
Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media - hprotagonist
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-star-codex-and-silicon-valleys-war-against-the-media
======
elipsey
Sigh. I think this article is holding Scott, and a core constituency of
posters and meet up people, guilty by association with every rando on the
internet, and also about half of the celebrities in the Bay area.

"War against the media" strikes me as ridiculous hyperbole in this context. I
have met some of these people in real life, and none of them expressed that
attitude to me, nor any kind of utopian superiority. It seemed like they were
just trying to live morally considered lives and improve themselves a little
at a time if they could -- and maybe do a little networking.

I think if Scott knew that his blog would get so big it would screw up his
career and living arrangements, he probably wouldn't have published it in the
first place. That might have been a lapse of judgment, but begging the NYT not
to make him mainstream famous is hardly war on the media.

~~~
amznthrwaway
There are only two rational explanations here:

1) Scott Alexander wanted more attention, and he realized that deleting his
site and blaming the NYT for it would garner dramatically more attention,
creating opportunities that he wanted. He recognized that he could become a
martyr to a certain group, and use that for future gains.

2) Scott Alexander is an absolute moron who did not foresee the Streisand
Effect that he was going to cause.

I personally do not think he is a moron. I think he is a manipulative
sociopath who knew that people who agree with him on other matters would line
up to create future opportunities for him if he pretended that his hand was
forced.

It saddens me that so many "smart" people fall for such transparent nonsense.
There was no lapse of judgment. He is just a selfish sociopath. Nothing more.

~~~
zozbot234
Scott is extremely popular in the rationalist community (second only to EY and
possibly RH), and has a sizeable following outside of it. He doesn't _need_ to
"pretend[] that his hand was forced" to get any sort of "future opportunities"
he might want; he just needs to ask. This whole kerfuffle doesn't exactly help
him, even from that POV.

~~~
Just_a_simple_q
Who are EY and RH?

~~~
zozbot234
They're prominent members of the rationality community, who also happen to be
mentioned in the article in connection with the same.

~~~
SilasX
I think they were asking for someone to expand the abbreviations and save
others from having to dig for all the EY/RH people mentioned.

EY = Eliezer Yudkowsky, I don't immediately recognize an RH.

Edit: Ah, Robin Hanson, I guess?

------
avsteele
Article fails to defend the NYT in any substantive way, and the writer makes
obvious their biases with statements like:

 _S.S.C. supporters on Twitter were quick to identify some of the Times’
recent concessions to pseudonymous quotation—Virgil Texas, a co-host of the
podcast “Chapo Trap House,” was mentioned, as were Banksy and a member of
ISIS—as if these supposed inconsistencies were dispositive proof of the
paper’s secret agenda, rather than an ad-hoc and perhaps clumsy application of
a flexible policy_

Obviously this isn't and either/or. The lumping together of all SSC supporters
is another cheap rhetorical trick. In any case, no matter which of these views
you hold, the examples show the policy could accommodate Scott's request for
pseudonymity.

Note too the lack of any real investigation or original reporting here; the
author hasn't bother to talk to Metz?

 _Additionally, it seems difficult to fathom that a professional journalist of
Metz’s experience and standing would assure a subject, especially at the
beginning of a process, that he planned to write a “mostly positive” story;
although there often seems to be some confusion about this matter in Silicon
Valley, journalism and public relations are distinct enterprises._

This is just silly. How about you ask Metz? The cheap shot at all of Silicon
Valley tips the hand too.

This article is just more propaganda in the evolving war of words between SV
and journalism.

~~~
zozbot234
> Note too the lack of any real investigation or original reporting here; the
> author hasn't bother to talk to Metz?

The article specifically mentions that Metz did not want to be quoted
directly; most likely, the author _did_ talk to him. (Though, it's even less
clear to me why Scott would want to lie about what Metz said, so I'm
definitely inclined to trust Scott's account of the matter.)

~~~
nerfhammer
yea "Metz declined to comment on the record" is the author strongly hinting
that he did talk to him off the record, and perhaps the author does have some
idea what Metz' article would have ultimately been about. The author could
have chosen to say "Metz declined to comment" which would have suggested this
less.

------
TulliusCicero
> For one thing, the S.S.C. code prioritizes semantic precision, but Metz—if
> Alexander’s account is to be taken at its word—had proposed not to “doxx”
> Alexander but to de-anonymize him.

Oh? From Wikipedia:

> Doxing, or doxxing (from "dox", abbreviation of documents), is the Internet-
> based practice of researching and publicly broadcasting private or
> identifying information (especially personally identifying information)
> about an individual or organization.

Yes, doxxing is normally associated with publishing addresses or phone numbers
of people whose real names are already known, but de-anonymizing an anonymous
blogger still sounds like a form of it.

~~~
baddox
It seems to me that the level of "privateness" of the information is relevant.
Obviously just saying the real name of a famous person who goes by a pseudonym
is not considered doxxing. This article claims that his full name "can be
ascertained with minimal investigation," and Scott's own blog deletion
announcement seemed to agree. Where precisely to draw that line is an area
where we can reasonably disagree.

~~~
astine
I looked up his name a few weeks ago after the blog was brought down. It took
be a couple of days to find it and even then I only found it because I've seen
him in person. People here are discussing tracking down his old blog through
archive.org, but I didn't think to do that. So, 'minimal investigation' is a
relative term.

~~~
Barrin92
type "scott alexander slate star codex" into google and his real name, plus
several pictures of him are on the first page of the image results.

Alternatively, given that he's made his profession as well as place of
residence known, looking for psychiatrists named scott alexander in that
region also returns an official result.

If it took you days to figure that out I'm sorry to say you don't have a
future as a private eye.

~~~
harry8
Google is not a static thing.

Results a few weeks ago may be nothing much like results now. (If it took a
rando on the internet to point that out to you you don't have ... No let's
leave that kind of garbage out, yeah?)

~~~
Barrin92
his real identity has been up on the internet for ages, years in fact. He even
used to blog under his actual name on less wrong, and has been at public
events that he himself organised. Not to mention that as a medical
professional that info is obviously going to be online as long as he
practises.

If your pseudonym is your actual first and middle name and you're relevant
enough to be on the frontpage of google right now you're not being doxed,
that's just public information at that point.

------
cwp
This is fascinating. It's a New York take on the Bay Area take on New York.
It's the Media take on the Tech take on Media. It's illuminating, and
frustrating. I keep looking for some reflection, some attempt to learn
something from another point of view.

I'll have to read it again more closely.

~~~
fmajid
Scott Alexander only recently moved to the Bay Area, and as a clinician, he is
very unlikely to be associated with any tech companies, although many techies
read his blog, of course.

The NYT behavior here was despicable. Not quite Wen-Ho Lee yellow-baiting
despicable, but despicable nonetheless. The New Yorker shares the same envious
hatred of tech companies most of the New York media scene seems to evince, not
surprisingly as their livelihoods are evaporating. That said, the reason this
is happening is not tech companies, but the take-over of news companies by
entertainment conglomerates, the replacement of actual reporting by
infotainment goop, and the turning of reporting from a slightly disreputable
working-class scrabble to a respectable profession for fancy liberal-arts
college graduates who would never dream of being rude to their fellow
classmates working in PR, law or other professions dedicated to preserving the
status quo, let alone afflicting the comfortable.

~~~
Barrin92
>The New Yorker shares the same envious hatred of tech companies most of the
New York media scene seems to evince, not surprisingly as their livelihoods
are evaporating.

You really got to love how thin-skinned all the tech bros here are if they
even receive the tiniest amount of scrutiny. You legitimately sound like
Donald Trump ranting about the "failing New York Times", mocking people's
livelihood evaporating? What kind of comment is that?

