> I increasingly find myself in disagreement with Scott’s essays on social issues and public policy, despite broadly sharing his small-L liberal outlook.

Well, there's your problem. Scott isn't a "small-L liberal." He does a decent job at masquerading as one, but ask a fan to recount his "greatest hits" and they're all boring old orthodox conservatism: race realism [1], IQ [2], anti-identity politics [3], etc.

(No, I'm in the mood to debate his positions on any of this, it's all been done to death and further debate isn't going to change anyone's mind, let alone his. The citations are there to establish that he is aligned with these views, whether or not it's warranted.)

One fringe benefit of belonging to "The Church of Graphs" that I don't think the author really touches on is that believers can do motivated reasoning _very_ easily. Scott is an expert at laundering his motivated reasoning through well-researched citations and data that supports his points, but he's not so great at giving the other side a fair hearing.

[1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-should-we-think-about-r...

[2] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-to-stop-worrying-and-le...

[3] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/against-against-boomers

*not in the mood