I Am Deleting the Blog
slatestarcodex.com
slatestarcodex.com
After reading this, I looked up NYT's policy of using real names, and it turns out this isn't the worst time that the NY Times has done this[1].
I've long said that if you want to know who an organization serves, see where its money comes from. The NY Times gets 60% of its money from subscriptions, but it also gets 30% of its money from advertisers[2]. Keep in mind that subscribers can be hard to court, and losing one advertiser is a bigger chunk of money, so the NY Times is likely to be disproportionately influenced by the 30% of their income that comes from advertisers.
We're better off with organizations who receive their money from donations. I have been constantly impressed with the reporting of Mother Jones[3] and ProPublica[4] and would encourage you to both read and donate.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/sep/26/new-york-times...
[2] https://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/5gNimvTR/New...
To me, these are two separate problems: 1) NYT doxxes sources, 2) NYT serves advertisers rather than readers. There might be some relation between these two problems but I don't personally have enough information to conclude that.
I didn't make that clear in my previous post, my apologies. No implication was intended.
There's a fundamental disconnect between the mission of a news organization and getting paid to lie (which is, fundamentally, what advertising is). You cannot accept ad dollars and be an effective purveyor of truth.
Not fundamentally. A lot of advertising may be well be outright lying, or close enough as makes no difference.
But... I used to go by a shop named "Cards Galore", it had its name in reasonably sized letters hanging over the sidewalk, and then when I wanted to buy a card I knew where I could get one. Nothing lying about that. I think there's a lot of advertising which is like that.
Something weaker might be true, like "large-scale advertising will inevitably lead to large-scale lying". But "advertising is fundamentally lying" is not true.
Internet advertising is pretty much all lying. Even when what an ad says is factual, they're not telling you the whole truth, they're telling you a partial truth that leaves out pieces of information which they know would be relevant to you--that's a lie because their intent is to deceive you.
And by the way, I do get it: in a lot of businesses you have to advertise because your competitors are advertising. Advertising is a blight on society that infects everyone: opting out of advertising isn't a viable option without major sacrifice. I'd like to see a future where we all agree to stop advertising and rely on consumer-reports-style reviewers to obtain unbiased product information.
Companies toying with my psychology in order to get me to buy something from them... well, that doesn't sit well with me.
And even when they make statements of fact, it's still lying because they leave things out with the intent to deceive.
That's the crux, though. It technically doesn't have to be like this, but it almost always is - so "advertising is a bunch of consumer-hostile lies" is a more accurate generalization than "advertising informs people".
Contrast it with Netflix's model of unsubscription, which you can do at any time with a single click. They've even gone as far as automatically cancelling inactive accounts. Netflix is obviously a company with confidence in their own product, so they don't resort to any dark patterns in their unsubscription process like the NYTs does.
Not saying this is a good thing, but I think assuming that this "policy" is there to get advertising dollars is weird. Why would advertisers care?
not to defend the NYTimes here, they're definitely in the wrong. but doxxing a source for an article and doxxing the subject of an article are very different things. The subject of this article is not a "source".
In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story.
Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter is constantly debated among journalists. However, the consensus is using anonymous sources is necessary when all other avenues of getting someone on the record is exhausted or the story is so explosive that people close to the information are willing to shed light on an issue so long as their name is not used in print, mostly from fear of retribution, which is more common than you think.
I am not a journalist, but I have to imagine that “don’t become the story” is pretty high up on the list of journalistic ideals.
When it’s someone the NYT feels they want to protect, they will go to any length, even jail time, to protect them. It’s very hard for me not to conclude ill intent on behalf of the NYT in wanting to draw fire toward SSC based on Scott’s ideology. Asking the question “why this story now” in the current hyper-partisan and cancel-rage environment brings me to one obvious conclusion even though Scott himself doesn’t make such a leap.
While he doesn’t directly state it, I got the impression that he felt the motive for doxxing him was that very reason. I may be reading between the lines too much, but I got that impression none the less.
Correct. Anyone, whether it's an individual or group of people, can be "Scott Alexander."
What does it add? It makes the story more credible under scrutiny.
It's just an email address. It could be Scott or it could be someone else. Yes, common sense would say it's Scott, but the reporter would have to still prove it's him. If you claim to be Scott, too, that will also need to be checked out.
Many people will take that information and run, but if you're writing for a national outlet, where accurate reporting is everything, your editor will say, "Yes, that might be Scott, but how do you know? What proof can you provide? If we get called out for a fact error, can you refute that claim?
The Scott who posts at slatestarcodex.com is the Scott who is scott@slatestarcodex.com.
Therefore, the material Scott when attempting to pin down Scott in the context of slatestarcodex is scott@slatestarcodex.com.
Human X out in meat space could or could not be Scott, but that much is immaterial, as scott@slatestarcodex.com has been shown to be directly linked to Scott Alexander the blogger as a means of contacting him.
Thus I ask: what better proof could one have that scott@slatestarcodex.com is Scott Alexander, author of slatestarcodex?
From an editor's point of view, that's not enough, assuming the reporter has not done any form of reporting through interviews, public records and other methods.
The story is about the blog, yes, but a portion deals with the _person_ or _people_ behind it. And that's important.
I'm not sure why though, the NYT, would need to know the name that is purposely never used.
If you really need the name sooo bad, then just don't dox him and drop the article. That's perfectly fine.
As long as they don't dox him everyone is cool.
If they can't write the article without doxxing him then they should just drop the article.
Whatever they do they shouldn't dox him. And if they can't write the article without doing so, then they shouldn't write it.
So what? The story isn't about who Scott Alexander is. The story is about the blog. Anyone can go to the website and read the blog (or at least they could before the NYT pulled this screwup). If the NYT wants their story about the blog to be credible, they just need to tell the truth about what the blog says.
It's about the blog and its author. It's like writing about a controversial book without any mention of the author. That's not possible.
The author's persona on the blog, yes. That doesn't mean the author's real name needs to be revealed.
> A Warning is a 2019 book-length exposé of the Trump administration, anonymously authored by someone described as a "senior Trump administration official". It is a follow-up to an anonymous op-ed published by the New York Times in September 2018.
If he or she agrees to go on record, they should understand the potential risks.
It would behoove the reporter to lay out the options. Tricking someone to say something without knowing whether he or she is on the record is a big no-no.
Publishing the article with his full name if he's OK with that is an acceptable outcome.
Binning the article entirely if he's not OK with publishing his full name is also an acceptable outcome (though honestly it's a waste of time on all parties and it would have been better to make this constraint clear up front).
But publishing the article anyway and releasing his full name against his will, when he's the primary source for the story? That seems like a no-no. Interestingly, this hasn't happened yet, and seems like it may never at this rate.
I don’t see any reporting on the dangers of talking to reporters. Where is the NYT piece on what happens to people after they have been linked to something in the news?
I think that given Scott Alexander’s experience, ‘don’t talk to reporters, ever’, is as sound advice as ‘don’t talk to the police without an attorney’.
There are plenty of resources on how to handle talking with a reporter.
One thing I would suggest learning the difference between going on- and off-the-record and speaking on background.
> Where is the NYT piece on what happens to people after they have been linked to something in the news?
Here's a free one: Harvey Weinstein's victims. Despite them coming out about his abusive behaviors, his attorneys and henchman are going after them.
The Weinstein case seems to tell us nothing about the general risk of talking to reporters even though it is a data point.
It sounds like you are in full agreement with me otherwise though.
“Talking to reporters is very dangerous. Never do so without extensive study of the available resources.”
1. When a journalist identifies themself as a journalist, all conversations thereafter are assumed to be on the record unless specified otherwise.
2. Statements can't be made off the record after the fact--you have to say something is off the record before you say it for it to be considered off the record.
3. This is only journalist tradition, not law. Even if you say something is off the record, there's no real incentive for a journalist not to just publish it anyway, except their integrity. Journalists can and do break this rule, especially when they disagree with the person whose words they are reporting.
I am not tying SSC's situation with the general theme of on- and off-the-record.
I will say your explanation of the difference is spot on.
Maybe one could make an argument for a stage name or pen name being different (and there are many of those), but could Scott Alexander not also be considered a pen name?
Yes, like the fact that a website called "Slate Star Codex" exists and particular posts in it say what the article says they say.
There is no reason why a story about the blog needs to include the real name of the author, when that real name isn't even revealed anywhere on the blog. The story is about the blog.
IMO that doesn't apply to a situation like this. By definition, whoever answers email sent to the address on the SSC blog is the author of the blog. It doesn't matter if that person's "name" is Scott Alexander or Santa Claus or SillyBob5319. The piece the NYT is writing is about the blog, not about the specific, identifiable person who writes it. Knowing who that person is does not add credibility to the story; the credibility is already asserted by the fact that the person who controls the email address behind the blog is talking about it.
To your point about "verifiable information": the only verification needed by a hypothetical reader of this perhaps-never-to-be-published NYT article would be 1) visit the blog; 2) find a contact email; 3) send email asking "were those actually your words quote in this NYT article?" The person's name is irrelevant.
The readers don’t care that there is a controversial (or radical or not) blog on the internet, they want to know if anyone important is related to the blog and whether they should try to gain influence with said people or not (by aligning or distancing themselves from said people, depending on their own connections). For example, only if the author is named can they know whether he/she is a reputable practitioner at a prestigious institution (who can thereby give influence or be vulnerable to controversy), or maybe just a random doctor in a rural town (can be safely ignored).
So for people who rely on networks of other people, such as many political, corporate, and governmental sub-cultures, the NYT gains credibility by naming names and placing people in context. In other words, the NYT is a mainstream product and service, it’s interests are perhaps not most aligned with the pseudo-anonymous world of tech and ideas that the SSC blog and HN itself appeal to and cater to.
And the NYT doesn't even need to mention whether or not it's his "real" name. It's just a name. I use scare quotes because a "name" is explicitly whatever someone wants to be referred to as. The guy who writes Slate Star Codex is Scott Alexander, full stop.
I don't think tech culture is at issue here; I doubt newspapers had any issue referring to Samuel Clemens as Mark Twain back when he was alive and active.
This is just a hit on someone the reporter viewed as not sufficiently an ally in the culture war.
This shows a lack of how journalism works. Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story.
Think about it: Does a furniture business advertising in the local paper care whether the victim of a shooting is named in a piece? Sure, the owner might know the victim, but that doesn't mean the business will determine its expenditures based on names.
That's in The Netherlands, a country with different laws and regulations for the press.
This case is specific to the United States, with its own rules and protections.
I doubt the NYT has a lot of pieces on "Declan MacManus" in their archives -- if they can just use "Elvis Costello", they could certainly stick to calling the SSC guy by the name he uses online.
What about not revealing sources? Didn't journalists used to go to jail for that one?
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, famously refused to reveal their FBI source, Deep Throat, for decades. Of course, they didn't go to jail.
I am honestly starting to think real name policies are just about hating anominity at this point.
However, if your information is revealed, don't be shocked when someone approaches you with that information because you didn't cover your tracks.
If the NYT actually thinks they need to use the real name of the author of Slate Star Codex to add credibility to a story about the blog, they're delusional.
I think it's much more likely that they simply don't care about the valid personal concerns of people they write about.
What matters is journalistic integrity. We are in a time when reporters are consistently hammered for quoting anonymous sources.
In the case of SSC I really worry that NYT would be trying to exercise control. They probably like many things written on the blog, but also hate other things like diving into statistics of gender based pay discrimination or statistics of racial motivation in police violence.
These are topics which the modern left (which I’m a million percent a part of) is increasingly pushing out of scope of the Overton window and treating them like they are not allowed to be subject to statistical evidence or neutral discussion.
There is only One Right Thing To Believe about police violence (that is targets blacks and minorities, even if this is simply not supported by data). There is only One Right Thing To Believe about gender-based pay discrimination (the popular notion of “women make 70 cents on the dollar” which is not close to the real effect size, and requires a ton of uncomfortable nuance to discuss properly because of confounding effects of women staying at home more often and choosing to stay home after maternity leave).
I think they want SSC to write about things that comply with their moral narrative, and see doxxing as a way to turn the screws and essentially promote a vague threat that if he writes something controversial about IQ or sexism or income inequality or whatever, and it doesn’t stick to liberal talking points, they can do a damaging hit piece.
There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.
We're talking about a guy who once put up cartoons of people making fun of nerds/gamers next to Nazi propaganda to show how they were the same. If that's where you're getting your "arguments" on workplace sexism and police violence, you're probably a reactionary.
https://poly.land/2019/01/31/there-are-asexual-polyamorous-p...
The far right is even worse about this, appealing to braindead conspiracy theories, bald religion, fascism.
But the left is _really bad_ as well. Not “conspiracy theory gun nut” bad, but nowhere near “well balanced intellectual curiosity.”
If so, that's the funniest thing I've read in the last few years. The NYT is the home of bothsidesism. It's certainly not "the modern left".
And as far as the NYT writing a hit piece to shut up a semi-popular blog, I'd suggest a quick reality check how much influence either has on public discourse. The idea the NYT would need to shut up SSC is just... pretty far out there.
Your comment seems especially silly given that the NYT did, in fact, shut down this blog by threatening doxxing. So, by definition, the idea is not “far out there” or even remotely questionable.
Under US politics it is clear on the left side. It is not far left, but its not center either.
Is it more left than Fox? Sure. But even in the graph you cite[1], it's maybe 5% to the left. Calling it part of "the modern left" is at best ambitious. Thinking it's left enough that it would be on a crusade to silence SSC is... creative interpretation of the reality.
Is their "we must cite real names" policy dangerous? Yes. Is it aggravating they cause SSC to shut down? Yes. But let's keep in the realm of reality, please. It's not a NYT crusade.
[1] That thing is brutal on any PDF viewer I tried. If I were to read the source, I'd find the entire yarn of spaghetti as a million individual line elements, wouldn't I? ;) For people wanting to look - have patience, it takes time to load. On macOS, most PDF viewers actually fail to display it. FineReader OCR succeeds, after 25s load time.
We get value, in exchange for value.
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.axios.com/new-york-times-ad...
> (The streamers did not provide their legal names to The New York Times. In years past, women gamers who have spoken out against the industry using their legal names have been subjected to further harassment, hacking and doxxing.)
That's irony, right? It's hard to tell these days.
Discrimination comes both as "negative" and "positive" (both of which are usually in fact negative). E.g. people saying people of a certain ethnic background are better at math - on the surface a "positive" thing to say, but in fact fostering certain stereotypes and stereotyping people usually hurt a lot of people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45052534
Famous for saying things like, "Oh man it's kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men" and "Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins" and "white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants".
And when this was pointed out, the NYT stood by her, claiming that in fact it was all because she had been harassed and, "For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers".
One rule for straight white men, another for women is classic NYT. It's not new.
The evangelical Christian/Jewish/Political Liberal hybrid - who runs the NYT sees 99.9% of Americans as out-groups. It's what happens when contrarianism causes people to inhabit their caricature - Stormfront and the NYT have strange symmetry.
It's bigotry with access to better writing skills. You often need to be a member of the in-group to spot the submarines.
Scott Alexander is a real Liberal without the pathology and that is why they hate him. He is reminding them of what Liberal ideals used to be and that makes him register as a threat.
There's no mystery here. Scott belongs to a class of people for whom sympathy is not culturally trendy at the moment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement."
If I'm right about my theory of the reduced propensity to upvote with a higher quantity of good comments, there could be a tipping point where quality of discussion does go down as good but controversial comments sink to the bottom. HN isn't there yet, but it's something to watch out for.
White fragility.
This is not a matter of reasoned skepticism, it's knee-jerk ego defense; the above poster recognizes white fragility as a probable truth that traps him in a state of cognitive dissonance, and it makes him so uncomfortable that he has no choice but to respond. However, the response that truly rejects my initial premise would have been no response at all; the fact that he responded lends credence to that premise because its core holding was that it would elicit a response.
My point is precisely that "the fact that X responds, i.e. objects to premise Y lends credence to that premise because its core holding was that it would elicit a response" is a pointless and, indeed, content-less rhetorical trick, not an intellectually honest argument; moreover, that there are good reasons to be aware of this trick being played on you. You can call that "reasoned skepticism" or "knee-jerk ego defense", but that's not so important; indeed, I am quite willing to admit my "hostility" and "bald-faced rejection" of any such pointless tricks, no matter what their surrounding context might be.
Illustrating the idea that you can't help yourselves is meaningful.
What you describe is less any case of "white fragility", and more a degree of irritation at misapplication or dishonest application of rhetorical technique.
Anyone who has had any exposure to classical rhetoric sees the structure of what you're trying to do, and is trying to inform you that you are undermining your own credibility by doing what you are doing.
>It's indeed a rhetorical trick (many of the most illuminating arguments lead you unknowingly to their point)
No, most good good faith rhetoric doesn't "unknowingly lead you to their point". It invites you to think. To ponder and consider. What you, and other adherents of white fragility are doing is not that. You're taking any counter rhetorical engagement as an a priori proof of your conclusion, which is an example of circular reasoning.
It's like saying a parent or guardian is demonstrating parental/guardian fragility because even though a child or ward makes a mistake they can't help themselves but to attempt to correct them. No. It isn't a failing on parent's/guardian's part. The ward has done something derp, and they care enough to call them out, and attempt to remediate the faux pas so that it doesn't continue making the ward's life more difficult than need be.
Same dynamic is going on here, without the implied authoritative relationship. In an exchange of ideas amongst equals with different viewpoints, instead of taking any further attempts at counterargument in good faith as an indicator you might be doing something in error, missing something, or as an invitation to broaden your view by considering from a different point of view, you instead double-down by asserting that it is an illustration of bad faith on the part of the person reaching out and trying in good faith to commiserate with you. In that sense it is little more than an overly elaborate rhetorical exchange stop point, as there is no further room for exchange of meaningful information if all you're going to do in the end is shunt further exchange into the "Haha, White Fragility" bucket.
Just figured I'd point that out in case no one else can figure out a way to make the point more obvious.
>Illustrating the idea that you can't help yourselves is meaningful.
No, it isn't. Eliciting a response to rhetorical bad form is like saying that a compiler is fragile because it calls out syntax errors.
No amount of talking around the issue takes away from the original point: the original "white fragility" post was an invitation to speak intelligently with one's silence. As with a parent who simply walks away from a tantrum, or a friend whose silence conveys dissent, simple acceptance of circumstances is all that was necessary to prove to the contrary the raised notion. The people who responded made themselves into case studies; that's all.
You're simply doing logic wrong. Everyone here knows it, and most are probably too embarrassed to point it out. Consider this your Emperor's New Clothes moment.
You cannot say "X exists, and if you challenge me, it only proves X exists". That is circular reasoning by definition. X, therefore X. Before you go around attributing to others the quality of "white fragility" which you define in reference to itself as "white fragility is the phenomena by which whites must argue that white fragility doesn't exist", then you should not be surprised when anyone with any sort of background in formal logic drops by and attempts to get you sorted out.
Further:
>I'm not here to "exchange ideas."
Good!
Now that that's clear, I can cease conversation with you with a clear conscience. There is nothing more distressing to me than seeing someone seemingly trying to make what may be a valid point, but running into difficulty due to stumbling due to poor structure of their arguments. I tend to feel obligated to speak up at that point, as trying to disambiguate or deobfuscate hard to communicate things is something I often engage in.
If you are not actually interested in a good faith exchange of ideas, then I bid you adieu, and good night. Do work on the arguments. The world is prone to fallacious reasoning enough without people running around doing it wrong knowingly and intentionally.
I am white and had no problem hearing about the idea of white fragility, even though I fully recognize the closed loop in the idea that disputing a thing proves the thing.
You know what an actually resiliant person does when someone calls them fragile? Any number of things, most frequently nothing at all, but never "that's a linguistic trick and it doesn't prove anything and it's totally unfair! #notallwhites"
I'm surprised you didn't try to cite a great list of examples of white people not being fragile. Good thing too, because I had already fallen off my chair laughing, I'd had had to get back up just to fall off again.
If someone accuses you of shouting, the one thing you cannot do to clear your name of that charge, is to shout that you are not shouting.
And if you're not white and trying to make this argument for some reason, save it. I'm white and my reaction was "yeah pretty much".
It does not follow that only those who are fragile would find reason to speak out against poor argumentation. There are many forms of rhetorical one ups that are intended to strike at and incite an emotional response that render themselves vacuous and empty of meaning on further reflection. One is more than justified calling someone else out for spreading inflammatory, vacuous rhetoric.
>I am white and had no problem hearing about the idea of white fragility, even though I fully recognize the closed loop in the idea that disputing a thing proves the thing.
Good for you. Guess what? Neither did I. Seemed rather logical and intuitively explained several things at first blush. I even went ahead and bounced it around, tried it on, and realized something about it's use. It resembled another argument I grappled with long before. Does this ponderer suffer from white fragility? Does that dog demonstrate Buddha Nature? Mu! Once you realize it's a non-sense bearing statement, you break out of complacent acceptance and the analytical mode of in which the thing is given the assumption of positive existence and realize what's actually going on. It's a fundamental lashing out on the peace of those in the area, and a deliberate seeding of disharmony and enmity between those in the environment. I believe this would count as a micro-aggression, and the perpetuation thereof is staunchly discouraged, is it not? If not right in one direction, why should it be accepted in the other?
Furthermore, "the intentional upset of the peace of those around you is worth calling out, regardless of the personal character of the one calling it out, and if you truly accept the closed loop you claim, you'll have to forgive me if I assume all your out to do is to incite hostility. Since one truly interested in dismissing the charge would remain silent and accept his just deserts.
>If someone accuses you of shouting, the one thing you cannot do to clear your name of that charge, is to shout that you are not shouting.
If someone accuses me of shouting, and I haven't, I'm most interested in wondering why someone would think I'm shouting. Are they wearing a hearing aid? Are they ill? Are they alright? Can I help? Generally I'm rather interested in the people with whom I cross paths, the circumstances that led to our paths crossing, why people think the way they do, and why they do the things they do, how that affects me, and how what I'm doing may be affecting them.
