Apparently we get a shout-out? Sharing this brings me no joy, and I am sorry for inflicting it upon you.
JFC man, stop digging
Zionism, to define it in one sentence, is the proposition that, in the situation described, you have not merely a right but a moral obligation to keep digging—and that you can do so with your middle finger raised high to the hateful mob.
On one side, we have a trolley problem thought experiment involving hypothetical children tied to hypothetical train tracks and some people sending him rude emails. On the other side, we have actual dead children and actual hospitals and apartments reduced to rubble. I wonder which side is more convincing to me?
It’s the same pattern of thought as rationalists with AI, trying to fit everything they see into their apocalypse narrative while ignoring the real harms. Rationalists talk a good game about evidence, but what I see them do in practice is very different. First, use mental masturbation (excuse me, “first principles”) to arrive at some predetermined edgy narrative, and then cherry pick and misinterpret all evidence to support it. It is very important that the narratives are edgy, otherwise what are we even writing 10,000 word blog posts for?
The slight of hand is that he considers all Jewish hostages to be his last child, and all Palestinian bystanders to be the children of his enemy. Humanism is seeing them all as your children. Scott seems to have discovered what we might call “race-ism.”
I choose to believe that S.Aa wrote some antisemitic prompt into his LLM of choice to make the slop at the head of the post, causing himself extreme psychic damage.
Not saying anything new here: what’s on display is what we already understand about Scott. Aside from a few examples, Scott can only understand things in a narrow, zero-sum, chad/jock vs incel/nerd/nice-guy framework.
E: straight from the horse’s fingertips:
Obviously I did not and would not generate that cartoonishly antisemitic image. One of Peter’s fans sent it to me, calling it a “diagram” that would help me understand the situation in the Middle East, trying to get a rise out of me. Now he’s sending me emails about how the image isn’t antisemitic, since it obviously only targets Orthodox Jews (!). Yes, I had to pick a name when I saved the image, so I called it “woitworldview.png.”
Hearsay, my original belief stands. (jk)
E2: in the comments of Woit’s blog, the “cartoon guy” commented, owning up to generating the slop, with a pretty shitty comment that I will not replicate here. (Yes, I could continue the bit by saying this is a Scott sockpuppet. No, I will not be doing that.)
The comparison with Tatsuya Ishida from Sinfest in the other thread was spot on - Just like Tats, Scott Aa is now depicting whoever disagrees with him as zombies.
I’m acutely aware of how sheer numbers can create the illusion of argumentative strength. I know many people who were sympathetic to Israel immediately after October 7, but then gradually read the room, saw which side their bread was buttered on, etc. etc. and became increasingly hostile.
It can’t be that they witnessed more and more acts of increasing violence and genocidal intent, must be they don’t believe in anything.
Public reminder that two thirds of American Jews support the Gaza genocide. ScottA is not an outlier, he’s the norm.
That survey was taken over a year ago. Attitudes may have shifted somewhat by this point.
People sending him anti-Semitism (or talking about him using anti-Semitic language is fucked up, saw people do that sadly). Really hope nobody here did that.
Still dehumanizing people he disagrees with. And refusing to understand the people he disagrees with. (But he could have made those points without calling others zombies, or do a weird ‘arabs dont get western freedom’ bit).
And I dont get why he thinks we are allied with re random piece of shit in Lebanon because we said his trolley problem thought experiment is fucked up, and that the genocide in gaza should stop. (Also the annexation of the west bank).
You can be against different groups of assholes at the same time. The guy is splitting so hard.
E: the whole ‘I hope they will grow up from this from the necessary devastation(*)’ bit haunts me. He doesn’t seem to get that the US put a lot of effort into rebuilding those countries. Which with stances like his is not something that is going to happen. (Also, see the west bank, Palestinians will likely not trust these efforts). It also took a long long time for the hatred to die down in Europe but esp the hatred from others towards Germans. (For a long while driving a car with German numberplates in The Netherlands was a risk as randomly people would cut you off, and my grandfather, who now is dead, mostly called German people by their WW2 slur, it took that generation mostly passing away for that to lessen sadly. At least these are my experiences and what I heard). I’m reminded of A.R. Moxons line: ‘if you want to be friends, why aren’t you friendly’(**). Unrelated, I’m also reminded of this post: https://forward.com/opinion/415250/from-the-river-to-the-sea-doesnt-mean-what-you-think-it-means/
*: I know it is not a thing people agree upon, but I think a lot of the devastation of the civilian infrastructure in ww2 was not necessary at all. It seems to be agreed upon that terror bombing actually has to opposite effect.
