
Update on My Situation - spzx
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/09/11/update-on-my-situation/
======
brundolf
> And now that I’ve publicly admitted privacy is important to me – something I
> tried to avoid coming on too strong about before, for exactly this reason –
> some people have taken it upon themselves to post my real name all over
> Twitter in order to harass and threaten me.

Has anybody applied the Dark Forest metaphor to internet publicity? It's
fascinating (horrifying) how simply catching the attention of too big a piece
of the internet can start wreaking havoc on different parts of your life. You
don't even have to have done anything controversial. Attention itself appears
to be caustic, at the extreme.

~~~
tedunangst
One strategy might be to not hit the self destruct button prematurely. Far
more people have read and shared his blog post about being doxxed than have
read the NYT article.

~~~
stevenwliao
The optimal strategy would probably have been radio silence, and then the blog
disappearing without an explanation after a few weeks.

~~~
pas
Optimal for what? Sure that might thwart this problematic piece but would it
guarantee anything for the future?

At least this way Scott was able to size up his readership and work on solving
this problem for good (for himself), plus the cat is out of the bag regarding
how fickle the NYT is.

~~~
stevenwliao
Optimal for maximizing the chance of the publicity going away and him
continuing his job status quo. Most people aren't going to write about a dead
blog.

This solution is fine now that there's no chance.

~~~
pas
But the blog is very important for him, just as psychiatry.

~~~
stevenwliao
Yes, but we can infer from his initial actions that he preferred keeping his
job over maintaining the blog.

~~~
pas
As far as I understand the "hiding of the blog" was an immediate reaction to
make the NYT think for a second and so to stop the publication of the article.
Basically it was a statement to underline how seriously he takes his request
for privacy. So he can keep the status quo, his income, and so he minimizes
any harm to his patients.

But that just means he wanted to change the NYT's mind (the journalist's
and/or the editor's at least), not to forever give up blogging. (So it seems
to me his preferences are rather complex and they depend on various time-
frames.)

------
stevenwliao
So the lesson for those who maintain anonymous or pseudo-anonymous identities
online-

As your pseudonym's popularity grows, chances increase that someone will be
interested in unmasking your identity. The only solutions are to reduce your
pseudonym's visibility or staying fully anonymous in the first place.

~~~
divbzero
Incredibly sad but true.

There seems to be two opposing imperatives for online social identity. On one
hand you want reputation and accountability for what people say to fight
trolling, bullying, and misinformation. On the other hand you want some level
of anonymity to encourage free speech and expression. I don’t know if this
core tension can ever be fully resolved but our current online environment is
clearly far from optimal.

~~~
sam_lowry_
This is a solved problem, just rarely implemented in real life on a large
scale. Karma systems.

You can be anonymous and at he same time have some valuable history of past
interactions.

Slashdot, Stack Overflow, etc. are good examples.

~~~
BTCOG
And yes, this is how all online interaction should work. Similar to other PGP
pseudonymous internet identity. The world needs the 1990's identity
segregation via handles once again. Social media is a fad that simply brings
out negative.

------
maxander
Interesting to speculate on the “extremely generous” offer from Substack.
They’re obviously willing to devote a decent amount of dev time to making
Scott comfortable, and I’m sure they have a good idea of how having SSC on
board would promote their platform on its take-over-the-blog-market mission,
so it could be generous indeed.

~~~
frank2
All we know is that Substack is willing to make a lot of _promises_ to Scott.
Scott probably lacks (as I do) the expertise to negotiate a contract that
would actually hold Substack to those promises.

But maybe I am being too cynical.

~~~
pas
It's not the promises that are problematic. The long term plans and interests
of Substack are not so well aligned with Scott's.

Every future development has to either treat him as a special snowflake (so
they have to implement a VIP tier) or eventually bulldoze every perk of his
blog back into uniformity.

I don't understand why doesn't he goes full patreon.

~~~
edbob
If cancel culture is causing him problems, then Patreon is the last place he
wants to be.

~~~
edanm
Just to be clarify, he wasn't a victim of cancel culture, he voluntarily took
his blog offline to avoid his real name being punished in the New York Times.

~~~
edbob
He had to leave his job due to the politically motivated attack, which the
Times said they would continue even after he told them that it would screw up
his job. Doxxing is definitely a part of cancel culture.

~~~
edanm
I mean, Scott himself says that there was no ill intent on NYT's part.