And how is the New Yorker "infotainment"? How is the NYT? The quality of
reporting at either institution is the same it's always been, in fact they're
doing better than they've done in a long time. What's wrong with a liberal-
arts education or being a lawyer?

They're defending the status quo? Who brought Theranos to public attention, or
Epstein, or Weinstein or much of the behaviour of the current administration
over the last few years? Not Scott Alexander or the tech sector, they're too
busy running their ads or writing arcane blog posts about the dangers of
feminism with comment sections full of racists.

~~~
zozbot234
There were _lots_ of very clear warnings about the whole Theranos situation at
places like HN, well before the story hit the most elite media. The red flags
were quite visible, and people did point them out. For that matter, Scott
Alexander and the rationalist community in general are more insightful than
even the most famous policy wonks and pundits. They don't do paid-for
investigative journalism? Maybe, but so what - public policy commentary is
just as impactful on its own terms.

------
tripletao
What an ugly article. A couple quotes:

> It remains possible that Alexander vaporized his blog not because he thought
> it would force Metz’s hand but because he feared that a Times reporter
> wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason
> for negative coverage.

The reporter is unaware that the Internet Archive exists? The content is
obviously still readily available, so the reporter is either stupid or
disingenuous.

> For one thing, the S.S.C. code prioritizes semantic precision, but Metz—if
> Alexander’s account is to be taken at its word—had proposed not to “doxx”
> Alexander but to de-anonymize him.

And no, the difference between "doxx" and "de-anonymize" is never explained.

The practical lesson that I'd take here is that semi-anonymity doesn't exist.
Alexander should either have written under his own name, or taken sufficient
technical precautions to make doxxing by the NYT impossible.

The higher-level lesson is that anyone expressing heterodox opinions is likely
to write something that a reporter working for a mainstream outlet considers
"a creditable reason for negative coverage". At that point, the reporter now
seems happy to use whatever tools they have at their disposal to cause that
person harm, with the implicit consent of the huge organization behind them.
Probably this was always true to some extent, but I think it's getting worse.

~~~
ajkjk
It didn't strike me as ugly as all.

~~~
whatshisface
Reading the Scott Aaronson affair described as being about the trouble of male
nerds on the "dating market," was awfully ugly. Of course, this doesn't mean
that the New Yorker has it out for "rationalists," it's just an example of the
callous and not-exactly right coverage that subcultures usually get from the
mainstream. The _truth_ is that the Aaronson affair was that he had crippling
anxiety when he was young, got mixed up with Judith Butler literature, and it
didn't really help him. He never had any trouble finding a partner once his
anxiety had resolved, so you really have to do some free word association to
get from the reality to the description.

~~~
baddox
It seems to me that simplifying the entire Scott Aaronson affair was
necessary, since it was just a brief part of this article. I thought their
choice of simplification was reasonable and in good faith, but of course
others might disagree (and unfortunately, whether we agree or disagree is
likely to be effected by our overall level of agreement with the article).

~~~
zozbot234
You can simplify, and then you can say Scott wrote an angry "screed" that
misrepresents 99% of feminists and ignores the plight of vulnerable women in
its bourgeois defense of the privileged, nerdy intellectual class. (The
article doesn't _actually_ say "bourgeois", but the dogwhistles are crystal-
clear.)

~~~
mst
I confess that any description of anything that uses the word "screed" will
tend to seem to me to be in bad faith. Largely because every time I've dug
into the origins of such a description, it has indeed been in bad faith.

------
hirundo
> This plea ... in this case, it seemed to lend plausible deniability to what
> he surely knew would be taken as incitement.

That's unfair given that the alternative was supine acceptance. He made a good
faith attempt to amplify his reasonable criticism while leashing the
inevitable jerks. Can the author of this article say as much?

This is a formula to silence any popular speaker by association. Here's a
dangerous person who listens to you, therefore you lose the right to complain
in public.

~~~
zozbot234
I agree with the author that Scott definitely knew what was about to happen.
He has consistently tried his best to "leash" his followers, but the response
has been quite harsh nonetheless. And the whole SV + conservative politics vs.
old media angle has made the situation even more intractable.

~~~
mst
Calling it "plausible deniability" implies that he condoned any negative
results.

I don't believe that to be true, and I do believe that if he'd made no comment
at all about contacting the NYT, many - if not most - of the people who
contacted them in an unconstructive fashion would have done so anyway.

I do agree that Scott knew what was about to happen - but I think his attempt
to guilt trip his followers into not doing it even though he knew it would
probably be futile was genuine.

------
mc32
A very drawn out low-spark attempt to whitewash the attempt by a NYT reporter
to divulge (de-anonymize in their parlance) the person behind the blog by
hiding behind speculation ('would the nyt really do that?') and semantics...

Journalism continues to go downhill and doesn't have a way to stop the trend.

~~~
Natsu
You've heard of the thin blue line, well this is the thin grey line.

There's no attempt to stop any downhill trend. If they wanted that, they'd
write to inform and attempt to give all relevant facts. Instead, they curate
what the public is allowed to be showed, happily trumping up juicy anonymous
rumors one moment and then failing to report well-documented, relevant facts
the next.

They're losing because that information is getting out anyhow and every time
it does, they lose a little more of the public trust. Gell-Mann amnesia
remains in full effect, but a lot more people are simply unplugging. Legacy
media is facing something much worse for them than a "war"\--they're facing
utter irrelevance as people figure out that they're mostly using unlinked
online sources anyhow and we can completely bypass the middlemen.

Constant outrage porn is terribly unhealthy for your heart, anyhow, and if you
have any friends, you'll hear about anything big enough to be important anyhow
and can look into the original sources (if any).

I don't bother with science reporting at all, for example. I hear about
anything worth noticing on HN or similar channels and then I read the actual
scientific paper should I care to, rather than some journalist's half-baked
summary thereof.

~~~
wutbrodo
> I don't bother with science reporting at all, for example. I hear about
> anything worth noticing on HN or similar channels and then I read the actual
> scientific paper should I care to, rather than some journalist's half-baked
> summary thereof.

It's utterly shocking how often news articles summarize a paper incorrectly in
some central, significant way. It's gotten to the point that, as you say,
reading the paper and the comments on a sufficiently informed forum is my
baseline for getting information about science one might care about. That's
obviously a lot of work, so you can't do it for everything, but the second-
place option is to accept that you're not informed about the topic and don't
consider it worth informing yourself about. Reading science reporting is often
literally worse than not being informed on the topic at all.

~~~
thu2111
Part of this is not the journalists fault, though. Or it is, but only in the
sense that they should be more adversarial.

Very often when I read bad journalism, it's based on a bad academic paper in
which the university press or even the paper's abstract has lied about what's
actually inside it. To fix this would require journalists to both read and
understand the contents of every paper they base a report on. Arguably they
need to do that, but, I don't believe that's ever been the standard used
before. They generally don't expect "respectable" people like academics,
institutional spokespeople etc to flat out lie to them even though it keeps
happening.

------
avivo
As someone who works at the intersection of technology and journalism, it
hurts to see how many misunderstandings there are in these comments and
elsewhere. The tech world (and HN in particular) deeply needs a solid
explainer on how journalism works. So many misunderstandings!

(Of course, many/most journalists also need an explainer about the tech world.
And that is not to say that some of the more nuanced critiques on journalism
or its implementation are not on point — as many journalists would agree! e.g.
Jessica Lessin... and Taylor Lorenz
[https://twitter.com/Jessicalessin/status/1278332719974449152](https://twitter.com/Jessicalessin/status/1278332719974449152))

~~~
lliamander
> As someone who works at the intersection of technology and journalism, it
> hurts to see how many misunderstandings there are in these comments and
> elsewhere. The tech world (and HN in particular) deeply needs a solid
> explainer on how journalism works. So many misunderstandings!

