"Quantum Computing" is a cult with commercial interests / investor scams.

I'm even more cynical about the economists.

Scott Aaronson has often called out inflated claims by quantum computer startups.

He's been more of a quantum fanboy of late. He does still talk about obvious fraud, but he's largely uncritical of the bigger players' offerings. Likewise, he's on openAI's payroll; no hard-hitting critique to be found. His Busy Beaver content is top-notch, though.

But when he shares his opinions on cancel culture, gender, etc.? He's just another blogger.

So? That means nothing as to the quality or even topic of their blog content.

Unless blogs started receiving peer review while I wasn't paying attention, there's likely a reason any given content lives there and not in an academic paper.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36852187

Wrong submission about attention.

Well, yeah, blogs are not academic journals. And if a blog post disagrees with academic consensus, the academic consensus will be right the vast majority of the time. But this applies to all blogs on the internet, not only those on LessWrong.

The issue is that LW, more than most, is seemingly unaware of this fact.