I don't consider this a part of cancel culture because there was no specific
attempt to cancel him.

~~~
edbob
From the original article, "NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real
Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog" "Unfortunately, he told me he had discovered
my real name and would reveal it in the article, ie doxx me." "I’m not sure
what happens next. In my ideal world, the New York Times realizes they screwed
up, promises not to use my real name in the article, and promises to rethink
their strategy of doxxing random bloggers for clicks."

So maybe he's saying that the Times doesn't realize they screwed up, so
there's no "ill intent". But in my moral system, if you know you are causing
serious harm to an innocent person for no good reason but are so callous that
you _don 't even care_, you are still responsible for that harm.

I don't want to split hairs over cultural terms. I will accept your
definitions for you.

~~~
pas
What you quote is of course the essence of the problem, but I don't think it's
cancel culture (and also parent commenter doesn't think it is that either).

Because cancel culture seems to be when someone does something (discussing
eugenetics, speaking Mandarin that sounds like a racial slur ... or blurts
racists shit on live TV, sexually harasses others, and so on) and a mob
attacks them and their host institution. Some of that is really justified some
doesn't seem so.

In this case Scott wasn't attacked by any mob. He simply wanted to keep his
relationship with his patients that, a strictly exclusively doctor-patient
relationship, no need for a third channel (eg the NYT, and his blog linked by
the NYT).

------
sillysaurusx
_At this point I think maintaining anonymity is a losing battle. So I am
gradually reworking my life to be compatible with the sort of publicity that
circumstances seem to be forcing on me. I had a talk with my employer and we
came to a mutual agreement that I would gradually transition away from working
there._

Wait, _what_? Why?

What'd he write that's so incompatible with employment as a psychiatrist?

I don't get it. Why is it a risk for any employer anywhere to keep him on
payroll? What's the worst possible outcome for the employer?

This post is putting on a tough front, but I'd be terrified if I were him.
Imagine being forced to start your own business or go bankrupt.

~~~
s3cur3
Background: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-
my-...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-
revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/)

> First, I’m a psychiatrist, and psychiatrists are kind of obsessive about
> preventing their patients from knowing anything about who they are outside
> of work. You can read more about this in this Scientific American article –
> and remember that the last psychiatrist blogger to get doxxed abandoned his
> blog too. I am not one of the big sticklers on this, but I’m more of a
> stickler than “let the New York Times tell my patients where they can find
> my personal blog”.

~~~
dmurray
I think this doesn't really answer the question, though. Psychiatrists like to
do X - is that because they follow a cargo cult of other psychiatrists who do
X, or because there's empirical evidence that not-X is bad for patient
outcomes (or bad for doctor outcomes - he has repeatedly mentioned concerns
over his physical security)?

This is exactly the kind of question I'd expect SSC to tackle thoughtfully on
his blog if it wasn't so close to home. But without clear evidence against it,
it's hard to criticise him for taking the conservative approach.

Further, I'd expect he'd admit these days that using (most of) his real name
for his blog was a mistake. He shouldn't be expected to further overreach
professional standards of anonymity just because he previously made that
misstep.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Consider therapists who have you lie on a couch vs those who have you sit in
the same style chair, as an equal.

Some therapists position themselves as an authority figure for their patients.
If they were to open up about themselves, the patient might think they're
incapable after seeing the therapist has doubts in their own life.

This has advantages and drawbacks. It may be more efficient in earning trust,
thus helping some patients heal faster. OTOH, some patients may never really
accept this kind of therapist.

In my experience, psychiatrists more often position themselves as authorities,
and among psychologists/therapists/counselors there is a mix.

It's really hard IMO to get communicable science out of talk therapy because
there are so many variables and it is extremely subjective and personal. The
whole point is to help a patient navigate their own issues.

I draw the above opinion on therapy from reading a few books about the history
of psychoanalysis and the various branches it has taken.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Consider therapists who have you lie on a couch vs those who have you sit in
> the same style chair, as an equal.

> Some therapists position themselves as an authority figure for their
> patients.

It is not obvious that the person who gets to recline while the other person
must sit is the one with _lower_ status or authority.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Sure it is. You're in a more vulnerable position while reclining.

~~~
tzs
What about the common trope of a person with wealth and/or power reclining
while a servant or slave feeds them grapes or fans them with palm fronds [1]?
Is Djambi actually higher status than Hedonism bot [2]?

[1]
[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrapesOfLuxury](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GrapesOfLuxury)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFYMzQ3Vfq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFYMzQ3Vfq0)

~~~
unityByFreedom
Haha IMO we are all equally capable of thinking for ourselves, and therefore
it is not necessary to have the patient recline in order to subjugate them
and/or induce openness.

~~~
pas
Isn't that done also to break eye contact? In (some) analytical therapy face-
to-face discussion is discouraged as far as I know.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Therapists usually try to encourage social skills that increase eye contact.

------
peteretep
I would like someone with the funds to do so to simply become his patron, and
give him a salary to do what the hell he likes, ala medieval Europe. He’s got
to have enough very wealthy fans that this is realistic?

