“Public intellectuals need to say what they actually believe” by Aaron Bergman

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Recorded08 Jan 2026

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Intro This Twitter thread from Kelsey Piper has been reverberating around my psyche since its inception, almost six years now. You should read the whole thing for more context, but here are the important tweets:Link 1, link 2, link 3 I really like Kelsey Piper. She's “based” as the kids (and I) say. I think she was trying to do her best by her own lights during this whole episode, and she deserves major props for basically broadcasting her mistakes in clear language to her tens of thousands of followers so people like me can write posts like this. And I deeply respect and admire her and her work. But: I deeply regret not telling my readers sooner what I told my family Easier said than done, hindsight is 20/20, etc., but I basically agree that she fucked up.[1] The reason I’m writing this post now is that it's become increasingly apparent to me that this kind of isn’t a one-off, and it's not even an n-off for some modest n. It's not out of the norm. Claim Rather, public intellectuals, including those I respect and admire, regularly communicate information to their audiences and the public that is fundamentally [...] ---Outline:(00:11) Intro(01:21) Claim(02:20) A few more examples(02:24) Will MacAskill(05:40) Dean Ball(13:41) The case against the status quo(13:54) It's misleading and that's bad(14:06) No one else knows they're playing a game(15:15) What would a reasonable reader infer?(16:31) Public intellectuals are often domain experts relative to their audience(19:01) You're (probably) all they've got(20:50) You can have your cake and eat it too(22:33) Not a trivial ask(23:43) Appendix: transcript of original rant The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: January 7th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/efcrv3tMogwFCQvGZ/public-intellectuals-need-to-say-what-they-actually-believe --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

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