A second ScottA post has hit my psyche

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.

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.
A defining property of a zombie is that it’s not alive, and thus that destroying it is not murder. Not sure if that was what he was going for.
- Yeah, if I had to guess, it would be that that in part 3 of this shit, Scott begins advocating killing the "zombies". So what he's going for is "manufacturing consent".

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.

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.

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.
- Yeah, they’re all not cool enough to know about this one.

Public reminder that two thirds of American Jews support the Gaza genocide. ScottA is not an outlier, he's the norm.

For context this is similar to the rate for evangelicals. About 50% of Republicans think Israel is either on the right track or should go farther, compared to 25% of Democrats.

I don't know how much this actually adds. Scott is still actively refusing to differentiate between people on the internet being mean to him and US-backed Israeli military forces murdering civilians through starvation. Indifference to the latter is justified through the former.

Also for all that he and others talk about "Israel’s current war of survival against the Iranian-led terror axis" it shouldn't be understated just how badly Iran was mauled in the recent bombing, to say nothing of the decapitation of Hezbollah. Israel and their US allies have demonstrated time and again that even where these groups that seek their elimination exist the notion of them actually having the ability to do so is absolutely absurd.

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.

I don't think anyone here would be the sort to do that. I think we have at least an implicit kind of "prime directive" against engaging at all and also our mods have done what feels like a good job keeping us free of rabid Nazis and their sympathizers. Like, I'm not going to claim it's impossible and I fully believe that someone somewhere sent him some truly vile shit as a result of this whole affair, but I would be legitimately shocked if it was any of our regulars.
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
- I hope no-one here emailed him, more in a “don’t debate fascists” way and also a “it’s a waste of time anyway, Saa is set in his ways and is probably unable to be deprogrammed” way.
- He named the file after Woit, so either he was trying to be cute re naming, or he made this himself. Which is a wtf discovery. No idea why he doesnt just show emails.
  The naming itself is already hitting the libel part. Imho.
  E: he reacted on peters blog, scott named it, but it came from an email (and he calls the emailer "peters fan").