Are there one or two insights you could share that would make this article
seem less bad than many people here perceive it to be?

> And that is not to say that some of the more nuanced critiques on journalism
> or its implementation are not on point — as many journalists would agree!
> e.g. Jessica Lessin... and Taylor Lorenz

The criticism isn't limited purely to monetary considerations. There are
prestige and partisan political issues at stake here as well. The author
touches on the political lens by bringing up the red/blue/grey tribe
distinction. As for the prestige, it's worth noting how many prominent figures
signed that petition. Some of the public comments of these individuals give me
the impression that they trust SSC more than the NYT. My perception (in my own
bubble at least) is that even if NYT's subscription revenue is doing OK, the
NYT's position as the "paper of record" is in jeopardy.

~~~
wutbrodo
> these individuals give me the impression that they trust SSC more than the
> NYT

Anyone who's read both and trust the NYT more has severe reading comprehension
issues...

Note that "trust" here doesn't mean "their conclusion is definitely correct".
It means trusting what's on the surface of the article: that descriptions of
linked-to references aren't completely fabricated or misrepresentative, that
some baseline level of honest reading of sources has been attempted, etc.

This isn't quite the apples-to-apples criticism that it appears: NYT has tons
of people trying to cover a big chunk of all the events of note happening, and
has no way of hiring at scale that narrowly selects for particularly
intellectually honest or intelligent employees. Scott is a single person who
happens to be really intelligent and quite intellectually honest, and he posts
at the cadence he prefers about topics that he thinks he has something
valuable to say about. If he had to scale his posting to the level of the
NYT's, it's probably get more untrustworthy too.

~~~
lliamander
> Note that "trust" here doesn't mean "their conclusion is definitely correct"

Totally agree.

> This isn't quite the apples-to-apples criticism that it appears

Fair, but I have have two responses to that.

The first is that the ability to discover and access high quality writers (not
just Scott) directly means that the NYT brand has less value.

The second is that people increasingly feel that NYT has an agenda (not merely
a bias) that colors the quality of their reporting.

~~~
wutbrodo
Sure, I don't think either of those contradict what I'm saying. I have about
as low an opinion of the NYT as possible, and have for years. I just wanted to
temper my criticism by saying that it'd be more difficult for them to attain
trustworthiness than Scott, even if they were run and staffed with
intelligence and integrity.

~~~
lliamander
I don't think we are in contradiction either. I think what I'm simply
clarifying is _why_ I am making the comparison. One point I am trying to make
is that there is a shift in how some people (particularly some influential
people) consume information.

I'm not simply criticizing the NYT, I'm saying that it is being replaced (as
the authoritative voice on current affairs) by user curated lists of
independent writers.

------
rachelshu
For all the other reasons that people on this site might hate this article,
nevertheless it succeeds in doing the one thing that Scott asked of
journalists: that they respect his pseudonym.

~~~
lliamander
Agreed, although I suspect things would have turned out poorly for the author
if they had not.

~~~
reedwolf
What are a bunch of angry nerds gonna do?

~~~
lliamander
If they are so impotent, why hasn't the NYT published their article yet?

~~~
reedwolf
Not sure if you're familiar with how these major investigative articles are
written, but something this big can take months to put together.

Scott had his panicked meltdown the second this guy started asking questions,
which was probably just the beginning of the investigation.

You think the outfit that took down Weinstein cares about some SV tantrums?

~~~
enolan
> You think the outfit that took down Weinstein cares about some SV tantrums?

Metz cares about access to SV sources, probably. I'll quote Nostalgebraist[0]:

> The journalist also written a soon-to-be-published book about AI work at
> “Google, Microsoft, Facebook and OpenAI,” whose blurb makes it sound
> impressed with its subjects, and also touts his “exclusive access to each of
> these companies.” So, this is someone whose career depends on being in the
> good graces of the big-name Silicon Valley crowd, and presumably cares a lot
> whether e.g. Paul Graham is mad at him.

I don't think you can do the sort of work Cade Metz wants to do if the first
thing anyone from OpenAI thinks of when you write to them is "oh, it's that
asshole that doxed Scott Alexander".

[0]:
[https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/621772274317623296/my...](https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/621772274317623296/my-
reaction-to-the-ssc-situation-is-this-really)

------
dvaun
If you enjoy reading SSC and want to show some form of support, consider
adding your signature to the petition[0].

It's a small thing to do and only takes a little time to complete.

[0]:
[https://www.dontdoxscottalexander.com/](https://www.dontdoxscottalexander.com/)

~~~
cinntaile
An additional way to protest against their decision is to block nytimes.com on
your devices. If you use adguard, nextdns or pihole this is easy to do. If a
lot of people do this it will have a big impact, their links get posted a lot
here on HN!

~~~
anonms-coward
I don't think that will get the NYT to listen. A better idea is that if you
are a subscriber, unsubscribe and give this as the reason. As recent history
proves, the NYT truly listens to cancellations. A bunch of people running
pihole, not so much for sure.

~~~
cinntaile
If you are a subscriber then a better signal would indeed be to unsubscribe
rather than to block the site obviously, most of us probably aren't
subscribers though. My guess is they're still earning some ad revenue from
non-paying users, so reducing the number of readers should have an impact. I
am aware that pihole users probably don't see the ads anyway. It might not
make them listen, but I wouldn't underestimate the impact either. If they
notice a drop in traffic from a big site like HN it might raise some eyebrows
at least. At the same time you would have fewer people sharing the links to
their other networks so you would get these second order effects as well. How
big would this impact be? Hard to tell, only the nytimes would know for sure.
I do feel that at least the people that signed the petition from above should
stop using the nytimes. Actions speak louder than words after all.

------
motohagiography
The entire piece is an expression of an ideology digesting a perceived threat
to itself and producing antibodies in the form of snide, cognitively limiting
tropes. As an example of watching the beast in action, this is a truly
valuable specimen.

Highly recommend reading it as an example of the form.

~~~
adamsea
FYI I feel like the language you use is kind of dehumanizing - “the beast in
action”, viruses and antibodies when talking about people and what they write,
etc.

Not saying that was your intent but wanted to share my impression. Don’t know
if it’s just me or if others feels similarly.

~~~
motohagiography
When you look in to what that means, dehumanizing seems like a pretty serious
accusation. While I can't help with your appeal for sympathy from others, I
can offer that this post was about the logic of ideas, abstracted from the
people who write them. Doing so treats the people you disagree with as equals,
which is about as humanizing as it gets.

~~~
adamsea
I think it’s a spectrum and you are correct that on the far end of that
spectrum is definitely some very bad stuff.

Which is not where I think your comment is at all :).

But because it’s a spectrum I think and hope my sharing how some of the
language in your comment struck me is helpful.

Lol the irony is I think that “the logic of ideas, abstracted away from the
people that write them”, is in a literal sense, de-humanizing ;).

Worth thinking about imho since the ideas we are talking about are about
language and people and societies :).

------
atdrummond
So the playbook is to denigrate SSC by conflating his (granted, self-imposed)
deplatforming with Srinivasan and Lorenz’ Twitter spat.

Clever, likely effective, if not ethically and logically dubious.

