I think this is a very big part of it - it has been clear for a while that the generalizer-for-hire model of substack has not been good for him - but the specific Elon Musk savior fixation seems distinct and has been getting much, much worse.

also audience capture and the way being too online seems to break people's brains

All bloggers and pundits should follow the lesson of the Lawyers, Guns, and Money blog and regularly say and do things that piss off their commenters and never apologize for doing so.

I would not necessarily blame online; you can break someone's brain in exactly the same way and a lot quicker by getting them a column in a newspaper.

+++. Freedom is choosing an audience capture

Yes - I suspect there is a point of online fame past which you can only make it if you are either (a) incredibly mentally robust, or (b) just turn off comments and completely ignore feedback from people you don't know and trust.

Noah also simply has no other job than being online after leaving Bloomberg and doing substack full time. Zero forced professional interactions that aren't just online stuff. No editor. Not that I want to excuse the crazy stuff, but I do think that's not a recipe for staying healthy.

I do think it's interesting that he can still write some reasonably interesting posts, while suffering from severe Twitter brain.

I thank god for editors regularly

Andres makes very good points, when I met Noah he was a professor and eventually had the Bloomberg column. Then it was just the column. Now it’s just blogging and posting

uh oh, someone needs to stage a Matt Yglesias intervention.

Jesus Christ this is like a nightmarish cautionary tale about why to never monetize

Yeah originally he was just blogging for fun while working at Stoneybrook

People periodically try to get me to make money from the internet and I’ve always refused, and I think this is what I needed to hear to refuse forever

I often wonder what would happen if editors at academic journals behaved more like editors in the media There would be so much complaining, but I low key suspect it would improve the landscape

They used to be very much the same. Not only is mandatory peer review relatively new historically, even in the naughts I got additional reviews/edits from old school editors AFTER I cleared it. In the 1990s even some older (archival) conference editors did this, to establish uniform style & quality.

Yeah. I’m loosely aware that editors were more active only just before my time. I had one or two such experiences early in my career and it’s a positive. These days most editors just adjudicate the balance of reviewer opinion

They do this because of the incentives acting on them. Another reason why the present publishing and journal system is broke

No editor.

i think this is a big part of it. it is important to have a life outside of being online! family, hobbies, literally anything!

Are you implying that rabbits don't count

rabbit is good friend [because rabbit doesn't say "that's really fucked up why would you say that"]

He wrote a whole post/thread about how to do this!

not to mention sunk costs. if musk is who the rest of us think he is then noah is quite lost and quite bad at his job. which is, of course, unpossible

This sort of generalism has been the hallmark of economist-as-public-intellectual for a while (cf. Freakonomics), but the incentive structure of Substack + X tends to amplify the negatives by attenuating any sort of critical feedback.

A part of it may be very simple: he's likely making significant money from the intersection of Substack and X, and that tends to incentivize a positive view of Musk

I used to know him somewhat (and think he is a decent and sincere person fwiw), and I think that this is a genuine embrace on his part of Elon Musk greatness.

I think there's a granule of truth there that parts of today's online left sometimes forgets. If you compare pre/post-spacex space stuff, you see a truly remarkable shift in the early 2010s. ULA (i.e. boeing) era US, and really world wide, space flight was depressing.

Lots of nerdy tech folks grew up fascinated (in a naive / good way) with space exploration. There hadn't been anything exciting/non depressing post space shuttle. To this day I have SV acquaintances that see Musk's awfulness and have a hard time balancing that with getting out of that situation.

I don't want to excuse that, but I do think that there is a somewhat innocent aspect (definitely not the only one!) to the Musk-the-great-industrialist story.

Yes, this has to be part of the explanation: that the truth is complex, and we likely have our own blind spots. Like, when I say Noah is incentivized to see good in Musk, I fully accept that, for my part, I am now incentivized not to see *any* good there, because I've shut down my account.

He’s an earnest person to a fault

Yes. this is exactly it. There is not an ounce of malice or subterfuge in him.

My first red flag was when he earnestly defended Balaji’s character to me

In all seriousness, failure to make tenure messed him up and partially made him turn to Substack. He was also once more upfront on Twitter about an untreated psychiatric disorder so that partially explains why he’s fine one second and then flies off the handle the next second.

I’d heard about the first one not the second

Anyways, I hope he eventually gets the help that he needs. And that he figures out a way of writing without developing a parasocial relationship with bad people. www.noahpinion.blog/p/a-few-thou...

Overly trusting, influenced by far right people he's made friends with?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm overly trusting and unduly influenced by my far left friends. But you know, it is what it is. This is a community that accepts me (not on BlueSky, lmao, but IRL). They aren't vapid clout chasers like the people who I went to grad school with. They actually care.

I am definitely influenced by the @liberalcurrents.com crowd and I am good with that lol

They're radical liberals, not even left, although perhaps my impression of what is left is warped by years of direct exposure.

I believe this. But, you know, people can hold completely sincere views that are shaped by their mode of earning a living. E.g. I have a very positive view of the NSF. I sincerely think it's an important institution! I'm not just saying that because it makes my work possible. But, um, it does.