7 ms·
im not going to tell you you're wrong for respecting him, but i feel this comment is only telling half the story. He's very well respected in the "rationalist"
by rrose 4y ago
im not going to tell you you're wrong for respecting him, but i feel this comment is only telling half the story. He's very well respected in the "rationalist" community, but he and that community are pretty controversial and definitely not universally respected
- civilian 4y agoIf anyone is curious about the controversy, here's the NYTimes piece on Scott Alexander: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-codex-rationalists.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-cod... It's a decent article, and the few attempts at pearl-clutching fall pretty flat. My only gripe with rationalists is that they suck at running their own conference, CFAR. (:
- 0x_rs 4y agoIf somebody's interested, I would strongly suggest checking out both sides of the dispute and not only that, as the NYT story caused quite some ruckus at the time. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-... https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-times-article?s=r https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
- tomcatfish 4y agoThe operating point is that Scott Alexander isn't looking for a few extra dollars selling potentially fake health products. He makes a *lot* of money on Substack, enough that this concertn isn't valid. Also, "So and so isn't respected in the whole world, only in the people that know about them" isn't a super helpful argument anyways.
- ajkjk 4y agoWell, the point was that he (or at least the community he is in) is actively disrespected by some people as well, so it's a bit more pointed than just "not known about". Mentioning this only for completeness' sake. I think he's good, on net. But somewhat adjacent to some more dubious and distasteful stuff.
- astrange 4y agoWell, he is trustworthy on psychiatry even if he’s a member of a religion that worships nonexistent AIs and Bayes’ theorem. But his main posting hobby is that he wants to be friends with weird internet right-wing intellectuals and that you should too. So every time I glance at the comments there someone wants to give their opinions on exactly who is genetically less intelligent than the commenter.
- floxy 4y agoI heard he's been known to wear white after labor day.
- ajkjk 4y agoYeah, that's not it.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
- Tenoke 4y agoProbably very little if any. Most of his other posts that mention promising substances (e.g. Zembrin and other nootropics) like this one[0] don't even include links and if they do I believe they are usually stripped out but I didn't find one with a link easily to confirm. I'm guessing he just included it as there are multiple different brands for this one. 0. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/nootropics-survey-2020-results https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/nootropics-survey-2020...
- Natsu 4y agoThere's no referral link in this post, he's not profiting from this and he's written about many different treatments.
- thebooktocome 4y ago[flagged]
- slater 4y agoGrifters gonna grift.
- InitialLastName 4y agoBoth communities define themselves by their opposition to mainstream establishments that find them destructive.
- lalaithion 4y agoWould you write the same comment about a Catholic psychiatrist who wrote a blog about both Catholicism and psychiatry? Catholicism is definitely pretty controversial and definitely not universally respected, but I think most people would have pretty strong pushback against a commenter who felt the need to bring up an author's Catholicism regarding a blog post that had little to do with catholicism.