Comment by listenallyall
11 hours ago
That's fine - the man was certainly not above being criticized, and he had plenty of flaws. Point is, do it while he's alive, don't wait until he's dead (especially when his death was not a surprise)
11 hours ago
That's fine - the man was certainly not above being criticized, and he had plenty of flaws. Point is, do it while he's alive, don't wait until he's dead (especially when his death was not a surprise)
> do it while he's alive,
Why? Must every obituary be a hagiography?
Adams got plenty of criticism while alive and had plenty of chance to defend himself. He doesn't get a heckler's veto on the living. We are entitled to tell the truth about the dead to ensure the accuracy of their memory.
But this wasn't an obituary. It wasnt a recalling of facts about his life. It wasnt written for a news outlet which publishes obits about most notable figures. It was an opinion piece and a discussion of how Adams affected the writer.
Of course Alexander, or anyone, has the right to be critical. It's just cowardly to wait till he's dead when he isn't able to refute any of the points (or even to absorb them and say, yea, he's right about this, I'm going to try doing better).
"cowardly to wait till he's dead when he isn't able to refute any of the points"
It's only here in the past few days that I have ever heard this particular view: that it's somehow "cowardly" or uncouth or otherwise inappropriate to speak critically of someone who has died because being dead, they are unable to respond.
I am genuinely curious where this idea came from. I've heard "don't speak ill of the dead" all my (by now, getting to be pretty long) life but I never heard this rationale for it except here in threads related to this guy.
I agree that it would be inappropriate to, say, attend someone's funeral and walk around saying you know, in a lot of ways, this guy was a real asshole.
But to claim it as some kind of general principle, with that rationale? That is... deeply weird, or at least it strikes me that way. How on earth could anyone ever discuss any historical figure while abiding by this rule?
Or on a much smaller scale, imagine a family with an abusive member who dies. Are the remaining members never to speak of the ways they were affected by that person? That's crazy.
People are who they are, live the lives they live, and do the things they do. Most people are better than the worst thing they ever did and worse than the best thing they ever did. There's nothing wrong with assessing that fully after they die.
But it's the "because they can't respond" rationale that surprises me. I had no idea that rationale even existed, let alone seems (at least here, with respect to this guy) to be somewhat widespread.
Your comment seems almost completely divorced from the tone of someone who actually read the article in good faith. It's almost like you got to the first critical thing that was said, stopped, and came back to the comments section to pout.
In no way was Scott Alexander dancing on the man's grave, in fact he spends a considerable portion of the article going over the positive influence Scott had on his life, despite not endorsing his politics and being dubious of his self-help methods.
> But this wasn't an obituary. It wasnt a recalling of facts about his life. It wasnt written for a news outlet which publishes obits about most notable figures. It was an opinion piece and a discussion of how Adams affected the writer.
Of course it was an obituary. It did recall facts of his life. There is no rule requiring obituaries to be positive or published in mainstream, dead-tree newspapers. There is a long historical tradition of heavily opinionated obituaries. Here's a great example about Margaret Thatcher [1].
If we can set aside your nit-picking about the word "obituary," I still don't understand your position that it's somehow "cowardly" to criticize dead people. As I've already pointed out, Adams got lots of criticism while alive and the timing of Alexander's article certainly isn't motivated by cowardice. To say only kind things of the dead is to be dishonest. We owe it to ourselves to not sugarcoat the past. Or do you think that a history book that accurately recounts Joseph Stalin's rule of the Soviet Union is "cowardly"?
[1] https://socialistworker.co.uk/news/margaret-thatcher-a-bruta...
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