
Comparing the NYT op-ed to tweets from cabinet members - jpdus
https://github.com/mkearney/resist_oped/blob/master/README.md
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mjevans
It's interesting to show the VP and 45, but as their speeches and public
messages are probably mostly written BY the senior staff the correlation is
highly suspect.

Also, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

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heartbreak
Why should we not attempt to unmask the author? Is there an ethical argument
against it?

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rococode
A person tries to anonymously reassure the public while putting their career
at risk if they are found out, and the response to their good intentions is to
try to out them and destroy their career as a result? I feel that's a little
messed up, especially when NYTimes states they are aware of the identity of
the person so it's not like the validity of the article is suspect.

Regardless of how you might feel about everyone in the administration, it'd
certainly be a clear warning to people about the risk of making such
statements in the interest of transparency, and you can be sure we'd never see
one ever again, from any politicians on any side of the political spectrum.

For the sake of discussion, what ethical arguments do you think there are
_for_ finding out who wrote this? Let's assume you aren't in the Trump camp,
since it'd be reasonable to say that if you support Trump then you might be
more motivated to find out who it is, and there's nothing wrong with that I
suppose.

~~~
vivekd
Even if a person doesn't support Trump, actively interfering with and
sabotaging an elected official who holds the highest executive office in the
country seems like a bad thing to do.

If a person doesn't like the president, the proper recourse is public
criticism working to ensure he doesn't get re-elected and if possible
impeachment . . . the proper recourse is never actively sabotaging the
president of the United States. There may be exceptional circumstances where
the president is violating the constitution, however, we still have a
functional supreme court so that exception isn't raised in this circumstance.

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cliffordthedog
> the proper recourse is never actively sabotaging the president of the United
> States

Why not?

> however, we still have a functional supreme court

We don't. Mitch McConnell saw to that 2 years ago.

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travmatt
Are you asking why Americans shouldn’t support an unelected cabal of secret
plotters who seek to impose their ideology onto America by staging a coup?

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cliffordthedog
No, I'm saying "don't undermine the president" applies, at most, to the people
in the executive branch of the government.

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travmatt
The op-ed was written by a senior member of the executive branch, so I’m not
sure how that has any bearing on what’s being discussed here.

~~~
cliffordthedog
Oh I totally agree with the statement when restricted to people like the
author. Even then it depends on the definition of "undermining".

I think the author is cowardly, disingenuous, and dangerous.

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simonsarris
No Kellyanne Conway as an option? That was my bet.

Pence uses the word "lodestar," Mattis loves to say "first principles." The
ending (reach across aisle) reads a lot like McCain speak. ...Of course the
42D Chess move is to make it look like anyone near Trump could have written
it.

It's also possible it was penned by two or three people, especially if it was
a group that formed a pact to save their jobs/face as un-elected bureaucrats,
as a hedge if the midterms go poorly and they still want D.C. jobs, etc.

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btown
Flagging this because doxxing is not something this site should promote, no
matter how high-profile the post, nor how politicized the content. No matter
how interesting the techniques used, this thread is potentially as dangerous
as Reddit's witch hunt for the Boston bomber. [0]

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/1iv343/the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/1iv343/the_boston_bombing_debacle/)

~~~
nautilus12
Not trying to be pedantic with a sad situation but hadn't Sunil Tripathi
already been missing for a month and was already dead when reddit fingered him
as the bomber? This makes it sound like Reddit was the cause of his death.
Granted, it could have been which is why doxxing should be avoided, but I
still dont think this is a good example.

It should be careful to distinguish between the harm caused to his family and
the cause of his death which I dont think was reddit/4chan. I am a bit
confused because this says he dissapeared on the 16th, but other sources say
he had been missing for a month prior.

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mcphage
Does this filter out retweets, and/or the text of retweets? It would be useful
to see the raw data it's built from—the code specifies a 'data/mat.rds' file,
but there's no data directory in the repository, and I don't have R installed
/ any familiarity with it to really follow details about the code.

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d--b
The NYT knows better. They know that you can unmask someone by finding
correlations in style. They most likely edited the content heavily to avoid
this.

Besides, correlations with tweets probably wouldn’t mean much as tweets are
not written the same way as regular text and not by the same person anyway.

~~~
Redoubts
A member of the editorial board said that they wouldn’t do that with the Op Ed

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-
daily/id1200361736?m...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-
daily/id1200361736?mt=2&i=1000419221554)

Question asked at around 17:00

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cossovich
Points to a senior speech-writer. Someone who has written speeches for both
Pence and POTUS - but probably more speeches for Pence... might be an op-ed
directed by Mattis but my money is on the speech-writer going rogue.

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save_ferris
I'm surprised by this result, given the fact that the op-ed is compared to
tweets and DJT turns out to be one of more highly correlated members of the
group. Based on what I've seen posted on his Twitter account in the last two
years and the way he's handled himself in public since taking office, it's
really hard to see how this op-ed came from him personally.

~~~
Arn_Thor
This didn't measure his personal twitter but the POTUS account, which is
manned by White House staffers. Trump's got his personal account on his phone
and uses that for his rants and raves

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davidw
Very relevant:
[https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1037512349488492546...](https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1037512349488492546?s=19)

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nautilus12
So its the person that writes Mike Pence's tweets? Not sure a term frequency
analysis is enough to conclude much.

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codeiscodeman
Anonymous sources suck. Speak truth to power if you want, put your name on it.
Otherwise do your damn job.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
Exactly right, and the NYT did a great job of making Trump's points about the
media for him by publishing this anonymously.

To be clear, I find his attacks on the media horrifying, and it's one of the
things that's so disgusting about this NYT op-ed.

[https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-
anonymous-...](https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-anonymous-
new-york-times-op-ed-and-the-trumpian-corruption-of-language-and-the-
media?mbid=nl_Daily%20090618&CNDID=54169689&utm_source=Silverpop&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20090618&utm_content=&spMailingID=14203508&spUserID=Mjc4ODQwOTY3NDQ0S0&spJobID=1480491643&spReportId=MTQ4MDQ5MTY0MwS2)

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guelo
A lot of speculation on Twitter is focused on the word lodestar which has
previously been used by Pence.

[https://twitter.com/jamescdownie/status/1037441482469335043](https://twitter.com/jamescdownie/status/1037441482469335043)

~~~
dawhizkid
Highly doubt Pence had the time to pen this himself, and it would seem way too
risky to involve his speechwriter to write this on his behalf. I'm guessing
the author was extremely careful to not expose themselves through their
writing style and threw this in there to distract.

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closed
Dave Robinson has a nice blog post using a similar analysis:

[http://varianceexplained.org/r/op-ed-text-
analysis/](http://varianceexplained.org/r/op-ed-text-analysis/)

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jovas
The high score of VP and POTUS is surely reflective of their speech writers...
isn't this backed up by the fact that VP has .8 and mike_pence has -.05?

Regardless, if throw out POTUS and VP, we are left with Pompeo and Ross as the
two highest.

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d--b
Yes, but Trump’s tweets are clearly not ghost-written!

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chlorophyll
So... it's Mike Pence or the Donald himself?

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almostApatriot1
Pence through a fall guy. Definitely.

