A submission comment since this is very long: Like many hn readers, I personally enjoy Scott Alexander's writing. This is a rather scathing but very long criticism of his style, so I thought it may make for interesting discussion here.
I am trying to make up my mind - OP started with some observations about his style which I found partially relevant, but then derailed into something that seemed motivated more by political disagreement.
Yes - I felt it went into a lot of conjecture about certain events and Scott's responsibility/involvement (and very polarising interpretation of these events). I found that less useful and it would have probably been better to separate arguments.
As somebody who has never liked Siskind's writing, I found this clarifying as to why. Like Sandifer, I think Siskind is absurdly wordy in a way that's murky. And I don't think you can separate the politics from that. What Siskind is up to is thoroughly political and intentionally so. Also intentional is the murk, because it provides him deniability and helps lull an audience into listening to things that plainly stated they would find revolting.
> Does anything straightforwardly emerge from these examples? Do they reveal anything about the nature of tolerance?
No, Alexander's point is precisely that tolerance might be more complex then it appears. This is what happens when someone who is used to pieces with ten straightforward examples of the outgroup being bad encounters an actual attempt to understand and think about something.
Let me tell you for absolutely sure, the author is not, in any way, somebody used to "pieces with ten straightforward examples".
I mean, the very next sentence after the list of those is "This is an extremely unusual and heterogenous group of texts. This is not, in and of itself, a problem; writing lengthy essays that swerve among heterogenous groups of topics is kind of my jam."
> Alexander's point is precisely that tolerance might be more complex then it appears.
That is a patently obvious claim for which anecdotes appearing to support that conclusion - but implying another - are provided.
Why do you think he chose those examples? How is tolerance more complex? What should be done to change how we approach it, if anything?
Put another way, it’s a valid rational argument against the status quo, but without any alternatives suggested, it is a purposeless one - we all know we could do better at anything.
Reading this reminded me of of big reason that I really like Slate Star Codex: When Scott disagrees with someone, he describes that person's opinions fairly.
Scott would summarise David Duke's writing in such a way that David Duke himself would say that's a fair summary, and only then disagree. Maybe that's being "rather more receptive to neo-nazi rhetoric" to quote that eruditorumpress page, and maybe it is. Maybe today's etiquette is best regarded as that which most people to doday. So when Scott doesn't misquote or put strawmen into anyone's mouths, he's just out of touch.
A few lines down from the "rather more" quote is a statement that Scott "is someone who […] openly advocates eugenics." He is? I hadn't noticed. Scott would have inserted quotations to support such statement. Which may be out of touch and may make him seem receptive &c, but I like it.
Ironically, you haven't actually fairly described or interacted with the points of this person you disagree with. And you even quoted them out of context to misrepresent them as not providing quotations of Scott openly advocating eugenics, when they did exactly that just a few paragraphs after the line you quote.
Well, I'm sorry if the quotations are misleading. I find it difficult to insert long quotations on HN, while making them look like quotations. So I tried to pick good, representative but short ones.
Could you show me how you would do it? Post something and insert long enough quotations (from the part I partly quoted) that they are fair and representative, and still clearly look like quotations?
I know. It's an honest question though. Look at my blog and see how trollish I am, if you want.
I wonder whether the difficulty of quoting extensively contributes to the sometimes too polarised tone on HN. As far as I can tell it's ~impossible to do civilised things like quoting two paragraphs, emphasising the key parts and appending "emphasis mine". Try it, and IME people will be unable to tell the quoted parts from your own. It's a magnet for misunderstandig due to lack of markup.
The best I've been able to do is to keep quotations down to a line or a little more than that, so that both quotation marks are clearly visible at the same time. But that shortness opens the quotation to people saying "taken out of context", no matter how much I try to pick fairly.
"The best that I've been able to do" ≠ "the best that can be done".
that David Duke himself would say that's a fair summary
That's an interesting choice, given that both Duke and Alexander have a history of obfuscating their real intentions and beliefs. Giving a racist neo-Nazi like Duke a 'fair summary' is not the neutral approach you seem to think it is.