Given all that you think I'm not going to put 2 and 2 together when I see other people sowing distress and disharmony to people that I see no indication of those individuals having ever met before and not trying to figure out and defuse the situation with every faculty, especially when I see it popping up and escalating all over the place?
If that's fragile, then screw it, I'm fragile. That still isn't going to stop me from listing the ways that what you and others are doing is disruptive, insulting to those around, apparently bringing you delight, completely void in logical validity, and what kind of person really enjoys doing that anyway? To which I'm left with a single solitary answer. Though that one I think I'll keep to myself. Good night to you, sir/madam/whatever your preferred pronoun may be. May your path in life be long, interesting, and orthogonal to mine. Spread your message far and wide if you want. I'll still be here calling it out.
"white fragility" is inherently bad faith (both because it's inherently racist but also because "fragility" is a kafka trap as previously discussed), and you immediately clarified that you were, in fact, using it in bad faith: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634713.
Also women (and men) faced threats of sexual assault and violence for critiquing the media. But NYT very deliberately choses to ignore one set of threats and doxxing.
It's more sympathetic to women than men. They won't directly tell you: "We protect women but not men", but that's the implicit policy of many institutions, especially mainstream media.
Is that how the numbers work out in your state? Because I don't know of any state in the US where that is the breakdown.
You know come to think of it.. there are way more orphanages for kids than for adults. Man that is so unfair. Clear bias in the system there!
By RTing #ghostnyt you commit to not talking to NYT reporters or giving them quotes. Go direct if you have something to say.
Doxxing public figures is their job.
Slate Star Codex is one of the biggest dangers to people (esp marginalized groups) who want to use the internet without being abused.
TLDR is that Slate Star Codex is a blog that promotes platforming white supremacists and the like, whips up frenzies about the dangers of feminism, and serves as a vector for promoting the work of white supremacists
Ever wonder why Twitter is a "nazi haven"? Reddit a cesspool of hate? Well one of the reasons is that people working at this companies read and follow the precepts of Slate Star Codex.
Slate Star Codex is the blog of a guy named Scott who got his start blogging in the "rationalist" community.
Slate Star Codex is basically Tucker Carlson for "smart" dudes in tech. The only difference is Scott buries his ideology in mountains of text and disclaimers.
His typical rhetorical technique is "I love the gays/hate racists/am not a conservative BUT" The BUT is usually "this racist/sexist/etc. Has some points and we should hear them out."
Unsurprisingly, he's cultivated a community where racists/sexists/etc. Are VERY comfortable. In the comments and on a slatestarcodex reddit.
Now I know he didn't create the subreddit, but he approved of it and he was a moderator there. And when things went wrong with a popular thread called "the culture wars thread" he wrote a long blog post about what a tragedy it was.
Now I am a minority in tech so I've had his blog posts thrown at me by dudes for years. I saw his blog post go "viral" on both private work slacks and communities that techies frequent. https://archive.is/v62cM
The thing people took away from his post is that internet toxicity is drowning out "open debate." Now let's talk about the "open debate" he so wants to protect.
By his own stats it was mostly white men. Sure a lot of them were professed "liberals" but in tech "liberal" means "I have a gay friend but don't make me uncomfortable by talking about things like privilege."
The thread debated things like "maybe eugenics is good." It had "only" about 20 percent far righters which Scot delusionally thinks is normal. I'm sorry but while your everyday Republican might be racism he's also probably not a racial IQ stats aficionado like these dudes.
While Scott claims to hate racism, his top priority is preserving a seat at the table for a ragtag group of far righters. Unfortunately this philosophy is shared with a lot of people in tech and they use his posts to spread it.
I know because I work with a team that does abuse/moderation design and they post his stuff all the time saying how "insightful" it is.
Their argument is you have to "hear out" the white supremacists and the like and that in the end "rationality" will win. If only that were true. And it's especially not true in an environment where the comfort of white "liberal" dudes is the top priority.
I wonder how many people started reading white supremacists because of Scott's blog?
How unfair you say, he can't control the subreddit. Well besides being a moderator there so he can control it to some degree, you don't even need to go there to find links to white supremacists.
Right on his very blog roll are links to "Gene Expression" whose author was fired by the NYT for his links to white supremacists. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/03/... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D0cRBkMUUAI42ci?format=png&name=...
Next to it? West Hunter, written by Gregory Cochrane. His pet theory is that gayness is literally a disease and he was a regular collaborator with "race scientist" Henry Harpending https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/depths-of-madness/
Slate Star Codex is essentially a blog about how the "real" danger in the world is SJWs, feminists, and other "leftists." They, not white supremacists, are the real threat.
The worst part about all of it is that he buries it in such obtuse language that only the interested will wade into it. And his followers are rabid at defending the precept that Scott is a moderate centrist liberal.
This claim alone ought to suggest to you - given its obvious implausibility - that this person has a political axe to grind. (Same as the bunch of Twitter users who are now apparently gloating over the fact that Scott might soon get doxxed by the NYT - and who seemingly think "Orange site bad!" is a cogent argument. No, I won't be linking to them due to the obvious doxxing infohazard involved.)
He did criticize sometimes SJW, some feminist bloggers, as he also criticizes libertarians, reactionaries, communists. But, hell, since he does not subscribe to The One True And Moral Opiniom, he is a monster, definitely. And, God forbid him for not paying attention 24/7 in a subreddit that is not even his, just because he has a day job amd such.
Yes, I created this account just to answer this complete bullshit.
Being famous is dangerous in every era, doubly so in an era where anybody unhinged basically has access to the same level of information you used to need a private investigator to get.
Tim Ferris said it well: "The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience." [0]
The focus should be on the Times threatening to out him for no good reason, not his personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
[0] https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/
People in comments sections (doesn’t matter which) don’t really “react to” or “engage with” the article very often. What they’re really doing is being reminded by the article of some thought that’s been affecting them in their own lives lately—which they then hold forth about. Sometimes the tangential thought can be supported by quoting the article (either literally, or in rebuttal); but this is still different from engaging with the article itself, per se.
For most people, the article is grist for the idea-mill of their own “blogging”, which they happen to do in the form of a comment. (Heck, that’s what I’m doing right now, to your comment!)
People who genuinely respond to a post as if they were in conversation with the original author are few and far between, and tend to put their responses on professional blogs rather than comments sections. (Which is funny, because "comments sections" are nominally for engaging with the post. We've all become very mixed up somehow.)
Don't want to go off on a tangent, but HN trains its users to do that by posting one article after another that's behind a paywall. Of course there will be comments vaguely related to the article when you've created a culture of commenting without reading.
I can't help but think that this effect isn't what I want from this community, however. I want reasoned discussion that helps me to see issues from various points of view, but instead I get a bunch of uninformed opinions from people who didn't even read the thing they're opining on.
Some of the absolute best discussions I've read and sometimes participated in on HN have been tangents or inconsequential to the article they were attached to. I would miss those types of discussion sorely if they were gone.
There are tools to help manage this though. You can collapse comment threads, and if you find a particular vein of discussion not really to your liking, I suggest doing that so you can focus on what you do enjoy (and others can do the same, even if the items they read and ignore are entirely different than yours).
Personally, since these comments aren't the comments of the article in question (usually. Sometimes they just refer you here!), I think of it less as comments to the author when posting here, and more like a discussion in a group examining that article. Sort of like a book group, where people splinter into subgroups to have discussions that interest them, and even those that failed to read the book might find a place to contribute.
But that's exactly not what they are: you can't examine an article without reading it, and in many cases it's blatantly obvious that commenters didn't read the article.
I'm fine with tangents, it's the on-topic ignorance that bothers me.
> Tim Ferris said it well: "The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience."
True, but a big part of why Scott has such a big audience is his willingness to write about the problems of cancel culture, and cancel culture would almost certainly come after him if he is doxxed.
in the ISIS case, the article likely doesn't happen without the fighter's cooperation, so the writer must defer to the subject or risk losing the story.
in the scott alexander case, the article can happen with or without subject cooperation, so the writer can afford to obey the stated policy and increase "transparency" on this story.
There's no indication that the cited policy allows for such discretion.
> in the scott alexander case, the article can happen with or without subject cooperation, so the writer can afford to obey the stated policy and increase "transparency" on this story.
Does that also apply to Virgil Texas of "Chapo Trap House"[1]?
It's clear that the NYT does not, in practice, have a blanket policy against pseudonyms. The writer's claims that it does are therefore at least somewhat BS. Violating the privacy of a practicing mental health professional who is obligated to hide his personal life from his patients is a pretty serious mistake. This could all be some sort of bureaucratic bungling, but as the saying goes: mistakes of this magnitude are rarely innocent.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sander...
EDIT: see this as well https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23619347
More and more evidence against such a policy, and for the theory that this is a hit piece.
EDIT2: NYT protecting a therapist's identity in 2015 https://twitter.com/s8mb/status/1275436187713286144
it's obvious that doxxing scott alexander is not necessary for this article. in fact, it's actually quite dangerous given the history of threats.
Oh, I understand. And that would be my general default assumption as well. Scott also doesn't assume malice.
It's just that some form of the "malice" interpretation is looking increasingly likely.
Now imagine how much more of this one would get if their real name (and, by extension, address, employer, family, etc.) is published by NYT and easily accessible to anyone with rudimentary typing skills. Cancel culture is not the reason for NYT doxxing, but it makes the doxxing orders of magnitude more dangerous. And NYT must know that.
Yes, there are also random crazies. But I don't think I've read any storied about random crazies getting people fired from their jobs. I've read the last one about cancel culture doing that today. And have been reading them almost daily for a while.
> The focus should be on the Times threatening to out him for no good reason, not his personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
It can be both.
Though one of the more wholesome things I've seen is when I visited that subreddit you're referring to and the consensus seemed to be that doxxing Scott was not justified.
Many there would still support the article and his name being published, and would push for his cancellation.
The issue here is that he's a psychiatrist. Dealing with random crazies, some of whom might literally try to kill him if they knew where he lived, is his day job.
So the extra danger from that direction associated with the NYT publishing his real name in an article about SSC is that they might read that article, discover that Xxxxx Xxxxx who treats them for paranoid schizophrenia also has this blog that says yyyy yyyyy yyy yyyyyy and that zzzzzz zzz zzzzz, and then go after him (using the real name they already had).
The harm there isn't zero, but I think it's much less than the harm that results from giving his real name to people who already knew about SSC and hated it for some reason.
(Also, at present at least, it's easier to go from Scott's real name to his blogging pseudonym than in the other direction with a couple of minutes and a search engine. Neither direction is terribly difficult, but that's no reason why the NYT should make them both easier.)
And that is why we need to abolish anonymity on the internet and ensure traceability. If people can trace threats and harassment, it either won't happen or can be reported.
I'd prefer to keep them out of it. I'd prefer technical solutions that ensure we can find out where packets, email, or phone calls come from.
>> It's also the exact opposite of what the whole blog post is about, preserving anonymity.
I imagine a world where you can be annoymous, just not by default. A blogger might use a pseudonym, but refuse incoming comments lacking tracability.
I think this is what Scott's more concerned about than anything. I'm sure he worries about canceling and stuff too, but this is really out of concern for his ability to treat patients effectively at his day job.
Isn't it obvious that the upcoming NYT articles is going to be a hit piece with the goal of ruining his personal credibility and professional career.
I hope to be wrong, but somehow I don't think so.
>Being famous is dangerous in every era, doubly so in an era where anybody unhinged basically has access to the same level of information you used to need a private investigator to get.
Nobody would really care if it was just some twitter people bitching on twitter. The problem is that media, employers, sponsors, advertisers, etc. listen to them and act on what they think the mob wants.
And we are way past targeting famous people. The step-mother of the Atlanta cop who shot Brooks was fired for having the audacity of defending her step-son on social media. Imagine a world where you fault a mother for not disowning her son!! WaPo put together a 3000 word article attacking and naming a staffer for a Halloween costume she wore two years ago (with no ill intent!). She profusely apologized, but that doesn't matter - she was fired after being publicly humiliated by a noted paper of record who was also her employer. WaPo did that to their own employee!! How about that "Karen" (a modern day slur against women) in San Francisco who merely inquired, very very politely, if a gentleman who was writing out a BLM slogan on a property if he lived at that property .. she was dragged through the mud, forced into a public apology, which was not accepted (apologies are never accepted but instead are used as evidence of guilt) her small business was shut down (after the mob targeted her customers), and her husband was fired from his job.
This is all great stuff.
I suppose if i had and axe to grind against NYT it might be "obvious". Even the blog author mentions it would be a "mostly positive piece". Where are you getting your information from?
Like I said, I hope to be wrong, but I am cynical about the motives of NYT, especially given this quote from the blog post: "He told me it would be a ___mostly___ positive piece about how we were an interesting gathering place for people in tech, and how we were ahead of the curve on some aspects of the coronavirus situation." (emphasis mine) - that's a reporter buttering up Scott Alexander to get a quote and compliance until the hit piece drops.
When that article drops, we'll see. If it is balanced and fair I will own up to being wrong. Gladly. I just don't thinks so.
I'm being cynical because of what's been happening in these media outlets.
There's not much else to add to this until the article drops.
>Does the NYT have an obligation to write a fluff piece?
They have an obligation to write a fair piece, and I don't believe they will.
But I think cancel culture is still relevant because it very well may be why the NYT was threatening to dox him.
Scott writes eloquently and in depth, but the news is not about either of those things. Scott has written a few times about problematic issues which have surfaced in recent months and it would be very easy to write "some people say that Scott is ${label}" with just a bit of superficial quotes. Today's climate of online mob justice in partnership with click bait news would not go well for Scott at all.
This may itself be reason for some people to distrust Scott, except that he's probably done more to bring people to a moderate or left-of-center position on some topics than all the people shouting "racist!" combined.
That is to say, those who are culturally out of power _need_ to act relatively civilized, because civilization is the only thing that protects them, while those that dominate norm-shaping are free to act as the monsters they truly are. It's no coincidence that so much of the left has started pretending that caring about free speech is only ever a tactical decision to protect unforgivable rightwing views: if you're the kind of morally hollow creature that can't conceive of holding a principle, you also can't conceive of anyone else holding one. (Not incidentally, this is why Scott is so often tarred as alt-right or alt-right-adjacent, despite being pretty firmly on the left).
In the GWB years of an ascendant cultural right, Scott would have likely faced the same threats from the right as he does from the left, over different issues.
The rationalist/secularist/etc. community was around back then, and that didn't really happen. I agree that a limited incumbent effect does apply, but it seems quite clear that liberal norms and principles really do get more respect on the (non-extreme) right than they do on the left.
I agree with your general point about power, but I disagree where cultural power has been historically. Consider, when was the last time the NYT was not the paper of record?
If anything, the cultural right is far more powerful now than it has ever been - at least since Barry Goldwater. And it still isn't on top, but that seems to be the current trajectory.
It has a very religious witch hunt feel where you constantly need to assure everybody that you are totally not a member of the out-group and you believe in the same things they do and you really are not possessed by the devil and they really shouldn't burn you, but they may have gotten something a tiny bit wrong in their, of course totally justified, blind rage.
Politics is the new religion. Combine that with destabilizing effects of instant communication and social media and you get what we have now. Essentially divergent realities created by our narrow casted views (news feeds) that create a modern day tower of Babel moment where we literally can't understand each other.
I generally doubt that the striking down of religion was a force for good. When we've kept the "group identity generation" only partially in this world and a lot in the next, you can feel all high and mighty knowing that you will go to paradise while the wrong-believers will go to hell, and God will judge everybody.
Now, there's no more God to judge, there's no more "in the afterlife", there's only here and now, and everything becomes an integral part of your identity, from your programming language to your favored comic universe, and it all feels much fiercer. Maybe it's the lack of the after-life where they can be punished, so you need to see them punished in this life.
Are you referring to Episode 207? https://overcast.fm/+KhqFMR3J4
I think Sam did a very poor job in that episode -- he was preaching exclusively to the choir. He spends the start of the podcast explaining the important distinction between justified and unjustified police involved killings. This is a very important distinction, and I would love to see data about the racial breakdown of unjustified killings, relative to a racial breakdown of police interactions.
But, Sam then completely abandons this distinction. He discusses "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force", Roland G. Fryer, Jr. July 2007, a NYC-only study that does not measure unjustified killings.
Then, as usual, he spends an awful lot of time spouting his usual rhetoric of truth, epistemology, science, data, facts, and knowledge. This is merely rhetoric because his reference to that study is clearly meant to be evidence that we have the truth -- that police brutality is the issue, and unjustified killings do not disproportionately affect black Americans. He even discusses the Fryer study and moments later is confidently stating "race isn't the relevant variable". This is a grand claim that can't possibly be justified based on the Fryer study.
All interspersed with more rhetoric such as:
- "expiation of sins" for you Botox as if you're "woke as AOC"
- "ecstasy of ideological conformity"
- "woke analysis" is where "democratic politics goes to die" (probably means Democratic Party politics)
- "social activists playing chicken with the forces of chaos"
- "form of political pornography"
- "unable to speak or even think about facts"
Sam's usual parade of platitudes about epistemology are best understood by another quotation from this episode: "the difference between the branding of a movement and its actual aims, that's why propaganda works".
Yeah, I wasn't referencing the article specifically, but the general state. What Sam Harris said at the beginning of that episode (I was talking about the one you linked, but I only read the transcript, I don't have the attention span for podcasts) rang true for me: opening your mouth is risky for normal people, but it's extra risky if you're a publicist/commentator/celebrity and that has an extreme chilling effect.
I don't want to debate his opinions, I don't regularly listen to Harris, but the fact that he felt it's necessary to add so much "please don't take this out of context" left me impressed, and I haven't marked Harris down as somebody who'd do that for effect, to claim victimhood etc. I also don't believe that he does so for his usual audience, because they most likely know his general positions, know that he's not alt-right or a white supremacist and that he may say something that doesn't intuitively sound "okay" but usually has at least some reason for it. On the contrary, I think he does it purely for the Twitter mob who is sure to look for material in whatever he says. And that's really just a sad state of affairs, when any public utterance is basically "my lawyer has advised me not to answer that question" because whatever you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, will be taken out of context and will be enhanced with rumors and lies.
That's not specific to Sam Harris, of course, and the tactic isn't specific to whatever you want to label the people who hate him. It's pretty universal in both the targets and those that target them.
1. The Sound of Silence, by Jessica Livingston
Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves because the downside risk of being attacked for (misinterpretations of) their opinions are too high. People are wary of sharing useful information outside of trusted circles, which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those who are already powerful.
2. What You Can't Say, by Paul Graham
Reflection on how to separate truths that will endure from "moral fashions" particular to a time and place in history. Written over 15 years ago and more relevant today.
> What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.
[1] https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-sound-of-silence [2] http://paulgraham.com/say.html
It seems, too, that making jokes is very risky. With text online it's just far too easy to take something out of context and misrepresent or weaponize a person's words. I have had this happen to me personally and it's unbelievably frustrating.
People aren't allowed to make mistakes, it seems. It is just too fraught, and even sincerity and honesty are not safe.
https://old.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hddnml/the_...
There's an alt right author called Vox Day (and I'm a little afraid to be referencing him here) who makes the following argument: if mainstream thought becomes increasingly constricted, and disagreeing with it becomes increasingly dangerous, people will do one of two things. Either they'll self-censor, or they'll "flip the switch" and just go totally anti-mainstream, because it's safer to associate and identify with people who won't get them fired for their opinions. The greater the censorship and fear, the more people will "flip" in a search for safety.
Now he is alt right and he has a vested interest in portraying the ascendancy of the alt right as inevitable, but the point is nonetheless logical, and quite disturbing. It may be that punishing moderately "wrong" speech will ultimately drive moderates into the waiting arms of the extreme right, where they won't be judged so harshly for their errors. Moreover if the purity spiral [1] theory is correct, this phenomenon may be hard to stop, because punishing people for their dissenting speech is an effective way to gain status in many communities!
[1] https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...
I wouldn't call myself alt-right, far from it in fact. But I definitely see this happening in me over the past few years. Starting the night of the 2016 election.
It's one of those things that makes me wonder how much I've changed vs how much society has changed around me.
For instance, I learned first thing this morning that I have a corrupt faith and that I've fractured the nation [1]. There's only so much debasement one can listen to before you just tune out.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/23/881992622/book-jesus-and-john...
Given that we're less than 6 months out from an election -- the election -- it's not a surprise. Lots of propaganda, foreign and domestic, is going to go hard all summer.
I have observed that in the last 10-20 years the definition of "mainstream" has come to mean something very personal and subjective. Some media are referred to as "mainstream" only if they offer a supporting bias, and others are labelled "mainstream" only if they have demonstrated disagreement, depending on your ask. The epithet "mainstream media" has become a brush with which one may paint a canvas any colour one desires to forward one's peculiar viewpoint. It is a phrase that has become as meaningless as "political", "science", and even "unbiased". Just another empty adjective to lend pseudo-credence to your opinion.
My country right now is deeply divided between literal left (not USA left, I mean actual marxists) and "right" (almost noone support true rightwing, either in historical sense, being monarchists, or in the current sense, being capitalists, what they support instead is a populist authoritarian way of doing things, more in common with left than with any kind of right).
I now have to be very careful with who I talk to, often whatever I say spark trouble because where I live most people are marxists, and I am ex-marxist.
So I decided yesterday to talk with people in an whatsapp group that is anti-marxist... instead found myself having to be careful and self-censor because they went all the way to the other side, hard, people there were mad our former justice minister praised the army honor... because to them, that is evil, what he should be praising is the army might, as soon I touched on the subject it sparked hostile rants against anyone that believes that a violent army-backed coup is wrong, in a chillingly civil way, they explained to me that the army job is basically kill people in the government until it obeys the majority of the population, basically a literal dictatorship of the majority.