~~~
Aeolun
I am under the impression that this is essentially what Substack offered him
if he started writing on their platform?

~~~
peteretep
Perhaps — but that’s still a commercial arrangement, rather than a patronage.

------
acituan
Good psychiatrists who can also do therapy are worth their weight in gold. I
think this is a huge loss for anyone that made and could make use of his
psychotherapy. It would have also been a loss for the rest of the world to not
make use of his writing. Either way this made the world a worse place. Thus is
the banality of evil.

~~~
bjl
Well, if I was black I'd probably like to know if my psychiatrist associated
with HBD cranks. Or if I was a woman, I'd want to know if my psychiatrist
wrote apologia for incels. And that's just two examples of the countless
absurd hot takes hes had over the years.

Siskind dug his own grave here, and the NYT has done his patients a huge
service.

------
jddj
It quite obviously wasn't, but _man_ , if this was all just one big substack
marketing exercise.

------
motohagiography
Sad that Alexander has had to leave his job because some petulant reporter
thought he was a sufficiently public figure for a takedown, but good for him
and Substack for making sure he landed on his feet. A personal hit job by one
of the most powerful institutions on the planet (or rather, their mouthpiece)
is no small life event.

~~~
anoncareer0212
It doesn't appear that's true, unfortunately - there's no takedown or article
:/ As he notes, it was essentially the Streisand effect.

~~~
motohagiography
So far he has averted the one that he removed his blog over, and in response,
someone else did one instead. It's like there is a war on truth itself or
something. I recommend looking the article up.

------
mindfulhack
> At this point I think maintaining anonymity is a losing battle.

> I may start my own private practice, where I’m my own boss and where I can
> focus on medication management – and not the kinds of psychotherapy that I’m
> most worried are ethically incompatible with being a public figure.

This is why privacy is important - to maintain boundaries between different
parts of your life, like work and personal.

We are all complex human beings and we deserve to be 3-dimensional, not
1-dimensional.

Capitalism prefers that humans be one-dimensional cogs in its machine. That we
be specialised. One type of personality or field of expertise only. If not,
you're paid less, you're respected less, you're listened to less. And it's
only because people know more about you than they did before.

It is a real shame what has happened here. But even more, it is a shame that
humans treat each other in 1-dimensional ways. We dehumanise and objectify one
another, in transactional and very non-personal ways. But we're all persons,
who deserve to feel, operate, and be treated as such. There is much about
capitalism and trade that is problematic.

I wish Scott well in his endeavours.

~~~
glial
I wish people downvoting you would explain why. Your comment seems eminently
reasonable to me, but there are no replies to it.

~~~
Viliam1234
I didn't vote (I don't even see the downvote button, not sure why), but the
argument about "capitalism" is nonsense. The author obviously has no idea how
people were treated in socialism. (Spoiler: exactly the same.)

The main reason we treat people as 1-dimensional is because we interact with
many people, and can only deeply care about few. Dunbar's number, etc. The
alternative is spending your entire life with only a few dozen people, like in
a medieval village or something. This is why we have friends and relatives,
who care about us in a complex way, and the rest of the world, which only
perceives a selected part.

Yes, everyone needs a friend. No, everyone can't be everyone's friend. This is
not about capitalism, it is about existentialism.

~~~
mindfulhack
Thank you for replying.

It's a shame any airing of concerns about capitalism per se trigger people so
much. We need to air our concerns about the world in order to discuss and
hopefully solve them together.

Your reply helped do that. I'm immediately convinced. OF course, socialism is
just as much a machine too. So it's not the system, the problem is scale and
'overpopulation' relative to our evolutionary adaptation. Something for me to
think about.

I appreciate the correction.

~~~
Viliam1234
I am happy that you found my comment somehow useful. I actually agree with lot
of criticism of "capitalism", except for using the word itself, because the
problems are more general than that.

