the goals of a particular post. The substitutes recommended will be deeper reading of primary and secondary sources instead of *only* using SSC as a source (being that it’s tertiary and pop-sci), at the very least.
Maybe these criticisms once brought to light won’t be enough to brand you as a “pseudo-intellectual”, but people who do not take these kinds of criticisms into account will read your disclaimers against your expertise, yet would still be left with the inability to understand how these affect the soundness of your claims, because supposedly, they too, are not domain experts. I think such refutations, if valid and pondered, could be educational and sanity-raising for everyone in the SSC blogosphere.