I read as far as this part:
Because Gerard was on LessWrong when the internet splintered and polarized, he saw the whole story through the lens of LessWrong, and on an instinctive level the site became his go-to scapegoat for all that was going wrong for his vision of the internet.
And I want to make a comment before continuing to read.
I’m uncomfortable with the psychologizing here. I feel like your style is inviting me to suspend disbelief for the sake of a clean and entertaining narrative. Not that you should never do such a thing, but I think it maybe warrants some kind of disclaimer or something. If you had written this specifically for LW, instead of as a linkpost to your blog, I would be suggesting major rewrites in order meet the standards I’m used to around here.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the true psychological story was significantly different than the picture you paint here. Especially if it involved real life events, e.g. some tragedy in his family, or problems with his friends or job. Would those things have even been visible in your research?
I’ll keep reading, but I’m now going to spend extra effort to maintain the right level of skepticism. None of what I’ve read so far contradicts my priors, but I’m going to avoid updating too hard on your interpretations (as opposed to the citations & other hard facts).
I am bothered that no other commenters have brought this up yet.
Fair.
And yet I felt the discomfort before reading that particular paragraph, and I still feel it now. For me personally, the separators you included were not enough: I did indeed have to apply extra effort throughout the post to avoid over-updating on the interpretations as opposed to the hard facts.
Maybe I’m unusual and few other readers have this problem. I suspect that’s not the case, but given that I don’t know, I’ll just say that I find this writing style to be a little too Dark Artsy and symmetrical for my comfort.
I still think this post was net good to publish, and I might end up linking it to someone if I think they’re being too credulous toward Gerard. But if I do, it might be with some disclaimer along the lines of, “I think the author got a little carried away with a particular psychological story. I recommend putting in the effort to mentally separate the facts from the fun narrative.”
Also, to give credit where it’s due, the narrative style really was entertaining.
(EDIT: typos)