~~~
Cenk
Taylor Lorenz is mentioned once in the article, in the 29th paragraph, as an
example of “the heightened sensitivity on both sides”

> At the end of last week, Srinivasan and the Times reporter Taylor Lorenz
> fell into their own public brawl; though it was not directly related to
> Alexander, it reflected the heightened sensitivity on both sides. Vice
> obtained leaked audio, from an invite-only app called Clubhouse, in which
> Srinivasan, who seems to believe that any critical coverage of a
> technologist must reflect a mistaken assumption, likened the media to a
> foreign interest: reliance on mainstream reporting, he said, is “outsourcing
> your information supply chain to folks who are disaligned with you.”

~~~
atdrummond
I’m aware - I read the article shortly after it went up.

In a narrow reading of the article, I think this critique tracks. However,
given the broader prominence of that particular digital debate and Lorenz’
unique success in centering the discussion online to this purported “SV war on
media”, their Twitter situation exists as the girder for the broader arguments
in the article.

------
arthurjj
This article lacks the self awareness or nuance that I was hoping for. I don't
think there's a single part where the media is portrayed in a negative light.
I think it's save purely by the author's prose.

For example

> "bear the classic markers of grandiosity: the conviction that they are at
> once potent and beleaguered"

Is only applied to tech not journalism. But is so well written that you ignore
that fact."Gray Lady against the Grey Tribe" is great turn of phrase and I
hope it catches on.

------
AzzieElbab
I've been reading the NewYorker for decades. And this article makes me realize
100M Spotify is paying for Joe Rogan podcast is actually a bargain. Old media
is done, they do not have a business valuable outside of adds driven model,
all they can fight for is the power to develop narrative(s). In other words,
they are fighting for status

~~~
krelian
Can you elaborate on why this article drives you to think that?

As someone with no stake in the issue (aware of LessWrong but not much else) I
found it very interesting and well written and it made me want to immerse
myself more in the rationalist community which I found appealing. There was
definitely an angle to this piece, like any piece, but I found it only
slightly unbalanced.

The unbalance was situated at the judgement of SSC's action of deleting the
blog which clearly the reporter didn't view favorably.

Further thinking about it, I would not be surprised if the NewYorker writer
collaborated with the NYT reporter on the piece. Taking in account when the
blog deletion happened I don't see how the reporter could have done his
research on the nature of the blog to such detail without the NYT reporter's
material.

~~~
zucker42
The problems with the article that I perceive:

1\. It makes claims about the SSC readership and the rationalist community
intended to invoke an emotional response with little verifiable evidence.

> This plea conformed with the online persona he has publicly cultivated over
> the years—that of a gentle headmaster preparing to chaperone a rambunctious
> group of boys on a museum outing

2\. It's overly general in how it addresses people involved; it tends to
conflate very different people connected by little more than their professed
belief in using evidence to make decisions and examining their preconceptions.
Using a rationalist psychologist as representative of "Silicon Valley" is
evidence of this point.

I may be influenced by the fact the fact that I have a good friend who is an
avowed rationalist and I don't believe the broad strokes generalizations in
the article represented him.

Also, it fails to grasp what I perceive as the main reason for Alexander's
blog takedown, which I think is merely a game theory influenced attempt to
prevent the NYT from printing his name, rather than anything more grand.

------
MattGaiser
The problem is that the media has lost people’s trust that it is not going to
get things badly wrong or dig up whatever it can on you in the interest of
controversy.

If people don’t know if something will be a hit piece, they need to respond as
if it is.

I’ve worked with some great and curious journalists. I’ve also known some who
don’t care to understand the issues at hand. They just want to write about
them.

------
alex_young
Can you really be both a public figure and keep your identity hidden by way of
asking?

There’s a playbook for this. Look at Banksy for example. If you don’t want
your identity out there it’s your job to protect it. Not the New York Times.

~~~
modeless
Banksy's identity is right on his Wikipedia page for anyone who really wants
to know. I think NYT and other media _are_ keeping him "anonymous" by way of
asking. They could easily publish his name if they wanted. Unlike SSC, Banksy
seems to hold similar political views to NYT, so they have no problem playing
along.

The only truly anonymous public figure I'm aware of is Satoshi Nakamoto and
I'm pretty sure that the only reason he stayed anonymous is that he died
before he could be definitively found out.

~~~
DubiousPusher
> Banksy seems to hold similar political views to NYT, so they have no problem
> playing along.

Genuinely curious of your basis for this. As far as I can tell SSC and most
rationalist adjacents are basically neo-libs which the NYT has been a bastion
of for decades.

~~~
profgerm
One belongs to the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of
1912, and the other to 1897 [1].

It’s the narcissism of small differences, and the treatment of heretics versus
pagans.

They- the NYT and SSC- do have, probably, 99% overlap politically, but that’s
not too far off from the difference between humans and chimps either. It’s
that last 1% that really generates a lot of friction between them.

As the article says, Scott would tolerate conversations with vile people and
egregious ideas. The NYT would rather dox them.

[1]:
[https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religio...](https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/sep/29/comedy.religion)

~~~
DubiousPusher
As a lapsed Baptist and former theology student this has been a favorite joke
of mine for years. It has even been a great proverb for demonstrating to
friends not familiar with church history the banal origins of the many schisms
that has spanned the tree of Christianity. I had no idea it had such a recent
or conspicuous origin. Thanks for sharing.

------
commandlinefan
Not that the NYT has any business printing somebody's name who doesn't want it
to be printed, but I kind of feel like he had been looking for an excuse to
shut down the blog for a while - it had been a long time since any of his
posts really felt inspired like they were even a year ago. This gives him an
excuse to make a clean break.

~~~
whatshisface
That theory directly contradicts his claim that he was considering continuing
his blog under a different name.

~~~
gkoberger
No, it supports it. Why not use the excuse to shut it down, killing “SSC”
forever. He’s no longer tied to those posts or opinions. And then he can
create a new blog not linked to it at all, and start fresh.

------
partingshots
Wow, this is pretty juicy. I’m surprised that this hasn’t gotten more traction
on HN considering the community, plus with Paul Graham / Sam Altman having
already directly spoken out in support.

Does anyone have links to the Twitter threads mentioned in the articles?
Twitter’s direct search querying is pretty terrible.

------
cowpig
I was much more skeptical of this alleged culture war when reading this
article than I am now that I've read the HN comments section.

------
jeegsy
The wonders of language. Here you have a hit piece but worded ever so
carefully as to seem neutral. Correct pandemic predictions or no, I still
don't get why the media was interested in this blog in the first place. I have
always enjoyed SSC because it reminded me of old (better?) internet. The
conversations were intellectually stimulating (much like here), it wasn't on a
soc-med platform and as the article mentioned, they are for the most part
commited to civil discourse. Its imho everything you would want especially in
this age of S __tshows like fb and twatter. This is worth emphasizing. All
these folks "worried" about our democracy because of the spread of disinfo on
facebook should consider that this was a relatively small tight-knit community
that had low risk of spreading outside. Yet the media still showed interest.
This is getting ranty, I guess I'm just mad at the things we have to deal
with.

------
mediadude
>Alexander, whose role has been to help explain Silicon Valley to itself, was
taken up as a mascot and a martyr in a struggle against the Times, which, in
the tweets of Srinivasan, Graham, and others, was enlisted as a proxy for all
of the gatekeepers—the arbiters of what it is and is not O.K. to say, and who
is allowed, by virtue of their identity, to say it.

Oh, the irony! The same journalists who report primarily, nowadays, on who
next to be canceled due to "problematic" views they may have had years or
decades ago now feel that _they_ are having their journalistic freedoms called
into question. As though that would not _necessarily_ follow.

