Scott Alexander

That's because hypnotism and persuasion isn't really a life hack that helps you win all the time at everything.

If the world's best hypnotist asked a room full of VCs for money with a stupid business plan, he would probably fail.

This isn't to say persuasion is useless, and in certain fields it can be very powerful indeed.

But let's not go crazy and start worshipping it.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

The nerd sits in his cubicle and thinks, if only I were more charismatic.

But the salesman with the bright teeth and the firm handshake thinks, man, I bet I could get out of this dead-end job if only I was smarter.

Footnote, a better answer here would differentiate facts are worse than memes and persuasion is worse than intelligence.

Persuasion can be fact-based.

Here I think of Ezra Klein and Matt Iglesias, two of our most influential public intellectuals, each with a reach far greater than Adams'.

Both are excellent writers and have non-zero charisma, but they're mostly respected for being knowledgeable and likely to be right about things.

Back to the text.

4.

The part on race and cancellation, included under protest.

Ilya Lazovsky writes, quote, Ilya Lazovsky writes, quote,

J.J.

McCulloch, who has a blog linked here, writes, quote, Good essay, but I think you kinda yarda-yarded away the racist rant, which was extremely explicit and extended.

I think it was the opposite of a bog-standard cancellation, which we think of as being a slightly unfair, overzealous policing of an at least slightly subjectively offensive comment, often from years ago.

But Scott went on quite a long diatribe about why black people as a group are dangerous and undesirable to be around, and why he personally goes out of his way to avoid them.

Some conservatives have tried to use bog-standard anti-work logic in defending him, but no, his comments really are quite explicitly and undeniably racist, if that term has any useful definition at all.