I've said before that I'm a fan of Scott Alexander, his current blog, Astral Codex Ten, and his former blog, Slate Star Codex. Last year, I paid for a subscription to his current blog. Now that the subscription is expired, I probably won't renew. Here, I'll explain why.
The main reason is that he doesn't really write that much content. He offers lots of open threads and "rationalist community meetup" events. He also offers what seem to me to be unending reader submitted book review contests. I'm sure they're good reviews (I actually haven't read them), but I didn't subscribe to the blog to read other people's work.
Another reason is that what he does write, now, seems to lack the heft of his earlier pieces. Frankly, his pieces are shorter than before. He wraps up his essays a bit too quickly for my tastes. What I used to like about his writing is that he seemed to devote a lot more time in each essay exploring whatever issue he was exploring. And he tends to wrap things up too neatly. In that, his writing style reminds me of Richard Roeper's film reviews at the Chicago Sun-Times.
A third reason, not a major one, is that I suspect he wasn't completely honest about the controversy with the New York Times that led to him cancelling his former blog. I don't think he lied about anything. But I suspect he portrayed the situation as a bit more dire than it was. That said, I do believe him when he says he's gotten death threats. And even if the threats weren't credible, they're still freaking death threats and I don't blame anyone who gets concerned about such things, especially because that's never happened to me.
It's possible all my reasons are off base. Maybe Scott always posted so little content, but because I wasn't paying to read it, I wasn't inclined to (and didn't have any standing to) complain.
While it's probably true that his essays are now shorter, I can't promise his longer essays were necessarily better. I usually skimmed huge chunks of his essays. It's quite possible that when he wrote (to make up numbers) 2,000-word blog posts, I read only 1,200 words and skipped the rest, while now he writes 1,300-word posts and I read everything.
For the New York Times thing, I obviously don't know the whole story. I'll never know the whole story.
I should say that I don't bear Scott any ill will. In fact, I might even re-subscribe to his blog. But for now I'm taking a break.
