Comment on Open thread, July 16-22, 2013

Sat, 20 Jul 2013 13:01:45 GMT

Julia Galef is a rising star in the skeptical movement; she has a podcast "Rationally Speaking". But she is connected with LW, she believes in Bayes theorem, and she only criticizes the political left. She is obviously used as a face of LW movement because she is pretty! -- This is a sexism on LW's part, because men at LW agree in comments that Julia is pretty. If they weren't sexist, they would talk about how smart she is

I think what this is really saying is that Galef is socially popular especially among skeptics (she has a popular blog, co-hosts multiple podcasts, and all that), but she's not necessarily smarter, or even more involved in LW activities (presumably, MIRI/CFAR has a reputation of very smart folks being involved, hence the confusion), compared to many other LW folks, e.g. Eliezer, etc. So, the argument goes, it's not really clear why she should get to be the public face of LW, but it's certainly convenient in that, again, LW is made to look less like a cult than it really is.

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