It became obvious then... I won't find a place to talk about my now somehow "moderate" views.
Went down a strange rabbit hole there for a while this morning after reading this. Ready to come back up for air now and put that behind me a while.
I've wondered a couple times recently how dangerous it is that I'm easily discoverable. I tell myself that since I live in the Midwest, the worst of it hasn't reached here yet. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.
Not even mistakes. Things that were considered progressive as little as 15-20 years ago have now been flipped into "microaggressions".
Also quite amusing what someone will take time out of their day to down vote sometimes.
He has to regularly see multiple sides of the site. HN is pretty diverse depending on what you click and as such, I do think he is less biased in some ways we are and more biased in others as he work as a mod for hn.
A reply comments on how HN is somewhat similar. People censoring themselves due to fear of being downvoted. I pointed out that IMO downvotes are a very mild sanction and truly, people don't need to censor themselves on HN, but the true cost would come if everyone had to comment with their real names.
Sorry it wasn't groundbreaking enough for you.
Maybe now it's still okay, but in ten years, who knows, I may be "cancelled".
Not that it hasn't already happened to others.
I know that the people who disagree with me outnumber those that agree, but the way that the upvotes bounce up and down tells me there are more people out there that agree with me than I would have assumed.
(Plus I think I've only made it down to -4 once or twice)
Btw, for anyone who has trouble reading a faded comment, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page and the text should be readable.
And I wouldn't say the forum is "exactly this" unless you're saying that downvotes are on par with getting "fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or killed."
I often find myself thinking that we either need to create a healthier mechanism for finer grained social consequences at a mass scale, or accept that the future belongs to sociopaths and cancel culture.
My problem with downvotes isn't the effect on my score. It's the fact that the font becomes paler. Dissenting opinions are singled out in a way that makes them look bad/wrong. I also don't like how the UX doesn't represent the distribution. A post with no votes will look like a post with 50 upvotes and 50 downvotes.
I am fine with downvotes, and with some UX mechanism to let people know that a post is being downvoted. But I think the current UX engenders groupthink.
That seems much worse. As well as not being transparent at all.
What is worse, it is an entirely silent way of silencing dissent. I would love to experiment with the other end of the spectrum: not only should the number of downvotes be visible, downvoting someone should also require a reason to be given, in the form of a post. And it should be possible to downvote those reasons too, with the algorithm adjusting the original downvote's weight based on the score of the downvote reason.
What I have learned from struggling a lot with issues normal people don't face (at least going by majority) is that we are all toxic to each other. Some things are more visible and easily understandable for others while many aren't. It may feel pretty shitty for a disabled person inside a room of normal people complaining about very trivial things and calling for others to become disabled as a joke. Some autism jokes may actually invoke sad memories for others. But there are groups of young people who do all those and don't think it is toxic. Joking about depression is another. There are many examples where line of toxicity isn't so visible for a specific majority.
People have difficulty imagining the scale of time and when that difficulty helps them form a tribalistic decision to justify their own biases, it's much more easier to do that than fight against the urge.
The rise of short attention span only means people are much less empathetic than they seem to think they are by social media.
It's only my opinion but an empathetic person will look beyond that this person has some horrible political opinions and I want to run a witch hunt. A tweet out of 20k tweets in isolation doesn't say much about the person especially if it's old. They might be having a bad day, may want attention and said something controversial to get it. Maybe they do have medical problems (I know I do, I am on meds and my behavior changes a lot). And even if that person is officially shitty, I don't see why would you try to burn their house. It's ok to inform others but what's the point of attacking someone that they think "nobody" cares about them?
If nobody cares about improving those people, then they might as well become too extreme in their opinion. If nobody wants to hear them, they might as well be racist. We all strive for connection and the reason why we don't want discrimination to exist is we don't want to lose our ability to interact with people we care about. If all racists can get are other racist people or no one, why would they change?
Side note, most if not all outrage on social media (esp twitter and youtube) seems to be created by sufficiently motivated individuals. It's as obvious as a bright sky. So I wonder if you can live sharing your opinions while not getting bad side on one of those twitter mob groups.
There is a chilling effect happening, and people need to be able to make unpopular arguments -- again, in good faith.
This is why I like to use science as a guide (not a decision point), for then there is a chance to be self-correcting.
I have not seen this, at least on a large scale. Are there specific events you are referencing?
Both sides of the spectrum have anti-scientific factions which are current: on the left there are deniers of gender differences and people who overstate the role of genetics in mental illness, on the right there are climate denyers, evolution deniers, people who think crime is prevented by more aggressive policing. Anti-vaxxers are fairly uniformly distributed across the political spectrum.
At the same time, so long as I stay away from news and social media, I'm pretty much unaffected. Society in the various countries I've spent time in over the last few years (Ireland, Spain, Germany, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia are the main ones) seems much the same as ever.
I think that it has all those trappings, but underneath is a deep addiction to anger, outrage and the rush of adrenaline that accompanies it.
There is also a sort of religiosity that your comment alludes to.
>Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural being. But, for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role much like that which religion plays for some people. The leftist NEEDS to believe in leftism; it plays a vital role in his psychological economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He has a deep conviction that leftism is morally Right with a capital R, and that he has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on everyone.
I had a bit of this discussion on HN not long ago. I love to debate and hear ideas from those I disagree with. But, that's not what people are often doing today. They are using your statement to appeal to others to listen and accept their clearly racist ideas or provable wrong, anti-science ideas.
IMO, it's intellectually dishonest and a debate I have a hard time continuing.
We also saw this with the ok sign where people were digging up pictures of people from years ago and somehow connecting them to using racism through the ok sign. It's challenging for a person who isn't on top of every news story to navigate this time.
Your policy is still the one that brought us down this path, and will (or has) plunge the western public into a debilitating purity spiral, as the overton windows shrinks and more and more viewpoints become 'clearly x-ist' or 'provably wrong', according to the crowd.
Good! Let it all burn.
The people he's talking about are beyond the pale. He's fine disagreeing with people, he even likes to have his point of view challenged- it's just that these people are a step too far; they're not just wrong- they're evil.
An answer is: I've found the people you ACTUALLY disagree with. Insofar as you can be said to hate anyone, it's the people you would gladly exterminate- and feel good doing so. Disagreement with someone on a matter of import automatically causes some small amount of dislike for them. You can still like someone overall! But if they're a great person, except e.g. they think abortion should be illegal, you'll still think less of them than you would have otherwise. My argument is that this dislike scales with how much you disagree with someone; and so, all else being equal, the people you hate most are the ones you disagree with the most strongly- to the point that a will awakes in you to engage against them in righteous wrath.
You see it in the twitter mobs and the witch hunts of old: If people decided to crucify someone, say by going after their livelihood- if, somehow, they thought that was the best way to improve the world- they should do it with their eyes down, shaking their heads, crying "If only it didn't have to come to this- but if we didn't do this, you would have caused even more pain than we. This course of action is a tragedy; but any other would have been worse. Forgive us, but for the good of the nation, you have to die."
They don't- they go after people with glee. It's fun, it's exhilarating; it's a fox-hunt. You can read it in people's testimonials about being part of a twitter job-lynchmob: Everyone enjoys it till they're the one on the chopping block!
Real Disagreement, as I would call it, is that kind that honestly provokes the aforementioned emotion: the desire to see someone destitute and homeless, if not dead, and the frame of mind where you could look at the result with pride. I'd call that hate.
(You can hate people for other reasons, of course.)
The right may take the cake as far as hypocrisy goes in general, but the one thing that pisses me off the most about the left is their lip service to open-mindedness. I often wonder if they do in fact believe it themselves.
> They are using your statement to appeal to others to listen and accept their clearly racist ideas or provable wrong, anti-science ideas
With the continuously widening scope of what could be considered "racist" or "anti-science", I suppose there won't be much left to debate soon enough.
> With the continuously widening scope of what could be considered "racist" or "anti-science"
I agree this is a danger. But in my original comment, I'm referring to basics. Evidence has mounted that masks work, yet people still physically fight over wearing one. Evidence has mounted (IMO overwhelmingly) that HCQ does not work and is even dangerous, yet people keep saying that's all they need to survive COVID. Then there are the anti-vaxxers. It's a concern that even after a vaccine is found, it's possible not enough people will even get the vaccine to reach herd immunity[1].
[1] https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/05/04/a-majority-of-vaccine...
The problem with all the success anecdotes is correlation does not mean causation. The odds are low that I'm going to walk outside and die. If I walk outside while picking my nose and don't die, it doesn't mean picking my nose is stopping my death. The large majority of people recover from COVID doing nothing at all. Finding efficacy of any drug requires controlled studies.
[1] https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/miracle-cure-testimonials-a...
For an alternate take from the blogosphere,
https://scienceblog.com/516960/suppression-of-chloroquine-is...
I've been following HCQ/Zinc long before it got politicized.
It's well known that covid is a disaster in nursing homes, often resulting in 30% deaths. Here's some anecdotal evidence of early treatment with HCQ in that setting:
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/texas-e...
Here's a journal article claiming positive results. It's had over 300 citations, so there's probably some interesting reading there:
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/bst/14/1/14_2020.01047/...
Causation generally requires some theory to support it:
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/ny/scientists-study...
I'm 78, so I'm paying attention. Here's the best guidance I've seen so far. (They have backed off on HCQ because of all the political flap.)
https://www.evms.edu/covid-19/covid_care_for_clinicians/#cov...
I don’t think anyone is appealing to others to listen to their racist, anti-science ideas so much as demanding that they be accepted and if not a mob may be sent after them. I wish it were only “appeals to listen”.
“Yes clearly other people are stupid. The only ideas that should be exposed to the public are my own ideas. People other than myself apparently don’t have functioning brains, or they would all think what I think. So instead I must fight to have all opposing ideas erased.”
The up and down arrow are really bad icons for UX.
The problem is when someone believes that people shouldn't see any opinions that they disagree with. How do you stop them from downvoting substantive content? Personally I don't think changing the icons will help
We desperately need forum software with better forms of moderation.
These opinions are now mainstream. He gave them a platform earlier than the media did, because he was more open to being wrong and to exploring heterodox ideas, but also applied research and rigour when writing about them.
Can you explain a bit more about what you're asking for?
But my read is that Scott is simply opposing the NYT's absolute policy of posting his real name in their article. His decision to delete the blog is because there were other non-coronavirus posts which he feared could lead to all kinds of IRL reprisals if his real name were to be known publicly.
Hence the repetition of "No doxing random bloggers for clicks". He seemed to be willing to bring everything back if that policy changes, and went so far as to ask people to mail the editor and be polite and specific about it.
Anyhow, apologies if I'm just restating the obvious here.
>People who could offer smart insights consor themselves for fear of being attacked for their opinions.
The user you're replying to asked what opinions is Scott risking to be attacked about. You're providing arguments about Scott having offered smart insights, which was not the part of the argument debated. The original post shifted the discussion from Scott's worries--which were chiefly related to the dangers of working in psychology--towards the more general discussion about censorship as it is talked about in the works referenced above.
In other words, most of this thread is repurposing Scott's post to give a platform for their current political concerns.
If you read Scott's post, it says that blog readers have tried to get him fired and sent him death threats. That's already happened, before his anonymity is completely broken by the NYT. He's written on a variety of political topics, including feminism and racism, which are now self-censored as the blog has been taken down. Censorship is very much a feature of Scott's post.
So yes. He's being silenced because he cannot enjoy speaking publicly without fear of retribution.
Scott has created one of the most thoughtful, level-headed, and interesting places on the internet. And yet he's shutting it down because it has led to a huge downside risk for his personal and professional life:
> I also worry that my clinic would decide I am more of a liability than an asset and let me go, which would leave hundreds of patients in a dangerous situation as we tried to transition their care.
What does this mean for others who want to start similar blogs or engage in these sorts of discussions? They're going to see this sort of thing happening and think: "Why bother? It's not worth the trouble."
In England the regulator is the GMC, and here's their page for doctors use of social media: https://www.gmc-uk.org/ethical-guidance/ethical-guidance-for...
> Anonymity
> If you identify yourself as a doctor in publicly accessible social media, you should also identify yourself by name. Any material written by authors who represent themselves as doctors is likely to be taken on trust and may reasonably be taken to represent the views of the profession more widely.10
But also, a complaint to the regulator is a worrying time for the doctor even if they've done nothing wrong.
You can’t imagine how it would affect his job?
> The second reason is more prosaic: some people want to kill me or ruin my life, and I would prefer not to make it too easy. I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an anti-psychiatry subreddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for).
You write:
> What's the hidden truth, controversial opinion or super secret insight at stake here?
There is no one opinion at stake here. What is at stake is the ability to hold any dissenting opinion. Or not even hold it, but merely discuss it openly.
In the case of the anti-psychiatry lobby it's not even a dissenting opinion! It's basically the opinion that psychiatry ought to exist. There is just a small community of dissidents who disagree and want to get Scott fired (or worse). They now have a lot more leverage, because we've collectively decided that we should foster a culture where it's totally normal to try and get someone fired for things that are totally unrelated to work.
Just as the members of an anti-psychiatry subreddit should have a right to freedom of speech and association without the fear that their posts will get them fired (or worse), so should Scott.
They exist, but the woke crowd is purging them hard now. Any moment now I expect Columbus city to be renamed.
Yes, thereby creating tomorrow's woke crowd. Tomorrow's woke crowd will ultimately purge today's woke crowd. So we may as well just politely state our opinions because self-censoring and trying to be nice won't save us.
In a sense, it is starting remind of me stories my parents told me of the old country during communist regime. Political jokes could and were reported by your friends. This could result in various social sanctions including 'wolf ticket' ( effectively blacklist of dissidents ) preventing you from getting a job, car, you name it.
Amusingly, today you find out, who your friends are by being unflinchigly open.
There’s a movement to have Yale renamed as it was named after a slave trader, not merely a slave owner. But so far Yale has managed to frame it as a troll
When you see phrases like "wrong/right side of history" and you see things happening like mass cancellation of brands or people for their opinions, you are seeing it. When a police officer is immediately fired and then charged with murder for performing his job the way he was trained to do it, you are seeing people fear the mob more than they care about the truth.
JK Rowling and Terry Crews are two famous people that come to mind who recently stated unpopular opinions and were attacked by mobs of people. There was no desire on the part of the mob to look for logical reasons for someone to have a valid opinion that differs from the mainstream.
If you want an example of a current person with a true belief that is not accepted by their society that seems by definition hard to produce. Especially to an anonymous member of the society.
Bits and pieces are strewn all over the place. But you have learn to separate the wheat from the chaff for yourself. Then you might start noticing the places with limited quantities of slightly more observant commentary.
>Are they literally so confronting/offensive that they don’t exist on the internet?
No, they just don't exist on the internet the same way most real conversations don't exist on the internet. The internet is great for information of the type that would be found in traditional publications, is of professional interest, or are marketing materials. It sucks for everything else.
People being real exist in very small quantities, usually on lighter topics to avoid exposing themselves, and are always outnumbered by people preforming for the audience or (untempered by people openly talking like reasonable people) have taken an extreme position on the topic.
He also claims him voicing his opinions about politics got him blacklisted from his dream job of being a Hollywood writer.
When he’s talking on a platform like Joe Rogan or having a leisurely chat he’s much more willing to be moderated by others opinions, and demonstrates the sort of give and take of a normal human being in a conversation. He’s certainly not some bastion of liberal values, and has principles he believes in, after all he’s an Orthodox Jew, but people like him exist because there’s a market for it and he’s carved out this public persona.
The people performing to the audience will get views from people like my uncle who just wants to see “Stephen Crowder OWNS libs” and has no interest in being right, only in feeling right. Unfortunately they’re going to likely always have the larger audience.
It's very simple. Suppose the following.
1) A man has a law degree from Harvard and was publishing nationally when he was in high-school.
2) He has a set of opinions and schools invite him to speak.
3) Lot's of students ask him questions many who strongly disagree with him and attempt to "take him down".
4) All of this is on video, hours and hours of video.
OK
Now, in what possible world would this person not "own" people at a high frequency?
If he wasn't "owning" at a high frequency then that person should be embarrassed.
You see "Ben Shapiro owns X" and not, Ben Shapiro in conversation with Ezra Klein, or Ben Shapiro telling his audience that their opinions aren't worth anything if they don't spend time reading and listening to the best voices on the other side.
"Ben Shapiro the guy who owns people" is a meme because he's more of a threat then "Ben Shapiro the guy who certainly should speak slower, has reasonable arguments, even when he's wrong" because that Ben Shapiro, that second one is actually scary. People could listen to what he has to say.
The right's loudest voices have never been the brightest, or when they were bright, the most reasonable. Shapiro raises the level of discourse on the right by a mile.
I have yet to hear Ben Shapiro say something novel or interesting. I like him though, because for the first time a popular voice on the right is educated and can reason from premises to conclusions, in steps, and is willing to discuss the validity AND soundness of his arguments.
By consistently doing that alone, he's in the top 1% of journalists. He's the exact opposite of what the right is "supposed" to look like.
And if you look to reasonable then you'll become a "Ben Shapiro owns" meme or a "binders full of woman" meme.
Are you living in a bubble?
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. ... For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. ...
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency... Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'—Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
I would be content with being ordinary—permission to ask obvious questions about the narrative handed down from on high—without fear of defamation that costs me my livelihood.
Sure, that's not much to ask for. The rights people fight and have fought for are mostly the freedom to do basic, everyday things like that. Wishing, hoping for it is easy. To actually do something about it, to fight for it and achieve it, to give everyone freedom from that fear – that would be greatness.
Lots of us passionate techies like to weigh in on every topic and forget that not everything is academic. Sometimes the world doesn't need to hear our opinion. That doesn't mean we're being censored.
Everyone has a right to express their opinion even on topics they are woefully unqualified for. Including clueless techies.
The only instance I agree is when celebrities spout opinions as fact (or promote a pet diet or cause) only because it could send millions of people on wild goose chases. That said it’s more of a wish and really not a desire to censor them.
An example might be someone arguing "trans women are not really women". If the question doesn't affect them personally, they're just pursuing what they see as a rational debate or stretching their mind. Their lives will not actually be affected by the exercise.
If you're a trans woman then that's an argument you've been exposed to hundreds of times and it's demeaning and emotional.
You can argue that you're just being rational. And you might ever change your mind! But it's a shitty thing to force that conversation on people when they're only the ones who have a stake in the outcome.
It's not censorship if you are choosing to hold your tongue out of consideration for others.
That...pretty much is being censored?
It's easy to require due process prior to anyone being deprived of freedom, and we generally see this as a positive development, compared to the alternative. Using "shame" (aka witch hunts, cyber bullying and the like) to punish unwelcome views is the opposite of due process.
Also my idea of shame doesn't include death threats let alone more extreme things like swatting.
And why not swat someone? If you're going to go after their livelihood and try to stop them from ever having a job again, you're half killing them anyway. People murder each other for less. Be honest and just have their dog shot already ;)
George Floyd shouldn’t have come into the line of fire of these systems, he was an innocent man. The fact that it was and is so difficult to prosecute the responsible officer shows how dysfunctional the system is.
Using shame as a system of justice relies on emotional charge at the point of infraction. I would argue that’s how mob justice starts, not how we end injustice.
I hear you. The shame-based system is prone to be unjust. TBH, I also think the people pioneering it are wrong about most things. I guess what I'm trying to say is that any violent regulation of expression is unjust, so even if shame-justice is on point 10% of the time it's still an improvement. And in the cases when it's wrong the consequences are less severe.
I wrote, and rewrote the rest of this comment 3 times, before I gave up, and started from the top of the thread again. Now I have decided to stop exhausting myself over what might be acceptable to an indefinable demographic (HN commenters reading this individual thread) for me to say.
This blog post is literally about someone fearing that it'll escalate to "beaten up" or "fired" if their name is published.
I guess it could be a bit difficult to see from the US where you had the first amendment forever. But the rest of the world is not like that.
On the contrary, my claim is that if you take the world as a whole there has never been more permissive attitude towards open debate than today. But even in the so-called free world... Compare the treatment of JK Rowling got to the treatment MLK got.
> If there's significantly less violence, it's a win.
Don't try and back away from your claims once you've made them.
And taking this debate from the point of view of the world as a whole is disingenuous, don't try to latch the damage done by one onto the overall good done by others and claim a net good for the first who caused the damage.
Also we aren't comparing now to the 1960s; yes now looks fabulous compared to then as does it compared to the purges in the USSR but we arent comparing those; we're discussing the recent devolution in free expression as pointed out in the blog this post is about.
Where did I say anything that can even remotely be interpreted this way?
Whether you think it's appropriate or not, I wasn't referring to the blog post. I also don't think it's what the blog post is about: Scott is worried about his patients knowing his political views interfering with his work as well as death threats, none of which has anything to do with shame.
Where I live cancel culture coexists with violent regulation of expression. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the US history but I doubt that whatever golden age you have in mind was sufficiently long even if it existed. Larry Flint was shot in '78 so that leaves 30 years max if that.
Now perhaps I overshot the gun and we could state that your interpretation of shamming tactics was something else but right now they have a very public face so you'll have to specify if you mean something else.
This blog post is a symptom of the lean towards shaming tactics over debate; the problem has evolved to the point that scott has to worry about his career being destroyed because of it.
And re times, how about the 2000s then? we built and debated online without the need to destroy one another's lives because of the POV we took on a political argument.
In theory, tasers are good because they can substitute shooting.
In practice, you had 5 shootings, and now you have 4 shootings and 200 taser uses
Overall there's certainly a larger discussion about the use of force, and maybe tasers contribute to that in some negative ways, but most of the time they're used everybody gets to live at the end of the day.
You get 200 people fired from their jobs and make it hard for them to get employment elsewhere, a few are going to kill themselves. (Or see if they can get revenge first.)
Would you also like being hellbanned on HN?
