This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I want to think critically about who gets attention on the non-mainstream political internet.
There's a few models we can imagine for how this works. One is a perfect meritocracy. The ones who get the most attention produce the best content along the metric(s) that measure what audiences like. This is the naive view and it's what I imagined for a long time. I'm betting most people imagine that it works like this.
I don't think it works like this. When you try to compare the merit of big attention getters vs. smaller attention getters, you get weird, even creepy results. It's unclear why Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky are better than Status 451 and John Nerst. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Wikipedia and memory tell me that Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky were favored by the rich and by other entertainers. This suggests something more nepotistic than pure meritocracy.
The people you pay attention to are probably put in front of you. They are allowed to recieve attention by people with more traditional forms of power and lower forms of attention, the kind that isn't paid by consumers but rather is of a nature such that they are willing to buy it. This means their takes aren't really real. They're kind of fake, permitted, virtual, simulated; what are you not seeing that allowed attention getters can't say? Most obviously, they can't criticize their allowers. More than that, they can't disagree with their allowers fundamentally. On a deep level, they just can't be honest. They're not honest. Honesty is not allowed. Keep this in mind -- I think if people were more critical about how establishment their favorite commentors are, the equation would tilt a little bit more toward a pure meritocracy.
It's the same everywhere. Look at this Graphtreon ranking. Pay attention to the following creators:
DarkCookie ($60k per month)
Sad Crab ($25k per month)
Dream Now ($6k per month)
DarkCookie has made a good game that has been stuck in development hell for months. He's hemorrhaging patrons (I remember him getting $100k per month), but he's still one of the top earners.
Sad Crab have a stellar artist, but their game has been stuck in development hell for months as well. Yes, their game is worse than DarkCookie's Summertime Saga, so earning 2x-4x less sounds fair, doesn't it?
Dream Now is making a game that is suffering from every known fault known to adult games (an episodic fiction in general): weird pacing, plot that goes nowhere, but so does every other game. Unlike the previous two, the creator actually manages to squeeze out a release every few months. Is his game 10x worse than Summertime Saga? Is it 4x worse than Innocent Witches? Hell no.
No adult game maker has been favored by the rich and by other entertainers. They do cross-promotions, but some of them are on this chart, and some of them are not at all, despite making games that easily rival the three I've covered.
More options
Context Copy link
I'll echo what some others have said and say that, while I think you have a bit of a point in that sometimes the best in a field are not the most well-known and instead the most well-connected get the spotlight, I think Scott and Yud are not great examples here. Status451 is probably mostly known for the Days of Rage book review; while an important work in our Internet Contrarian Nerd Canon that also includes many of Scott's works, that's mostly kind of it?
Meanwhile, I doubt that the Shadowy Cabals Running The World have ever heard of The Sequences or read Meditations on Moloch or Unsong, as your post seems to imply--the kinds of people who could probably nudge the course of history with a single phone call don't seem to act like they have, at least (with the infamous Sam Bankman-Fried being a possible, possible exception--and that's stretching it, since I think you could argue his history-changing power has been severely curtailed now).
David Hines who did that review (along with three articles on reading radical lefty organizing books) isn’t a main author on status451 anyways more of a guest writer. He’s more a regular contributor to The American Conservative and his Twitter feed has echoes of this place with his focus on civility while his politics are just mostly lukewarm conservatism and then there’s the typical dad posting. Which is to say he’s not exactly the modal status451 author back when they were still writing at all.
That probably makes it even worse! Probably the most well-known thing from that site, and it's a guest contribution!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When I don't have energy for cooking and go to eat out, 9 out of 10 times it's a cafeteria with a small fixed menu. They serve a soup, a few bread buns, a fresh salad, and a dish with decent amount of chicken (12 options, realistically 5), all for something like $4,8. Right now I'm feeling cheeky so I'm in a mid-tier Iranian restaurant where Fesenjan and other delicious things can be had – for about 300% more. It leaves a better sensation after the fact, more giddy lightness than stuffed stomach; might just be saffron. Maybe I'll come here once more in my life.