~~~
wwright
Could you point me to an era of journalism where it wasn't largely used to
condemn certain figures over their words or actions?

~~~
stinkytaco
Largely used? A scan through my local paper, and frankly most of my
experience, is that journalism is largely used to report the news. I'm not
going to wade in on the moral debate here, but I count among the new stories
in the first few pages today:

3 stories about a major storm that came through last night

1 story about changes to unemployment rules

1 story about a major conference being canceled due to travel restrictions

2 crime stories

~~~
wwright
"Largely" probably was the wrong word. The usage I describe will probably
always be a minority, but my assumption is that it's been a relatively
constant minority since journalism started. There's always an incentive to
demonize and vilify someone somewhere.

------
samirillian
Am I the only one who feels like this is just posturing on both sides?

SSC seems to want both fame and anonymity. The New York Times calling him
controversial is more self fulfilling prophecy than truth. Both sides seem
pretty absurd.

~~~
throwawaysea
I don't see the want of both fame and anonymity as being at odds with each
other. For example, take Wikileaks.

------
kipply
skipped in the article, but the deleted website specifies that the purpose of
deletion is partially to ensure that if the Times were to publish an article
then they'd also have to answer as to why they needlessly endangered Scott's
patients and housemates.

"If there’s no blog, there’s no story. Or at least the story will have to
include some discussion of NYT’s strategy of doxxing random bloggers for
clicks."

------
jdonaldson
It's clear that Alexander has tried to maintain a level of anonymity for good
reason. This article shows how easy it is for any independent thinker to get
pulled into a broader "us vs. them" conflict, and be at the mercy of the worst
actors from each side.

------
mcguire
" _Alexander’s plea for civility went unheeded, and Metz and his editor were
flooded with angry messages._ "

Surprise! The rationalist community is made up of human beings after all.

~~~
gwern
Assuming you believe Metz and his editor, and note that "angry" is a pretty
milquetoast adjective. Usually when people try to engage in nutpicking, they
at least cite death threats, which are a dime a dozen online when people are
_really_ angry.

~~~
mcguire
I'm sure if they did, it's not from _real_ rationalists.

------
carapace
Burn the witch!

No, burn the witch-burners!

No, burn the witch-burner-burners!

But then what about the witches? Burn them too or...?

Okay, just burn people who burn any people!

Er, doesn't that mean we have to burn ourselves?

Why don't we just not burn anyone at all?

Burn _that_ guy!

And so it goes...

------
rayiner
Maybe Silicon Valley really should have a war against the media. Because right
now the media is waging a one-sided war against Silicon Valley. Media coverage
of tech has become almost uniformly negative—the way the media used to talk
about fracking or Wall Street. Silicon Valley needs to realize that being
somewhat liberal on social issues will not protect it from a media that has
set its sights on the kind of intellectual and (little “l”) libertarianism
that characterizes Silicon Valley.

~~~
abvdasker
One-sided? Have you seen what has happened to revenues of news publications
since the advent of Google and Facebook? The idea that the tech sector is
seriously threatened by the news media is silly. All this fretting about
negative coverage basically amounts to persecutory delusion from what is
easily the most powerful sector in the US economy.

------
AzzieElbab
Quite a war, media suffers heavy casualties. Oh wait it was just the blogger
and his readers.

------
savanaly
I was a very loyal reader of SSC and thought I followed the "doxing" incident
and fallout rather closely. I read numerous related blog posts about it and
followed the discussion on the main remaining discussion space the community
has, /r/slatestarcodex.

Never once did I see the comments of said "Bay Area attorney" or Srinivasan,
or see them discussed. It's certainly possible they were there and I missed
them, but they weren't so important that it was impossible to miss them
either. It's these ones the article focuses on because they went overboard in
striking back at the NYT in a way not really consistent with the principles of
Scott or SSC, in my opinion anyways.

A shame this article is basically trying to use those few hotheads to tar and
feather the whole community.

~~~
cowpig
My reading of the article, or at least the second half, is that there's a sort
of culture war going on in which "old media" and "new media", journalists and
SV, "grey" and "blue".

I was more skeptical until I read the comments section here.

------
seemslegit
> The mind-set of logical serenity, for all of the rationalists’ talk of “skin
> in the game” and their inclination to heighten every argument with a
> proposition bet, only obtains as long as their discussions feel safely
> confined to the realm of what they regard, consciously or otherwise, as
> sport.

Contrast and compare with the New Yorker writers and readership who regard
their own high-minded observational detachment as art, consciously or
otherwise.

------
dilyevsky
Now _that’s_ a hit piece

------
nikisweeting
I'm saddened by reading most of the HN comments in this thread, the "war
against the media" line seems to have actually inspired people to do that,
instead of doing the right thing and calling it out as the exact kind of
tribalistic nonsense that SSC is all about preventing.

------
FancyPete
Newyorker's hot takes are lower quality than it's core offering of slowed down
reporting about something big. This is no exception. The concluding paragraph
seems the most telling. The author seems to simply throw his hands up and say,
'I don't know, this is all about power or media or culture or something.'

I think people here are looking for a deep read of this, but my read is that
the assignment didn't interest the reporter and he just tried to rush it.

------
haberman
> The Times, although its policy permits exceptions for a variety of reasons,
> errs on the side of the transparency and accountability that accompany the
> use of real names. S.S.C. supporters on Twitter were quick to identify some
> of the Times’ recent concessions to pseudonymous quotation—Virgil Texas, a
> co-host of the podcast “Chapo Trap House,” was mentioned, as were Banksy and
> a member of isis—as if these supposed inconsistencies were dispositive proof
> of the paper’s secret agenda, rather than an ad-hoc and perhaps clumsy
> application of a flexible policy. Had the issue been with Facebook and its
> contentious moderation policies, which are applied in a similarly ad-hoc and
> sometimes clumsy way, the reaction in Silicon Valley would likely have been
> more magnanimous.

This is a weak defense. What is the actual rationale for doxxing a blogger
over their vigorous objection? How do you actually justify this decision on
the merits?

~~~
nkurz
My disagreement with this paragraph was with the implication that "these
supposed inconsistencies were [intended as] dispositive proof of the paper’s
secret agenda", as opposed to the more obvious accusation that there simply
was no hard and fast real name policy: perhaps the reporter was mistaken that
there were no exceptions allowed, or was not willing to make the case to his
editor that anonymity was justified, or had already made the case and had
explicitly been denied. Only the last two of these might fall under "secret
agenda", and even then it's still more likely to be the opinion of one editor
or one reporter than the agenda of the paper as a whole.

------
abvdasker
The beauty of the article is in exposing the fundamentally emotional,
illogical reaction of the SSC's author and associated community. For a group
that seems to value dispassionate rationality and intelligence as inherently
morally good, their overreaction to this unpublished article is deliciously
ironic. Instead of allowing the "marketplace of ideas" to play out, Scott
Alexander decided to take his ball and go home.

