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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31640 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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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.

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.

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.

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".

Why would thinking that it's a meritocracy imply you were picking a bone?

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

Do you agree that there's a significant amount of nepotism going on?

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".

Do you agree that there's a significant amount of nepotism going on?

What do you mean by "nepotism" in this context?

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