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non_radical_centrist  6mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   3040 thread views

[AstralCodexTen]Book Review: The Origins of Woke

astralcodexten.com

I thought the Origins of Woke was a great book personally, although I shared a few of Scott's criticisms. Namely I thought it was a little weird how focused Hanania was on making sure workplaces be more conducive to finding sexual partners, and how much he cared about funding women's sports received. But overall I thought the book was great and captured a major causative factor of how Woke is so incredibly strong.

When people aren't allowed to acknowledge the flaws of Wokeness in the workplace or their employees will get sued, it creates an immense chilling effect. That's probably not the sole cause of wokeness, there are other factors like supporting impoverished minorities being a very convenient luxury belief to signal how much of a good person you are, but Hanania convinced me it was a major factor.

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This feigned incredulity from Scott comes off as quite dishonest:

He has some broader point that I have trouble interpreting - basically that corporations used to be cozy, chummy places full of banter and flirtation that everyone enjoyed...Still, Hanania really hammers in this point that we should apparently all be angry about the loss of corporate flirtation... books doubling as interesting settings for pornographic stories, but I’m otherwise unable to fathom the level of Hanania’s enthusiasm here.

Hi, I'm Scott Alexander, I bounce around different Rationalist Group houses, where me and everyone else in my circle forms poly-amorous relationships with with our intellectual collaborators, and spend all their time building up inside jokes, private parties, etc. You see that piece in the New Yorker about the girl who was scared about AI? I was dating her, haha. Stole her from this other guy I used to do collaborate with.

Also Scott Alexander: I guesssss I could see some weirdos who'd want their work to give them to have some banter and flirtation. I don't know if there's a lot of people, but Hannania is entitled to his opinion here, as far out as that seems to you and me.

None of those are his job though. And while his job as a blogger is connected to that, his job as a psychiatrist is not, and is much more likely to be used by him as his model for what a normal job looks like. You could argue that his membership and status in the rationalist community leaves him out of touch with how many people are largely socially isolated outside of work, but I don't see how this is such an obvious point as to imply dishonesty. Though I do think it would be good if he delved into it in more detail - does he think it's more realistic to reverse the trend of social isolation through non-work communities?

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