Ultimately discrediting the "rationalist" ideology was as easy as making them
angry.

~~~
roryokane
As I understand your comment, you are arguing that according to Scott
Alexander’s principles of free discourse, the New York Times publicizing
Scott’s real name should be no different from a random online writer arguing a
controversial view, e.g. neoreactionary views. Thus, you say that Scott’s
objection to the New York Times publishing its article proves Scott’s
hypocrisy, because he allows discussion of neoreactionism but not of his real
name.

I think that is an unfair comparison. Controversial ideas such as
neoreactionism are part of the “marketplace of ideas” in that both arguments
for them and arguments against them can be publicized. Someone who encounters
a neoreactionary idea can research additional arguments for and against the
idea and use those arguments to decide on their own position.

Unlike an idea in a marketplace of ideas, publicizing Scott’s real name on
nytimes.com, a site highly-ranked in search engines, is irrefutable. No matter
how many people subsequently post to their own websites arguing that Scott’s
real name shouldn’t be publicized, it wouldn’t change Google’s behavior of
showing the New York Times article about Slate Star Codex when a psychiatric
patient searches for “Scott Alexander [real name]”. Rather than two sides of a
figurative ideological war fighting until the stronger idea proves the victor,
publicizing Scott’s name would be one side leading the battle with a nuclear
bomb.

Additionally, Scott’s real name isn’t an idea that can be argued for or
against, not is it relevant to the New York Times reporter’s ideas. Scott
suggested in his takedown post that he wouldn’t object so strongly to his name
being publicized if it were actually relevant to the article:

> If someone thinks I am so egregious that I don’t deserve the mask of
> anonymity, then I guess they have to name me, the same way they name
> criminals and terrorists. This wasn’t that. By all indications, this was […]
> going to be a nice piece […]. Getting punished for my crimes would at least
> be predictable, but I am not willing to be punished for my virtues.

Thus, Scott’s takedown of his blog does not prove hypocrisy or ‘[discredit]
the “rationalist” ideology’.

I also doubt that the takedown is an “emotional, illogical” action on Scott’s
part (no comment on his community). As zucker42 suggested elsewhere in these
comments, Scott’s takedown is probably “a game theory influenced attempt to
prevent the NYT from printing his name”. Scott saw the upcoming NYT article’s
inclusion of his name as a danger to his career and personal safety, and used
his blog’s readership to threaten the NYT with bad PR if they followed through
with that apparently-dangerous action. Seems reasonable to me. At worst, you
could accuse Scott of overestimating the actual danger of the NYT’s action and
thus threatening the NYT with a disproportionate amount of bad PR.

~~~
abvdasker
1\. The content of the article is still unknown. Scott — and from what I can
tell most of the rest of the SSC chud community — made an assumption about the
ill intent of the author for which there is no evidence. Again the hypocrisy
here is delightful given how much of rationalist ideology relies on giving
people the benefit of the doubt.

2\. Scott's last name is already out there and is ridiculously easy to find.
The idea that he was actually anonymous as the author of SSC is silly.

3\. There's an implicit admission of guilt in the way Scott anticipates that
his clients and the broader public will react negatively to his views. I
wonder, what is it about Scott's views that makes him so certain the reaction
will be negative? Why hasn't he allowed for the possibility that his clients
and the NYT readership will react positively to the article? Couldn't it raise
his profile and that of his blog in a way that is beneficial to both?

4\. I recognize that this is heresy to rationalist ideology, but his identity
matters in a discussion of his ideas, especially his political ideas. It's
easier to assess his sincerity or credibility given the background his real
identity provides. Is Scott really the Grand Wizard of the KKK in real life?
Is he a saint who spends his days serving the homeless? Is he just some guy?

5\. If nothing else Scott is making the tactical mistake of adding fuel to the
fire. My guess is that not only will the NYT still publish, this entire
kerfuffle will almost certainly now be part of the story. Traditional news
media thrives on controversy and sensationalism. Scott has just made this
whole thing far more interesting and already drawn more attention to himself
via the New Yorker article. _As of my writing this comment the Google
autocomplete for "Scott Alexander" is his last name._ His knee-jerk reaction
to the unpublished NYT piece has already ensured the loss of anonymity. Seems
kind-of irrational.

~~~
nkurz
Starting with #1, why do you believe that "Scott — and from what I can tell
most of the rest of the SSC chud[1] community — made an assumption about the
ill intent of the author for which there is no evidence."

From what I've seen, everything Scott has written has claimed exactly the
opposite. He claimed several times that his expectation was the article would
probably be mostly positive. In his explanation for taking down the blog, his
words were "It probably would have been a very nice article."

In one of the most discussed postmortems, Scott Aaronson explains why he
personally vouched for the NYT reporter and encouraged people to cooperate: "I
told Scott Alexander and others that I knew Cade, his intentions were good, he
was only trying to understand the community, and everyone should help him by
talking to him openly."

While there were a few opinions on the blog pre-shutdown that suspected it
would be a negative article, these were generally people who had poor earlier
experiences with reporters in general, and weren't specific to this case.
Countering them were multiple reports from interviewed posters saying that the
reporter seemed genuine and well intentioned.

But somehow you've reached the exact opposite impression: that led by Scott,
practically everyone assumed ill intent. Since it's easier to define the
opinion of an individual than a group, let's concentrate on just Scott. Could
you explain how Scott demonstrated his belief that the reporter had ill
intent? Has he written anything that would back this interpretation, or is it
based on the assumption he actually believes the opposite of everything that
he has said in public? Conversely, what would he have said differently if in
fact he didn't assume ill intent?

[1] Chud as in Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller? Or is this a typo I
haven't been able to decipher?

------
haltingproblem
I am surprised that the New Yorker decided to publish this. While I admire SSC
and Scott Alexander, I did not read SSC regularly or subscribe to even a
significant majority of his views, this article is circling the wagons around
the Times and the media establishment.

The writer conveniently buries that he used to work at the NYT Magazine
somewhere down in the article:

 _" Until recently, I was a writer for the Times Magazine, and the idea that
anyone on the organization’s masthead would direct a reporter to take down a
niche blogger because he didn’t like paywalls, or he promoted a petition about
a professor, or, really, for any other reason, is ludicrous; stories emerge
from casual interactions between curious reporters and their overtaxed
editors. Perhaps Metz was casting about for something on Silicon Valley’s good
sense on the coronavirus, found Alexander’s post, and thought he’d look into
it."_

------
isoprophlex
NYT can talk a big talk but... if your source wants to remain anonymous, why
still expose them?

What a sorry excuse for journalism.

~~~
charia
This is a mistake in the understanding of the situation. The NYTimes and all
major press outlets anonymize sources. For example for this article, the
NYTimes journalist gave people who spoke with him about SSC the choice to
remain anonymous.

The article was going to frame Scott as a subject. The real debate is if
subjects of articles also deserve full anonymity. The NYTimes' policy is to
generally not give subjects a right to anonymity.

The New Yorker article author does bring up another article the NYTimes
published about Chapo Trap House where host Virgil Texas was one of the
subjects but also given anonymity.