**: A similar thing could be said of the Hamas/Hezbolla people, but we in the west here do not support those groups.
Really hope nobody here did that.
if anyone from here did then they’re fucking banned, but I need better evidence than none and a standard for anti-Semitism that doesn’t include views that are just anti-Zionist and anti-genocide with no hatred behind them
Someone claiming to be the “cartoon guy” showed up at Woit’s blog to explain himself. He’s an edgelord Reddit atheist, the type that we’d ban tout de suite after he leaves one slur-filled comment that we delete.
Hi Scott! I guess that you’re lurking in our “living room” now. Exciting times!
The charge this time was that I’m a genocidal Zionist who wants to kill all Palestinian children purely because of his mental illness and raging persecution complex.
No, Scott. The community’s charge is that you’ve hardened your heart against admitting or understanding the ongoing slaughter, which happens to rise to the legal definition of genocide, because of your religious beliefs and geopolitical opinions. My personal charge was that you lack the imagination required for peace or democracy; now, I wonder whether you lack the compassion required as well.
[Some bigoted religious bro] is what the global far left has now allied itself with. [Some bigoted religious bro] is what I’m right now being condemned for standing against, with commenter after commenter urging me to seek therapy.
Nope, the global far left — y’know, us Godless communists — are still not endorsing belief in Jehovah, regardless of which flavor of hate is on display. Standing in solidarity with the oppressed does not ever imply supporting their hate; concretely, today we can endorse feeding and giving healthcare to Palestinians without giving them weapons.
nah he’s almost certainly talking about the post on old-sneerclub, the rationalists seem almost unaware this one exists.
Browsing that thread on old!SneerClub, I learned that a few months ago, ScottAa made a jokey post about being in some random “top 50” list of quantum-computing blogs, and the comment thread of that post escalated until he was saying this:
Aleksy #163: Please don’t take this the wrong way, but—I feel like the world would be a better place if you were not part of it.
My reasoning is as follows: when you single out a single UN member state, among all ~200 of them, as being illegitimate and having no right to exist—when, moreover, that state is literally the only thing standing between half the world’s Jews and their violent deaths in a second Holocaust—when it’s obvious to any fairminded person that, if you applied 10% of the same level of legal scrutiny to the founding events of other countries, the UN General Assembly would need to be swept nearly bare—when, finally, you needle a productive scientist over and over, commenting and emailing to ask why he hasn’t replied to you yet, taunting him that if he doesn’t then he’s effectively conceded the argument, etc. etc.—it’s clear that you’re making a negative contribution to the world.
I feel like, if you understood this, you’d see that the right and honorable thing to do would be to kill yourself as quickly as possible.
I hasten to add, however, that I’m not saying this out of any personal animus whatsoever towards you. It’s purely disinterested reason that’s led me to these conclusions. If you respond to me emotionally rather than rationally, that will show me that (alas) you weren’t ready for a logical, evidence-based discussion of these matters.
Never has a man had a more normal one
Peter Woit has weighed in on this second post as well in an update to his original response. Note that he has linked to the sneersub.
Here’s the update text, with links preserved:
Update: More from Scott, it seems that those opposed to what Israel is doing in Gaza are “brain-eaten zombies”. He’s also convinced that the zombie problem is mainly academics in the humanities. I hear that there’s a statement about what is going on in Gaza signed by thousands of prominent scientists that will soon be made public. A lot of very prominent brain-eaten zombie scientists out there, it seems.
Of course he’s still not allowing comments on his blog. For other discussion of his blogposts, see here and here.
E: I don’t know anything about Woit, what should I know about him? I see that, despite his recent disagreements with Scott, he has links on his blog to sht-opt’ed and also other sneer club villain Sabine Hossenfelder. Also, he seems a little judgmental/critical of the pro-palestinian protest tactics. So my guess is: liberal academic that’s probably a little STEM brained, but not anything near problematic enough to be sneered at here.
Woit is a math guy at Columbia who is mostly known for calling string theory a crock of non-science. I don’t think he’s sneerable. Sometimes his opinions align with a remark by, e.g., Hossenfelder, but he’s not … brain-cooked by engagement algorithms like she is. I check in on Woit’s blog occasionally to see if there’s news in the world of math that I missed, and the sense I get is that he made the criticisms he wanted to make and would rather talk about things he finds more interesting, whereas Hossenfelder is desperate for those physics is a corrupt cabal clicks.
