Scott Aa. watches The Queen's Gambit, blogs about how a woman overcoming sexism in chess is just like the time people on the internet called him a misogynist
(https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5171)
posted on December 16, 2020 06:35 PM by
u/completely-ineffable
I love how women being systematically sexually abused in workplaces
is “small fish”, “modern woke ideology” etc. I think he said the quiet
part out loud.
(watching a UNICEF ad) Child poverty? How trite. They have been spinning this narrative for years now. Besides, I am not even a child. Although I can relate to the intelligent ones a little bit.
Scott’s (note: this applies to both Scotts) ability to understand
everything through the lens of people on the internet saying mean things
about him never ceases to amaze me.
Agree.. honestly, his post reads like a cry for help, or at least a cautionary tale of what happens to credulous people who open themselves up an internet community without realizing all those people are miscreants with axes to grind who don't actually care about you as a person.
imagine being insecure about this specific sort of thing, and having the encouragement and support of the specific fan club that he has
anyone in that position would fall down a terrible psychological deathspiral
> He's the one who set SSC off on "untitled."
Indeed, let's recall just what Scott Aa did here: in his blog comments, a woman talked about her experience with sexual harassment in academic science, and he responded by talking about how he also suffers for being a nerdy male, downplaying her experiences. So basically the same thing he's doing in this blog post, except worse because it was talking down to a real person, rather than talking about a work of fiction.
Then the resulting critique was actually surprisingly mild i.e. his "feminism oppressed me by making me afraid to ask anyone out" I think was not ever very publicly connected to his musings (from the time period when feminism was oppressing him) about how back when he'd have an arranged marriage with the prettiest girl in the schetl (hence the blog name).
In that particular context complains about feminism and dating really don't look good at all, because feminism did in fact reduce arranged marriages of the kind he was fantasizing about, and if he think he would have gotten one and he complains about feminism there's not many ways those dots can be connected.
(note: I didn't make that connection either because I didn't know about the post where he explains the blog name, but had it pointed out to me)
> linking to Scott's blog is screaming hatred
Well, linking to Yudkowsky's reddit comments is [producing hatred](https://www.reddit.com/r/badmathematics/comments/2bazyc/0_and_1_are_not_probabilities_any_more_than/cj43y8k/), so there's a precedent for this.
I was taking an excuse to link a thing where Yudkowsky makes a fool of himself and make a joke at his expense. I wasn't doing whatever it is you seem to think I was doing.
I'm just gonna laugh at you calling people ableist pieces of shit and then immediately turning around to sign off from an argument with "get some therapy".
I would support that. He's talked about hatereading this place and feeling awful about himself and I don't wanna support anyone's self harm.
He's broadly harmless in a way Scott Alexander is not.
I kinda get it, in a sense, like.... sometimes it's hard for other people to explain things to you in a way you can understand.
I mean, it took me a while to understand why I should care about other people. Such as it goes. I eventually figured it out. Ironically thanks to CFAR, but not the rationalist side, more the emotional side of their program.
To be fair to Baronson, and as an appaling chess player, I agree with
him about chess drama written well; two of my favourite short books are
the Granta account of Nigel Short facing Kasparov in London (written up
by Julian Barnes), and Stephen Zweig’s fictional Chess.
Where I depart from the dude is his dull use of that fascination is,
as you point out, a metaphor for his own insecurities, where every
sentence has to even implicitly be a complaint about under-appreciation
for geeks.
Dude, get over it and grow up, get a thicker skin, most of us had
to.
It as usual also clear - for example, no mention of The Luzhin
Defence - that Baronson is over-extending himself on an at best
bare literary education.
No harm no foul of course, but if you’re gonna do media crit it might
be worth having some credentials in the field.
There’s also that, after defeating male player after male player,
Beth sleeps with them, or at least wants to. I confess that, as a
teenager, I would’ve found that unlikely and astonishing. I would’ve
said: obviously, the only guys who’d even have a chance to prove
themselves worthy of the affection of such a brilliant and unique woman
would be those who could beat her at chess. Anyone else would just be
dirt between her toes. In the series, though, each male player
propositions Beth only after she’s soundly annihilated him. And she’s
never once shown refusing.
>i swear to god this man is not normal
It is known. Still, he's the only designated sneer target you could see yourself being friends with. Admitting to some peculiar/sexist thought patterns is a far cry from main sequence rationalism.
Aaronson writes this, at face value an earnest admission to an embarrassing worldview in his youth. A rationalist would instead take it as a given. Write an essay on chess as an instrument of sexual selection for the good of the Volk. Sterilisation based on Elo ratings.
Maybe he's written some more heinous things than comment 171, I don't know. But with what I know, I don't mind that saying anything about me it says. Aaronson is different from (better than) Moldbug and Scott the psychiatrist. So einfach ist das.
How dare people say I deny women’s interiority. It just happens to be
an objective feature of reality that women are mysterious angels who can
never be empathised with
Oh god. I got as far as the part where he’s confused that a chess
genuis would be attracted to a man who couldn’t beat her at chess, and
then my sneer started to hurt.
tbf getting a PhD in CS from UC-B at 22 and then [googles CV] getting tenure at MIT is indeed “what some people would call a [a sufficient condition for being considered a] ‘child prodigy’” haha, this doesn’t sound like your typical college-dropout autodidact “polymath”, credentialist though that is
If I ever become a rich, highly-esteemed scientist, I hope I won’t
spend my life constantly paranoid that somebody out there wants to bully
me for being a nerd.
The Lesbian Understander has logged on
I love how women being systematically sexually abused in workplaces is “small fish”, “modern woke ideology” etc. I think he said the quiet part out loud.
Scott’s (note: this applies to both Scotts) ability to understand everything through the lens of people on the internet saying mean things about him never ceases to amaze me.
one of his fans (comment #9 and #19) immediately reads this as a callout against sn**rcl*b
[deleted]
To be fair to Baronson, and as an appaling chess player, I agree with him about chess drama written well; two of my favourite short books are the Granta account of Nigel Short facing Kasparov in London (written up by Julian Barnes), and Stephen Zweig’s fictional Chess.
Where I depart from the dude is his dull use of that fascination is, as you point out, a metaphor for his own insecurities, where every sentence has to even implicitly be a complaint about under-appreciation for geeks.
Dude, get over it and grow up, get a thicker skin, most of us had to.
It as usual also clear - for example, no mention of The Luzhin Defence - that Baronson is over-extending himself on an at best bare literary education.
No harm no foul of course, but if you’re gonna do media crit it might be worth having some credentials in the field.
i swear to god this man is not normal
How dare people say I deny women’s interiority. It just happens to be an objective feature of reality that women are mysterious angels who can never be empathised with
Oh god. I got as far as the part where he’s confused that a chess genuis would be attracted to a man who couldn’t beat her at chess, and then my sneer started to hurt.
I, too, was what some people would call a “child prodigy”
If I ever become a rich, highly-esteemed scientist, I hope I won’t spend my life constantly paranoid that somebody out there wants to bully me for being a nerd.
Scott shouldn’t be as surprised as he is. It makes sense if you see their shared traits not as mere nerd-obsession but as neurodivergence: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIdllh0hA3b/?fbclid=IwAR2cas3RAfpZ7hygS3Swjpb3GkKVH-z2_-yDQ3y5Yy99xjm9oElqvyFRl5A
I like how the first comment is about anime.
he needs therapy and couples therapy to take out any issues he has with his wife and women in general