Ironically, bringing this topic up always turns the conversation to ad-hominem attacks about the messenger while completely ignoring the subject matter. That's exactly the type of argument rationalists claim to despise, but it gets brought up whenever inconvenient arguments appear about their own communities. All of the comments dismissing the content because of the author or refusing to acknowledge the arguments because it feels like a "smear" are admitting their inability to judge an argument on their own merits.
If anyone wants to actually engage with the topic instead of trying to ad-hominem it away, I suggest at least reading Scott Alexander's own words on why he so frequently engages in neoreactionary topics: https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/lm36nk/comment/g...
Some select quotes:
> First is a purely selfish reason - my blog gets about 5x more hits and new followers when I write about Reaction or gender than it does when I write about anything else, and writing about gender is horrible. Blog followers are useful to me because they expand my ability to spread important ideas and network with important people.
> Third is that I want to spread the good parts of Reactionary thought
> Despite considering myself pretty smart and clueful, I constantly learn new and important things (like the crime stuff, or the WWII history, or the HBD) from the Reactionaries. Anything that gives you a constant stream of very important new insights is something you grab as tight as you can and never let go of.
In this case, HBD means "human biodiversity" which is the alt-right's preferred term for racialism, or the division of humans into races with special attention to the relative intelligence of those different races. This is an oddly recurring theme on Scott Alexander's work. He even wrote a coded blog post to his followers about how he was going to deny it publicly while privately holding it to be very correct.
> Ironically, bringing this topic up always turns the conversation to ad-hominem attacks about the messenger while completely ignoring the subject matter.
This is not a fair or accurate characterization of the criticism you're referring to.
> All of the comments dismissing the content because of the author or refusing to acknowledge the arguments because it feels like a "smear" are admitting their inability to judge an argument on their own merits.
They are not doing any such thing. The content is being dismissed because it has been repeatedly evaluated before and found baseless. The arguments are acknowledged as specious. Sandifer makes claims that are not supported by the evidence and are in fact directly contradicted by the evidence.
If anyone wants to actually engage with the topic instead of trying to ad-hominem it away, I suggest at least reading Scott Alexander's own words on why he so frequently engages in neoreactionary topics: https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/lm36nk/comment/g...
Some select quotes:
> First is a purely selfish reason - my blog gets about 5x more hits and new followers when I write about Reaction or gender than it does when I write about anything else, and writing about gender is horrible. Blog followers are useful to me because they expand my ability to spread important ideas and network with important people.
> Third is that I want to spread the good parts of Reactionary thought
> Despite considering myself pretty smart and clueful, I constantly learn new and important things (like the crime stuff, or the WWII history, or the HBD) from the Reactionaries. Anything that gives you a constant stream of very important new insights is something you grab as tight as you can and never let go of.
In this case, HBD means "human biodiversity" which is the alt-right's preferred term for racialism, or the division of humans into races with special attention to the relative intelligence of those different races. This is an oddly recurring theme on Scott Alexander's work. He even wrote a coded blog post to his followers about how he was going to deny it publicly while privately holding it to be very correct.