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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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DeclineIntoCensorship
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https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moderation-is-different-from-censorship
Did you seriously link writing by cryptofascist Scott Siskind? Dude needs a disclaimer.
Would you be willing to say more? I read a bunch of his stuff years ago and didn't come away with that feeling, but I also acknowledge I was in a kind of "fun new ideas I stumbled onto" naive phase at that time and wasn't thinking all that critically. And then just moved on outta boredom eventually.
I do, FWIW, vaguely understand his connection to the "rationalist" (fuckin turbo eye roll) community and the kinds of...creatures that comprise the major figures there (a Harry Potter fanfic taken as this illuminating, brilliant piece of discourse? holy shit this is S-tier own-fart-sniffing).
But Scott in particular struck me as compassionate and thoughtful, I didn't get gross vibes. But hey, bro is quite verbose and intelligent and maybe he just hid it ~well and I missed it.
https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method I remember this being a pretty reasonable critique.
Anything he writes on feminism also.
I'm only some of the way through and this essay is excellent, again, thank you, I have a feeling I'll be reading more of this author. The article is actually giving me some closure I didn't realize I wanted - I could never put together why I could find some of his (Scott's) writing thought-provoking, yet fail to really come away with any concrete points of view from his long ass posts much of the time. I actually assumed I just wasn't quite sharp enough to fully get it, or just not paying enough attention at any rate.
Nope, dude just writes that way (probably on purpose, "mealy-mouthed") and a razor-sharp reader like Elizabeth Sandifer here can slice through the fluff and see that there is piteously little substance in a lot of his writing.
What's interesting is Scott's essay "Moloch!" did kinda feel to me like a revelation at the time, helped me connect the dots on why everything is getting shittier constantly - I'll have to eventually give that one (the only one I actually remember) a reread someday after this and see what I think.
Cheers!
Glad you find it meaningful!
I think one or two of his writings are ok. The one about the war on pain patients is basically correct, that is within his realm of expertise so that is unsurprisingly. As someone who recently experienced several years of chronic pain so bad I could only cope by sitting next to a suicide machine knowing I could end it at any moment I had the misfortune of finding its assessment correct from the inside too.
Moloch is interesting, because I feel he misses the main issue. His flat out refusal to engage in any sort of leftist analysis chalks it up to nebulous difficulties and innate human behaviours rather than deliberate choices by oppressing classes.
!sneerclub@awful.systems is a place on lemmy where people shit on this sort of galaxy brained tech racism if you want more. Although they're their own sort of faux intellectual smugness half the time.
Oh I do remember that one too, found it eye-opening, and yep probably because it's right in his wheelhouse so to speak.
So very sorry about the pain - I've been adjacent to it, which of course is not even a sliver of what it's like to experience it. Someone close to me once had to wean themselves off Methadone, unexpectedly, and without help, which he had been (eventually) prescribed cuz nothing else would touch the pain. I don't really understand how he's still alive TBH (not just from that), but he's the kind of old-school stubborn that defies logic of any kind.
Chronic pain and chronic isolation (esp. of the elderly) are two titans of misery just hiding in plain sight, stomping on life. I hate it.
I didn't understand quite what you meant about a "suicide machine" unless that's just a euphemism for something obvious. If you want to elaborate I'd be curious, but I fully understand if not.
I am doing much better now, between learning new limits and some other things that are unwise to write down. My sympathies to you friend, even when opiates are needing to be discontinued — i.e. someone is actively being harmed by addiction — the correct response is /always/ a controlled taper.
Re suicide machine. I built a device what for apply to self to extinguish self quickly, reliably (assuming no emergency medical intervention within about 10 minutes), and with minimal discomfort. I didn't want to die, but knowing I could always take that option quickly made it possible to take it minute by minute and not kill myself out of fear that it would later be unbearable.
I don't really want to describe the device as there are ethical and (regrettably) legal reasons why being frank about suicide is something to handle carefully.
Totally understand, almost didn't ask for that reason. Glad things are going better for you.
Thank you, I'll give it a read!