Admittedly, this is unsolicited blogging and the moral of the story could as well be conveyed with McDonalds vs. fancy burgers, or with Scott's own musings on Coca-Cola in How The West
HWas Won. I much prefer Wyclif's commentary. But there's no mystery in why Scott is a star of greater magnitude than Wyclif.I've also wondered about prominence of rationalist thought leaders. But after all is said and done – this is cope, sorry. We know Scott's history and we know Eliezer's, it's all in the open, and many of us have been there for much, or all, of the way, long before they received any establishment attention. What makes those guys special is that they are, indeed, that good. Or rather – they're good at this niche public nerd-intellectual schtick. Good enough to have reasonably long shelf lives.
The first virtue of a public intellectual is productivity. The output must be consistent, voluminous, topical, wide-ranging, and ideally give the impression of effortlessness. A proper PI must be able to write about anything and, perhaps, write anything – from poetry to meta-analysis to an alchemical treatise; all in the same recognizable but immensely varied voice, a one-man magazine. It's a bit of a sports performance – namely, verbal gymnastics. Like Andrey Plakhov says:
Adding to that, Scott had his Annus Mirabilis of 2014, writing an entire book's worth of important articles! And they are all very accessible. That's the second virtue: clarity. Or put another way, being able to distinguish the job of a public intellectual and an academic performer. There is a niche for obscurantism, as Moldbug has demonstrated, but it is not large. People who'll read you are mostly not geniuses, but neither are they fools who can be intimidated and amazed by big words. Many of them just want an entertaining, clear narration and commentary of ideas they could as well write about themselves, had they more time.
Plakhov then proceeds to criticize Eliezer. I won't touch Eliezer beyond saying that he has essentially cultivated the community and intellectual culture where Scott got promoted, wrote an entire mini-Talmud of rationality and a very voluminous, popular work of fiction with the intention to peddle his ideas to the masses – an accomplishment that's harder than it might look. And this is the third virtue of a public intellectual – working in the context of a public-facing intellectual tradition, and molding it, and contributing to its growth. You can't get far on your own; nobody will care about a loquacious manifesto-shitting crank, even if by some miracle your manifestos are actually great so long as one looks past the inevitable lack of polish. So you've got to live in a society. It's not different from what aspiring artists (or sex workers) do, reposting and boosting each other. But these two have done more than others.
The fourth virtue is letting your personality shine through your texts - and better if it's a likeable personality for a wide enough audience. Author-clientele relationships are parasocial. Many very smart people would rather keep their identity small; so it takes reading 20x as much to get a good feeling for who Gwern is. It's perhaps a more authentic impression than one you get with a single note by Scott – but people like the latter more, and they like that it happens so naturally. But you mustn't be larger than life – that's the turf of life coaches, and it's nauseating for the target audience of intellectual commentary.
And only the fifth virtue, I'd say, is sticking to the confines of the Overton window, and thus preventing the loss of people who feel uncomfortable outside.
By the way, why do I know what Plakhov says? Because sometimes I get engrossed, perhaps infatuated, studying a hitherto ignored smartass, amazed that something so good, so obviously beyond my ken, was so readily available; and in a few days I skim his entire output, and in a few days+1 I am disappointed and see what should have been done and said better. But I did not. Because I'm not that productive and not that good.
There may be some factors loosely along the lines you hint at. Bluntly, they both are cult leader figures («rightful caliph» jokes are not just jokes), or perhaps intuitively exploiting the Learned Rabbi archetype of their ancestral culture. When I saw people debating Sequences IRL, it was hard to distinguish from a chavruta following a Shiur; or from an underground Marxist circle, acolytes diligently inspecting the complex wisdom in teacher's words. That's funny to see. That could contribute to the resiliency of their fame. That can be at most a part of it.
It may not be a perfect meritocracy. But it does select for the fittest.
Speaking of - when are you posting something on your substack, you lazy bum? I wanted to sponsor my favorite Russkie-in-exile, but you just won't let me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You know who else claimed to know better sources than the mainstream? Hipsters.
Consider a few alternative explanations:
it isn’t a meritocracy, just emergent patterns from the signaling and countersignaling of eight billion status games
it isn’t a meritocracy, just the human brain imagining trends where there are none
it is a meritocracy, but it is noisy and slow to act, so some chaff remains in with the wheat
it is a “meritocracy,” but truth doesn’t play any part in its metric of memetic fitness
it is a meritocracy, and the rich and influential actually have better taste than you
It’d be rather hard to tell these apart based on two data points.