There's also some level of physical safety concerns as well, but (as of yet) that's not as big of a concern.
Raising any sort of doubt regarding nuclear energy safety will quickly get you downvoted, flagged or banned:
Fukushima proved that nuclear energy is not that safe.
I'll downvote that not because it's a doubt about nuclear energy safety, but because it's a pretty bad assertion.
https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...
That's not particularly true of left-wing movements; to the extent it's true of them it's also true of right-wing movements. The relevant factors are orthogonal to the left-right axis.
No, it's not.
> It is because leftism promotes a resistance and challenging to authority and a prior belief in the goodness of the downtrodden masses
I could with as much, justification say it is particularly associated with right-wing movements because the right promotes a rigid adherence to rules and authority, which devolves under pressure into seeking out non-adherence with progressively finer and finer combs.
> Right-wing ideologies usually promote submission to authority and traditionalism. The problems that come with excesses in that front are of a different kind.
Maybe in some other aspects, but a cycle of eating their own under pressure is not a point on which there is a difference. The left perhaps has more contribution from “people that were on the factions side before it gained power become genuinely opposed once it started executing power” and the right perhaps more from genuine intolerance for even the slightest deviation, but they both definitely experience it.
Consider that the right are supposedly in favour of free markets and small government but also supposedly in favour of strong submission to authority? These positions are incompatible.
In reality most historical movements labelled as "right wing" were left wing, yes, that means fascism and Nazi-ism too. The latter of course even had "socialist" in the title yet decades of the academic left insisting that against all common sense and obvious observations, Nazis were actually right wing, has left the world hopelessly confused about this so-called spectrum. You can't be both supportive of a dictatorship and state-controlled industry, and a believer in small government, free speech and free markets.
Ah yes and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is also democratic, please...
Heh. Is that a joke?
> It looks something like political/national racial purity. Once people start spouting that, they tend to be removed from polite conversation.
Yeah, the American Right has really marginalized Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, et al.
> There is no similar outer bound on the left
Really? Which of the following statements will get you excluded from public political dialogue in the US)
“Europeans did Africans a favor by bringing them to America as slaves”
Or
“Capitalist ownership of the means of production is a root of injustice and fundamentally incompatible with democracy”
(One of these has been prominently made by prominent voices on one side of the spectrum without repercussion, while people are routinely excluded for statements for more moderate than the other. At least in the US, to the extent anything vaguely resembling your point is true, it's exactly the reverse of the split you've proposed.)
The fact that Trump is what you think passes for an ethno-nationalist these days is all the evidence needed to demonstrate my point.
>“Europeans did Africans a favor by bringing them to America as slaves”
This is a pretty gross thing to say, but it's not ethno-nationalism. Words have meaning for a reason.
>“Capitalist ownership of the means of production is a root of injustice and fundamentally incompatible with democracy”
The most popular politician in our country a couple years ago, and perhaps still today, is the open socialist Bernie Sanders.
The discussions on SSC were often intellectual and rationality-based, but a lot of the super-commenters were right-leaning. Left-leaning commenters were more scarce, and even benefitted from some affirmative-action less-strict moderation to encourage them to sick around. In fact, after the recent BLM protests, a new user showed up to argue and explain the social justice position, and did so respectfully and was well-received.
But I think a lot of the regulars had their blind spots. So many arguments were essentially: since A is true, B and C are the logical conclusions, but often nobody questioned A, let alone tested it—the rationality was often superficial. A popular format on the open threads (thus I’m characterizing the blog readers and commentariat, not the blog author) was impossible hypotheticals leading to un-provable speculation. Questions like what would’ve happened if Germany in WW2 had such-or-such a weapon. The format was even codified in the format of friendly aliens offering some weird bargain (take a pill to sleep 12hrs a day—or never need sleep but always be tired), then asking people what they would do or how that would change things. Fun thought problems, but so disconnected from reality or practical thought—essentially nerd-sniping (to use an admittedly uncharitable term).
Tl;DR: SSC was a mixed bag, but mostly civil and well-intentioned.
Here is the comment on archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200622224636/https://slatestar...
Meanwhile, from my perspective, we Europeans lookt at North America and see a lot of racists, transphobes and anti-poor agitators complaining about being cancelled on national Media and while giving speeches at universities (e.g. fox news, Jordan Peterson). Which feels...off.
Sure, one easy way of gauging this phenomenon is the social response to the swastika compared to the hammer and sickle.
Another is that the biggest ethno-nationalist gathering in decades in the US was a few years ago, tragically someone was run over by a vehicle. There were only hundreds of people there. The next year they tried to hold another rally and only dozens showed up.
>Meanwhile, from my perspective, we Europeans lookt at North America and see a lot of racists, transphobes and anti-poor agitators complaining about being cancelled on national Media and while giving speeches at universities (e.g. fox news, Jordan Peterson). Which feels...off.
The business model of the corporate press is to fill your heart with fear, so that you will watch/click/share/etc. A great example of this phenomenon is the "Fine People Hoax." You might recall there was a major news story claiming that Trump called white nationalists "fine people." Except if you read the transcript he clearly states, in the same breath as the words "fine people," and without prompting, that white nationalists should be condemned totally. These types of things happen over and over again.
And regarding the symbolism...I can kinda see that example, maybe, but I generally don't see the hammer and sickle used in mainstream politics either. And even then, there is a line between something like the hammer and sickle which was used before and after Lenin/Stalin as a symbol vs. the swastika which was literally designed by Nazis and only ever used by them (the Buddhist one is slightly different)
If anyone directly sympathises with Stalin/Lenin and calling for dekulakhisation, I'd expect that to also remove them from polite conversation. It just seems to happen less ?
My point is that there is not widespread public support for this tiny group of awful people. The fact that so few people showed up is evidence of that. These people went "too far right" and were abandoned, as they should be.
>If anyone directly sympathises with Stalin/Lenin and calling for dekulakhisation, I'd expect that to also remove them from polite conversation. It just seems to happen less ?
AOC tweeted Marx's Labor Theory of Value. Bernie Sanders, recently the most popular politician in the country is an open Socialist. Michael Moore can openly/publicly support and wish Happy Birthday to Marx. Can you actually name an instance where a person went so far left that they were canceled?
1. People tried to cancel Bernie Sanders, it just didn't work https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/15/bernie-sa...
2. Not a single person who openly advocates Stalinism or similar forceful collectivisation makes it onto the national stage. Meanwhile Richard Spencer was so "cancelled" that he continued to interviewed on national TV
3. In Germany and Europe, most communist parties are under observation by the constitutional secret service, despite being democratic parties
4. In the US, Colin Kapernick was cancelled by the NFL for kneeling to protest police brutality
Leftist positions, as it turns out, are much less inherently tied to authoritarianism than Nazi ideology. Thus, you often see people advocating for democratic socialism on the national stage, but not for Stalinism and a violent revolution. The latter of which immediately gets them cancelled before they become much of a public figure,
calling yourself 'nazi' will have the same consequences, so I don't see what is the problem here, communism is every step as bad as nazism (source: born in USSR)
And being up Bernie Sanders name in "polite" democratic circles, let's see how supportive they are.
Reality is, the far left doesn't get cancelled as much because their popular ideas generally involve democratic control over the means of production and treating everyone like a human being, not revolution, while the far rights "popular" ideas are racism, sexism and the disenfranchisement of the "proles". One of these inherently requires authoritarianism, the other doesn't.
2. Not a single person who openly advocates Stalinism or similar forceful collectivisation makes it onto the national stage. Meanwhile Richard Spencer was so "cancelled" that he continued to interviewed on national TV
3. In Germany and Europe, most communist parties are under observation by the constitutional secret service, despite being democratic parties
4. In the US, Colin Kapernick was cancelled by the NFL for kneeling to protest police brutality
Leftist positions, as it turns out, are much less inherently tied to authoritarianism than Nazi ideology. Thus, you often see people advocating for democratic socialism on the national stage, but not for Stalinism and a violent revolution. The latter of which immediately gets them cancelled before they become much of a public figure
2. Richard Spencer has not been canceled because he went too far left.
3. So not a single person then.
4. Is Kapernick far left?
I actually see people supporting leftist authoritarians openly pretty regularly. I already provided some pop culture examples elsewhere... AOC tweeted Marx's labor theory of value. Bernie openly supported the USSR (even honeymooned there), Cuba, Venezuela, and is an open socialist. I see people wearing Che Guevera shirts walking down the street.
If the left is so powerful, so accepted, where are all the communists in power? Who's in the white House?
Colin Kapernick isn't remotely far left, and he still got cancelled.
There are open Marxists in Congress, in Hollywood, in the top Universities. Corporate press and the NBA openly supports Communist China. There is no such equivalence on the right. There's no open Hitler supporters pulling the levers of power. Trump is not a white nationalist, not even close.
Trump has on multiple occasions used Nazi imagery, quotes and Slogans. "America First" was a Slogan used by American fashists https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/20/...
He only condemned David Duke after a media uproar.
If your standard for "white supremacists" is "openly admits to wanting to eradicate or enslave blacks and Jews, as was done before" and your standard for "far left" is "anyone who admits to some Marxist ideology" then you are measuring with two different sticks. And trying to make these two equivalent is dishonest.
The Marxists in power did so by democratic elections and without any shady business (I know of no ongoing investigations or impeachments at least). The barely shaded fashist in power still has investigations running, has deteriorated the democratic institutions in the US whenever he could and used rubber bullets and gas to (possibly illegally) clear a parc from protestors for a photo op. Which of these are more in line with authoritarianism?
But actually, don't bother to answer unless you will actually engage. If in the charitable case, for you any form of Marxist thought means hardcore left, then you are also dismissing all of social democracy as "far left", which is literally most of Europe. And in the most uncharitable case, you are wasting my time trying to create a false equivalence between democraty compatible socialist ideas and fashism, which is inherently nondemocratic. Have a nice day
It's simply not true that communists are canceled.
The media regularly openly supports the CCP. The
most popular politician in our country as of a
couple years ago was open socialist Bernie Sanders
Communism != Socialism
Each of these terms have been applied to a wide variety of beliefs and practices. Nobody owns these terms, but even Marx himself drew a sharp distinction between the two.
"Communism" is a system in which the state owns everything and resources are, theoretically, fairly and equally distributed to the people. In practice, this has never worked out well, and very few folks view communism as a realistic solution today.
"Socialism" refers to a much wider range of ideas. Broadly speaking, any redistribution of wealth is "socialism" and this would include collecting taxes and using them to build a public library, roads, or fund schooling for children.
In practice, just about every nation on Earth is a blend of socialism and capitalism. In a truly free-market/capitalist society with zero traces of socialism, the government would provide almost literally nothing except for perhaps border defense.
Canada and the UK are capitalist, but lean farther toward socialism (with their nationalized healthcare, etc) than the USA. When a modern American politician like Sanders or AOC advocates for "socialism", this is what they mean.
Unlike communism, socialism works. It's just a question of how much of it you want. Even your most "socialist" politicians in the USA don't advocate the abolition of private property, and even the most libertarian politicians don't advocate the total dismantling of the federal government.
It is also very important to understand that socialism is utterly compatible with democratic elections. Just as you could have a capitalist nation ruled by a dictator, you can have have a socialist nation with democratic elections. A nation's method of choosing leaders is almost entirely orthogonal to how it structures its economy.
CCP has "communist" in the name, but this is more of a historical artifact than anything.
Rule of thumb with political parties and countries is that their actual names have little to do with reality -- witness all of the dictatorships that have had "Democratic" in their names over the years.
Democratic Republic of the Congo springs to mind. And of course North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (lol)
only to communists, maybe. From where I stand, Leninism/Stalinism/Trotskism/other -ism are all extreme totalitarian ideologies
Maybe if North Korea suddenly turns into actual paradise, I'll reconsider.
So yeah, _all_ real world outcomes, definitely
You think Stephen Miller wants to stop with border camps? This is an absolute absurd claim to make.
> There is nothing you can support that's so far left you will be expunged from polite society.
Where is the comparable person to Stephen Miller being anywhere close to public policy on the left? We have one barely socdem congressperson. Where are the NYT opeds about third worldism?
I think his points are informative but instead of creating a useful discussion and debate, people focus on attacking him. I wouldn't be surprised if some people will request FB to fire him... (which thankfully won't happen) It's likely next time he will think twice before saying his opinion on social media. That's how toxic social media has become.
Update: Great to see this got so many upvotes so quickly. Just shows how biased (no pun intended) social media like Twitter is, and how concerned people are to say their opinion publicly these days.
Even on HN you see issues and that's will pretty tight tribal norms, moderation and topics where commenters aren't usually deeply or emotionally involved.
I agree with your overall opinion, but i think that change actually starts with people reflecting on the impact of the chosen medium on their message. Not self-censorship but "positioning"
Lots of people are canceled because they said or did something in the real world that was dragged onto Twitter, the New York Times, Reddit, or some other cesspool. It's not as easy as "don't expect substantial debate from toxic platforms".
Further, you absolutely touch on sensitive issues provided you espouse a certain position, and it needn't even be a majority opinion nor an opinion that is shared by a majority of the people you purport to defend. It needn't be supported by evidence, and in fact citing the evidence is a damnable offense.
Lastly, I don't think the problem is just "nuanced debate on social media platforms is just too hard". It's certainly difficult, but if canceling were down to that, it would look like everyone canceling everyone else. Instead it looks like one relatively small, well-defined group (or as well-defined as groups tend to get) cancelling everyone else. Social media debate is certainly messy and hard to make productive, but this doesn't explain cancel culture. I posit if you simply weaken this group by reinforcing free speech norms, debate on social media would be much less toxic (not perfect--we're still dealing with humans, after all, but much better than it is presently).
The best history/government teacher I had in school had a recurring throughline for our classes. Paraphrasing: "It is better, in the long run, to be for something than against something."
To be against something is to highlight a problem. To be for something is to offer a possible direction for the future.
Critical thinking is the ability to critique - specifically, to explain what is wrong or bad about a particular system.
Besides because something isn't as good as another doesn't make something bad. A good new idea or appeoach and critical thinking is better than just a good new idea and can guide the approach. They aren't mutually exclusive.
By assigning moral outrage to one side of the debate, we remove the pretense of a debate. It's no longer about evidence and facts but vilifying one side. It's ad hominem 2.0 if you will, and it works because we as a society have a visceral negative reaction to some labels.
The problem is that pavlovian-esque training can be untrained. If you call everyone who does something you don't like a nazi, then pretty soon it doesn't seem like being a nazi is all that big of a deal. That in itself is bad because by abusing the term you buy cover for actual, literal nazis. The same issue applies when you label everything racist or sexist or otherwise.
Words have power, but that power can fade if misused.
That nuance allows for far more room for debate.
Do you know why we have that reaction? Because of millions upon millions of dead, innocent humans. That is what those ideologies lead to. We learned this lesson once, and we learned it very well. We don't want that to happen again. We don't want to let those ideas spread again. We don't want to see the mass graves again they lead to again. We learned that.
Some people have forgotten, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Nazi_Party
> nor is Nazism a coherent political ideology to which one can seriously ascribe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fascist_Party
I'm not going to link to it, but there is a self described National Socialist Movement party still alive today.
> But saying that anyone else who claims adherence to Nazism or allegiance to the (completely defunct) Nazi party makes them a literal Nazi actually elevates their status from what it is, which is just a pathetic racist cosplayer.
“The tragic aspect of the situation is that the Tsar is living in an utter fool’s paradise, thinking that He is as strong and all-powerful as before.” - Sergei Witte in 1905
They can't afford to do that, because this "mob" is actively dangerous. They will slander their enemies with all sorts of baseless accusations, call their workplaces to try and get them fired, manufacture false flag harrassment/cyberbulling and try to attribute it to them, etc. It's no different from the 8chan trolls - in fact they come from adjacent Internet subcultures, quite literally.
They are successful at making people's lives miserable through harassment like death threats and swatting, and unsurprisingly, those tactics are universally reviled.
Notable exception: Donglegate; a person was cancelled, then the person cancelling got cancelled - her company was DDoSed until she was gone*
Hilarious.
* well, that's what I want to believe because it's more interesting; it's possible backlash of people against first cancellation had it's part in that.
"Cancel culture" is just a new spin on scapegoating, behavioral contagion, and public shaming, all of which have a very long history.
Because ‘sane people’ does not include your employer, who will throw you to the mob to appease them. In the US that also means losing your health insurance, so it can be a death sentence for you or your loved ones.
(I'll regret posting this when I'm starving in a gutter.)
Just look at the death threats someone like Fauci is getting for doing his job and informing the public. Not that many people want to deal with being a public target to the worst actors in society.
"I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the
language of the unheard"
Please note that I have specifically used the term "understandably" above as opposed to, say, "justly." You may feel a particular instance is or isn't just, but even if one vehemently disagrees with the practice it is typically understandable.
Consider that "cancelling" is often invoked in response to acts (sexual assault, racism) that have been regarded as wrong and/or illegal for millennia. And yet, those acts persist. Clearly the current system doesn't do enough to prevent them. So folks feel the need to go outside the system. "Cancel culture" is best understood as a symptom and not the problem.
Beyond that, characterizing cancel culture as "going outside the system" is silly. It's literally tattling, how much more sucking up to the system could one be? If "the system" (aka the overall collection of people in positions of power) was a-okay with sexual assault and racism cancel culture wouldn't exist because you wouldn't be able to complain to bosses, schools, etc. about people raping or being racist.
Literal KKK members feel like they need to "go
outside the system" to harm black people, does
that make lynching okay?
My initial post said nothing to indicate that cancel culture was a good thing, or that it always represented a just cause.
Nor did it say that "going outside the system" always represented a just cause, etc.
They're being heard loud and clear. That's the problem. Their incessant whining and searching for the "problematic" behind every issue is crowding out reasonable discourse and discussion.
It's a form of mob rule and it's progressing from tiresome to downright hideous as more and more careers are destroyed by its vindictiveness.
> "cancelling" is often invoked in response to acts (sexual assault, racism) that have been regarded as wrong and/or illegal for millennia
You have it upside down. Cancelling is often the result of applying today's morals on yesterday's actions. People/books/movies/statues weren't "cancelled" before because nobody had a problem before. But now everything's retrospectively a target of the new moral crusaders.
People/books/movies/statues weren't "cancelled" before
because nobody had a problem before.
Plenty of people found these things lousy for decades, and in some cases centuries.
But not enough listened. So the voices became louder, and more unruly.
It's like when you try to tell your neighbor nicely that his dog's been pooping on your yard. And he does nothing about it for years. Then one day he wonders why you've left an enormous pile of dog poop on his doorstep.
Gross? Rude? Highly non-ideal? Sure. But he didn't listen to reasonable discourse.
So what? Many more found them worthy. A critique is not the measurement of whether statues should be torn down or books censored. Otherwise no art would be produced.
What has changed is that the mob has become emboldened into thinking that things they don't like deserve to be destroyed. It's juvenile intolerant behavior.
A critique is not the measurement of whether
statues should be torn down or books censored
In many recent cases, we are talking about slavery.
Many monuments glorified military "heroes" of the Confederate Army, a rebel army that sent men to their deaths fighting for the right of white Americans to own black slaves.
In general, I believe the world suffers from a lack of nuanced discussion and understanding. In the case of slavery and monuments to slavery, I find very little need for nuance.
books censored
A statue is not a meaningful source of information.
It essentially yields a single data point that says, "here is something held dear by the society in which this statue exists."
Removal of a statue does not censor information or rewrite history. It merely says, "we're not celebrating this any more." If anything, in the case of the removal of Conferate monuments, it represents a greater awareness of history.
But some of them are just so inherently offensive, the contents overpowers the presentation - e.g. the "faithful slave" monuments and memorials. Perhaps contemplating these might help understand more subtle problems with the rest, so here's a few examples:
https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=42188
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jstephenconn/5136209868
https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/245/
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Slave_memorial_at_Pr...
In the modern age (and forever, probably, but more quietly / less permanently), we are defined by what we're outraged by.
So we've ended up in a situation where both ends of the spectrum have each individually out-outraged themselves into two very different but (probably) equally irrational corners, where to try bring some nuance and depth back in is to become a social pariah. To do anything less than express equal outrage about the issue du jour is to become a social pariah.
Obviously most of the issues themselves are valid points of conversation at their root, and I certainly don't think that all of the people using science or rationalist labels are doing so genuinely and not as a cover for their own identity bullshit or actual bigotry.
But that's orthogonal to the observation that it seems true that we simply can't have a conversation anymore about certain trigger topics. Even my stating this very observation should probably (due to the current state of our collective discourse) invoke some thoughts about my motivations: which minority group/s does jddj take issue with? Is he transphobic? He mustn't realise how much of the repression of women has simply been normalised for him.
Whether it's a symptom or a standalone issue isn't really important. The point is that it's not useful as a tool for beneficial societal change, instead it's a tool for gesturing vaguely and it's a crutch that we lean on so as to not need to truly engage with or wade into the uncomfortably nuanced grey areas which naturally surround every issue.
But on the left we've absolutely embraced it, to a fault. Unfortunately, and not that I could do any better in their situation, those on the left who have had a brush with it often go on to make cancel culture an identity issue of their own, and discourse suffers further for it (looking at you Sam Harris).
Agreed that it's a symptom (not necessarily of repression, but more of polarisation). I don't agree that that characterisation is enough to get it a free pass.
In the modern age (and forever, probably, but more quietly /
less permanently), we are defined by what we're outraged by.
There's a unfortunate implication in your words, though, regarding "outrage."
Nobody would ever begrudge a fellow human being a sense of outrage regarding something they feel is legitimate. If your neighbor child was kidnapped, you would never criticize them for feeling outraged (among other emotions) because naturally, that would be a perfectly reasonable way for them to feel.
So when you criticize people for feeling outraged, you are clearly dismissing the validity of their claims, and/or insinuating an ad hominum attack against them.
Instead of policing their tone, why not just discuss the thing they're angry about?
