Critically Reading Scott Alexander

post by jenn (pixx) · 2025-03-25T20:49:51.943Z · ? · GW · 0 comments

Contents

  Topic
  Reading
  Potential Discussion Questions
None
No comments

Meet inside The Shops at Waterloo Town Square - we will congregate in the indoor seating area next to the Your Independent Grocer with the trees sticking out in the middle of the benches (pic) at 7:00 pm for 20 minutes, and then head over to my nearby apartment's amenity room. If you've been around a few times, feel free to meet up at the front door of the apartment at 7:30 instead.

Topic

One definition of a rationalist is "someone who disagrees with Eliezer Yudkowsky". This week we'll be dragging The Other Guy through the mud a bit, just to avoid getting a little too complacent.

To guide us, we'll be reading a 2021 essay by Elizabeth Sandifer critically reading two of Scott's most (in)famous essays, I Can Tolerate Everything Except the Outgroup, and Untitled.

Sandifer is, according to her X profile, a "middle-aged trans anarchist with eschatological leanings". She had previously written in 2017 Neoreaction a Basilisk, a collection of essays about the alt-right, which had a chapter on rationalists that made the rationalists really mad. I was one of said really mad rationalists so I did not read it. (We can make reading that chapter a sequel event if there is sufficient interest.)

She was also a side character in TracingWoodgrain's recent investigation into David Gerard, Reliable Sources [LW · GW].

Scott in I Can Tolerate Everything Except the Outgroup says:

I had fun writing this article. People do not have fun writing articles savagely criticizing their in-group. People can criticize their in-group, it’s not humanly impossible, but it takes nerves of steel, it makes your blood boil, you should sweat blood. It shouldn’t be fun.

I did almost sweat blood at some points, reading Sandifer. Now it's your turn <3

Reading

The Beigeness, or How to Kill People with Bad Writing: The Scott Alexander Method (Elizabeth Sandifer, 2021)

I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (Scott Alexander, 2014)

Untitled (Scott Alexander, 2015)

(It's worth noting that both Scott essays are >10 years old at this point, and may not reflect his current views.)

Supplemental:
Living in A Gender Bubble (Ozy 2016)
Different Worlds III-V (Scott, 2017)

Potential Discussion Questions

• Sandifer accuses Alexander of "studiously and emphatically avoiding actual thought" while Alexander criticizes feminists for ignoring the real pain of shy, nerdy men. How do these competing claims about "who isn't listening to whom" reflect broader patterns in contemporary discourse? Is there a way to bridge such divides?
• Both Alexander in "Different Worlds" and Ozy in "Living in a Gender Bubble" suggest that people can inhabit drastically different experiential realities even in seemingly identical circumstances. How does this mesh with your own experience?
• Sandifer writes: "Critiquing feminism while declaring that its central claims are 'not the point under discussion' and 'not relevant' is self-evidently arguing in poor faith." Is this a fair characterization?
  • Tangent: should discussions of men's issues always occur within a feminist framework to be considered legitimate?
• Alexander's essays are now over a decade old. How has the rationalist community's thinking on these issues evolved since then?

0 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.