Worse, it could be a combination: the public eye is fickle, and optimizes for dumb things like “outrage” and “tits.” Meanwhile, a million elites push two million competing causes, and billions of proles struggle to read those tea leaves for personal status. Out of the multitudes asserting their love for the Truth, few agree on what should qualify. Hipsters claim to know of a quality blog; counter-hipsters descend to explain how it is Problematic or perhaps a mouthpiece for the Cathedral. God forbid that someone wade in with less-than-pure motives!
If you’ve untangled this knot, then tell me: what is good, Phaedrus?
This is what I mean by meritocracy.
Status 451 and John Nerst get as many viewers/comments/likes as SA/EY?
10 years is too slow?
Still a meritocracy.
The rich have a more democratic taste? I wouldn't call that better, and do you think their tastes are identical down to the point where themselves being criticized is A-OK, and how do you account for the lack of such criticism?
Divide by 1000 and I'd say you're onto something.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm a little unclear on what your argument is stating, so I will respond to what I think you're saying and try to specify anywhere I think there is ambiguity.
I'm reading your evidentiary claim/question as something like: Why do some writers/creators blow up, while others who are just as talented get nothing? Why is it that (made up number incoming) if there are 10,000 people who want to read grey-tribe CW analysis, and ten writers who are all about as talented as SA at writing blog posts, that SA gets 9,500 readers and the other nine split the remaining 500? Or, hell, let's even give SA that his content is 5% better, why does that translate to 95% of the spoils? The answer is, as ever, the network effects created by tribal and status signaling.
The value of the Western Canon historically is that references to one work in another work form layered meanings that help us create and decipher the meanings of other works. Knowing the mythological corpus of Ovid's Metamorphoses and Hesiod's Theogony allows you to understand Homer's Iliad, allows you to understand Plato's dialogues, the Bible sneaks in about here, allows you to understand Augustine, allows you to understand Shakespeare, and so on to Nietszche and Joyce and, hell, all the authors after Joyce** just wish their work could be as important as Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, real genre killers those. When you've read the Canon you can reference Dante and other educated men will get the references, and beyond the inherent enjoyment of the reference, and the enhancement of understanding and meaning produced by the metaphor, you get the benefit of signaling that you too are an educated man.***
The LW canon isn't that cool, but it works roughly the same way. Anywhere in the SSC-verse of subreddits and forums, you can reference SA, and other people will get it, and not only will it enhance the meaning of what you're saying by in a single phrase ("Moloch" or "Barber Pole"), you signal your in-group status. I'm one of you. This enhances your credibility. So I have no interest in reading another blogger who is "just as good" a writer when I get the additional value from being able to understand and make references to a better known work.
** If you read Joyce or Nietzsche without having read, or at least familiarized yourself with, the majority of the Western canon you are missing out on the vast majority of it. Given the amount of references I pick up on, and my own sore lack of having read it all, I can only imagine how many I'm missing. And I can't imagine how pointless reading a work so dense in references is if you don't get the fraction that I'm getting. I guess that's why they make those annotated reading books that go along line by line and tell you Joyce's meanings; but the experience must be so completely different for someone who really gets it all. I find the gap in my, and my contemporaries, knowledge tends to be the music, opera and musical theater, that were part of culture. So few of the neo Western Traditionalists know their Gilbert and Sullivan.
*** The difference between Status as socioeconomic etc. status and Status as just being a member of one group among many coequals is just one of context. There isn't any mechanical difference between signaling you are a Victorian gentleman and signaling you are a Goth middle schooler, it is all in the eye of the beholder.
In fairness, Rogue's tactic very much does sound like the no-fun-allowed type of IP shenanigans that already plague other industries and fields. There's probably no reason they couldn't continue their made-in-America strategy and build a good reputation without trying to center themselves as "official"--plenty of other companies in other industries build good reputations without having to rest on popular trademarks or official partnerships, a la Coke.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wrong level of zoom.
Why are Ben Shapiro and Nathan Robinson "better" than Scott Alexander?
Your model should account for;
Network effects and the resulting power-law distribution in attention density.
Different variables that make up merit (in the context of the media landscape). Yarvin might have more "correct"/meritocratic takes than Scott, but Scott is infinitely more pleasing to read (to me).
