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Jeez at the NYT hit piece on SSC. It doesn’t take much undeserved hostility to get me defending the rationalists instead of trolling them, but this almost had me feeling sorry even for Moldbug and Thiel. That takes a potent mix of bad faith and storytelling skill to pull off.
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I really didn't read it as a hit piece, mostly because it was so ineffective. I mean there was no actual full throated accusation leveled at any individual, it mostly to me seemed like a middle aged journalist hallucinating some version of a hip clique into existence that he's
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Fascinated by and jealous he's on the outside of. As much as it may be unfair, I also have a sense that it may be unwise to appear to band together in coherent, morally indignant opposition to this, offering ready fodder for the in-group of weirdos narrative
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Well, it *is* a coherent ingroup of weirdos :) They got that much right though they drew a far bigger boundary around it than makes any sense. They’re just mostly harmless Bayesian geeks rather than the murky Sith-cabal with tentacles controlling SV they’re made out to be.
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Exactly. That's what I meant by it (sorry, fellow weirdos :D). Which is to say, more like being a rando catholic than a fanatical sea org scientology member. I think it's hard for certain institutional players to grasp one can sincerely value process (free inquiry) over ideology
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