TCS Is Bad

Topic Summary: Link to TCS criticism.

Goal: Sharing.

CF relevance: It’s about TCS.

Do you want unbounded criticism?

OK but I’m just sharing a link so the critical discussion would be about the articles, not directed at me. I’ll say my opinion of the link though, so potentially someone could criticize that: I think the articles make some good points. If the articles are actually bad, then I’m mistaken.

To me some of the articles seem similar to stuff Elliot has (recently) written about TCS. I doubt that’s coincidence.

If Elliot didn’t write the articles, I’d guess there are some plagiarism / lack of proper credit problems with them.

This post is worrying to me.

I have some things to say that are similar to things that Elliot has said about TCS. It’s not a “coincidence”. I have followed TCS for a long time, I have read Elliot’s writing on TCS over the years, and I am writing about it now partly because TCS has started to become active again over the last couple of years.

I don’t think that the things I have to say are plagiarizing Elliot, even though some of them are similar to things Elliot has said. I am not sure what you think is plagiarism in that blog: you didn’t state any specifics.

It is also worrying to me that you are speculating on the identity of an anon. I am an anon. I don’t want people speculating on my identity. I understand that I might not be able to stop CritRats or current TCSers from speculating on my identity, if I say something that bothers them. They might try to guess who I am and try to smear me in some way. But I don’t want people on this forum to be speculating on my identity: I want to be able to write here, including in unbounded, without people naming who they think I may or may not be, who I sound like, etc.

I have also noticed in the past that people who say something that sounds kind of like Elliot’s opinion will often be accused of being Elliot sock-puppets. This has been happening for many years. It is odd, and I think it is used in a way to delegitimize Elliot’s views: they are so bad/weird that obviously no other real person could think similar things. I don’t know if that’s what you mean here, but I could see CritRats or TCS people saying that any good/ difficult-to-answer TCS criticism is obviously Elliot sock-puppets, so needn’t be engaged with or taken seriously (and in fact, should probably just be ghosted and not replied to at all, as they are currently doing with Elliot).

To be clear, that is not allowed on this forum. @Lebowski’s post violated the rules.

The new TCS website has a forum section. It says it’s moderated to prevent spam. They have let posts go up which were clearly not spam then deleted them later. There’s no free speech or genuine critical discussion there, nor anything close, and they don’t have honest rules. Presumably the comment sections on the articles are handled the same way.

Regarding TCS being bad, I agree and I wrote some thoughts on how I didn’t notice earlier.

I apologize. I was focused on the fact that Elliot has been the victim of plagiarism in the past, and how that was bad.

I think I should stop trying to say things for the purpose of defending Elliot, especially about subjects I don’t understand very well like plagiarism.

I also need to consider side effects of what I write more. I often say things with a particular goal in mind and mostly consider whether or not what I say will achieve that goal. I would not have written a post with the goal of speculating on the identity of an anon. But I failed to consider if my post might have that effect.