The question is if the decision not to give Scott anonymity as a subject
despite others receiving it in recent history is one borne out of
maliciousness, callousness, incompetence or a cultural disagreement between
NYTimes reporter and an internet blogger.

~~~
Natsu
No, this part of the situation is both well known and already rebutted. Look
at ggreer's comment up thread. They've made multiple exceptions to this policy
in the past.

The harm to Scott's patients and their ability to have continuity of care
alone should outweigh any supposed interest in needing to know the man behind
the pseudonym when the writing under the pseudonym is all that's relevant
here.

------
doe88
On another dimension it's maybe somehow a dig from _The New Yorker_ to the
_NYT_ , there seem to be bad blood between them (e.g. Ben Smith's article on
Ronan Farrow's writings).

------
Analemma_
This article could've been a lot worse, but it still suffers from the mistake
that the press is axiomatically good and anyone voicing upset at it must be
evil and/or have something to hide. If you take that as a baseline assumption,
instead of an empirical hypothesis that is looking increasingly shaky, then
you're going to end up with an article like this one where the tone clearly
conveys who you're supposed to sympathize with in a way that is not supported
by the facts.

------
bawana
What do you call a problem that's even more abstract than a 'first world
problem'? A zeroth-world problem?

------
oconnor663
I think folks who feel like this is a hit piece need to watch out for the
biases that Scott himself described in
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200619200544/https://slatestar...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200619200544/https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/17/caution-
on-bias-arguments). I don't want to assume that no one has done that
accounting, but I want to highlight that it's important.

Some scattered observations:

> Alexander, in another widely circulated essay, published in 2018, has
> popularized an alternative heuristic—a partition between what he calls
> “mistake theorists” and “conflict theorists.”

I think it speaks well of the piece that the author spent so much time on
mistake theory vs conflict theory. To someone who isn't already an SSC reader,
that's probably a pretty boring topic. But it's a big piece of context for
what regular readers consider important and interesting. If I were writing a
hit piece, or a clickbait piece, I don't think I would've made space for this.

> By their own logic of gamesmanship, some of the positions they tolerate
> actually have to be extreme, because only a tolerance of a truly extreme
> position is costly—that is, something for which they might have to pay a
> price.

This is an interesting take. I don't know if I fully agree with it, but at the
same time I don't think it's shallow.

> “Feels like tech pieces would benefit from pre- or at least post-publication
> peer review by experts in the field, namely the investors and engineers and
> founders”—in other words, the subjects of stories should be allowed to edit
> them.

A case of one group misunderstanding the fundamental, traditional values of
another group. I haven't thought before about how the "Gell-Mann amnesia
problem" might be fundamentally at odds with journalistic objectivity. It's
not just that journalists don't have the time or the background to understand
technical topics -- it might be that sometimes one _must not_ have that
background in order to write about a subject objectively. Or maybe that's one
way to be objective, which can work in cooperation with other ways. Who knows.
Again, not sure if I totally agree, but it's an interesting observation.

------
mrkurt
Watching people who hate cancel culture try to cancel the NYT is hilarious.
Watching them try to cancel individual NYT writers is gross.

All because Scott Alexander retroactively decided his last name is private
information and threw a tantrum.

~~~
atdrummond
Where is this canceling occurring?

I saw quite a few people here, as well as the two SSC subreddits, going out of
their way to encourage polite outreach to the editor and to avoid antagonizing
the actual author. So far as to discourage the naming of the author.

Not denying it may be happening, it just does not seem to jive with the
majority response (in my bubble).

~~~
mrkurt
I'm not sure how directly the cancelling is affiliated with SSC, but the
#ghostnyt hashtag is a pretty good cancellation motion. The only thing that's
really reached my bubble has been outrage and cancellation, though.

[https://twitter.com/hashtag/ghostnyt](https://twitter.com/hashtag/ghostnyt)

~~~
whatshisface
"They tweeted something bad" -> "get them fired," is substantially different
from, "the reporters working for this organization are dangerous," -> "don't
talk to them." One is going on the offense, the other is defensive.

------
mcint
Here's an archive link instead,
[https://archive.vn/9jx43](https://archive.vn/9jx43)

------
ppod
"Personally I feel the Gray Tribe is just as annoying as the Gray Lady"/ "Well
the important thing is that you've found a way to feel superior to both".

[https://xkcd.com/774/](https://xkcd.com/774/)

------
lliamander
> Until recently, I was a writer for the Times Magazine, and the idea that
> anyone on the organization’s masthead would direct a reporter to take down a
> niche blogger because he didn’t like paywalls, or he promoted a petition
> about a professor, or, really, for any other reason, is ludicrous;

Niche? A blog that get's 600K page views a month and is highly regarded
(aruably even moreso than the NYT) by numerous intellectuals and public
figures?

I will concede that perhaps no one would _direct_ a reporter to take down
Scott. However, that leaves open the possibility that they tend to hire the
kind of people who would take on that initiative themselves. As Noam Chomsky
once told a reporter "I'm sure you actually say what you believe, but you
would not have your job if you believed differently".

> For one thing, the S.S.C. code prioritizes semantic precision, but Metz—if
> Alexander’s account is to be taken at its word—had proposed not to “doxx”
> Alexander but to de-anonymize him

What, pray tell, is the difference?

> as if these supposed inconsistencies were dispositive proof of the paper’s
> secret agenda, rather than an ad-hoc and perhaps clumsy application of a
> flexible policy.

They also have previously given anonymity to a psychiatrist political blogger
for the exact reasons Scott asked for anonymity. I think there was really very
little differences between Scott and this other blogger, but I'm sure we can
all guess what those differences might be.

> They have given safe harbor to some genuinely egregious ideas, and
> controversial opinions have not been limited to the comments.

Merely arguing against neo-reactionaries (rather than banning the
outright/deplatforming them) is considered providing "safe-harbor"? This is
why the re-assurances of benign intent don't hold much water.

> in which Alexander explored and upheld research into innate biological
> differences between men and women. (As it turned out, the Damore memo was
> written before the post, but there was a noticeable overlap between them.)

If I recall correcty, that post was actually a sort of defense of Damore (or
at least a response to Damore's detractors).

> Many technologists and their investors believe that media coverage of their
> domain has become histrionic and punitive, scapegoating tech companies for
> their inability to solve extremely difficult problems, such as political
> polarization, that are neither of their own devising nor within their
> ability to solve.

Not that I don't share skepticism of SV, but I see no self-reflection here on
whether skepticism of corporate media is ever justified.

\--

At the very least the author didn't doxx Scott.

~~~
InfiniteRand
I found that line calling it Scott a niche blogger a little odd as well given
that the article as a whole seems to be designed to establish the greater
importance of Scott within the wider Silicon Valley and Rationalist
communities. Unless those communities are just small little niche groups, but
then why end with "Everyone has skin in the game, and the stakes are high."

~~~
lliamander
I would say the Rationalist community in general is probably pretty niche, but
the significance of Scott is that his blog appeals to a much broader audience
than the Rationalist community or even Silicon Valley.

------
SquishyPanda23
> so the reporter is either stupid or disingenuous

IMO your comment would be better without the ad-hominems

> anyone expressing heterodox opinions is likely to write something that a
> reporter working for a mainstream outlet considers "a creditable reason for
> negative coverage"

I get that you're angry, but this is unsubstantiated by anything you or the
article says.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> ad-hominems

That's not what an ad hominem is. The word you're looking for is "insult".

~~~
SquishyPanda23
The term I'm looking for is ad hominem.

"this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the
character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument
rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself."

tripletao chose to attack the character of a journalist instead of engaging
with the arguments.

~~~
tripletao
I doubt the character of the journalist because of the disingenuous nature of
his arguments, not the other way around.

To be clear, do you think Alexander actually intended to conceal a "creditable
reason for negative coverage" by deleting his blog? If so, why didn't he e.g.
request deletion from the Internet Archive, to at least make the reporter's
job noticeably harder? In any case, Alexander surely understands how the
Streisand effect works, and that a big public gesture that makes information
slightly less available (but still available with modest effort) tends to
disseminate that information, not conceal it. So do you really think that was
his goal?

And do you think the journalist really believed what he wrote? I don't, and I
think he was disingenuously reaching for stuff to smear Alexander with. I
think that's ugly.

