While I find the subject a little outside of my wheelhouse and not interesting enough to spend time and effort to decipher, "guy obsesses over something for a long time and writes a lot about it" is pretty much the core of what made /r/themotte fun to be in. While writing twenty (!) essays in a row on the topic is definitely weird, it's not as though Alexandros is chasing Scott around or constantly emailing him (to my knowledge). And, well, that sort of weird is almost what this space is for.
If someone here dedicated themselves to a massive personal research project to disprove statements that they figured to be harmful from someone they saw to be an influential public figure and wrote essay after essay on it I think the reception would be somewhat less cold if the figure weren't Scott.
Doing a lot of personal research and writing articles about a topic you're interested in is great! But obsessing about a particular author simply because they're the ones making the argument, isn't. In fact, it's pretty much anti-rationalist to attack the author instead of the argument. Spamming posts with hyperbolic clickbait headlines like "Scott Alexander has WOUNDED Rationalism with his Ivermectin article!!!" does little to improve Alexandros' actual argument.
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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
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Notes -
Scott's reward for interacting with this guy is that this guy will now not leave him alone.
While I find the subject a little outside of my wheelhouse and not interesting enough to spend time and effort to decipher, "guy obsesses over something for a long time and writes a lot about it" is pretty much the core of what made /r/themotte fun to be in. While writing twenty (!) essays in a row on the topic is definitely weird, it's not as though Alexandros is chasing Scott around or constantly emailing him (to my knowledge). And, well, that sort of weird is almost what this space is for.
If someone here dedicated themselves to a massive personal research project to disprove statements that they figured to be harmful from someone they saw to be an influential public figure and wrote essay after essay on it I think the reception would be somewhat less cold if the figure weren't Scott.
Doing a lot of personal research and writing articles about a topic you're interested in is great! But obsessing about a particular author simply because they're the ones making the argument, isn't. In fact, it's pretty much anti-rationalist to attack the author instead of the argument. Spamming posts with hyperbolic clickbait headlines like "Scott Alexander has WOUNDED Rationalism with his Ivermectin article!!!" does little to improve Alexandros' actual argument.
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