Wow. I gotta say many of the comments here are quite something.
Look folks - I got word through a backchannel that a summary post might get the issues I raise actually addressed. I thought that was reasonable, so I wrote that post. I didn't even submit it anywhere other than post it on my twitter.
So I randomly open up theMotte website today, to see that people are losing their goddamn minds that I wrote something on my substack. And as /u/jimmy mentions, not a single person addressed any object-level argument. I believe the sum total is zero. And before someone jumps in and says "ah that's because you make it so personal" I will say that the sum total was pretty poor before anyone characterized my writing as "making it personal".
Like, seriously, what the flying fajitas?
Look, this may look like a lot of wasted words to you. That's totally fine by me. To me, this has been a course in learning about the absolute state that "evidence-based medicine" is in. I don't learn well from books, I learn from projects. So this was that project where I learned about all the things I wrote. Writing raises the bar and makes me dig deeper. And in the course of it I generated several novel findings, like correcting the Strongyloides hypothesis, finding that a Cochrane meta-analysis had violated its own inclusion criteria for most of the studies it included, putting together the Latin American hypothesis, as well as a few more things I've not published yet.
You don't have to understand how my brain works, and I sure as hell don't, but I've learned to trust it and follow it wherever it wanders, because there's usually something of value.
But for the life of me I struggle to conceptualize the ethical system that the people criticizing me here are implementing. In what world is it OK for Scott to call people "known fraudsters", "gullible rubes who were bamboozled by pseudoscience", attack many scientists who never did anything to him, and falsely so, and even attack me as a conspiracy theorist -- unprovoked, to a massive audience, but me responding by sticking my neck out and making concrete falsifiable claims is what attracts the outrage?
Now, I want to be extremely clear -- It is Scott's right to do all those things, a right which I will defend. And it is my right to call them out, and record the errors for posterity, so that nobody can say that they were not pointed out. And yes, as several people pointed out (thank you!) my extremely serious concern, moreso than it is with Scott, is with the rationalist community letting an argument that is this flawed go unchallenged. It follows that I don't want to be like the people I criticize, so I took it upon myself to do the analysis and explain the problems, in excruciating detail. And to do all this knowing that going after the most well-known and popular thought leader in the broader rationalist community will not get me any brownie points, even if I'm right.
I am acting in the only way I can see as morally consistent, and while obviously not everyone will agree with me on that, accusing me of being obsessed with demonstrating that the rationality community is failing at holding its own to account is a bit of a weird flex. If I'm right, then this is obviously extremely important for most people in this community. And if I'm wrong, then surely you can show me how. And if you're unsure, or can't be bothered to find out, that's totally cool also.
But weaponizing the lack of interest in finding out if I'm right into an attack that assumes I'm wrong is a better demonstration of my entire point than I could ever have hoped for. I can't claim to know what kind of rationalist discourse will help us address the various existential risks coming our way, but I am pretty sure this ain't it.
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Notes -
Wow. I gotta say many of the comments here are quite something.
Look folks - I got word through a backchannel that a summary post might get the issues I raise actually addressed. I thought that was reasonable, so I wrote that post. I didn't even submit it anywhere other than post it on my twitter.
So I randomly open up theMotte website today, to see that people are losing their goddamn minds that I wrote something on my substack. And as /u/jimmy mentions, not a single person addressed any object-level argument. I believe the sum total is zero. And before someone jumps in and says "ah that's because you make it so personal" I will say that the sum total was pretty poor before anyone characterized my writing as "making it personal".
Like, seriously, what the flying fajitas?
Look, this may look like a lot of wasted words to you. That's totally fine by me. To me, this has been a course in learning about the absolute state that "evidence-based medicine" is in. I don't learn well from books, I learn from projects. So this was that project where I learned about all the things I wrote. Writing raises the bar and makes me dig deeper. And in the course of it I generated several novel findings, like correcting the Strongyloides hypothesis, finding that a Cochrane meta-analysis had violated its own inclusion criteria for most of the studies it included, putting together the Latin American hypothesis, as well as a few more things I've not published yet.
You don't have to understand how my brain works, and I sure as hell don't, but I've learned to trust it and follow it wherever it wanders, because there's usually something of value.
But for the life of me I struggle to conceptualize the ethical system that the people criticizing me here are implementing. In what world is it OK for Scott to call people "known fraudsters", "gullible rubes who were bamboozled by pseudoscience", attack many scientists who never did anything to him, and falsely so, and even attack me as a conspiracy theorist -- unprovoked, to a massive audience, but me responding by sticking my neck out and making concrete falsifiable claims is what attracts the outrage?
Now, I want to be extremely clear -- It is Scott's right to do all those things, a right which I will defend. And it is my right to call them out, and record the errors for posterity, so that nobody can say that they were not pointed out. And yes, as several people pointed out (thank you!) my extremely serious concern, moreso than it is with Scott, is with the rationalist community letting an argument that is this flawed go unchallenged. It follows that I don't want to be like the people I criticize, so I took it upon myself to do the analysis and explain the problems, in excruciating detail. And to do all this knowing that going after the most well-known and popular thought leader in the broader rationalist community will not get me any brownie points, even if I'm right.
I am acting in the only way I can see as morally consistent, and while obviously not everyone will agree with me on that, accusing me of being obsessed with demonstrating that the rationality community is failing at holding its own to account is a bit of a weird flex. If I'm right, then this is obviously extremely important for most people in this community. And if I'm wrong, then surely you can show me how. And if you're unsure, or can't be bothered to find out, that's totally cool also.
But weaponizing the lack of interest in finding out if I'm right into an attack that assumes I'm wrong is a better demonstration of my entire point than I could ever have hoped for. I can't claim to know what kind of rationalist discourse will help us address the various existential risks coming our way, but I am pretty sure this ain't it.
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