Finally, I didn't intend to express anger in my last paragraph. I intend to
express caution, that anyone dealing with a journalist should consider the
possibility that the journalist is out to cause them serious personal harm.
This is true regardless of whether that's deliberate and targeted based on
their opinions (which I suspect, based on the inconsistent application of the
NYT's policy on anonymity, but which I agree no one can prove), or just out of
habit (which is fairer I suppose, but doesn't make the harm any less).

~~~
SquishyPanda23
First, thanks for responding. I really didn't intend for my comment to derail
a discussion so far into the weeds.

> I doubt the character of the journalist because of the disingenuous nature
> of his arguments, not the other way around.

I believe you experienced it that way. But I don't believe that was
communicated well. IMO you intended to make a case against the article but
ended up actually make a case against the journalist without addressing any of
the article's substantive points. That was the context of my original comment.
That is, to me, the comment reads as if the insults are themselves the case
you're making against the article. Maybe other people didn't read it that way.

For example, the reporter obviously has access to several of SSC posts. If the
reporter believed that deleting the blog caused it to be forever lost to
history, then he couldn't possibly have written this piece. So obviously he's
aware that at least some of the controversial content of SSC is still
accessible. In fact, he believes that enough of the content is accessible to
write an entire long-form New Yorker article about the controversial content.
So surely he must believe that enough of the content is available to write an
NYT article about the content.

So I'm not sure what the existence of the Internet Archive is supposed to say
about his character. It doesn't seem to impact his argument in any way,
because it's possible to simultaneously know about the Internet Archive and
also believe Alexander deleted his blog to dodge/mitigate negative press.

> do you think Alexander actually intended to conceal a "creditable reason for
> negative coverage" by deleting his blog?

I honestly have no idea. I don't follow the blog. I think it's possible he
wanted less scrutiny if his name was going to be released. I believed
Alexander's reasoning about the deletion when I read them when this first made
the rounds on HN.

> And do you think the journalist really believed what he wrote?

Yes, absolutely. I also believe Alexander believed what he wrote in all his
blog posts. I don't think there's a reason to assume bad faith on either
party. Journalists have flaws like everybody else, but I think they generally
believe in what they do.

> reaching for stuff to smear Alexander with

Again, I don't know anything really about Alexander or SSC, but personally I
find this a bit hard to believe. I also don't think it can be inferred from
the article. And more to the point for the (IMO extremely boring) ad-hominem
debate is: even if he was deliberately looking for things to smear him with,
it's still an ad hominem to make the case against the journalist for having an
axe to grind. The journalist can both have an axe to grind and also be
genuinely saying truthful things.

> I didn't intend to express anger

Fair enough, my apologies.

> that anyone dealing with a journalist should consider the possibility that
> the journalist is out to cause them serious personal harm

My natural tendency is to bristle at this. I get that journalists do sometimes
cause harm. I also get that you want to be cautious about anything you say
that might end up circulated in a major paper.

What troubles me is that this fits in with an overall anti-journalist
narrative that I've seen a lot on HN recently and in tech in general.

For that reason, my preference is to focus on the content of this particular
article and focus less on the angle that this piece might be part of a larger
attempt of journalistic nefariousness.

~~~
tripletao
Thanks, and I agree that there's an increased and harmful tendency to assume
bad faith in political and other discussion--we should engage as much as
possible with the arguments presented, regardless of what motivations we think
exist behind them. I try to avoid suspecting bad faith myself, but in this
case I didn't see how.

> For example, the reporter obviously has access to several of SSC posts. If
> the reporter believed that deleting the blog caused it to be forever lost to
> history, then he couldn't possibly have written this piece. So obviously
> he's aware that at least some of the controversial content of SSC is still
> accessible. In fact, he believes that enough of the content is accessible to
> write an entire long-form New Yorker article about the controversial
> content. So surely he must believe that enough of the content is available
> to write an NYT article about the content.

So we agree that the content remains readily available, to journalists and
others. So I think that means if Alexander "feared that a Times reporter
wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason for
negative coverage", then we agree that deleting the blog wouldn't (and didn't)
help.

> It doesn't seem to impact his argument in any way, because it's possible to
> simultaneously know about the Internet Archive and also believe Alexander
> deleted his blog to dodge/mitigate negative press.

So this is where I don't understand. Alexander surely knew about the Internet
Archive (and his e-book, and whatever other countless copies of his popular
content existed). So why do you think it's possible that he'd delete his blog
in order to dodge/mitigate bad press due to content that a journalist might
uncover there, when he knows that action would be ineffective (and indeed
probably counterproductive, due to the Streisand effect)? That seems so
implausible to me that I'm unable to believe the argument was presented in
good faith.

In any case, I agree that journalists do important work, and I have great
respect especially for those who reveal information of public importance,
against the wishes of powerful governments, companies or other entities that
seek to conceal it, sometimes at the cost of the journalists' lives. This (and
most "tech" and "culture" journalism) seems pretty far from that, though.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
> why do you think it's possible that he'd delete his blog in order to
> dodge/mitigate bad press due to content that a journalist might uncover
> there

This is a reasonable question. I don't honestly know enough about the topic to
make even a hypothetical argument that such a thing is _likely_. But it does
seem _possible_ any time a high profile blogger shuts down in the face of a
news story, that this is one of the reasons for the shut down.

For example, Alexander gives one reason it's possible on his blog: "If there’s
no blog, there’s no story." The NYT doesn't really have an incentive to run a
story about an ex-blog. So by shutting down, he puts pressure to shut the
story down altogether.

Regarding the Streisand effect, I'm not sure. But I think, based on his blog
post, that he thinks the story is less likely to run now.

Plus, accessing the blog is now at least an order of magnitude harder. Can you
access some of the pages? Sure. Will NYT readers? No, probably not. Search
doesn't work, it's painfully slow, only some URLs are snapshotted. It may even
be that most readers probably don't even know about the Archive.

So yeah at least to me it seems _possible_. For example, he's come out as
saying he likes eugenics. It's reasonable to fear that if a NYT story ran
giving his surname and saying he supported eugenics, then he may have a hard
time practicing as a psychiatrist.

~~~
tripletao
I agree that deleting the blog makes it less likely that NYT readers would
investigate and find something objectionable, both because the blog becomes
less accessible (but not inaccessible) and because if the story doesn't run
(as it seems not to have) then there's no readers in the first place. The New
Yorker claim was about the NYT reporter, though, not the readers. If I had an
embarrassing secret out in public and a reporter was sniffing around, then
conspicuously deleting some but not all copies of it seems like the stupidest
possible thing I could do, just encouraging them to dig further for it. That's
the reason I doubt that could be Alexander's motivation in deleting the blog.

As to the Streisand effect, we're talking about this now at least, and you're
aware that he "likes" eugenics[1]--indeed, if anyone's still reading this
thread then perhaps they learned that Alexander likes eugenics specifically
because of this article, which appeared specifically because he deleted the
blog. I can't imagine the NYT reporter doesn't know too. So as a tactic to
conceal his writing, I think deleting the blog has empirically failed.

Though I agree that he probably did fear that an NYT story that said "[Scott
Alexander's full name] likes eugenics" would harm his ability to practice as a
psychiatrist, and reasonably so. Eugenics obviously has an abhorrent history
in its purported application, and he treats the subject casually enough to
creep me out too. I didn't read his blog extensively, but the creepier stuff
always felt to me more like autistic-style disregard for social context than a
desire to revive those horrors. I think the remedy to that should be for
someone to point that out to him (as they have, of course), rather than for a
journalist to quote his worst phrasing out of context and thus end his career.

1\. Literally with the word "like", too,
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200109033206/http://slatestarc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200109033206/http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-
sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/)

------
LatteLazy
Old medias war against new media more like...

------
agentdrtran
Where is the outrage for doxxing when it happens to people at way more risk
than scott alexander?

~~~
anonms-coward
It is there with folks who know about those people and feel connected to them.
SSC has a lot of it's audience on HN. Hence you see the outrage here. People
can't feel similarly outraged by every doxxing since they have limited time,
energy, and emotional bandwidth. If people were forced to worry about issues
just on their impact, a large number of kids are starving in Africa, and by
that logic people shouldn't worry about anything else till they can do
something about that.

