To understand the recent NYT article about Scott Alexander, you need to understand the forum SA's detractors hang out in, SneerClub. Here's how it advertises itself, on its sidebar: "the club attracts psychologically f'd-up people. Bullies, in a word".https://archive.is/Vplke
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James Babcock Retweeted David Gerard 🐍 👑 🌷
One SneerClub regular is David Gerard, who has written 3606 comments there, and made a project of feeding material to Cade Metz (https://twitter.com/davidgerard/status/1360735880466604040 …). He also frequently edits the LessWrong Wikipedia article, always towards criticism (in violation of WP:AXEGRIND).
James Babcock added,
David Gerard 🐍 👑 🌷 @davidgerardi sent Metz SO MUCH material for that NYT SlateStarCodex article, i can see the ghosts of what i sent every phrase is firmly backed up by multiple sources - but it was run through the NYT mealymouthed centrist filter read every line as the strong version of the statement7 replies 0 retweets 24 likesShow this thread -
This is why there are persistent rumors that the rationality community is affiliated with neoreaction, HBD, and so on: because we're nerds, and rumors make good weapons for bullies.
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Replying to @jimrandomh
Hbd was always a central point of discussion in the ssc subreddit with most users agreeing with it. Not a rumour
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Replying to @LegendOfHouse
Looks like there was an HBD question on the reader survey: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/01/20/ssc-survey-results-2020/ …. On a 1-5 scale, mean response: 2.75. I never spent much time on the subreddit, but I picked a few random points in time on http://archive.org and didn't see it mentioned on its front page.
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Replying to @jimrandomh @LegendOfHouse
My own take (I think very common): innate differences exist and sometimes matter, eg COVID and vitamin D deficiency, but it's silly to invoke genetics to socioeconomic differences in the US, when there's so much known, overt racism in our country's recent history.
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Replying to @jimrandomh @LegendOfHouse
It's easy to point at nerds who insists on getting technicalities like genetic-differences-in-vitamin-D deficiency right, and misconstrue them as though they endorsed phrenology.
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Replying to @jimrandomh @LegendOfHouse
Phrenology and IQ science is the same tier of "hilarious bullshit". Yet, there's a question asking your IQ. Further, a mean answer rounded up to literally 3 on a scale of 1-5 does not indicate a strong concern for the nutrition of black people.
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How do you feel about Scientific-racism and phrenology? Slate Star Codex readers: It’s alright I guess, give it a 3 out of 5. Shockingly this is not as reassuring as you may think
@jimrandomh.1 reply 2 retweets 13 likes
One of the funniest, saddest, most memeable moments on SSC was Scott's readership actually going out to get IQ tested en masse and a ton of them completely losing their shit when their score wasn't as high as they thought it should be
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ArsonAtDennys and
Arthur Chu Retweeted Arthur Chu
And Scott had to write this ridiculously carefully phrased blog post saying that yes the Science says IQ matters a great deal but that doesn't mean *your* IQ matters You're not like one of those dumb Chads, you *know* you're nothttps://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1009921254751498240?s=20 …
Arthur Chu added,
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ArsonAtDennys and
Maybe they should have just fallen back on the old, "IQ isn't real". That is what I do.
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