GeniesLoki

if something can poison your brain just with words it's good writing (assuming you're not stoopid); so is scott bad, or is he harmful? can't be both

Counterpoint: if this is the case why does everyone have a Hogwarts house? (I am not as negative about SSC as Erin but I'd still hesitate to recommend his work without a lot more context TBH)

I guess to add to this: I put SSC in the same category as a lot of woo. He is worth reading and trying to extract value from, but the process is intrinsically a slightly adversarial one and taking him too seriously is worse than not reading him.

Reading him is a net positive if you're able to cleanly separate the good bits from the bad bits, but he isn't going to do that for you (because he can't), and I'd rather people not take on either than take on both.

What do you think the bad bits are?

He's very confident of his position and he's very big on "principle of charity" as a talking point but he's not actually very good at being charitable to competing worldviews. Most blatant example is that basically every time feminism comes up you need to salt the post liberally.

wait you read Scott as confident? I'm not being hostile here I'm just shocked

"Confident" is maybe not the right word. "Convincing" perhaps. He's the sort of "not confident" where you tell people you don't know what you're talking about then talk like you know what you're talking about and people come away believing you more than if you hadn't.