Audience. Scotts writing probably is incomprehensible to someone below 100 IQ. They might be able to parrot what Scott said. They can memorize the teacher's password. But they won't "get" it. Try explaining the idea of Moloch to everyone you meet and see how that goes. There is a marginal area where people do consume content they don't get, but parrot ("I fucking love science"). But most good political commentators don't pander to that audience.
What do they want? Does everyone want {your favorite political commentator's unbiased insight}? Or do they want to shit on the outgroup with the justification as window dressing?
Don't confuse good for {I like this commentator}.
Weirdness points. Imagine two software engineers. Both are excellent programmers, but one looks like a homeless person. All else being equal, who will get hired over the other? Apply this exact mechanism to commentators and on the margins in an extremely competitive market. Even marginal amounts of weirdness will fuck you over. This is different from being pleasing, it's not being displeasing. This is the "Rule 2" of writing.
Randomness. Luck.
I don't see it as very competitive since it's trivial for someone to press subscribe. SA must really be way better than John Nerst in some way, but we can't see it as readers, because I believe that way is his friends who also have attention and who have money. This is the openish secret that is kept from us -- hey, it's only fair that someone who gets to tell everyone what to think, or think about at least, gets his privacy!
How do you square this with the law of large numbers?
Wow, who are these rich friends and how can I get money off them, because they certainly never paid me to go read Scott! I demand my share of the swag!
You are sounding like "It's so unfair those guys got to be big name rich famous rockstars and my band didn't, we're every bit as good as they are!" Well, yeah, that's how it goes.
More options
Context Copy link
This presupposes you see things you subscribed to and things you could potentially subscribe to on even footing, which is no longer the case the moment you subscribe to anything. You see more of what you subscribe to, that's what subscription is.
Path dependency.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As someone who has lurked and been around since 2011, this is so out of touch as to be hilarious. Scott / Eliezer are reasonably well read and well known now because they have produced a prodigious amount of writing that is both intelligent and enjoyable to read. They have done so consistently for years.
I assure you in the early 2010s they were neither popular nor well-known, they got there because of the quality of their work.
More options
Context Copy link
Okay, I had to look up the latter two, and while their sites are okay, there's nothing there that would really interest me. I don't follow Yudkowsky or hang out on Less Wrong. I certainly didn't come to Scott via "the rich and other entertainers", but via following various Catholic blogs.
You seem to be attributing success on their part to "nepotism", i.e. they know rich, influential people who boost them, while the meritorious artists who are starving in garrets get no attention.
My take on that? Starve away, if I don't want to read you, I won't - even if you are recommended by Taylor Swift and other nefarious string-pullers.
Thanks, not in the market for conspiracy theories right now and I'm all out of tin foil, so I have to pass on this.
I think the implication is that other Catholic blogs were the “entertainers,” aka existing successful content-producers. This is, naturally, a fully general theory, one vague enough to avoid falsification...
It's not unfalsifiable, I've just left quantifying it as an exercise for the reader.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That reminds me, whatever happened to ClarkHat? I remember Popehat eventually had to break up with him publicly on his blog. Presumably because Popehat was getting respectable mainstream attention and no longer needed the cover of "Look, I can cohort with diverse views I disagree with!"
Then Clarkhat got banned from Twitter for reasons I don't even remember. Looks like he quit posting on Status 451 in 2016. I was slightly hopeful he'd have gotten his twitter back in that amnesty Musk declared, but alas, still suspended. Not that I think he'd come back. I'm more just curious what exactly it was he was writing back then that was so completely bonkers his colleagues broke up with him and he got banned.
There was also the small matter of the Vox Day affair. As you may recall, Ken White was one of VD's bête noires, while Clark was a friend of both of them. The way I remember it, some of Ken's followers started calling Clark out on his association with VD, and Clark defended VD as an honorable and unfairly villified man, while also insisting that he and Ken were bffs and if VD ever dared to go low (such as mocking Ken's mental illness) in his spats with Ken, Clark would "rain hellfire" on VD.
VD promptly went low and wrote a series of vitriolic, mocking posts poking at every one of White's exposed weaknesses. (Ken had, probably unwisely when in the middle of a public fight with one of the most proudly cruel, no-holds-barred partisans on the Internet, written openly about his depression and mental illness.) VD even took shots at Ken's adopted Korean-born child.
Response from Clark: crickets.
