Comment by igorkraw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by igorkraw | Hacker News Reader

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In the years that I've read him I noticed this is something that happens from time to time with Scott Siskinds (see 3 if you take offense to me using his name) texts, especially when he steps out of his zone of competence to opine on politics, science in general, AI etc. The simple, obvious answer that the establishment believes in is met with some snarky ridicule and on goes the article, with some very subtle rhetoric veiled in the irony ("rigour doesn't matter, all scientists have biases, you can't trust rigorous science if the wrong people do it" is the message behind [quote] Studies are going to be confounded by the allegiance of the researcher. When researchers who don’t believe something discover it, that’s when it’s worth looking into. [/quote] ).

I often wondered why this is, because he seems like a very smart guy with interesting ideas sometimes, so it seemed kind of weird and conflicting.

Then I learned he's trying to hide his beliefs about scientific racism and political views (1) while often writing in the tone of "pained centrist just wanting to understand things scientifically" and it made much more sense as (in the worst case) an old school propaganda technique of FUD in science and rigorous science to make the HBD go down better and (more charitably) as Mr. Siskind just being another bright-but-human person who when writing on things he has actual expertise on can be very well worth reading, but simply shouldn't be trusted on anything aside from this. Rationalwiki has a decent writeup on him (2)

1: https://web.archive.org/web/20210217195335/https://twitter.c...

2: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Alexander

3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25874025

This is a strange take.

I thought it was a fascinating write up about how if you assume ESP doesn't exist then parapsychology research has something important to say about the replication crisis in social sciences.

Going into how double blind solves all this means skipping the interesting bit: that parapsychology can be viewed as a control group for the scientific method.

Exactly. He's definitely smart, and so it was a mystery to me why his articles were so incredibly long and rambling. (I get that some people enjoy his prose regardless of content, but I'm not one of them.) Why would a smart person who in theory wants to convey important points be so obscurantist about them? I threw up my hands and put it down to a personality quirk.

It was the Sandifer article "The Beigeness" that cleared it up for me: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to...

And I really object to the comment I'm replying to getting flagged. I get that some people will disagree, but flagging it as if it were somehow inappropriate is a misuse of flagging power.

That was a very eye opening article that also cleared up what was bothering me about Scott's style. Thanks for sharing.

Unfortunately, while the Sandifer article does make some valid points about Scott Alexander's writing, it also deploys plenty of questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning itself. I'm personally not impressed by either article.

You're welcome to make the case, of course. But you'll understand why your comment doesn't persuade as is.

Well, a quick red flag in Sandifer's article is that she describes Slate Star Codex as "a crackpot blog that keeps giving cover to f---ing nazis".

But what first got my attention (well, second, since the first thing was that Sandifer's article is as long and rambling as Alexander's is--both of them could have made what valid points they had with far fewer words) was this statement, a little earlier, about Scott Aaronson (referring to the comment in the blog post of Aaronson's that Alexander's article links to):

> Aaronson was declaring that, as a shy and nerdy man, he was a member of "one of society's least privileged classes" in response to someone saying they were a rape victim.

The reason this got my attention was that I had previously read the Aaronson post in question, and the comments, and I didn't remember any such thing. So I read through the post and comments again. The commenter that Aaronson was responding to when he talked about his personal history (the comment of his that Alexander quoted) did say she was a rape victim in that comment thread--but she said it after the quoted comment from Aaronson. Aaronson's quoted comment was in response to an earlier comment of hers, which did not say anything about her having been raped.

So Sandifer lied in her article about a fact that was key to her argument. I understand this is just one example, but there isn't room here for a multi-thousand-word critique and I don't have time to write one anyway. But the example I have given is not the only questionable thing I saw.

What's your evidence that there was a lie, as opposed to just a reasonable error of fact or an editing error?

Amy did imply she was a victim of sexual assault previously, just not rape. So at the very least it was an error of degree. And regardless, Aaronson, had no reason to think he wasn't talking to a rape victim. The odds were something he surely knew. So I think Sandifer's correct that "this was neither the time nor the place to express them". And that's coming from a "shy and nerdy" guy.

Given that you're very up in arms about "questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning", you'll see why I would expect you to do better than turning a reasonable and non-fatal error into a supposed lie about a key fact. But it is about what I'd expect from somebody working hard to defend a cryptofascist.

> it is about what I'd expect from somebody working hard to defend a cryptofascist.

Obviously we are not going to find any common ground here if that's your opinion of Scott Alexander.

That's definitely not true. I just agreed with you that there was an error in Sandifer's article. We agree that questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning are bad.

But if you can't talk to me or take responsibility for your own words because I have a negative opinion of one of your faves, that's a choice you're making.

have you considered the possibility that he is simply correct about HBD?

Depends what you and him exactly mean, but since he's talking about the neoreactionaries being correct, I'll assume he doesn't mean the scientific version which posits that race has no genetic basis (ctrl+F "race")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation

but more this variation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism.

Even if it was correct, I think if there are no nefarious consequences being pushed for, I think people who want to argue HBD should rise to the challenge of explaining in plain english what they mean and what consequences they would draw from their assumption being correct, instead of hiding behind obfuscation. While I am not necessarily 100% aligned with groups like AntiFa chapters, BLM etc., at least they are honest about what they think and want to achieve.

Have you considered the long history of racist misuse of science and its "just asking questions" defenders?

That has nothing to do with its veracity.

That is clearly not the case.

For hundreds of years people have energetically misused science to justify both their racist feelings and systemic racism. And other people have showed up to disingenuously defend that in many ways, including your evasive, just-asking-questions routine.

There is no reason to think that activity has stopped. And indeed, the shift in the last 50 years to make overt racism moderately less socially acceptable suggests that we might see an increase in the amount of covert racism. So I feel no obligation to take the latest iteration any more seriously than I would the 1850s version. It's the same deal with perpetual motion machines or multi-level marketing schemes or religious door-knockers: the next one to come along could finally be the one that isn't horseshit. But that's not the way to bet.

If you'd like to make the argument that your personal favorite scientific racism is better science than the scientific racism favored by other racists, feel free to take a swing at it. But just looking over your comment history, I'm not going to give it a lot of weight.

Just evaluate evidence and methodology. Historical factors are irrelevant. You obviously have a preconceived Truth that could never be disproven no matter what was empirically shown, but that's not science.

Nah. I don't have The Truth, just some pretty good heuristics on how I spend my time. I've all ready looked into enough religion to know that I don't have to give any time to godbotherers. I've already looked at enough perpetual motion machines to know that I don't have to disprove each one. And I don't have to hear out each racist on why this time he's rilly rilly rite about how the people he hated all along are scientifically bad.

Is it possible that one day somebody will come along with a real perpetual motion machine and I'll miss out for a while? Sure. But there are other people who enjoy evaluating that stuff enough that I'll eventually hear about it. And it's the same deal here. I don't get my theology from evangelical Christians, and I don't get my bioanthropology from evangelical racists.

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