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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34497 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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But Scott Aaronson was never massively popular either. I'm not sure I could compare their levels of popularity because they are both sort of obscure, but I would feel safe in saying they probably aren't an order of magnitude different in popularity. Just looking at number of book reviews on amazon, they are both in the hundreds.

Aaronson's brand is way bigger. His blog is way more popular; he has more clout in academia compared to Caplan, such as being involved in cutting-edge fileds like quantum computing. This tends to attract big egos compared to more mundane stuff. It does not help that Aaronson does not put up a shield to criticism, unlike most public intellectuals.

I doubt it is clearcut one way or the other. Clout in academia is one measure of popularity. Vaplan probably has more TV news appearances, he has been on national debate stages, and certainly has more social media followers (since Aaronson got rid of his).

I think if you both of them who was more popular theyd give an answer similar to mine.

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