> I would like to begin by stressing how deeply miserable I am to be back on this beat. [...] Since people seem to love pointing out that Neoreaction a Basilisk does not actually talk about Scott Siskind, aka Scott Alexander, here’s another goddamn essay.
The author certainly didn’t owe anyone another article, but it would be nice if there was a point to it beyond pointing out Scott’s obvious and consistent reluctance to reach falsifiable conclusions or express more than weakly held opinions.
Isn’t all philosophical writing, good or bad, vague?
No. Bad philosophical writing is vague. Sometimes even good philosophical writing is difficult or murky, because the author is grappling with concepts novel enough that it's hard to find ways to express them. But the best is quite clear. As an example, read Frankfurt's "On Bullshit", which takes an under-examined topic and adds significant clarity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
And there's definitely a point beyond what you claim. It's that Siskind is intentionally obscure because he's hiding something: low quality arguments leading to disturbing conclusions. And Siskind is quite aware that's he's intentionally hiding what he's up to. He's even admitted it privately: https://twitter.com/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001
Apologies for my brevity, but that was my point. The author’s foregone conclusion appears to be that since his conclusions are bad, so too must be his reasoning; rationalism is rhetorical by nature, so deconstructing it this way isn’t going to convince anyone who didn’t already agree.
I’d love to see a takedown of some of those linked and earnest statements - though I suppose folks can be close-minded about “facts” as well (statistics can’t lie, right? /s)
>The author’s foregone conclusion appears to be that since his conclusions are bad, so too must be his reasoning
I don't think that's accurate at all. She explicitly states that she's critiquing his reasoning and spends the vast majority of the essay doing that.
Although it's worth pointing out that a conclusion being incorrect is good evidence for either the reasoning or the premises of an argument being incorrect.
Exactly. The essay is quite specific about why the reasoning is bad. Sandifer's breakdown makes clear why I think Siskind's work is often in the category of "not even wrong". [1] To be wrong, one has to be clear, specific, and coherent. And I said, I don't think it's an accident that Siskind is murky. It serves his political purpose.
I almost agree, but I thought being NEW excluded self-awareness, as that’s more of a Gish gallop (as mentioned in TFA). The problem with taking one of those on earnestly is as I mentioned in the neighbor.
I have no idea what "thought being NEW excluded self-awareness" could mean here, and I am equally befuddled by what you think is more of a Gish gallop, and am not confident you understand what one is.
I don’t think an author can ‘not even wrong’ intentionally - if it is intentional, then it would be something like a Gish gallop, which Sandifer describes another SSC essay as.
I don’t necessarily agree, but I understand why she’d think so.
It is quite easy to be "not even wrong" intentionally. Bullshitter often are, in that truth is irrelevant.
A good example comes from Cialdini's "Influence". He describes a study where they had someone come up to somebody using a library copier and ask to use it. Compliance went up significantly if the asker gave a reason, even if that reason was, "because I need to make some copies." That statement obviously ads no new information; the circularity makes it invalid as an argument. But it's effective persuasion. It's not even wrong, because it doesn't rise to the level of trying to make a decent argument.
Another clear example is America's foremost bullshiter, Trump. He clearly doesn't care about being right. His goal is not to make an intellectually coherent argument. He cares about influence. Like Siskind, his goal is manipulation, not the shedding of light.
She is critiquing his reasoning by asserting he isn’t reasoning at all, but making rhetorical arguments; I completely agree with this! As another poster pointed out, he has been caught being candid about that behavior.
My critique, in turn, is that this behavior is self-evident to anyone who is willing to recognize it, a legitimate basis for decision making to rationalists, and irrelevant to folks who are only interested in agreeing with whatever conclusions they see in those murky essays.
When a writer opens 10k words by moaning, and not even moaning in an entertaining way, I have no time in my life for this.
I read enough of this to see that they're setting up to criticize the way someone is presenting an argument. The few attempts at self awareness to the irony does not fix anything. It just makes it all the more tedious.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 11.4 ms ] threadI am trying to make up my mind - OP started with some observations about his style which I found partially relevant, but then derailed into something that seemed motivated more by political disagreement.
No, Alexander's point is precisely that tolerance might be more complex then it appears. This is what happens when someone who is used to pieces with ten straightforward examples of the outgroup being bad encounters an actual attempt to understand and think about something.
