Statement on New York Times Article
On point 1:<p>&gt; The Times points out that I agreed with Murray that poverty was bad, and that also at some other point in my life noted that Murray had offensive views on race, and heavily implies this means I agree with Murray’s offensive views on race. This seems like a weirdly brazen type of falsehood for a major newspaper.<p>In the quote in question, he literally says that Murray &quot;has some very sophisticated theories about class and culture&quot;.  While I&#x27;m not familiar with Murray&#x27;s writing, it&#x27;s hard to believe that his theories on class and culture are completely disconnected from his theories on race.<p>———<p>On point 2:<p>&gt; This is true only in the sense that in 2014, I applied this comparison to a specific group of feminists who I accused of bullying and taunting people in a way that made them traumatized and suicidal. I describe my specific concern in the linked post. Lots of other feminists are great, and I continue to support gender equality.<p>Calling it a &quot;specific group&quot; is downplaying things.  In the same 2014 article he wrote:<p>&gt; We will now perform an ancient and traditional Slate Star Codex ritual, where I point out something I don’t like about feminism, then everyone tells me in the comments that no feminist would ever do that and it’s a dirty rotten straw man. And then I link to two thousand five hundred examples of feminists doing exactly that, and then everyone in the comments No-True-Scotsmans me by saying that that doesn’t count and those people aren’t representative of feminists. And then I find two thousand five hundred more examples of the most prominent and well-respected feminists around saying exactly the same thing…<p>He has expressed similar sentiments elsewhere; it is safe to say he sees the attitude he criticizes as representative of at least a significant chunk of modern feminist activism.  Meanwhile, all the New York Times said is that he described &quot;some feminists as something close to Voldemort&quot;.  Where is the discrepancy?<p>&gt; Also, this became a weird go-to thing for people who wanted to do hatchet jobs to hit me with, so much so that sometime before 2017 I edited the post involved telling people not to do that.<p>His argument is that people who quoted him took his statement &quot;out of context&quot;.  I am not so sure.  The immediate context suggests an element of hyperbole, which <i>slightly</i> takes the edge off the comparison.  But add the context of the rest of the post?  The New York Times article says he described people as &quot;something close to Voldemort, the embodiment of evil in the Harry Potter books&quot;.  And… it&#x27;s no exaggeration to say he was accusing people of being (or at least behaving) truly evil, whatever that means.  I mean, he literally writes: &quot;some feminists are evil raving loonies and some manospherites are evil raving loonies&quot;.  He later mentions &quot;the evil fringes of both movements&quot;, which lack &quot;basic human decency&quot;.  And even setting wording aside, the post does indeed accuse people of being responsible for others being traumatized, which seems pretty evil.  (How valid the accusation is is another matter.)<p>In short, the Voldemort quote is, to a reasonable degree, representative of the post as a whole.<p>———<p>Point 3 is highly diffuse; he raises valid points in defense, but they don&#x27;t really prove the article wrong.<p>———<p>On point 4:<p>&gt; They further presented a more general case that I am six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-style linked to right-wing &#x2F; pro-Trump figures in Silicon Valley like Peter Thiel.<p>Not six, two.  Scott described Eliezer Yudkowsky as &quot;the guy who taught me most of what I know about rationality&quot;.  Eliezer Yudkowsky, as the article mentions, is friends with Peter Thiel.<p>More importantly, the main argument the article makes about Silicon Valley is that Scott&#x27;s views are <i>influential</i> there (while allegedly providing a &quot;safe space&quot; for prejudice).  And to demonstrate that, it mentions several notable people who follow his blog, including quoting Sam Altman praising it at length.  Whether those people know him personally is beside the point.