That's about the time when you stopped seeing him around. To all appearances, when called upon to back up his claims of loyalty, he quietly picked up his hat and slipped out of the room.
I don't get it.
I respect Vox Day, he's intelligent, a solid writer and a good editor.
He can also be charitably described as an egomaniacal crank who's overly credulous and always sure of himself.
I also prefer not having him around, certainly online. (he's probably one of those guys who's raving lunatic online and a mostly normal bloke offline)
Denouncing him should be a rather easy moral choice.
Bluntly, I think Clark was a coward who was hoping his buddy Vox wouldn't call his bluff. That he thought Vox wouldn't indicates he also wasn't very smart.
Certainly, if he had "rained hellfire" on Vox for attacking Ken White, Vox would have turned his saber wit on Clark as well (as he's done on many other former allies), and Clark didn't fancy being at the receiving end of Vox's vitriol and his followers' scorn himself.
An interpretation that's likely to be true.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The one that got him booted from Popehat was his weird scifi “Hitlerite” allegory about Muslim immigrants to Europe that hasn’t been scrubbed. Weirdly the silence caused by his ban on Twitter seems better for his brand than whatever broke in Kens brain with Trump and his Twitter posting. Even back before the boot Clark’s long form writing wasn’t very interesting to me but his Twitter was amusing at least.
More options
Context Copy link
He wrote that immigration parable about Nazi aliens seeking asylum on Earth that led to a lot of handwringing in the comments and was apparently too much for Ken White.
I'd like to know if he's still around, too. He was pretty entertaining.
I kind of like it; it's fairly plausible.
Also, damn, I'm pretty sure I've seen a similar parable that ended up with the guy advocating in for letting in Hitlerite refugees getting kicked to death by some. (I believe Alexander Kruel wrote that one)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This right here can be bent to suit the situation: they key metrics is attracting other influencers who in turn attract other people. This is standard metric in marketing as well and it is a reason why companies go for endorsements from popular athletes, celebrities or social media stars. I vaguely remember some taste tests between Pepsi and Coke with Pepsi being preferred in blind tests but Coke being preferred if brand was on display. One explanation that saves "meritocratic" concept is that the relevant product is not just the soda, but rather it is the whole experience that is influenced also by things like brand value and recognition. That is the relevant metric here.
Another similar dynamics is when it comes to inventions. You have many stories where some groundbreaking innovation was simultaneously invented by multiple people. And the story always goes that if one inventor was from some Bumfuck, Nowhere and another one was well networked guy from New York, everybody knows which one was successful. Again, one can argue also on merit that networking skills and connections are type of earned advantage - even if not by the person themselves, but maybe the advantage was created by their parents and ancestors.
This doesn't save the meritocracy concept because what I mean is democratic meritocracy. If a few people get 10,000 votes each, that's the nepotism model.
Then you have a very strange concept of meritocracy as it is all about people of merit having more say. If I am about to give a grant for physics research, of course it will be scientists sitting on grant committee as opposed to random people from the street. Can you explain how this "democratic meritocracy" is supposed to work? Even if the goal is to improve the lot of the masses, it will mean that people with merit will get more resources and status to work on behalf of people. So if let's say influencer is going to convince his flock about the importance of supposedly "good" Effective Altruism, it is supposed to still be in line with merit, right?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Meritocracy doesn't mean "flawless and perfect meritocracy", it means 'merit' is a very important factor. Random chance, idiosyncratic contingency, structural flaws, etc can explain why genius_1 gets lots of blog views and genius_2 doesn't. Human society is incredibly complicated. Many factors matter - for one, everythingstudies and status451 post less than once per month, while scott posts a few times per week. Some people who have more insight than scott just don't post, so we can't hear them at all! So the existence of smart people who are less popular than slightly less smart people, even in an honest meritocracy, isn't surprising at all! That said, quickly skimming Status 451, he's a significantly less skilled writer than scott and yud.
maybe they're favored by 'the rich and other entertainers' for the same reason they're favored by large groups of people - because they're smart and write well?
