(seriously, don't miss on reading some of Scott's posts -- you will be disappointed by almost every piece of nonfiction you read afterwards)
It's definitely one of those cases of "If everyone thought a little more like X, Earth would be a much better place.", (let X=Scott Alexander) -- and notably it becomes quite clear how to think like he does (he just tells you!).
Didn't spoil the nonfiction in general for me, but definitely did make me ask "why more people on the left can't be like Scott?" I'm not a leftist myself, and this makes me disagree with Scott - who is definitely on the left - from time to time, but even when I disagree I feel like I learned something and maybe improved my knowledge, understanding and appreciation for opposing points. I wonder if more people were like that, maybe we could have proper political discussions instead of the catastrophic calamity we are witnessing now.
Definitely, he is definitely not always right, and you should avoid taking any person's word as gospel. Scott's point isn't "I'm always correct/You should always agree with me", it is "We should be charitable and examine things without prejudice, and look into everything with as much depth and reason as possible". I've read a few of his articles where he was out of his depth (some related to math and statistics), but they have been generally well researched and open to criticism. I guess what I wrote about other non-fiction is how well he embraces not being right; it's almost a point of celebration -- to have learned something new (and approaching the truth), not a point of defense of ego. It's a radical[1] (at least in current culture) position of collaboration. Some of his posts remind me of the Polymath Project (see Tao, and others): the point is to get to the truth, together.
[1]: I also give you that, if this position weren't radical, then SSC might seem not so special -- a good psychiatry blog with interesting philosophical and rational thought.
If you speculated this might be the cause of the current calamity, I believe you're right. I don't think it's because we've suddenly changed and suddenly people have become polarized and dogmatic. I think culturally, and instinctively, we've been generally dogmatic for a really long time, with few individual exceptions. Most people want to quickly associate with a tribe, or dogmatic system, and blindly defend it without questioning its assumptions. It is extremely difficult to get an average person to change his mind on say his favored political party -- much more than you would expect from factual and philosophical basis alone (if you frame it as an abstract philosophical discussion, e.g. a trolley problem, I think it's easier to get people engaged and open to change their minds; an engineer that measures a poor performance of a system won't usually die on the hill of defending the system at all costs).
It's really counterintutive: by being shown a new point of view, by changing your view of how the world works (in description or aspiration), you are gaining, you are learning, it should be a good thing (for everyone) -- and yet we frequently over-attach to beliefs. I don't want to speculate too much, but it sometimes does make sense to defend yourself not to be convinced by anyone of anything (potentially with selfish or malicious intent), so this may be an over-correction (cultural and or evolutionary) trait. See the post "Epistemic Learned Helplessness"
https://jasoncrawford.org/guide-to-scott-alexander-and-slate...
hn discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26128579
(seriously, don't miss on reading some of Scott's posts -- you will be disappointed by almost every piece of nonfiction you read afterwards)
It's definitely one of those cases of "If everyone thought a little more like X, Earth would be a much better place.", (let X=Scott Alexander) -- and notably it becomes quite clear how to think like he does (he just tells you!).