Maybe I misread him, but considering I've seen him defending bestiality as consensual, I am not too inclined to give the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe I misread him, but considering I've seen him defending bestiality as consensual, I am not too inclined to give the benefit of the doubt.
It’s like carcinization. Every weird offshoot of libertarianism arrives at pedophilia apologia in their own roundabout way.
Tbh, that is what made me step back from my libertarian phase, lol.
I am confused by the threading, but it looks like Hanania used the "control by neurotics" phrase first and Decker is responding to it?
Someone called Cairo Smith has an essay abut how figures like Aella and Hanania groom people who share Twitter or meetups with them https://www.futuristletters.com/p/the-tragedy-of-nick-and-aella
Decker is also retweeting Kelsey Piper.
That's a good essay but I feel the author is doing to Nick what he accuses Aella of doing to herself and personifying him as a small little bean.
Is Nick autistic? Yes, no reason not to believe this. Does he have no conscious inkling that what he posts is pushing the realms of acceptable norms, I think that's rather unlikely if you've followed him for a bit.
He posts rage bait. The essay that made him internet famous was a sincere thought provoking piece but rage bait nonetheless. Since then he's struggled to say anything that's been given serious intellectual praise and instead has fallen to the level of latching onto whatever shocking point gets engagement.
He's a less interesting, and worst of all less funny Richard Hanania knockoff.
Cairo Smith infanttilizes the economist (who chose to start a PhD in economics at GMU and must have known the faculty there trend Libertarian) but I wonder if his supervisor has sat him down and walked him through how much money and respect economics professors get, how much money and respect quants in the finance industry get, and that neither of those industry likes to hire people who post pictures of themselves with bevies of sex workers (the done thing seems to be getting the fancy job, then expressing your desires in private). Making a living as a Substack pundit like Noah Smith is hard and you have to be lucky.
He quit his PhD to try and get into a better school.
(I don't think that was a smart idea)
Decker's undated CV says he has a BS in economics from GMU and his GMU PhD is "on pause" https://captgouda24.github.io/nicholas-decker.github.io/index.html
Eh, GMU Econ is an eclectic place. Home of Tyler Cowen after all. I'm sure Decker will manage fine. The author is absolutely correct that Decker is a smart guy. As for finance and quants, I'm sure he'd fit right in at most of those firms. You've got to remember Sbf and his band of merry men got their start at Jane Street.theyve been known for hiring people with much more bizarre online foot prints than Decker but probably not as famous.
Will he make it on substack? I doubt it, he doesn't distinguish himself from other lib Econ guys like Smith, he doesn't have a knack for finding interesting stories like Derrick Thompson or Kyla Scanlon, he doesn't have a particularly engaging writing style like Matty Yglesias. Most detrimental to him is he fails to be particularly funny while doing any of it. Id compare him most to someone like Richard Hanania. Both pretty detestable in similar ways but Richard manages to constantly maintain attention on himself, positive or negative, in a way Decker could only dream of. The whole Aella photo was the closest I think he managed
I would class Cowen as one of the GMU weird rightie economists like Hanson.
I don't think SBF had a large online footprint when he was working for Jane Street
Definitely not a large online presence but Caroline Ellison had a presence in the Harry Potter fanfiction community before/during her time at Jane street. Not finance but in journalism, Kelsey Piper also had a pretty noticeable fanfiction phase.
Not bringing it up to say it's comparable to Nick but more so that these firms are more than willing to overlook "deviant" online behaviour. Being able to draw attention is the new name of the game.
Wasn't that pseudonymous? Back in the day I had no idea that these people were on tumblr (and wherever the Glowfic was published). I just knew their blogs and Julia Galef's podcast. But the NYC finance world is not my world.
Caroline Ellison was definitely pseudonymous. Not really relevant to what I'm trying to say though. These things definitely used to be deal breakers in the "respectable world" : academia, finance, law, engineering, etc. The stigma around these things is going away as more people are born into the online world with a full lifetime of Internet history to go with.
Some professions will still definitely exclude those with checkered online footprints (Big law and client facing sides of finance come to mind). Don't think this stigma will last forever though. Other areas will care less and less, or already don't care at all, what people have said in the past online (software, financial analysts, quants, etc)
People have been trying to make money or launch careers with their online presence since the 1990s and a hundred waste years of their lives or lose careers for every one who makes a go of it.
Someone on Bluesky with the handle William B. Fuckley gives the impression of being a grad student in economics or political science who is staying pseudonymous to avoid hurting his career. Perhaps he is more cautious than Decker, or perhaps he wants to apply to work at more conservative firms and universities.
Another example of a pseudonymous "academic" would be a fave of this sub, Cremieux. There's definitely plenty of people who currently choose to not out themselves for valid reasons. However, I definitely feel this is on the outs as people realize they can actually capitalize on their online fame in real life. People in the econ space I've been following who are fully out in the open would be the likes of Matt Darling, Joseph Politano, and Maia Mindel.
In all honesty, I feel the article is the sort of voluntarist contrarianism that frames ThingofThings “we should let minority languages die out gently because nobody really wants them/they are inefficient” https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/against-linguistic-diversity/
To their credit, lots of commentators including rationalist-adjacent with linguistics degrees jumped into to refute them
Huh - why does GMU hire them?
RationalWiki has a page for GMU https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/George_Mason_University Once you have a critical mass of tenured faculty they can start to hire and promote fellow travelers (especially if sympathizes keep donating to the department, or endow an Ebeneezer Scrooze Chair for More Objective Economics).
In addition, Hanson and Cowen probably got tenure before smartphones. Their spicy takes on email lists in the 1990s reached small audiences of nerds.
Understood
A lot of people don’t read the blog, unfortunately, because it is too much information, but that’s okay. I’m not writing for you. I am writing for professors. As long as I know they read it, I’m doing okay.
I mean, the author is pretty much plainly saying they think for Aella it is something like an act (i mean, iirc, she has said as much herself), but they think Nick is genuine about it.
I think he knows it and the article wasn't saying he didn't know he was publishing provocative, controversial statements.
Rage bait isn't inherently bad. Provocative language and statements can be useful and justified.
Yes, that is exactly what the article is arguing. Instead of maybe having a provocative piece that gets people talking about some ideas before stearing towards some area of his economic interests, he is focusing more on rage baiting and his internet presense. The author attributes this in part to the goading of people like Aella which he contrasts with how similiar ideas and pieces are likely to be handled in academic institutions.
I can’t really control what you choose to look at. You can hardly speak for the overall nature of my work, though?
https://x.com/captgouda24/status/1976660913353859136?s=20
You're more entertaining and insightful than 99% of the slop out there mate, keep it up and you'll reach 99.9%
Kate?
Mate whoops
Hey, I guess my post got the attention of the man themselves, lol.
You have to expect if you post a thread listing summaries of academic papers and make another post justifying bestiality and condemning people who support age of consent laws, people are going to judge you more on the bestiality and pedophilia things than they are going to judge you on whether you are doing a good job summarizing the research you read.
If you spend time consistently, publicly posting rage baity statements about issues like that, the rage bait is what people will associate with your public persona. If you want people to judge you by your economic takes and summaries, you should probably not put them next to your takes on bestiality and age of consent.
Oof, that story is dark.
Yea, I saw that. I hang around a lot of economists and people in that works. Nick seems like a decently bright person, just went down a rabbit hole that his more serious advisor aren't equipped to help him navigate in any sort of productive way.
jesus christ
That is how bestiality is traditionally spelled, by the way.
Yea, I was being dumb there, lol.
Do you think we could use this somehow to trick Hanania into reading de Beauvoir or Deleuze and Guatarri?