"put in front of you" in the sense that they're downstream of very complex and shaped processes, and "put in front of you" in the sense that the elite are intentionally putting controlled opposition intellectuals in front of you to hide the dark truth, are different!
scott clearly and reasonably believes in a somewhat-strong form of HBD, and often hints at it. another person popular among the 'rich' and 'other entertainers' is moldbug (apparently glenn greenwald was introduced to moldbug by an unnamed billionaire) , who says a number of not-allowed things. Yet another person popular among 'other entertainers' (he's sometimes retweeted by people like jack posobiec and cernovich, relatively-mainstream right wing media figures) is BAP, whose regularly retweets literal nazi propaganda (not using this to condemn, just illustrate evidence against your point)! So I'm not sure this theory works.
More options
Context Copy link
You should read Influence by Robert Cialdini. Both yud and Scott have. There's also a lot of stuff that can only be described as memetic fitness - being from the same culture and having the same language as your readers, presenting the right image, getting and making the right references that they will recognise, talent expressing yourself, etc.
Also keep in mind that the closer you are to the centre the more you will appeal to both sides of the fight. Scott and yud are both closer than 451.
More options
Context Copy link
This goes for all entertainment sources, though. Who actually ends up capturing lightning in a bottle/the zeitgeist is pretty random, especially in the jump between 'known by enthusiasts of X' and 'known by the broader public'
More options
Context Copy link
huh? I cannot recall any entertainers endorsing either of those individuals.
It seems like this post is more about having a bone to pick with Scott Alexander and Eliezer Yudkowsky being undeservedly popular.
I didn't get that either - maybe he means 'other bloggers'? SA is well read by some rich SV people though, as well as 'mainstream' people more generally. matty reads scott! But many people here were SA readers relatively much earlier, so
More options
Context Copy link
So you think it's a pure meritocracy then? What would I gain from "picking a bone" with Scott Alexander on The Motte?
Grabbing eyeballs is not a meritocracy. It doesn't matter how worthy your prose; if it's turgid and boring to wade through, people are not going to bother and they'll go for the more entertaining, more enjoyable blog or Substack. Darkly hinting that it's all a sham and Scott is a puppet of "allowers" whom he can't criticise or disagree with, while people like [two names I don't know and don't care to know] are not Big Superstars - well, by your own theory, if they were Big Superstars it would be because they sold out and are in the thrall of "allowers".
More options
Context Copy link
Why would thinking that it's a meritocracy imply you were picking a bone?
More options
Context Copy link
few things in life are strictly a meritocracy . anything that is subjective , like writing, by definition cannot be a pure meritocracy.
By meritocracy I just mean selected for some trait of the work, so popularity can be both "subjective" and a "meritocracy."
Do you agree that there's a significant amount of nepotism going on?
I think there is some
More options
Context Copy link
Nope. Now let's turn the question back on you: why are you recommending these two guys? What's in it for you? What do you get out of it, what favours do you owe them or hope to have them owing you?
Because that's how it works, by your own words: "The people you pay attention to are probably put in front of you". Why are you trying to put Status 451 and John Nerst in front of me?
"Oh, I just think they're really really good and deserve to be better-known and more popular"? Well, maybe, but if I agree with your contention that it's all nepotism, then I have to consider that nepotism is at work here with your recommendations.
This is just another version of the complaint about bands: "They're not as good as they used to be, before they became popular. They sold out." Scott's fame, for what it's worth, got a target painted on his back by a jealous guy who funnelled rumours to Cade Metz at the NYT and resulted in that hit piece on rationalists (to tie-in with Metz' book on A.I. research but the article is not about Silicon Valley AI) and more explicitly, on Scott. And that it talks about Scott and Slate Star Codex is down to the guy who later bragged about having slipped Metz anonymous rumours to aim him at Scott.
So that's why people are wondering if you, too, have a bone to pick with Scott or why you're using him as an example of someone who is a manufactured 'celebrity' put out there by mysterious "allowers".
More options
Context Copy link
What do you mean by "nepotism" in this context?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Say more. I think there's some influence from higher powers, but the internet is much more meritocratic than any mainstream outlet. Do you think Moldbug, Scott, BAP, etc. would get any play whatsoever if it weren't for the internet? I don't. That means that, if establishment players are pushing particular outsider commentators, they're doing so while holding their noses, at least a little bit.
I do think the internet increased the extent of meritocracy, we're just far from a pure one still. In fact there might be a case that it was purer 10-15 years ago and now it's saturated, corporatized, censored, and centralized much more than before.
I don't think that "establishment players" necessarily resent the internet. Some seem to love it. It's cheaper to buy attention now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link