I mean, the very next sentence after the list of those is "This is an extremely unusual and heterogenous group of texts. This is not, in and of itself, a problem; writing lengthy essays that swerve among heterogenous groups of topics is kind of my jam."
That is a patently obvious claim for which anecdotes appearing to support that conclusion - but implying another - are provided.
Why do you think he chose those examples? How is tolerance more complex? What should be done to change how we approach it, if anything?
Put another way, it’s a valid rational argument against the status quo, but without any alternatives suggested, it is a purposeless one - we all know we could do better at anything.
Scott would summarise David Duke's writing in such a way that David Duke himself would say that's a fair summary, and only then disagree. Maybe that's being "rather more receptive to neo-nazi rhetoric" to quote that eruditorumpress page, and maybe it is. Maybe today's etiquette is best regarded as that which most people to doday. So when Scott doesn't misquote or put strawmen into anyone's mouths, he's just out of touch.
A few lines down from the "rather more" quote is a statement that Scott "is someone who […] openly advocates eugenics." He is? I hadn't noticed. Scott would have inserted quotations to support such statement. Which may be out of touch and may make him seem receptive &c, but I like it.
Could you show me how you would do it? Post something and insert long enough quotations (from the part I partly quoted) that they are fair and representative, and still clearly look like quotations?
I wonder whether the difficulty of quoting extensively contributes to the sometimes too polarised tone on HN. As far as I can tell it's ~impossible to do civilised things like quoting two paragraphs, emphasising the key parts and appending "emphasis mine". Try it, and IME people will be unable to tell the quoted parts from your own. It's a magnet for misunderstandig due to lack of markup.
The best I've been able to do is to keep quotations down to a line or a little more than that, so that both quotation marks are clearly visible at the same time. But that shortness opens the quotation to people saying "taken out of context", no matter how much I try to pick fairly.
"The best that I've been able to do" ≠ "the best that can be done".
That's an interesting choice, given that both Duke and Alexander have a history of obfuscating their real intentions and beliefs. Giving a racist neo-Nazi like Duke a 'fair summary' is not the neutral approach you seem to think it is.
The author certainly didn’t owe anyone another article, but it would be nice if there was a point to it beyond pointing out Scott’s obvious and consistent reluctance to reach falsifiable conclusions or express more than weakly held opinions.
Isn’t all philosophical writing, good or bad, vague?
And there's definitely a point beyond what you claim. It's that Siskind is intentionally obscure because he's hiding something: low quality arguments leading to disturbing conclusions. And Siskind is quite aware that's he's intentionally hiding what he's up to. He's even admitted it privately: https://twitter.com/ArsonAtDennys/status/1362153191102677001
I’d love to see a takedown of some of those linked and earnest statements - though I suppose folks can be close-minded about “facts” as well (statistics can’t lie, right? /s)
I don't think that's accurate at all. She explicitly states that she's critiquing his reasoning and spends the vast majority of the essay doing that.
Although it's worth pointing out that a conclusion being incorrect is good evidence for either the reasoning or the premises of an argument being incorrect.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
I don’t necessarily agree, but I understand why she’d think so.
A good example comes from Cialdini's "Influence". He describes a study where they had someone come up to somebody using a library copier and ask to use it. Compliance went up significantly if the asker gave a reason, even if that reason was, "because I need to make some copies." That statement obviously ads no new information; the circularity makes it invalid as an argument. But it's effective persuasion. It's not even wrong, because it doesn't rise to the level of trying to make a decent argument.
Another clear example is America's foremost bullshiter, Trump. He clearly doesn't care about being right. His goal is not to make an intellectually coherent argument. He cares about influence. Like Siskind, his goal is manipulation, not the shedding of light.
My critique, in turn, is that this behavior is self-evident to anyone who is willing to recognize it, a legitimate basis for decision making to rationalists, and irrelevant to folks who are only interested in agreeing with whatever conclusions they see in those murky essays.
I read enough of this to see that they're setting up to criticize the way someone is presenting an argument. The few attempts at self awareness to the irony does not fix anything. It just makes it all the more tedious.