Marx made a lot of criticism of capitalism, and a lot of it is valid. (He
underestimated the possibility of huge technological progress, but let's
ignore this for the moment.) The problem was not with criticism, but with the
proposed solution; the entire plan could be simply summarized as "1: socialist
revolution; 2: ???; 3: all problems gone".

And it turned out, you can organize a successful socialist revolution, but the
problems will stay, and often get worse. Now you don't have a capitalist
competing against a capitalist, but a politician competing against a
politician. The workers are no longer exploited by private factories, they are
exploited by state-owned factories instead. You are no longer afraid of losing
your job and starving to death; you are afraid of men in dark coats knocking
on your door after midnight. Your kids don't go to university not because they
can't afford to pay tuition, but because they said a politically incorrect
joke and someone reported them. (Not all things are the same: you probably get
universal healthcare and free education, which is nice, but also universal
censorship and ban on everything that was not approved by your political
superiors, which sucks.) But this is even more general than politics.

The best text I know written about this problem is:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

The second best is the first noble truth of Buddhism: "It sucks to be born, it
sucks to become old, it sucks to get sick, it sucks to die; it sucks to not
get what you want, it sucks to get what you don't want; briefly, everything
you see sucks." (You can make some people applaud if you add "...in
capitalism" after each clause, but that just offers a fake hope.)

To really improve the world requires solving ten thousand independent
problems. That is a lot of hard work. If only it was so simple that you merely
need to abolish "capitalism" and then live happily ever after...

------
zepto
So the New York Times cost him his job?

~~~
bearbin
Yes and no. The recent issue with the NYT is certainly the immediate trigger
of Scott Alexander's decision to change jobs; but it seems to me at least that
this course of action was inevitable (once the blog became popular).

If (you feel that) your job is incompatible with a personal association to a
popular 'rationalist' blog, and you write a rationalist blog under your own
partial name, and it then becomes popular - well you will have to take that
decision at some point - resign, or shut down the blog.

Scott has put off that decision as long as he could, and the NYT journalist's
behaviour certainly forced him in one direction; but fundimentally this
controversy is of his own creation.

Evidently he has taken the logical decision that the blog matters more to him
(or there are more opportunities as the writer of a popular blog) than his old
job and he's actioned this; I don't think it's fair to characterise this as
the New York Times 'costing him his job'.

~~~
ggreer
> If (you feel that) your job is incompatible with a personal association to a
> popular 'rationalist' blog, and you write a rationalist blog under your own
> partial name, and it then becomes popular - well you will have to take that
> decision at some point - resign, or shut down the blog.

Scott _did_ shut down the blog and it still cost him his job.

~~~
pseudalopex
He brought the blog back. It sounds like Substack made him an offer before he
talked to his employer.[1] And he said the plan to leave his job was a mutual
decision. What makes you sure shutting down the blog for good wasn't an
option?

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i10p4m/surv...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i10p4m/survey_on_moving_ssc_to_substack/)

------
commandlinefan
It's a shame that he won't be able to start blogging again any time soon - I'd
REALLY like to read his thoughts on the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

~~~
shajznnckfke
The way his writings and audience cut across political lines, I bet he’s happy
to skip it.

------
m1gerund
I am sorry that this happened. I loved reading his posts.

------
s9w
Interestingly this time around, Bing and Wikipedia seem to be on the side of
censorship, and google now as back then still blasts the name open. Rare
teams!

~~~
rbecker
What do Wikipedia, Bing, and Google have to do with this?

~~~
s9w
Usually google and Wikipedia can't wait to get their hands onto censorship,
while Bing is at least a bit more liberal. This time it's different.

------
iron0013
A tempest in a teapot. Nothing has happened to this man, yet he plays the
victim card over and over again.

~~~
ufmace
Scott responded to this line of thought already:

    
    
        'Fifth, if someone speaks up against the increasing climate of fear and harassment or the decline of free speech, they get hit with an omnidirectional salvo of “You continue to speak just fine, and people are listening to you, so obviously the climate of fear can’t be too bad, people can’t be harassing you too much, and you’re probably just lying to get attention.” But if someone is too afraid to speak up, or nobody listens to them, then the issue never gets brought up, and mission accomplished for the people creating the climate of fear. The only way to escape the double-bind is for someone to speak up and admit “Hey, I personally am a giant coward who is silencing himself out of fear in this specific way right now, but only after this message”. This is not a particularly noble role, but it’s one I’m well-positioned to play here, and I think it’s worth the awkwardness to provide at least one example that doesn’t fit the double-bind pattern.'
    

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-
thread...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/)