Not all outrage is justified, but there are a lot of things in the world worth making noise about. Some are life and death.
But that's orthogonal to the observation that it seems true that
we simply can't have a conversation anymore about certain trigger topics.
One, I'm a fan of conversation, but some topics don't deserve conversation, especially if conversation hasn't solved the problem in the past. With the benefit of hindsight, we can look back through history and spot plenty of these. There were plenty of people who said, "hey! let's not get all uppity about slavery! let's really think hard about this!" and history does not look kindly upon them. There is no middle ground there and no compromise possible. Most issues are not so clear-cut, but some are.
Two, there is a lot of inequality in the world, and "conversation" often (in effect) means that the oppressing class is once again passing the burden off to the oppressed class. As a white person in America, it is my job to understand things regarding inequality. It is not black folks' job to explain it to me. Though, of course, there are no shortage of black voices from which to learn. In general, frankly, a lot of "conversation" ought to be replaced by listening.
He mustn't realise how much of the repression of women has simply
been normalised for him.
But yes, an awful lot of bad things have been normalized within us.
There are really two ways we can react to that. We can view those realizations as attacks and attempts to "guilt" us. Or we can see those as opportunities to get better.
Like literally everybody, I'm far from perfect, but I do like to use my engineer's mindset to try and improve the things I can.
Whether it's a symptom or a standalone issue isn't really important.
The point is that it's not useful as a tool for beneficial societal change,
instead it's a tool for gesturing vaguely and it's a crutch that we lean on
so as to not need to truly engage with or wade into the uncomfortably
nuanced grey areas which naturally surround every issue.
Here's the thing: there's nothing wrong with bumper stickers or maybe even a little rabble-rousing on social media in favor of $YOUR_CAUSE unless that's all you're doing and you've fooled yourself into thinking that's enough.
Again, this is kind of an ad-hominum attack where you assume the people doing those things aren't doing useful things, haven't thought deeply about those "grey areas", etc.
There are definitely, for instance, topics which the typical Free Speech proponents get most vocal about which I think simply aren't worth talking about because either they are clearly just bait, or the harms obviously outweigh the possible benefits. These include that bullshit about the IQ differences between ethnicities, a lot of gender stuff, what flags/foods/songs/whatever children are exposed to at school, and other things of that nature.
Similarly, I'm not proposing that conversation be used in lieu of real change. Conversation hasn't worked and is unlikely to work to reduce police brutality, for example, and it simply doesn't matter to me whether data can be found which does or doesn't support the idea that black people are unfairly targeted there, the movement seems like a fair one to me based on my life experience -- and my opinion doesn't really matter here either, as someone who has largely been unaffected.
My complaint only holds in the extreme. Unfortunately, a lot of our lives are now lived in that band.
Mostly agreed on the ad hominem stuff.
However, it cannot stop as long as a large segment of the people in power do with abandon whatever they feel like, without any repercussion.
This is the only way it is possible for many people to get anything remotely resembling justice (although often it's revenge). As long as we don't fundamentally address inequality and deeply unjust systems, I don't think it will stop.
People are disagreeing not because of political correctness, but because this is a fundamental mischaracterization of how research works and how it gets transferred to "real world" applications.
(1) Data fuels modern machine learning. It shapes research directions in a really fundamental way. People decide what to work on based on what huge amounts of data they can get their hands on. Saying "engineers should be the ones to worry about bias because it's a data problem" is like saying "I'm a physicist, here's a cool model, I'll let the engineers worry about whether it works on any known particle in any known world."
(2) Most machine learning research is empirical (though not all). It's very rare to see a paper (if not impossible nowadays, since large deep neural networks are so massive and opaque) that works purely off math without showing that its conclusions improve some task on some dataset. No one is doing research without data, and saying "my method is good because it works on this data" means you are making choices and statements about what it means to "work" - which, as we've seen, involves quite a lot of bias.
(3) Almost all prominent ML researchers work for massively rich corporations. He and his colleagues don't work in ivory towers where they develop pure algorithms which are then released over the ivy walls into the wild, to be contaminated by filthy reality. He works for Facebook. He's paid with Facebook money. So why draw this imaginary line between research and production? He is paid to do research that will go into production.
So his statement is so wildly disconnected from research reality that it seems like it was not made in good faith - or at least without much thought - which is what people are responding to.
Also, language tip - a "woman researcher" is a "researcher".
I used "woman researcher" since it was important for the context as people accused him of mansplaining.
This is a silly standard to uphold. The sizable bulk of American academic researchers are at least partially funded by grants made from the US federal budget.
If you were to enforce your standards consistently, then all of those researchers would be held responsible for any eventual usage of their research by the US federal government.
I really doubt you apply the same standard. So, the criticism mostly seems to be an isolated demand for rigor. You're holding Facebook Research to a different standard than the average university researcher funded by a federal grant.
I don't think his argument is true. (That is, I do think researchers should keep bias in mind when developing machine learning projects.) (Regardless of their funding sources.)
Because of his employment, this argument is a particularly silly one for him to make.
Yann LeCun isn't receiving a partial research grant from Facebook. He's literally an employee of Facebook. His job title is "VP & Chief AI Scientist" (at least according to LinkedIn).
There's an obvious and clear distinction between an employee and a research grant, and this feels like it's almost wilfully obtuse.
The original locus of the debate was how the recent face-depixelation paper turned out to depixelate pictures of black faces into ones with white features. That discovery is an interesting and useful showcase for talking about how ML can demonstrate unexpected racial bias, and it should be talked about.
As often happens, the nuances of what exactly this discovery means and what we can learn from it quickly got simplified away. Just hours later, the paper was being showcased as a prime example of unethical and racist research. When LeCun originally commented on this, I took his point to be pretty simple: that for an algorithm trained to depixelate faces, it's no surprise that it fills in the blank with white features because that's just what the FlickFaceHQ dataset looks like. If you had trained it on a majority-black dataset, we would expect the inverse.
That in no way dismisses all of the real concerns people have (and should have!) about bias in ML. But many critics of this paper seem far too willing to catastrophize about how irresponsible and unethical this paper is. LeCun's original point was (as I understand it) that this criticism goes overboard given that the training dataset is an obvious culprit for the observed behavior.
Following his original comment, he has been met with some extremely uncharitable responses. The most circulated example is this tweet (https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1274809417653866496?s...) where a bias-in-ml researcher calls him out without as much as a mention of why he is wrong, or even what he is wrong about. LeCun responds with a 17-tweet thread clarifying his stance, and her response is to claim that educating him is not worth her time (https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1275191341455048704?s...).
The overwhelming attitude there and elsewhere is in support of the attacker. Not of the attacker's arguments - they were never presented - but of the symbolic identity she takes on as the anti-racist fighting the racist old elite.
I apologize if my frustration with their behavior shines through, but it really pains me to see this identity-driven mob mentality take hold in our community. Fixing problems requires talking about them and understanding them, and this really isn't it.
Nvidia AI researcher calling out OpenAI's GPT-2 over how GPT-2 is horrible because it's trained on Reddit (except it includes contents of submissions, and I'm not sure if there's no data except Reddit)
Reddit is supposedly not a good source of data to train NLP models because it's... racist? sexist? Like it's even rightist in general...
Anyway; the table looks horrific - why would they include these results? Oh, turns out paper was on bias: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.01326.pdf
Anyway; one can toy with GPT-2 large (paper is on medium, so it might be different) at talktotransformer.com
"The woman worked as a ": 2x receptionist, teacher's aide, waitress. Man: waiter, fitness instructor, spot worker, (construction?) engineer. Black man: farm hand, carpenter, carpet installer(?), technician. White man: assistant architect, [carpenter but became a shoemaker], general in the army, blacksmith.
I didn't read the paper, I admit, maybe I'm missing something here. But these tweets look like... person responsible should be fired.
Looks to me that you're argumentatively agreeing with Yann.
So then Yann notes that generic models don't have bias[3]. This is, probably, true. I'd be surprised if on the whole, "CNNs" encoded racial bias. But the specific networks we use, say ResNet, which are optimized to perform well on biased datasets, may themselves encode bias in the model architecture[4]. That is, the models that perform best on a biased dataset may themselves be architecturally biased. In fact, we'd sort of expect it.
And that all ignores one of the major issues which Yann entirely skips, but which Timnit covers in some of her work: training on data, even "representative data" encodes the biases that are present in the world today.
You see this come up often with questions about tools like "crime predictors based on faces". In that context it's blatantly obvious that no, what the model learns will not be how criminal someone is, but how they are treated by the justice system today. Those two things might be somewhat correlated, but they're not causally related, and so trying to predict one from the other is a fool's errand and a dangerous fool's errand since the model will serve to encode existing biases behind a facade of legitimacy.
Yann doesn't ever respond to that criticism, seemingly because he hasn't taken the time to actually look at the research in this area.
So insofar as data is the root of the problem, yes. Insofar as the solution is to just use more representative data in the same systems, no. That doesn't fix things. You have to go further and use different systems or even ask different questions (or rule out certain questions as too fraught with problems to be able to ask).
[0]: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1203211859366576128
[1]: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1274782757907030016
[2]: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1275162732166361088
[3]: https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1275167319157870592
[4]: https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/1275214381509300224. This actually goes a bit further, suggesting that as a leader in the field one has a responsibility to encourage ethics as part of the decision making process in how/what we research, but let's leave that aside.
No, that's still a problem with data in a broader sense. The issue is that "how X will be treated by the justice system" is not modeled by the data, so there's no possible pathway for a ML model to become aware of it as something separate from "crime". People who ignore this are expecting ML to do things it cannot possibly do - and that's not even a fact about "bias"; it's a fact about the fundamentals of any data-based inquiry whatsoever.
> So insofar as data is the root of the problem, yes. Insofar as the solution is to just use more representative data in the same systems, no. That doesn't fix things.
Ultimately Yann's proposals are still to use "better data" whereas all the ethics people are (and have been) screaming no, you can't use better data because it doesn't exist. He doesn't acknowledge that.
And the hairs Yann is trying to split here are ultimately irrelevant[1] and probably harmful[2]. And as someone with a large platform, addressing those issues in a straightforward way is far, far superior to trying to split those hairs over twitter.
From a meta perspective, his tweetstorm didn't add anything to the conversation that Dr. Gebru and her collaborators aren't already aware of. Nor did Yann's overall take away help to inform the average twitter user on these issues. In fact, they're more likely to take away the opposite conclusion: that with good enough data we can ask these questions in a fair way.
But as you rightly conclude there are flaws in any data based inquiry. Yann doesn't concede that.
[1]: https://twitter.com/isbellHFh/status/1275184863159685121
[2]: https://twitter.com/hardmaru/status/1275088134238162944
That's kinda bold claim. Are you arguing that current justice system just picks up people at random, and assigns them crimes at random, with no correlation with their actions? I mean, not some bias towards here or there, but no causal relationship between person's actions and justice system's reactions at all? That's... bold.
But if this is the case, then the whole discussion is pointless. If justice system is not related to people's action then there's no possible improvement to it, since if the actions are not present as an input, then no change in the models would change anything - you can change how exactly random it is, but you can't change the basic fact it is random. What's the point of discussing any change at all?
> Insofar as the solution is to just use more representative data in the same systems, no.
If by "same systems" you mean systems pre-trained on biased data, then of course adding representative data won't fix them. And of course if the choice of model is done on the basis of biased data then this choice propagates the bias of the data, so it should be accounted for. But I still don't see where the disagreement is, and yet less basis for claims like "harmful".
It depends on what you mean by causal. Does criminal behavior cause interactions with the justice system? Yes. But not engaging in criminal behavior doesn't prevent interactions with the justice system (for specific vulnerable subpopulations). So would you say that ReLU shows a causal relationship between criminality on the X axis and how the justice system treats you on the Y? I don't think I would.
In some sense btw this is what Timnit's "Gender Shades" paper looks at, which is that even if a classifier is "good" in general, it can be terrible on specific subpopulations. Similarly, even if there is a causal relationship across the entire population, that relationship may not be causal on specific subpopulations.
And of course, that ignores broader problems around our justice system being constructed to cause recidivism in certain cases. In such situations, interactions with the justice system cause criminal behavior later on. So clearly, in general since Y is causal on X, X can't be causal on Y.
> But if this is the case, then the whole discussion is pointless.
No! Because people trust computers more than they trust people. Computers have a veil of legitimacy and impartiality that people do not. (no really, there's a few studies that show that people will trust machines more than people in similar circumstances). Adding legitimacy through a fake impartiality to a broken system is bad because it raises the activation energy to reform the system.
At it's core, that's probably the biggest issue that Yann is missing. Even in cases where an AI model can perfectly recreate the existing biases we have in society and do no worse, we've still made things worse by further entrenching those biases.
> But I still don't see where the disagreement is, and yet less basis for claims like "harmful".
So I think an important precursor question here is if you believe the pursuit of truth for truth's sake is worthwhile, even when you have reason to believe the pursuit of truth will cause net harm? Imagine you have a magic 8 ball that when given a question about the universe will tell you whether or not your pursuit of the answer to that question will ultimately be good or bad (in your ethical framework, it's a very fancy 8-ball). It doesn't tell you what the answer is, or even if you'll be able to find the answer, only what the impact of your epistemological endeavor will be on the wider world.
If, given a negative outcome, you'd still pursue the question, I don't think we have common ground here. But assuming you don't agree that knowledge is valuable for knowledges sake, and instead that it's only valuable for the good it has on society, we have common ground.
In that case, you have an ethical obligation to consider how your research may be used. If you build a model, even an impossibly fair one, to do something, and it's put in the hands of biased users, that will harm people. This is very similar to the common research ethics question of asking how your research will be used. But applied ML (even research-y applied ML) is in a weird space because applied ML is all about, at a meta level, taking observations about the world, training a box on those observations, and then sticking that box into the world where it will now influence things, so you have effects on both ends, how the box is trained and how the box will influence.
Like, in many contexts "representative" or "fair" is contextual. Or at least the tradeoffs between cost and representativity make it contextual. Yann rightly notes that the same model trained on "representative" datasets in Senegal and the US will behave differently. So how do you define "representative"? How do you, as a researcher, even know that the model architecture you come up with that performs well on a representative US dataset will perform equally well on a representative Senegalese dataset (remember how we agreed that model architecture itself could encode certain biases)? Will it be fair if you use the pretrained US model but tune it on Senegalese data, or will Senegalese users need to retrain from scratch, while European users could tune?
Data engineers will of course need to make the decisions on a per-case basis, but they're less familiar with the model and its peculiarities than the model architects are, so how can the data engineers hope to make the right decisions without guidance? This is where "Model Cards for Model Reporting" comes in. And in some cases this goes further to "well we can't really see ethical uses for this tool, so we'll limit research in this direction" which can be seen in some circles of the CV community at the moment, especially w.r.t. facial recognition and the unavoidable issues of police, state, and discriminatory uses that will continue to embed existing societal biases.
And as a semi aside statements like this[0] read as incredibly condescending, which doesn't help.
I mean P(being in justice system|being actual criminal) > P(being in justice system), and substrantially so. Moreover, P(being criminal|being in justice system) > P(being criminal). In plain words, if you sit in jail, you're substantially more like to be an actual criminal than a random person on the street, and if you're a criminal, you're substantially more like to end up in jail than a random person on the street. That's what I see as causal relationship. Of course it's not binary - not every criminal ends up in jail, and innocent people do. But the system is very substantially biased towards punishing criminals, thus establishing causal relationship.
There are some caveats to this, as our justice system defines some things that definitely should not be a crime (like consuming substances the goverment does not approve of for random reasons) as a crime. But I think the above conslusion still holds regardless of this, even though becoming somewhat weaker if you not call such people criminals. It is, of course, dependant on societal norms, but no data models would change those.
> If you build a model, even an impossibly fair one, to do something, and it's put in the hands of biased users, that will harm people.
That is certainly possible. But if you build a shovel, somebody might use it to hit other person over the head. You can't prevent misuse of any technology. According to the Bible, the first murder happened in the first generation of people that were born - and while not many believe in this as literal truth now, there's a valid point here. People are inherently capable of evil, and denying technology won't help it. You can't make the word better by suppressing all research that can be abused (i.e. all research at all). You can mitigate potential abuse, of course, but I don't think "never use models because they could be biased and abused" is a good answer. "Know how models can be biased and explicitly account for that in the decisions" would be better one.
> his[0] read as incredibly condescending, which doesn't help.
Didn't read condescending to me. Maybe I do miss some context but it looks like he's saying he's not making generic claim but only a specific claim about a very specific narrow situation. Mixing these two is all too common nowdays - somebody claims "X can be Y if conditions A and B are true" and people start reading it as "all X are always Y" and make far-reaching conclusions from it and jump into personal shaming campaign.
this post is no longer available, of course
Corporations don't fire this fast, give it couple weeks and he will move to other position "for personal reasons", where he will rest-and-vest for the few months, before finally being let go.
Wow. I couldn't imagine that a person from the USA, of all places, could made so nonchalantly the equivalence smarts=power (unless there is a level of sarcasm on this essay that escapes me). There's such a lack of self-awareness in the american elite if they are bona-fide capable of sprouting such bullshit without realizing what they say.
I finally understand the answer to the childhood question of "But, how could this every happen here?" that used to be an automatic response to being taught about awful events in history.
When there is extreme moral certainty about societal problems, people can feel that for the problems to be dealt with they will need to do away with reason, due process, and free speech. It becomes the prevailing wisdom. Everybody that confronts these beliefs in a critical manner is either deplatformed or too scared to speak.
By this point, the institutions and citizens are almost all in on it.
Whether or not you see this in the same way that I do, probably depends on whether you think that the NYT is doing this from ignorance or because they consider Scott's manner of confronting topical issues to be competing with their own narratives. I personally think that they are willfully trying to identify a dissenting voice, and that we are right at the beginning of western politics becoming extremely harsh with dissenting voices.
I do not think that there is an analogy between the groups of then and the groups of today. Still, the "outrage" mechanisms that steer our will seem to be identical.
It's not that I think I can predict the future, but even if it continues as-is we're witnessing a loss of fauna, and this could easily mutate to something truly terrible in the next decade.
The fact is Scott Alexander was my canary. If a compassionate, liberal-minded intellectual that carefully understands both sides of every issue doesn't find it safe to write online it's not safe for anybody outside of the dominant culture.
I really do hope that everything turns out alright, and thank you for the essay recommendation.
By that measure, it hasn't been safe since he started his blog. In the article, he explains why he's always used a name he hopes people cannot trace to him.
"Cancel culture" is worth discussing, but it's not the topic of the article. He gives one example of it in a long list of things peoplr have done when they dislike him for the blog and discovered his identity.
> By that measure, it hasn't been safe since he
> started his blog. In the article, he explains
> why he's always used a name he hopes people
> cannot trace to him.
I believe that the journalists unstated reason for wanting to demask him, is to coerce him into silence and to make it easier for mobs to form against him in future.
Basically, they are too smart to attack him directly, but have decided to paint a target on his back, and to leave the job to bloodier hands.
He was interviewed by a junior reporter (who else would be assigned an article about a blogger). This junior reporter is too scared or naive to break the NYT policy of "always use names." Maybe NYT's orientation sessions stressed this a lot, or maybe the reporter got chewed out for not using names before.
It is weird they weren't willing to leave out his name after Scott brought it up. But we do only have one side of the story right now, and it's only been a day. A secret vendetta is too far a leap for me right now.
Could you point me to those essays? Would like to examine those!
* "The situation in Germany"
* "Germany waiting"
* "Are We Really Heading Towards a Revolution of the Proletariat?"
They have been translated into English and edited several times. For example they appear on the collection "Simone Weil, Formative writings 1929-1941".
They offer a rare insight written by a "leftie" germanophile french jew, and her dismay at the two-pronged attack that the German working class (whom she admiringly describes as the most cultured working class in the world), who were at the same time being destroyed and being seduced by the nazis. Somewhat naively she insists that no matter what atrocious things the nazis do, if they end up conquering Europe they will be seen forever as the good guys. She says that this is the normal course in history, and that the "good guys" in Europe's past were no worse than the nazis of today. She also draws parallelism between the German and the Soviet states, that caused her starch criticism in left-wing french circles. Since all of this was written well before the war, there is an ominous prescience to these texts that makes them extremely interesting to read. Curiously enough, there is no mention to the nazi hatred of the jews, she is mostly concerned with their hatred and exploitation of the working class.
> Since all of this was written well before the war, there is an ominous prescience to these texts that makes them extremely interesting to read.
This is the part struck me as fascinating from your earlier post and my googling on her writings. Excited to read the essays. Sadly I will have to resort to the English translations since je ne parle pas francais.
That was exactly the attitude back then. "Of course, there are problems right now, but nothing of the sort that happened before the Great War. Nobody wants another war, there's no way that it can happen again." If you read what the people wrote in the thirties, it is disturbingly chilling.
> Their propaganda is no less coherent. ... the hitlerites have the fundamental aims of anti-communism, the elimination of workers' rights; they say they are the defenders of private property, of the family, of religion, and hard liners against class warfare. But they find themselves at odds with old money conservatives, by the demographic profile of their movement, by the demagoguery which results, and by the personal ambitions of their leaders.
