Unfortunately, while the Sandifer article does make some valid points about Scott Alexander's writing, it also deploys plenty of questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning itself. I'm personally not impressed by either article.
Well, a quick red flag in Sandifer's article is that she describes Slate Star Codex as "a crackpot blog that keeps giving cover to f---ing nazis".
But what first got my attention (well, second, since the first thing was that Sandifer's article is as long and rambling as Alexander's is--both of them could have made what valid points they had with far fewer words) was this statement, a little earlier, about Scott Aaronson (referring to the comment in the blog post of Aaronson's that Alexander's article links to):
> Aaronson was declaring that, as a shy and nerdy man, he was a member of "one of society's least privileged classes" in response to someone saying they were a rape victim.
The reason this got my attention was that I had previously read the Aaronson post in question, and the comments, and I didn't remember any such thing. So I read through the post and comments again. The commenter that Aaronson was responding to when he talked about his personal history (the comment of his that Alexander quoted) did say she was a rape victim in that comment thread--but she said it after the quoted comment from Aaronson. Aaronson's quoted comment was in response to an earlier comment of hers, which did not say anything about her having been raped.
So Sandifer lied in her article about a fact that was key to her argument. I understand this is just one example, but there isn't room here for a multi-thousand-word critique and I don't have time to write one anyway. But the example I have given is not the only questionable thing I saw.
What's your evidence that there was a lie, as opposed to just a reasonable error of fact or an editing error?
Amy did imply she was a victim of sexual assault previously, just not rape. So at the very least it was an error of degree. And regardless, Aaronson, had no reason to think he wasn't talking to a rape victim. The odds were something he surely knew. So I think Sandifer's correct that "this was neither the time nor the place to express them". And that's coming from a "shy and nerdy" guy.
Given that you're very up in arms about "questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning", you'll see why I would expect you to do better than turning a reasonable and non-fatal error into a supposed lie about a key fact. But it is about what I'd expect from somebody working hard to defend a cryptofascist.
That's definitely not true. I just agreed with you that there was an error in Sandifer's article. We agree that questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning are bad.
But if you can't talk to me or take responsibility for your own words because I have a negative opinion of one of your faves, that's a choice you're making.
