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Even just transcribing these and hosting them is extremely helpful, thanks.
This was an excellent read if you're aware of the emails but never bothered to read his citations or to dig into what the blather about object-level and meta-level problems was specifically about, which is presumably most people.
So, a deeper examination of the email paints 2014 Siskind as a pretty run of the mill race realist who's really into black genes are dumber, you guys studies and who thinks that higher education institutions not taking them seriously means they are deeply broken and untrustworthy, especially with anything to do with pushing back against racism and sexism. Oh, and he is also very worried that immigration may destroy the West, or at least he gently urges you to get up to speed with articles coincidentally pushing that angle, and draw your own conclusions based on pure reason.
Also it seems that in private he takes seriously stuff he has already debunked in public, which makes it basically impossible to ever take anything he writes in good faith.
@Architeuthis @dgerard "...impossible to ever take anything he writes in good faith."
See also this unguarded moment from Tumblr. All the alpha is in bad faith social engineering!
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/9lj3g7
I wonder if this is just a really clumsy attempt to invent stretching the overton window from first principles or if he really is so terminally rationalist that he thinks a political ideology is a sliding scale of fungible points and being 23.17% ancap can be a meaningful statement.
That the exchange of ideas between friends is supposed to work a bit like the principle of communicating vessels is a pretty weird assumption, too. Also, if he thinks it's ok to admit that he straight up tries to manipulate friends in this way, imagine how he approaches non-friends.
Between this and him casually admitting that he keeps "culture war" topics alive on the substack because they get a ton of clicks, it's a safe bet that he can't be thinking too highly of his readership, although I suspect there is an esoteric/exoteric teachings divide that is mostly non-obvious from the online perspective.
So, by that token, if hypothetically you think that the Nazis got a few things right (not the war, racism or genocide, of course, or even the degenerate art, but maybe, say, the smoking bans and well-paved roads and perhaps the odd Wagnerian opera), the way to convince people is to start ranting about blood and soil and the need to exterminate the üntermenschen and wait for the nice normie liberals to politely meet you part of the way?
In his early blog posts, Scott Alexander talked about how he was not leaping through higher education in a single bound (he went overseas for medical school, and failed to get medical residency on his first try, ending up in a small Midwestern city). So I wonder why he is sure that in a world with fewer university degrees, he would have gotten as far as he did (medical schools in the USA used to limit admissions from people of his ethnicity).
Likewise with immigration restrictions: he knows that they often blocked Jews, many Europeans. and East Asians not just brown people right?
In his early blog posts, Scott Alexander talked about how he was not leaping through higher education in a single bound
He starts his recent article on AI psychosis by mixing up psychosis with schizophrenia (he calls psychosis a biological disease), so that tracks.
Other than that, I think it's ok in principle to be ideologically opposed to something even if you and yours happened to benefit from it. Of course, it immediately becomes iffy if it's a mechanism for social mobility that you don't plan on replacing, since in that case you are basically advocating for pulling up the ladder behind you.
He starts his recent article on AI psychosis by mixing up psychosis with schizophrenia (he calls psychosis a biological disease), so that tracks.
wait, this man is a psychiatrist? or is that another scott
Yes, Scott Alexander is an unusual rationalist blogger who had a credentialed professional career as a psychiatrist. After Substack became his patron, he opened his own medical practice, but the website has said "not accepting new patients at this time" since 2022. So he seems to live off gifts from fellow travelers with a side hustle in psychiatry.
i'll risk a guess that running ritalin-dispenser-as-a-service type business catering to overly confident rationalists might get him a pretty penny
Reading his adderall article I couldn't help but think that this guy is handing scripts to everyone in the Bay Area
That is very possible although I would guess that was earlier in his career given that he does not advertise as treating ADHD or similar. He has two small children, a writing job, and side projects like writing end-of-the-world stories for AI 2027. His practice has a name drawn from Lord of the Rings like other things in the Thielsphere.
His practice has a name drawn from Lord of the Rings like other things in the Thielsphere.
fuckin lol, I had not spotted this, what a tell
Fatty Lumpkin's Headshrinking and Sundry?
he had a blogpost about how amphetamines risks are overstated and it's fine actually for more people than usually prescribed https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
this post was the starting pistol for rationalists taking as much adderall as they could get down their necks. Scott is not telling you that adderall will make you a financial genius and super effective, you understand. Except Kelsey Piper, who he literally says this about by name.
This is the post that made it a rationalist commonplace that adderall makes anyone a super effective financial genius.
it's what got TPOT losers "microdosing" street meth. Of course the same TPOT confused meth and MDMA.
Somehow, Scott still has a license.
ye, who are we to doubt superpredictors like them
Making general statements about the risks and benefits of medication is different from proscribing them. The George K. Lerner, MD who was FTX's resident pill-pusher seems to be based in San Francisco and wants potential patients to know that inter alia "Dr. Lerner specializes in the treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD) in adults. He has extensive experience in treating adults who have been successful in their professional endeavors but have found attention deficit symptoms to be an impediment to achieving their full potential." (nudge nudge)
His website does not mention a connection with the hospital in Michigan which is the only one where I know Alexander worked. I would like to know more about possible connections other than their mutual connections to the FTX gang. I have not done shoe-leather reporting in SoCal and almost all of the things we know about Alexander are things he posted voluntarily under his main handle.
Lerner's site shows what Alexander's site might look like if he were focused on psychiatry rather than writing and peddling racist lies.
scott also has an explainer article for stimulants for ADHD where he tells that:
[...] This matches my experience. I’ve worked with a few hundred Adderall patients
so maybe he doesn't have to advertise lot, or at all https://lorienpsych.com/2020/10/30/adderall/
but look, i liked this article,
I’m midway through this and this part stood out to me, this is part of the email that was written by S.Al, edited for length:
Compare RationalWiki and the neoreactionaries. […] Almost nothing they say is outrageously wrong, but almost nothing they say is especially educational to someone who is smart enough to have already figured out that homeopathy doesn't work […] they fit exactly into my existing worldview without teaching me anything new
The Neoreactionaries provide a vast stream of garbage with occasional nuggets of absolute gold in them. Despite considering myself pretty smart and clueful, I constantly learn new and important things […] 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.
The garbage doesn't matter because I can tune it out.
“Rational Wiki presents an understanding of reality that I mostly agree with and is thus boring. I want some spicy takes so I’m going to go suck on the firehose of reactionary diarrhoea, but it’s ok because my throat game is too good to let any of it through” type shit
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]
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