====
La propagande n'est pas moins incohérente. On attire les jeunes garçons romanesques, par des perspectives de luttes héroïques, de dévouement, et les brutes par la promesse implicite qu'ils pourront un jour frapper et massacrer à tort et à travers. On promet aux campagnes de hauts prix de vente, aux villes la vie à bon marché. Mais l'incohérence de la politique hitlérienne apparaît surtout dans les rapports entre le parti national-socialiste et les autres partis. Le parti avec lequel les hitlériens ont un lien essentiel, c'est le parti national- allemand, celui de la grande bourgeoisie, celui qui soutient les « barons »; comme les « barons » , les hitlériens ont pour but fondamental la lutte à mort contre le mouvement communiste, l'écrasement de toute résistance ouvrière ; ils se proclament défenseurs de la propriété privée, de la famille, de la religion, et adversaires irréductibles de la lutte des classes. Mais ils se trouvent séparés des partis de la grande bourgeoisie par la composition sociale du mouvement, par la démagogie qui en résulte, et par les ambitions personnelles des chefs. Et, d'autre part, il se trouve, si surprenant que cela puisse sembler, entre le mouvement hitlérien et le mouvement communiste, des ressemblances si frappantes qu'après les élections la presse hitlérienne a dû consacrer un long article à démentir le bruit de pourparlers entre hitlériens et communistes en vue d'un gouvernement de coalition. C'est que, du mois d'août au 6 novembre, les mots d'ordre des deux partis ont été presque identiques.
Question is, what totalitarianism do you think we're headed towards? Trump/MAGA totalitarianism or Left/Cancel culture totalitarianism?
Once we're there, power will be wielded fully by whatever popular sociopath has the rungs on any given day.
That can change day-to-day, year-to-year or election-to-election, and different organisations will have their own all-powerful sociopaths, with their own particular preferences for abuses of power.
Once people have power, they don't merely act ideologically, they act selfishly.
I’m not sure if it’s a case of the top dog getting all the scrutiny, but it’s crazy to me how a company with so many good journalists can seem to have so many bad.
Much criticism is not even new (Manufactured Consent, Judith Miller).
This is ironically how the News works. It's new - novel, interesting, unique, temporary.
We will stand up for Scott - but it won't really change anything, and it will be temporary. It's naive to think that what we find important for a bit will have any impact on the real world and real lives. Especially as this is literally what the News does and has done for a hundred or so years.
there are other simple strategies that can be put into place to make any defence of a person harder and most people will look at the surface representation and move on to the next story. Eventually the story about the story will itself fade away.
Who hasn't? I mean, I see your point and it would be correct in many cases but if people can use this so easily to score points against the NYT, they aren't going to be deterred by that. The online culture that likes to label anything and everything as "racist and toxic" would only make their point stronger.
Given these concerns, I have no clue what benefit a supportive forum like this would be. We might all be cheering him on and thinking highly of him, but that wouldn't change any of his concerns.
It means: Pressure the NYT. Write a polite but firm email that this is not an acceptable attitude. If you happen to be subscribed, unsubscribe, and point to this as the reason.
I also imagine that if he was doxxed and wasn't able to make a living as a psychiatrist anymore, many people here would probably fund him through patreon, or purchasing books or whatever.
Newspapers are bankrupt, specially the NYT,that earns more money in real state(newspapers own properties in the center of cities that are very expensive) than with journalism.
Newspapers gold days are long gone.
So when someone buys it, it is not for making good journalism but for buying a propaganda channel for the owner's own interest.
The good journalist do not matter, if they say anything that the owner does not approve they are instantly fired. So they auto censor themselves.
Journalist are people too, they have families that need shelter and food. Being independent usually means almost starving. Young idealistic single people usually do that until they pick the comfortable alternative.
What's different now is that people have more access to primary sources. The story says that the boy was 11, because kids in that grade are usually 11 and the reporter was lazy, but the boy was really 12.
In the world where only one organization in the city has a printing press, the boy is now officially 11 years old because nobody who knows any better has the means to contradict it. In the world where your cat can get more hits on YouTube than there are people in New York City, the inaccuracies get publicized left and right, and then, rightly or wrongly, people lose faith in the news media.
This is kind of what we asked for. Give everyone a chance to speak to the world instead of only a privileged few and you get all the stories instead of only the rich man's story.
The problem now is instead of one party telling you a lie you didn't know was a lie, you have two parties saying contrary things and you know they can't both be right but the average person has no way to know who to believe and also doesn't have the capacity to verify everything personally.
So we end up with camps who are absolutely convinced that the other camp is nothing but angry malicious idiots who can't see the truth, even though that's what they think about you.
This is verifiably untrue. As a public company, their balance sheets are public, and almost 90% of their revenue is accounted for by subscriptions and advertising.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/71691/000007...
I haven't looked at the NYT balance sheets at all recently, so it's possible that I'm off the mark here, but a one time sale of a headquarters does not make them a real-estate company in my mind. To do that, you would need to demonstrate to me that they are regularly engaging in the transaction of property and buildings, instead of a one time sale.
I believe his father took on a more old school approach to keeping the news as neutral as possible, while still having a bit of your usual slant.
I read NYTimes daily for a decade and it's sad to see it decline as it has. I understand now just how much effort that must take, especially in the age of social media. I respect any news org that avoids the pull and pushes back on that sort of thing. But they are increasingly rare.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ochs_Sulzberger_Jr.
They've had good pieces but pretty much every publication other than tabloids got those, Playboy published a number of great interviews and articles.
Worse, assuming they did have a golden age they’re using that reputation in laundering the likes of Brett Stephens.
As was the Washington Post, which started publishing soon after the NYT (and managed to fight off the injuction NYT did not). It's possible that the Post only started publishing because the NYT had started, but the value of the NYT itself in the scheme was… limited.
Edit: minor typo
I actually kind of assume, in my prejudice about the past, that if there had been a DSM in the 19th century, "being tired of work" would have been in it.
So it's no exacting hot new news, sadly.
Walter Duranty.
The last thing they deserve is my money.
That said, this decision to shut down the blog looks like an overreaction to me. Scott seems to think that he should be able to be both a prominent online pundit, on the one hand, and completely anonymous, on the other. That just isn't realistic. If you're someone who matters, people are going to want to know who you are. And there are people who make it their business to uncover such information.
A part of being famous is a certain level of unwelcome attention. It's not just the good and kind that pay attention to you. It's the weird and threatening too. This should not be news to anybody. It seems to me Scott got his first brush with real fame (in the form of an article by a top newspaper), and discovered that even a modest helping of it was was more than he was willing to deal with.
Goodbye SSC. It was good while it lasted.
On the contrary, it's the perfect move. It forces the hand of the journalist, who will then have to mention that inconvenient fact. "BTW the thing this article is about does not exist any more because of this article."
R: So, this article is about a blog and the person that writes it...
E: Ok, cool, why can't I find the blog?
R: Err... it doesn't exist anymore
E: Why not?
R: Because I doxx the author in this article.
If you were an editor, would you publish that? The subject of the story no longer exists, so the story is less interesting, _and_ you come off looking like an asshole.
I think any reasonable editor, would either not publish the story, or not publish the name. Seems like a great move to me.
A lot of therapy relies on the patient not knowing much about the therapist, which would be very difficult if he was professionally linked to his blog.
Have you ever felt the need of knowing his full name?
Your belief that a person should be disallowed anonymity simply because they created a popular blog is crazy to me. Further there are a few celebrities today that operate under pseudonyms in their public life and every few people know them by their true legal name so it is factually inaccurate to say it is not "realistic" to have a public life and remain somewhat anonymous.
My position, strictly speaking, is that anonymity is generally permissible. If you want to try to remain anonymous, that is in many cases fine. But it is also quite difficult, particularly in the face of determined investigation, and is therefore rather unrealistic. Unless you really know what you are doing, your attempts will fail as soon as someone really cares about finding out. This makes combining anonymity with any sort of public prominence or celebrity status a particularly bad fit, because plenty of people care about knowing all sorts of details about celebrities, so there is plenty of reason for both amateur snoops and professional investigators to go looking.
I don't find your example of celebrity pseudonyms particularly convincing. These are simply terms of convenience, part of crafting a public image. They are not true attempts to hide anyone's identity. Pull up the wiki page of most any celebrity that goes by a stage name, and you'll find their real or original name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur
Good thing I scoped my comment to "modern society" not "our existence as a species" what follows is just a clever straw-man you build to refute an argument I did not make
>>But it is also quite difficult, particularly in the face of determined investigation, and is therefore rather unrealistic.
No argument there, anonymity is difficult, the question at hand is should society have respect for anonymity, and should respectable institution in that society also have respect for a person desire for anonymity
I say yes, you clearly either say no, or do not care if they do.
>>I don't find your example of celebrity pseudonyms particularly convincing.
In this context is very applicable. The NYT routinely uses these celebrities stage names in place of their real identities when writing about them. Why are they afforded this level of anonymity but Scott is not? Why is it OK to use those stage names but it is not OK to refer to Scott Alexander by his chosen "stage name"
Elton John can't deprive me of my liberty, hold me against my will, force me to take medication against my will (and sometimes without my knowledge), give me electroconvulsive therapy against my will, etc etc.
If you want to use Wikipedia as the gold standard, check out Wikipedia's own policies regarding privacy of article subjects. E.g.: "When the name of a private individual has not been widely disseminated or has been intentionally concealed, such as in certain court cases or occupations, it is often preferable to omit it, especially when doing so does not result in a significant loss of context." [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin...
Is democracy a natural right? Either way, notice how the voting is secret. That's a feature, not a bug.
Scott's had a pretty amazing run of being able to write edgy-enough-to-possibly-get-you-cancelled essays on the internet without getting cancelled, and on a personal level I've found him to be extremely kind and thoughtful and I wish this weren't happening to him, but at the same time it seems as inevitable as the flooding of a house built on low ground.
It looks to me more like the reporter decided that Scott's refusal to use his real last name was a weird request, not a legitimate security concern for his patients and himself. The reporter just doesn't get it.
It's not like it adds to the story. Every on the internet knows Scott as "Scott Alexander". I didn't even know it wasn't his real last name until today. It just seems so cruel to insist on doing this to Scott when I can't see any good reason to do it.
Full-time reporters don't get why a source might not want to be named? Dude that's a high-school level journalism discussion. If you're a full-timer at the NYT you get why, and are either complying with a corporate policy or grinding a political axe.
Or you are just an asshole.
There does not seem to be a good reason to refer to him by his full name rather than Scott Alexander. But there are a lot of bad reasons.
The main way I could see using Scott’s full name as being valid is if the reporter is outing some sort of malpractice, which I do not think is the case. I struggle really to think of any other good reasons.
Interestingly, the person I reached was initially engaging with me but when I began to describe the reason for cancelling my account he sighed and said, "Oh, That." Clearly I was far from the first person to raise the issue today.
https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1275346993296969730
> I feel like Slate Star Codex and the NYT are coming at each other from a substantial expectations gap regarding risk management.
> The culture of participating under one’s own name is normative for much of the professional class but not all of it.
Maybe stop trying to explain away that which is unabated shitty behaviour by the reporter.
Obviously, Scott didn’t expect the blog to be so big or his anonymity to be such and issue when he started using his real first and middle names. It’s self-congratulatory to imagine that you would have made a different decision given the full benefit of hindsight. It’s not like Scott could go back and change his online name to something more anonymous after the blog became more popular.
> In the financial industry we get around that most commonly by giving people “desk names.” If you’ve called and spoken to Sarah Smith, you are very likely not speaking to someone who answers to Sarah or Smith outside of work.
His Tweetstorm is a long-winded way of saying “Scott should have used a completely fake name instead of a partially fake name.” That’s not really a guarantee that his real name wouldn’t have been discover. It’s also missing the point of the issue.
He definitely did. Slatestarcodex was started to replace his old blog which was not anonymous and was becoming too popular for him to be comfortable with that, especially with his career starting to take-off. The old blog linked to the new one briefly to allow current readership to migrate, and then cut ties. That's why I know his real name. Perhaps he didn't expect it to be quite that big, but it being too big to be linked to his real name was part of the equation when he chose to use his first and middle names.
First and middle names are hardly better for tracking someone down than than first names only, since middle names aren't really used anywhere except very official things. Unless you have access to some official database that contains addresses and middle names or something (hey, isn't this what phone books used to be?), the middle name doesn't really add much IMHO.
The risk is whatever SSCs role in the piece is, they will be unfairly portrayed and de-contextualized with the intention of reputational harm -- probably via cherry-picked quotes from past writing - which is absolutely something the media is dishing out at this moment.
This is a really fucking strange place to take a stand when his name has been public knowledge for...almost forever. The guy physically meets people at conventions and the like and introduces himself with his full name. It's been less of a secret than who The Stig (top gear) is. NYT may or may not be doing a big wrong here, but it's a fruitless act by [insert name here] given that his name always already public.
Strangely emotional though he claims it's out of fear for his safety (which would have already been compromised.)
"Some people want to kill me or ruin my life, and I would prefer not to make it too easy. I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an anti-psychiatry subreddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for). I’ve had dissatisfied blog readers call my work pretending to be dissatisfied patients in order to get me fired. And I recently learned that someone on SSC got SWATted in a way that they link to using their real name on the blog. I live with ten housemates including a three-year-old and an infant, and I would prefer this not happen to me or to them. Although I realize I accept some risk of this just by writing a blog with imperfect anonymity, getting doxxed on national news would take it to another level."
Do you feel that that addresses your concerns? It seems reasonable to predict that he'd have more of those safety problems if the number of people who know his real name increases by 2+ orders of magnitude, and if it appears prominently on a website with a high rank on Google.
Many of the responses critical of his decision seem to read as "Here's reason X that his decision is non-sensical, and I didn't read the actual link where he clearly and reasonably addresses reason X."
He's taking his ball home.
I'm not concerned with people dismissing what I say on its merit, only presuming that because I wasn't convinced by his explanation that I hadn't read it which is dismissive.
His meatspace introductions necessarily have an upper limit, but the Internet will instantly and concurrently bring down the law of large numbers upon him, where every whack job sharing every dumb FB post about how he's evil will have an opportunity to ruin his life, his and his employer's work, the patients that depend on them, and/or the lives of his cohabitants in all the same ways.
As someone who knows people who work in mental health I can assure you there are many security vectors available once someone's real identity hits the internet and social media. I'm talking about patients who are in hiding from pimps, abusive family or significant others.
It's no different than using HTTPS or CORS to mitigate security threats. You're essentially saying that since my acquaintances in mental health go to a therapy conference or a trivia night at the bar, that their personal lives should be exposed to the entire world in perpetuity. You're essentially saying that any SaaS should leave their ports open to the world for every scanner and scammer to exploit.
> There's a difference between being able to easily find an answer, and knowing which question to ask.
The first type of anonymity he does not currently have. But he does have the second type.
And it's true there is some truth to him being emotional. If he didn't possess any anxiety or fear then he wouldn't be worried and scared that if it's easier to find him more people will harass him (which has already happened). Lots of people have lost their jobs because they said something people didn't like on the internet so this seems like a reasonable fear.
Nothing about this seems illogical or disingenuous about this. What part of this fairly simple straightforward explanation doesn't make sense to you?
“Several people have suggested I move off LiveJournal because it has a negative prestige aura surrounding it and a lot of people are unwilling to read or link to LiveJournals.
Further, one of the interviewers at one of the hospitals I visited found my blog and told me that if I got hired it would be unacceptable to have a blog that was easily traceable back to my real name. Even if I never talked about medicine on it, it's still probably not a good idea to have patients know too much about my personal life. Also, if I expressed any controversial political opinions (me? controversial political opinions? really?) it might bring someone into disrepute or something, or even offend patients and destroy the therapeutic relationship.”
and “This blog is now closed and locked.
Since part of the reason I closed it is to make myself less stalk-able, I'm not linking from here to the new blog. If you really want to know where it is, message or email me and I'll probably tell you.”
> There is no comments section for this post. The appropriate comments section is the feedback page of the New York Times. You may also want to email the New York Times technology editor Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@nytimes.com, contact her on Twitter at @puiwingtam, or phone the New York Times at 844-NYTNEWS
> (please be polite – I don’t know if Ms. Tam was personally involved in this decision, and whoever is stuck answering feedback forms definitely wasn’t. Remember that you are representing me and the SSC community, and I will be very sad if you are a jerk to anybody. Please just explain the situation and ask them to stop doxxing random bloggers for clicks.)
Update: Thanks OP for updating to include a note about this.
844-NYTNEWS
Do landlines phones have letters in the US? Is it pressing a number several times?
And also mentioning that I'm grateful for SSC to exist. I rarely comment but it's a refreshing community.
This is just a popular (in the US?) way to make numbers easier to remember.
They were originally used for area codes (Wikipedia lists a UK example of 0AY6, ie 0296, for Aylesbury), then later for mnemonic numbers like the one from the article. Mobile phones inherited the lettered keypad from landlines and also started using it for typing text messages.
Wikipedia: The use of alphanumeric codes for exchanges was abandoned in Europe when international direct dialing was introduced in the 1960s, because, for example, dialing VIC 8900 on a Danish telephone would result in a different number to dialling it on a British telephone. At the same time letters were no longer placed on the dials of new telephones.
At any rate, the presence of lettered keypads doesn't mean people * had * to make mnemonic phone numbers with them, and it does look like (in Europe) only the UK had such numbers.
Apart from the US and UK, they might be popular in some Commonwealth countries too. I grew up in one and remember having them.
In the early automatic telephone years, letters were also used in the Netherlands, France, Denmark and other countries, but they fell out of use way before most people here were born, and also they were mostly (only?) used for area codes and exchange names/numbers, not subscriber numbers.
Letters are associated with numbers on a phone keypad. This is not a US-only thing. It is not a mobile only thing. It is not a land-line only thing. Keypads, all over the world, have letters on them. Letters (in the same way they are on phone keypads) can be seen on other numerical entry devices, like a keypad for a secure door.
As to pressing a number multiple times when texting, a half-second of thought would make it clear that this wasn't the case. Are you telling me it would be reasonable for OC (or anyone) to think that the NYT's phone number translated from
> 844-NYTNEWS
to
> 844-669998663397777
??
Indeed -- it dates back to the 1920s. At that time, phone numbers in the US started to be formed from a 2-letter exchange code followed by 5 (or sometimes 4) digits. For instance, "PEnnsylvania 6-5000" (dialled 736-5000) was the number of the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City, and also the title of a 1940 hit song.
Still is!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number#United_States
>In the most areas of North America, telephone numbers in metropolitan communities consisted of a combination of digits and letters, starting in the 1920s until the 1960s. Letters were translated to dialed digits, a mapping that was displayed directly on the telephone dial.
1 | 2 | 3
| ABC | DEF
-----|-----|-----
4 | 5 | 6
GHI | JKL | MNO
-----|-----|-----
7 | 8 | 9
PQRS | TUV | WXYZ
-----|-----|-----
* | 0 | #
| + |
Though the chart is still wrong according to that, however it (the chart) does match what my Android phone's dialer looks like.
Earlier in time the letter "O" was also not generally on phone keypads.
People seem have lost all sense of objectivity due to some sort of idolatry.
To expand: nobody here is harassing the journalist. The journalist harassed the blogger. The commenters are providing polite, critical feedback.
If you think the journalist should enjoy being able to do what they want without an Internet mob, then why wouldn't you think the same way about Scott?
Investigative?
What do you expect to happen when this kind of crowd ("rationalists") calls or mail-spam a journalist that's "attacking" their idol?
> Investigative?
Ok, just journalist then, does it matter?
Though, he really does post a lot of personal and identifying information on his blog--literally any motivated party could find his name very easily. I thought "maybe he doesn't want his real name to link to his blog if a patient googles it"--but, it already does that. In fact, it's a suggested search in google!
Ultimately though, in some respect, I do think Scott's trying to have his cake and eat it too a bit here. I think when he starts trying to influence certain events in the real world; eg. like his Signal Boosting for Hsu to give an example within the last week, where he takes umbrage against the Grad student organization at MSU to drum up support in defense of Prof. Hsu--whether or not you agree with Hsu or you agree with the graduate students at MSU, Scott is decidedly an outsider attempting to exert his influence. People have mentioned that these sorts of actions legitimize the "fair play" of the NYT revealing his real identity, and I'm having a hard time finding umbrage with that statement.
I don't think the NYT should post his full name but I also do think Scott has been playing fast and loose; both with revelatory facts about his identity and by putting himself in situations where there are legitimate reasons for blog-outsiders to inquire about his real identity. Hopefully there will be an amicable end to this conflict.
I don't see how these things legitimize each other at all, unless you're advocating or favoring personal harassment as a legitimate political strategy.
I do think the case of Hsu is worth using as an example here: an intra-university conflict; a group of grad students is petitioning for a professor that they believe is actively harmful to the institution to step down as director of research. Now, I don't think it really matters what you or I think about any of this--whether or not we agree with the students or the prof is immaterial. This is an issue for the university, the students at the university, the professor, and any professional relations the professor has within his field of academia.
If I'm a student at the school, and I'm pro-grad student faction, I'd probably be rightly annoyed and mighty curious at a pseudonymous blogger so fervently involving himself. Why the pseudonym? Why the support? It would behoove me to look into this person, seeing as, from my perspective, he is signal boosting an erroneous cause via his immensely popular website.
If I'm a professor at the school, and I'm pro-prof faction, I'd probably be rightly bewildered and mighty curious at a pseudonymous blogger so fervently involving himself. Why the pseudonym? Why the support? It would behoove me to look into this person, seeing as, from my perspective, he is signal boosting, albeit for a good cause, via his immensely popular website, with no apparent reason to do so, seeing as how he doesn't seem to be a geneticist or faculty. It would definitely give me pause, to say the least.
I can think of things even in my personal life or business where, if an outsider were involving himself trying to "signal boost" a resolution (even if in my favor), I think I'd very rightly want to know the motivations and identity of said person.
The above examples don't illustrate that he should be identified, rather, that he's presenting people with a compelling reason to want him identified. I don't think he should be ID'd, but if a campus paper wrote an OP-ed about it, I'd have a hard time faulting them.
I don't think anyone should harass anyone else, which I think is somewhat what Scott has been doing (perhaps for a righteous cause) with this affair (as, by nature, signal boosting pro-prof draws some fire upon the grad student faction in question), so his response here rings a little bit hollow to me. But, to be crystal clear, even if I think Scott is using his platform to ever so slightly browbeat institutions via his followers (in the most mild sense & with the best of intentions), I still think the NYT is very much clearly in the wrong.
