As a teenager, I idolized Scott Alexander of SlateStarCodex, who wrote deep, compassionate and fascinating stuff about politics, history, medicine, AI, charitable giving, depression and anxiety, rationality, language and how we think about the world. As an adult, I met him.
I am here to tell you that he writes such a good blog because he is a thoroughly good human being. He is careful, cautious, sincere, witty, and brings out those traits in the people around him; I've never had a conversation with him that I didn't walk away from feeling smarter.
I have known him to volunteer huge chunks of the time he doesn't spend on his job and his blog to help my uninsured friends navigate the medical system, to help my unhoused friends access housing, to help me double-check a lit review I wanted to be very sure of, to review books,
to help people understand the world and navigate it and do good in it. The community he built around his blog is full of amazing people. I am on team Scott Alexander. Hopefully soon @nytimes will back down, his blog will be up and everyone who hasn't heard of him can go see why.