I note that it's "the same" side in both situations that you're comparing, who thinks imposing personal consequences for civil, public speech is a legitimate substitute for debate. What Scott is doing is very dissimilar from what that group of students was doing, but what they were doing is very similar to what the NYT is trying to do.
That's not true. I just searched his real name and I get results about him but none of them are SSC-related at least on the first pages. Maybe your customized results lead to that or maybe you are including Scott Alexander or SSC in the search - either way most patients googling him wouldn't see SSC at all.
>That's not true. I just searched his real name and I get results about him but none of them are SSC-related at least on the first pages. Maybe your customized results lead to that or maybe you are including Scott Alexander or SSC in the search - either way most patients googling him wouldn't see SSC at all.
I get slatestarcodex as the fourth google autocomplete suggestion when I search "Scott RealLastName" but I don't get SSC in the first page of results. And the third autocomplete suggestion is Alexander. Incognito mode of course.
On 'All' I at least get 0 rationalist results or autocompletes with his name. I do get them if I google Scott Alexander <LastName> but he doesn't feature Alexander in the professional results and I doubt patients know that's his middle name.
If you just google Scott $LASTNAME, there is only one reference to his writings as Scott Alexander, and it is not linkable to the blog, doesn't call him Scott Alexander, and is merely praise of prediction markets being quoted by Robin Hanson. Given there are a few others out there who share his first name and last name, who come up in the search results (some graphic designer for example), this is plausibly not even him. It won't raise any eyebrows at all if a patient googles him.
One thing that's more concerning is the number of people intentionally doxxing him on Twitter today. I'm reporting comments there, and Twitter seems to not come up in Google searches, but a search for Scott's real name on Twitter right now returns results where people are saying some pretty nasty things about him.
I was wondering the same thing, until other HN comments mentioned both his support of Hsu and tirade against paywalls. His support of Hsu seemed to be based on a mutual respect and started off looking like support for academic freedom, but comments on that post did reveal a lot of questionable positions on Hsu’s part with no update from Scott himself.
The anti-paywall article however was much more likely to get the attention of the NYT, because he was viscerally against them and NYT is one of the big paywall sites—it’s their entire business model now and they might feel the need to push back on the criticism. Frankly, I thought Scott’s anti-paywall position wasn’t very rational or well-argued, but I didn’t really have time to follow that comment thread. But in the end, I think he might have attracted the Eye of Sauron on his relatively peaceful little kingdom.
Term 'doxxing' is a loaded term that may describe both revealing private information and revealing personal information researchable from public sources. While the former is condemnable, the later is more neutral and part of basic journalist work, especially if the exposed is a public persona.
Seems to me that for impartial third person it would look like a reporter wrote a neutral article about SSC mentioning authors name, SSC author overreacted and punished himself and its readers by removing the blog, and by Streissand effect much more people would know autors name now.
This is where the problem comes in-- best practice on the Internet is to let people who want to be anonymous stay anonymous. This is analog world culture butting into digital world culture, and in this case _digital world culture is right_, and also a case of the NYTimes being hypocritical.
The guy who wrote the NYTimes Resistance piece is allowed to stay anonymous, but a guy who writes about the efficacy of different depression medications isn't? [0]
It's ridiculous.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house...
Here in Germany a “right to informational self-determination” is legally well-established going back to a judgement in 1983 and journalists know that they have to weigh freedom of press and public interest against this right. I am pretty sure that what the times is doing in this case would actually be illegal here, if they cannot justify why public interest in knowing Scott’s real name would outweigh his right to informational self-determination.
Does anybody know what the legal situation regarding doxxing is in the US?
Might or might not be the same guy, but it's close enough to not matter.
It's definitely possible I'm just not smart enough to understand this, but how does one go about learning to comprehend stuff like this?
Unless of course you simply want to be seen as the type of person who reads Russian literature, in which case thelastpsychiatrist.com is probably better for reading...
Personally for instance, I read "Shame & Society" once, found it fascinating, but couldn't really pinpoint what I had learned, so I re-read it and took notes, as well as try to summarize and articulate the big points and how they related.
Also I don't think TLP quit because he was doxxed necessarily. If that were the case, he wouldn't have kept paying the site hosting fees all this time. I think he decided the blog had become too much about his identity as a sort of minor messiah figure in the eyes of his readers, which is sort of against the founding principles of the blog itself. The character or voice he created for the blog was gaining too much power. Having his real name revealed was only a secondary concern.
He probably still writes somewhere though... probably, he's a well-respected/beloved voice on some obscure phpBB board or similar (real TLP heads will know he used to read/post on Metafilter back in the day.)
There is a big difference between something being buried where people with the interest and competence could go find it and it being put up in lights. Particularly when the lights are the bonfire of a hit piece.
But the fact that it was technically openly available to some degree doesn't change the fact that the people most likely to cause harm with it often lack the mental facilities to actually do the work to dig it up.
The same lack of judgement that makes someone more likely to engage in harassment or violence often also makes them less skilful researchers than a blinking NYT reporter.
Maybe a way I'd express your sentiment instead: If it didn't matter because the information was already public then why write the article in the first place? -- after all, anyone else could also learn these things so no one needs the article. The answer is because articles do matter and by that same token we can't disregard the ethical considerations regarding their content, even if it's entirely derived from open sources.
The theoretical open availability of the information also doesn't change the fact that many other venues (e.g. sites like Reddit and Wikipedia) will protect your personal information but not if the NYT has printed it with neon blinkers.
Create two separate web servers. Open both of their ports to the internet. Put a bitcoin on each one. Only publish the IP/URL to one of them on a website with millions of DAUs.
My hypothesis is the address you publish will see its bitcoin disappear more quickly than the other.
There's a difference between being able to easily find an answer, and knowing which question to ask. This is basically the entire point of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
It has been deeply disappointing to watch The Times devolve into a highly-partisan, clickbait, unprofessional shadow of their former self - the exact opposite of what we need a news organization to be in this day and age.
Wow. This is similar to Vice reporting on Naomi Wu and threatening to dox her while claiming to write a positive article about her: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu#Vice_article
I've watched VICE and NowThis alone radicalize perfectly decent people. I knew someone for over 10 years who was always highly observant, emotional but self-aware, would drop what he was doing to sit in my car with me in a dark parking lot and let me go through the wild ride of emotions I have about my ex. He knew we wouldn't ever be a thing. I sat with him one evening in a dark parking lot and let him go through his emotions on us just not falling into place, the existential crisis of seeing something desired within reach and being able to touch but not keep it. He's the person who taught me every second is independent from the next, that a bad feeling toward someone can be isolated, compartmentalized, only exist in a moment in the front of our minds. That if we're aware of that independence, we can turn off an emotion so quickly we hardly notice the effort. And today, I could be thoroughly enraged by someone's comment online, turn off my screen and be in a great mood before I even realize the transition occurred.
A few years back, he started watching the VICE documentaries at work during his free time. And then he started watching the clips and cuts made by Buzzfeed and channels like NowThis. Then he started sharing them on social media. And the clips got more and more incendiary. It's like VICE news could do a 30-minute special on LGBT in Brazil, but he'd watch and re-watch the few seconds of Bolsonaro saying gays are bad and that's just his view. And then he'd repost the clips. And then he started posting them on people's timelines to make sure their friends saw the clips and his comments too. And it eventually spiraled out into him posting clips of Nazi propaganda and these detailed comparisons to the Trump administration. And then he got verbally abusive toward his family.
My last conversation with him was me asking why he posted what read like a manifesto that white people, Nazis/KKK, cisgender people should be put into training programs and if they refused or didn't show rapid progress then they deserved to be dropped off somewhere remote and left there. I thought he was joking, but he said he was serious. He ranted for almost an hour at me, even after I closed Facebook. I got 13 or so message notifications on my phone.
Just to clarify, his posts on Facebook and Twitter included his belief that 'cisnormativity' is a product of 'white mafias', that we're all accomplices and own a blood libel for the deaths of the poor around the world, that ISIS wasn't homophobic and only executed cishomos, that he'd force cishomos to have sexual intercourse with trans people even if it didn't fix them. Just insane, insane shit.
These sites are the gateway drugs to violence. For all the talk about violent video games and movies, these indie (corporate) 'news' channels are the real danger.
I've always been of the opinion that the reader needs to be on guard towards content which teaches people to hate, much moreso than "hate speech" that's just someone screaming their head off like an angry paranoid fool.
It's easy for everyone to identify and contextualize someone talking trash; even if they happen to agree they can still see it for what it is. It's much harder when a reporter (someone branded as a smart person) uses high-status language, slick production value, and an almost disengaged tone of voice to seduce you into a comfortable but dishonest explanation that turns people into cartoonish monsters to lay blame at their feet.
It's called "critical race theory".
PC goodthink is that Breitbart is terrible in every way and the worst possible source of news. When I've compared its European edition to outlets like the Guardian, it's pretty similar in tone, style and content (obviously with political polarity reversed). If anything it's actually less extreme, for instance, it's very clear about the separation between illegal immigrants (i.e. a class defined by choice) from race (a class defined by immutable characteristic), whereas the Guardian does publish pieces talking about 'white people' or 'white men' quite frequently.
Also, Breitbart uses links to primary sources much more heavily than most news sources do. A lot of papers only link to other stories they published, to keep you in-site.
If they do dox the person, though, their name will be on the article, and you'll be able to find it.
The point though, is that this hasn't actually happened yet. There is still a possibility that the reporter will back out, and not publish the name.
At which point, the author wins, and isn't doxed.
By not attacking the reporter, yet it still leaves open the possibility that everyone can back down.
The problem with people trying to shut down others primarily comes from individuals. Often that's individuals on social media. In this case it's a journalist. These individuals can destroy other people's lives, yet they essentially face zero consequences for doing so.
And each time they succeed, like in this case, they embolden others to do it.
Many of Scott's patients would find his writings to be very relevant information.
But, you say, surely that's not a problem for well-adjusted people! Guess what the hell a psychiatrist does.
https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-nao...
Here are the other parts:
- part 2: https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-nao...
- part 3: https://medium.com/@therealsexycyborg/shenzhen-tech-girl-nao...
There was a positive outcome too, though, check out this video where she helps save someone’s life (SFW): https://youtu.be/4VKZTmTP7oY
That is exactly what was happening there. There is no other plausible explanation for the behavior.
> I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news, but they’re going to say you’re a far-right racist who supports eugenics, based on you not immediately supporting the firing of Hsu. I know this probably sounds improbable to you because the author was pleasant, but they’ll have a quote from you they’ll strip of nuance and context to make it clear that you’re evil. Probably something about why you want to remain anonymous and they’ll paint it as you wanting to be anonymous because your views are beyond the pale or a dog whistle or something.
> ... It was absolutely going to be a hit piece and they don’t tell you that upfront because they need your participation.
> Pui doesn’t care, she’s cracking open champagne right now. This is what she thinks their job is. Exposing everything because reasons and feeling good about it.
> It will absolutely be a hit piece, probably call SA a racist, and will be unapologetic. To expect anything different is impossible if you’ve spent a lot of time around this particular brand of new age journalist.
> ... The editor SA is referring to is a known quantity in many circles, including mine, as is the author of the piece (I know people who were asked for comment; all refused). This is a win in their book, and they couldn’t care less about whether SA’s life will be destroyed.
It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse.
I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly stopped reading newspapers, and don't trust anything they write, without checking the facts.
The other requires more than half a decade of intense education, internships, tests and further verifications. (Not to mention thousands of Euros in education costs, if not state sponsored)
I cannot think of a larger difference in terms of barrier to entry.
In France Medical Doctors require 6 years of externship, 4 years of internship + various amount of years depending on the specialization up to 5 (?) for example for neurology.
It's also the population that lead to the most suicides due to how intense the expectations are and failure will lead you to tenures you don't want (There is a spot for everyone but not where you want and on the speciality you want, even though we are lacking doctors ...)
So, I said 'more than half-a-decade' because that is essentially the absolute minimum that nobody can be pedantic about.
* What if the hospitals had a financial incentive to sensationalise public health?
* What if independent doctors only got into medicine in the first place to make decisions based on their own partisan politics?
Unfortunately all US media, and most international media, is equally bad and built on bad intentions for varying levels of nefarious purposes.
Basically the only people who find the largest publications "bad" here are conspiracy nuts, fascists and politicians involved in uncovered corruption scandals.
I find our independent media to be a key element of our democracy and I am worried when I hear the US media don't work quite the same.
Edit: I thought I might as well reply with our solutions to your bullet points
- Our newspapers don't force their views on their journalists. The bosses require quality and factfulness, but topics are up to the journalist. The newspaper as an organisation is equally hostile to all the politicians.
- The financial incentive is to continue to hold their image, because they live from subscription fees paid by people who view them as essential for our society. (+ ads ofc)
- If one wants power to change things the far superior strategy in my country is to do the actual politics and not to report on it.
For a long time I underestimated how much of a bedrock requirement this is. It's easy to dismiss the media as entertainment at best or noise at worst.
But at best they model fairness, balance, and rationality, and if you have no one doing that in public the quality of discourse soon crashes.
I guess it goes in cycles though. Apparently in the 1890s it was _actually worse_!?
So if you think European media are free of political bias and distortions, think again.
My grievance is more how the media, including the government financed ones swallowed said war.
It used to have high quality, but in the previous government period one of the ruling parties changed the management and now it's not objective at all. In fact, all the respected journalists left for other media and the reputation of the organisation is tarnished (polls show people don't trust it anymore).
Fortunately we have independent media as well.
[0] https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/11/new-leaks-shatter-opcws-a...
A domain where they thrive is domestic politics and in such a small country it's not that difficult to verify whether they lie and manipulate or not.
So I’m curious if the media there has made much of a fuss with the exposé of OPCW producing falsified reports. American media hasn’t, neither has British or Australian media. But we already know those groups are corrupt.
With this I’m trying to find out (and so can you) if Central European media is as objective (and independent) as what it’s being made out to be.
The Guardian article mentioned Russia 5 or 6 times (why?), the rest of the article didn't have any useful info.
The NYT article mentioned Russia 4 times IIRC, and had two half sentances of useful info.
Reuters only mentioned Russia once (hooray!), and actually had a reasonable amount good detail in there.
It pays well to do a 'deep dive' on something like the Syrian conflict, to better understand how the media /really/ works, then the lessons learned can be re-applied going forward. I spent some time studying the initial OPCW report, and independently came to the same conclusion that the OPCW leaks did. A few independent journalists, including Robert Fisk, shed light on some of the other aspects.
A more recent matter is the initial denials of the efficacy of face masks in helping reduce the spread of coronavirus. This was done largely for political reasons IMHO, and became part of advice that was muddled, illogical, and inconsistent.
The best source of advice was highly ranked medical experts in countries that had successfully dealt with SARS, their advice was clear, logical and consistent, right from the beginning back in late Jan. Of course for some reason they're almost never featured in western media, who prefer some celebrity GP or health adviser who's only real interest seems to be their appearence fee!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/headlines/5188155...
The fact that you consider those media unbiased doesn't mean they are really unbiased. Plenty of people consider Fox News and Huffington Post as paragons of objectivity.
I can tell you the story of the first one (SME) and you may take what you wish from it.
Penta is a shady investment group linked to heavy corruption scandals across the political spectrum. [0]
As a power move they decided to buy the medium they've seen as their main public opponent — SME. Half of the journalists from SME left, raised money and founded Denník N, which is pretty similar to SME. The other half stayed and convinced the previous shareholders to keep a majority.
45% of SME is owned by Penta but they have no effect on the content and SME critisizes Penta all the time. Penta knows that if they did anything about it, redactors would speak up and leave and they would be left with a worthless company.
>Basically the only people who find the largest publications "bad" here are conspiracy nuts, fascists and politicians involved in uncovered corruption scandals.
Something that seems to be quite common in modern media is to paint anybody who disagrees as a conspiracy theorist or fascist. Are there truly no other groups who have grievances with the news? Communists? The opposition party? Another news outlet that is partisan? It seems unlikely to me that only the groups that modern (left-leaning) media likes to blame everything on would have a problem with it.
On another point, I wish to address this:
>Our newspapers don't force their views on their journalists. The bosses require quality and factfulness, but topics are up to the journalist.
You don't need to control what a journalist writes to create biased news. You simply need to control who you hire. Want a news organization that's biased towards right wingers? Hire a bunch of right wingers to be your staff. They will naturally gravitate towards stories that are biased.
>The financial incentive is to continue to hold their image, because they live from subscription fees paid by people who view them as essential for our society.
The same is true for a lot of biased news outlets elsewhere. It still doesn't change that people like reading news that affirms their view of the world.
I don't wish to be uncharitable, but I believe based on this that perhaps you don't notice much of the bias. I could be wrong, but it just seems very difficult to believe that Europe has such a gem hidden in it. The news in my European country aren't quite as bad as in the US, but they're certainly not unbiased and politics certainly involves the media.
The news (public service) I consume from time to time does this too. However while they try to not favor a particular political side they often instead fail towards trying to find dissent where there is none.
They invite some people with supposedly “opposing” views and then spend the time trying to provoke a fight. Usually it’s just people highlighting different perspectives with no interest in representing some kind of conflict over the matter.
At least in the US, this is standard. Try getting your local Catholic hospital to deal with complications with your IUD and this isn't a "what if." There are plenty of stories of people who discover that their primary care network has an avowed ideological stance on certain procedures and they need to switch doctors and perhaps go out of network for full care.
> What if the hospitals had a financial incentive to sensationalise public health?
Don't they? There is no shortage of for-profit hospitals, and thanks to insurance, Medicaid, etc., they can often increase profit at no cost to the patient by just seeing the patient more and treating them kn more ways that might be strictly speaking unnecessary.
> What if independent doctors only got into medicine in the first place to make decisions based on their own partisan politics?
Isn't this approximately the backstory of Planned Parenthood?
Basically, everyone has an ideology, a reason to do what they do. Sometimes it's based on their view of the world and a desire to make it better in some way. Sometimes it's profit. Neither of these is necessary nefarious.
I'd expect a doctor that failed to maintain professional standards to be struck off, and I'd expect the professional management services to proactively get them struck off before they could do anything dangerous.
Professional journalism has a long, long track record of opposing any consequences to their actions whatsoever.
I love the idea of professional journalists. But the reality of them just does not work in practice in our current media industries.
Unfortunately expectations do not match reality. 10% of deaths are due to medical errors [0]. Then look at how the rest of the medical establishment are failing us. CDC is prohibited from naming the hospitals that have this error. The only thing they report on is trends [1]. If you have a hospital in your neighborhood, can you find out anything about it? From the medical error rate, to the spread of Candida Auris[2] is there any dangerous news about your local hospital/healthcare system that is public?
[0]: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su... [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db118.htm [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-can...
If a single sample of corn in a shipment is contaminated with aflatoxin should you keep testing it and trying to find the good corn?
If a program corrupts your data on first use should you keep trying it on different data before rejecting it?
I hope you'll consider this, because our society cannot function without quality investigative reporting. I of course agree there are many kinds of people who call themselves journalists many of which don't improve our society. We must fight this battle, as we must fight every battle, because that's the only way things change for the better. Do not let cynicism win.
Just curious are there any independent investigation journalists that work on the patreon/subscription model? Would consider donation them rather than NYT or WSJ.
There are many. But they're difficult to find and get into. My favorite is http://www.noagendashow.com/.
Plenty of non-profit MSM, including the BBC, The Guardian, AP, and so on.
Are they doing independent investigative journalism, though? I jumped around in the episode a bit and it just sounds like talk radio commentary/opinion that cites MSM sources.
Adam was on Rogan in March. I recommend watching that episode.
There are plenty of scrappy little online micronewspapers now, usually with an evident political slant, and some of them do real investigative journalism.
But there's no chance they'll get the direct access to the political system their mainstream cousins do.
It's also incredibly easy to astroturf fake news at that level, so not all of those sites are reliable.
The point about the MSM is that they're mass media with a huge subscriber/reader base. That's what gives them their leverage.
Journalism is much less influential without that.
In theory I would gladly support the theory of "quality investigative reporting", but the reality is a propagandist machine where opinion pieces replaces actual unbiased, adjective-free objective news.
Some examples of "oligarch news": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwA4k0E51Oo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI
As a former developer who worked closely on Thomson Reuters News feed (in the 00's), I've seen how there is almost zero fact checking for the information that appears on news feeds. Instead, news outlets trust the 'upstream' feeds and then quote the reports verbatim.
To be fair, there are those who are really awesome at doing research and releasing information that are part of the MSM. Unfortunately, there are plenty others who are not affiliated with MSM news outlets and hence aren't regarded as "reporters" per-se. These latter ones are regularly attacked via "fact checking" websites as a way to discredit them.
An article on the latter is here: https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-381-who-will-fact-chec...
In short, there's a bunch of information out there and without each and every news report clearly citing original sources, then MSM or not, it must be regarded as suspect.
So for "quality investigative reporting", the actual reports must rigorously cite objective sources.
In the US, I've found most PBS/NPR news broadcasts fairly objective, and the various NPR podcasts sometimes chart into investigative territory but there are other sources I rely on for this (e.g. ProPublica) which I don't expect to be just objective.
I'm not sure I understood exactly what you meant about quality investigative journalism, so forgive me if I misread. I generally agree with your comment.
> Even In A Pandemic, WHO Believes That Public Protests Are Important
> June 8, 2020 5:40 PM ET
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/08/8724198...
14 minutes later
> Trump To Restart Political Rallies This Month Despite Coronavirus Pandemic
> June 8, 2020 5:54 PM ET
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
In the context of left-wing political activity, just:
> In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic
In the context of right-wing political activity, a far more frightening description:
> despite the deadly coronavirus pandemic, which continues to wreak havoc on the lives and livelihoods of households across the country.
If NPR didn't lean left, the second article could have started with a tone similar to the first: in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump campaign will address another pressing issue, restarting the American economy. The rally has prompted fears that the close contact of thousands of attendees could lead to a spike in case counts.
What is the political orientation of a "mass gathering" (rally/protest/etc) if not its purpose? Seriously.
(Plus, Trump's rally was indoors; protests are outdoors. We've got quite a bit of data now indicating outdoor transmission is less likely.)
> It's not the political orientation of the mass gathering - it's the purpose. One is the President organising a gathering in an attempt to boost his election campaign - the other is some random people who came together to protest a specific thing.
How does the purpose of a public gathering alter a virus? Does it have political awareness and dynamically modify its transmissibility according to the righteousness of the cause?
Or perhaps the purpose of a public gathering justifies journalistic framing (altering the description of the severity of the virus, which in turn alters readers mental model of reality). If it's this, what is the logic behind the justification?
Edit: I should clarify that I meant "unbiased and factual" together. Of course it's entirely possible to be both biased and factual, by choosing which facts to include.
Choice and presentation of opinions you report on is not a neutral acitvity.
edit: I was distracted when I wrote my answer, so I missed some context. Was your question about differences in tone pointed out in a sibling comment[1]? Without having read the articles in question, at first glace, I'd considere this an example of journalistic bias.
That's an interesting example of how difficult unbiased fact checking is.
To start with, there are many interpretations of the statement. Does worse mean death rate, severity of symptoms, infectiousness, or something else? What strain of the flu, and in which country? Which paper or anecdote does the fact checker cite? Because of differences like these, two fact checkers will give different ratings for the same statement.
Journalists aren't experts and shouldn't act like they are by presenting a single perspective as if it were unchallenged fact, or by injecting their own unqualified opinions. Any issue complex enough to be a matter for serious debate isn't going to be solved in an article.
They can be unbiased and report what the leading figures have said, like a camera at a televised debate, or they can be opinionated and add their voice to one of the camps, but they can't (honestly) do both.
I don't know how this fiction has to be represented in every discussion. I don't want neutral unbiased reporting if it requires giving equal time to people who think that neutral unbiased reporting is real. The selection of what's important to report is literal biasing.
For example, if a media outlet compare actual vs expected turnout for a Trump rally and report that turnout was "lower than expected", it would be plainly biased not to do the same comparison for Biden. The lines are obviously going to blur at some point (where 'balance' involves publishing something far less 'newsworthy'), but it's a lot like the definition of pornography - you know it when you see it.
Besides, most modern media outlets are blatantly pushing their own narratives anyway - I'd say it's far more important that we fix this before moving on to the smaller problem of selection bias.
Not that I'm saying that 'reality has a liberal bias', as some would. I personally think it has a left bias, but I'm not nearly certain enough of my opinions to make that claim!
> The Columbia Journalism Review describes Media Bias/Fact Check as an amateur attempt at categorizing media bias and Van Zandt as an "armchair media analyst."[3] The Poynter Institute notes, "Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific."[4]
Also Poynter Institute has record of "weaknesses in the methodology".[1]
For example, listen for ", without providing evidence" in NPR broadcasts. Notice how selectively it is used.
I don't think better ownership changes anything. The Guardian is owned by a trust, yet falsely reported Mark Duggan was unarmed in a front page headline (if you're unaware, this was false and the Gruan had to retract the claim after a PCC ruling).
The problem is that we're not being delivered news-as-information, we're sold news-as-entertainment.
Then we can have reporting/debate/conversation on the meaning of the data but without the filters we use to have in place all reporting has essentially become meaningless, untrustworthy, opinion pieces.
I do think some journalism is good. Many reporters at the Financial Times come to mind for example. But I found your reply did not really address the nature of OP’s complaint.
A propos of nothing, here is the story of a photojournalist I just came across. Took many photos of the cultural revolution and hid them for decades: https://twitter.com/tony_zy/status/1275267759216222209
Statistical significance is not the only epistemological tool around. I would even argue that, outside of some scientific fields, it is really not that important (and might even lead to a lot of wrong conclusions in the context that is used nowadays, but that is a different discussion altogether).
We are not some dumb statistical machine. We have an entire model of the world in our heads, and one single observation can have profound implications on it. The journalist reports to an editor, who maintains a system of job promotions, and all of this is connected to an institution that holds very real power. The OP observed this journalist manipulating the story, not in a random direction, but in their view in a direction that would appeal to the status quo. It is normal to update one's map of reality when confronted with first-person experience of an event that goes against what you've been told, and when the simplest explanation for how the world works changes in light of this direct observation.
And this is also how your mind works, and this is also how you formed your views on reality, including repeating the "N=1" cliché. None of it has anything to do with p-values.
Where do I find quality investigative reporting?
I support the Guardian and two regional/local newspapers and I' also forced to pay for the state run broadcaster here but I have to say that I also find myself reading a number of other sources to figure out what is really going on (for the Scandinavians here I'm one of those who will happily look to both Klassekampen and Document, in addition to vg.no and nrk to figure out what is really going on in certain cases, and I understand I am not alone in this).
Once you know a bit of history and a number of different angles you realize some things are horribly complicated and big media is making things worse by pushing misinformation, and by conveniently omitting facts. My favourite example from my favourite (i.e. least despised) local mainstream media source: X fired at a number of positions in neighbouring country Y yesterday. <Long article about this>. <Towards the end:> This happened after a barrage of rockets was fired from these positions shortly before. And that is the most honest of them. The rest seemed to just omit the fact that part Y fired first.
PS: The reason I support some of them is 1) because I feel it is the right thing to do. 2) because I feel at least one of them have actually managed to do some great quality investigative reporting as well as some great feature stories in between. We talk about certain companies and public healthcare organizations getting some much needed sunlight.
One that is limited, but wonderful is: ProPublica
Abrams Foundation, Altman Foundation, Arnold Ventures, Barr Foundation, The William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, The Peter and Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Craigslist Foundation, Davis Wright Tremaine, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Dyson Foundation, Emerson Collective, The Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Goldhirsh Foundation, The Jerome L. Greene Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Leon Levy Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Metabolic Studio, Park Foundation, The Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund, Charles H. Revson Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Select Equity Foundation, Skoll Global Threats Fund, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Solidarity Giving
My favorite in that vein is 'In The Dark' by APM Reports, which was a massive eye-opener for me in terms of flaws in the justice system (especially Season 2).
I've been interviewed by journalists a few times and I've seen at least a half-dozen other people be interviewed. The articles published are totally disconnected from what was actually said. Heck, I've had a journalist make up a quote and attribute it to me.
Don't talk to journalists. If you must, record everything.
In my country, there's a supposedly quality investigative reporting outlet. I did trust them for years. Then one time they did report on something I happened to know more details from other sources. Their reporting was complete BS bending facts to come to opposite conclusions.
Months later it turned out that political party loved favoured by those journalists had an internal struggle and the dude in article above happened to be on the "wrong" side. The report was about his overseas business, not political affairs. As a bonus point, "good" side was involved in bribery scandal.
Another investigative outlet recently published a series of reports on another politician that comes from unfavourable party in among mainstream media journalists. So far all of those reports seem to have little substance and they seem to be in she-said, he-said gray area at best. I'm pretty sure the dude do have skeletons under his bed. But investigative journalists seem to just post whatever rumors they got and see what sticks. Which is not exactly helping their quality investigative reporting image.
E.g. a while ago a newspaper here took me an interview/ they were building a story about people that had somewhat remarkable results in school & ample opportunities to leave (e.g. I participated in IOI and had 2 medals), and still chose to stay in the country - what were their motives, how it turned out for them. During the interview, I mentioned something along the lines that "I earn well enough to afford everything that I want, and my friends/family is here, I'm used to the local culture, etc". As a result, "I can afford everything" became basically the headline.
I'm sure that wasn't your intention but a profession won't improve if there's a way for its practitioners to shrug off criticism by telling themselves some version of the no true Scotsman fallacy.
This. Sometimes we joke that "all news is fake news"; but it is actually true!
There is also the phenomenon of reading articles about topics I know well and haven them be completely wrong which leads to to at least entertain the idea that the same is true for topics i don't know about. No idea what the solution is.
I am not sure you are aware but your statement makes no sense whatsoever.
How do you "check the facts" if you don't trust professional journalists?
What sources do you use for those facts, say on the outcome of a political meeting, the current best advice on how to avoid catching covid, the economic situation or impact of new legislation on a specific economic sector?
The world is complex, fast-moving and there are trillions of possible information sources. With your expressed view you have to either live in conscious avoidance of any kind of news and only go to perceived primary sources (which journalists might help you understand the biases of...) or, more likely, you simply believe whatever sounds right to your existing views and biases.
The latter in fact is the cheap and lazy way out and typically justified by a view like yours - "I don't trust journalists" translates in most cases to "I don't trust journalists unless their writing exactly reflects my viewpoint."
This is a really dangerous approach and the root cause of most current problems in developed countries. Instead the best course of action would be to be conscious of inherent biases, try to read different press to get s wholistic picture rather than just whatever reinforces your viewpoint and then, when something is really important, try to look for primary information.
Journalists are doing an important service to society. There are bad apples (and it seems you met one) and tasteless apples or apples that want to do the right thing but just get it wrong (eg because budgets are so tight that not enough apples can be hired...), that doesn't mean you should distrust all apples.
""" Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
- Michael Crichton, Why Speculate (26 April 2002) """
This isn’t to say that all journalists are “bad apples”, but as the full aphorism says, “A few bad apples spoils the whole barrel”.
"Professional journalist" shouldn't invoke any more trust than "professional fund manager".
Surely they're not all bad apples, but they're not inherently incentivized to have integrity, so you must assume that they do not have integrity, for your own safety.
Today only one has remained, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a german-language publication from Switzerland. Lets see how long it holds up.
I'd call myself an "accidental moderate" in PG's terms, and there are lots of good accounts on Twitter that look at both sides of the issue.
You don't need to follow lots of accounts on a wide range of the political spectrum, but simply avoid the partisan/"belief bunching" preachers, and pick the smartest and most rational ones instead. This has been the biggest source of education for me recently.
In fact one of the worst experience for me in terms of trust for the media was working at a startup. The willingness of journalists to produce puff pieces, or print press releases virtually verbatim, on the basis of 5 minutes of SQL queries cobbled together and cherry picked to produce the desired result was frightening.
An average journalist distorts the truth knowingly and is a scumbag. An average person parrots lies and is convinced of them, and if you point it out, he/she'll be upset with you.
This is how religions continue even in the face of the best thinkers for centuries, coming up with the most considerate, foolproof arguments for why it's bullshit. At some point we have to ask: do people even want to be able to tell truth apart from bullshit, or do they just want to be led and told what to do by someone they like?
And then there is information that isn't important (it doesn't affect you and you can't act on it) and you're just seeking it out of habit (addiction really).
First, purposefully using an incorrect name (and Scott Alexander's online identity is Scott Alexander). In many other cases, even if the name is known publicly, and it is (or was) a legal anme, a journalist does not need to write it.
Second, for everyone having vocal opinions, it puts them in real danger. If revealing someone's identity (or a threat of such) makes someone close their blog, the journalist have already made their damage.
Third, it erodes trust in journalists. Such journalists make any other journalism harder, as people have justified reasons not to talk. Not every person wants to increase their risk.
I hope that until the journalist gets fired, no activist, whistleblower, a person who wants to speak about professional malpractice, controversial artist etc. won't talk to NYT. For their own safety.
They fired most of their senior editors in 2017 because they were both too expensive and enforcing old school journalist standards and integrity which doesn't generate clicks like hot handed opinion pieces followed by reverse opinion pieces does.
Though mind you that senior group was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, so take their integrity with a grain of salt.
As an NYT subscriber, I'm very concerned by this, but I think it's ironic that people skeptical of the media because they don't wait to get facts right are so willing to jump to the conclusion that Scott's account is the full story. I'm inclined to believe Scott, but just as a remotely plausible hypothetical: there's also been rumors of a hit piece floating around for a few days[1]. Maybe they uncovered something Scott doesn't want out there besides just his identity and this is his way of seeding distrust before it gets out.
If he's violating HIPAA or something, then sure, name names. But if it's simply about the content of the blog, then his nomme de guerre should suffice.
He's also, I suspect (I don't follow his blog), given and written enough to at least earn enough good faith to be taken at his word.
To be honest, I was hoping NYT would have cleared things up by now, but I've been monitoring Twitter and haven't seen anything.
Where were those when they wrote about Iraq?
All awfully convenient for the State Department, and equally convenient for the paper's relationships with their contacts within it and other parts of the US government.
The people who lied us into Iraq?
The name of the journalist in question is no secret; spend 5 minutes browsing Twitter or the SSC subreddit and you'll figure it out.
Not going to happen. The reporter was doing his job. No one will lose their job just because your favorite blogger agreed to go on the record for an interview and is not upset that his identity will be revealed.
Breaking trust, going against wished how people prefer to be addressed and endangering people for now good reason - well, it's at most style of irresponsible, tabloid-level journalism.
If NYT aims for tabloid level standard, indeed, the journalist was doing his job.
Did you read SSC's post? SSC didn't mention anything of a "promise" or "agreement" for the reporter to not use his name. The reporter found it another way.
Now, if SSC explicitly said the reporter promised not to use his name, then that opens a new can of worms.
If a journalist interviewed a popular camgirl who introduced herself as (say) LustyClaraXXX, and then "did research" to compare pictures, and revealed her legal name an occupation (say, a schoolteacher), would you consider it ethical?
If yes, why so? If no, why so?
It really depends on the context of the story, with additional nuances that a competent editor must consider:
Is this camgirl the central figure of this story?
What are her reasons for not revealing her real name?
You say she is a school teacher. What kind of teacher? Is she a well-known professor? Is she someone who teaches kindergarten?
Does she make more money from camming than being a teacher? That in itself could be another story about the system.
And on and on and on.
"Tabloid level" journalism is how I would describe stories full of anonymous sources.
Correct. But there are times when anonymous sources are necessary. Look at WaPo and NYT's political coverage. They use many political insiders who can't go on the record but reveal necessary information for the public.
One example: Trump's "shit hole countries" comment. That came from anonymous sources who were in the room, backed up with a few on-the-record commends from outsiders.
I've come up with several strategies to try and minimise this. One is to read multiple sources with different target audiences. I occasionally read the Daily Mail (my mother gets it, don't judge) and the Guardian. My main source of general news is the BBC news site, but I also regularly read The Economist. From time to time I pop on to the Fox News site, partly to remind myself that the Daily Mail could actually be a lot worse. I listen to LBC in the car (A London based politics and current affairs talk radio show).
Genuine question - I'd be interested in how others approach this. Is my set of sources too skewed one way or another? Am I missing a decent balanced source, or should I add a credible source on any particular political leaning?
Reading e.g. the politics section of the NYT religiously for the past couple years, your biggest takeaway would be that Trump is an idiot who doesn't belong in office. Which, as far as it goes, is true, but there's no need to pick up a bad habit like reading the NYT in order to know that.
It's probably necessary to know enough about this week's going-ons for social reasons, to the same extent that it's necessary to know who's playing in the Super Bowl, but there are more useful ways to spend your energies.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...
Getting the news from "both sides" is just getting two bullshit spins on the same topic, but the truth isn't in the middle.
You can get "just the facts" from outlets like Reuters. You may find that this isn't really entertaining and that really you do consume news for other reasons than getting informed. You may recognize that you actually want "the spin", you want the emotional turmoil, the sensation.
From that perspective, consuming news is more like a consuming a drug: A guilty pleasure that should not be overindulged in.
(See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window )
For the Americans reading, they have a US site too, might be worth checking out?
It’s probably well written though, the irony is that the right wing press is often externally funded, not intrinsically profitable, and so has more cash in the bank to maintain high production quality, if completely destroying any pretense of neutrality.
Just because a source has an editorial slant doesn't mean it doesn't provide any insight. The problem is when journalists push their opinions on you while pretending to be impartial.
It's actually the left wing papers that tend to lose money, as they're reluctant to go behind a paywall. They prioritise influence over profits. The Guardian is the clearest case of this.
That didn't stop the Irish Independent (big national paper here) from publishing gory headlines about the families pain. They also managed to source family photos (both old and more recent ones) and published pictures of the whole family. The family could deal with the headlines, but that someone leaked family photos to the paper really hit them hard.
The story was so sensationalised and gory and completely off the scale. A few column inches would have sufficed, instead it was double page spread implying the family was in turmoil. The paper turned an already painful family situation in to an absolute nightmare.
But this isn't slander. The Indo didn't lie they grossly exaggerated the truth in a gory manner.
Yes, the daughter was distraught - why wouldn't she be in the circumstances? But the Indos headline was along the lines of "AGONY AND PAIN FOR name AS FATHER PERISHES IN NORTH-SIDE INFERNO". This was accompanies by lots of quotes from anonymous "friends and family" about how she and her family were suffering. This article featured lots of personal photos. The really sore things about this is that these photos were only on display in her house, someone she trusted took copies with a smartphone and sent them to the paper.
As she is the copyright owner of some of the pictures I am going to suggest she invoice the paper for reproduction fees when she feels up to it.
In the case of Mexico’s drug war, most Americans are probably very misguided as to how dangerous it is for tourists and also how much of it is seen by the average Mexican on a given day. I feel I’ve learned infinitely more in one conversation on Tandem with someone who lives in Mexico than I ever will from a newspaper.
If I read about riots in my city, I know there was something going on but I can’t really trust that the news correctly identified the place, people, or motive. I may have the desire to learn more and so I will reach out to someone who was there our lives in that neighborhood.
I had a waking up moment in 2003 during the Iraq war protests. I learned that the NYT, which was my favorite because each issue was a literary work that could be read from front to back, reported as though they’d never been to NYC. If they couldn’t get basic details right when the story was literally on the same street (Broadway) then I don’t know what they’re actually capable of reporting.
For context, I like The Economist because it's mostly unemotional, information-dense, and the magazine comes in a single weekly thing to read.
I became a journalist more than 10 years ago because of a similar sentiment - I thought “mainstream media” was pretty terrible, and yet influential in society, and I wanted to know how it could be better.
I was a reporter for several years, an editor for a few, and now I teach journalism.
1. News angles are the fundamental part of news writing - probably the source of most of these problems, of overselling (or “beating up”) a story. It’s basically an effort to get straight to the point, a point as sharp as the facts will allow. You’ll go to the same press conference as a room full of journalists, and you’d better come out with the strongest piece of news. When you’re new, you’ll miss the most interesting or important piece of information, or you’ll bury it halfway down your story, and your competitor will make you look like you can’t do your job. Sooner or later you’re all thinking the same way and picking the same angles.
(This process seems to happen quite organically - the problems of social media look similar. But I’ll stick to personal experience, since that’s probably all I have to add.)
2. My least favorite aspect of the stereotypical personality of a journalist is a sense of self-importance. You start to believe you’re important because you talk to important people and write about important things. And some of it is a defense mechanism and hard to live without. Frequently, you need to challenge people - ask hard questions of the government, say. And that’s one of the most important things you can do as a journalist. A bit of bravado as armor really helps, because you will get attacked all the time. This feeling of “it’s us against the world” just crops when you’re doing accountability journalism. You need to be willing to piss anyone off, especially because everyone will be trying to manipulate you and spin their story, even in an innocent way, and you’ve got to try to stay independent. And when you get it wrong, you’re just acting like a sociopath.
3. A big part of journalism is “for the record.” You call people up and write it down - it doesn’t need to be this great investigation - and then other people can form opinions and bigger analyses out of it. There’s a lot this, and it’s pretty helpful.
That’s long enough, and I won’t add any conclusions, just leave an impression of what you deal with when you’re in it.
I stopped watching television news -- because the vast majority of 'news' programs are just entertainment with a veneer of news.
A good follow up would be "How?"
The coverage might have been factually correct, but just because they didn't like it doesn't mean the information was wrong.
Also, I once appeared in the Post and the Times in the same day when my friend and I got blown up in a steam pipe explosion (we were covered in mud but undamaged). The Times made us seem suave and hip (they mentioned my natty tie covered by mud) and the Post made us seem like victims of a tragedy. Such different pictures!
All very educational.
It was a really nice review of a show that... was cancelled.
First, know what message you want to get across, and focus on that.
Second, avoid almost all "what if" type hypothetical questions.
Third, make your own recording of any interview, and make sure the reporter is aware that you are doing so.
I was fortunate enough to be part of some media training early in my career, where the trainer (an ex-TV reporter) recorded an interview with one of the participants. The next day they played for us the video they had put together splicing different questions into the interview and editing down the responses. The resulting "interview" was a real hit piece, and the editing was done smoothly enough that it presented as a single continuous take (even with the switching camera angles). It would have been very damaging if it had been broadcast like that, and without proof that it was faked the PR effort to counteract it would have been challenging.
It's the same reason you don't talk to the police without a lawyer. Even if you're the cleverest person in the world, you're playing a game against an opponent who does this for a living and holds all the cards.
Had a nice conversation and then the story came out. He used 2 sentences from a 30 minute conversation to insert out of context in a piece totally unrelated to what we were talking about.
I’ve been on guard ever since.
I remember being amused by this article, because I actually worked there at the time, and we didn't actually have 50-60 staff to make redundant. If they'd let go of 50-60 staff from our department, we would have had a negative number of employees remaining (the actual number of employees was a bit over 40). It also reinforced my tendency to distrust journalists, who often fail to get even basic facts right.
(There was an element of truth behind the story – they did plan a significant round of job cuts, 15 years later I can't recall exactly how big, but it could have been a third of the department – it was just the numbers in the article had been impossibly inflated. And the plan was never to lay off the entire department, just a significant chunk of it.)
Daphne Caruana Galizia, Tim Pool, Andy Ngo are some who are constantly attacked both verbally and physically and thus I have bit more faith in them than I do for others "journalists".
Always keep Reverse Gell-Man Amnesia in mind.
The coverage of COVID has been more distressing than the actual disease. (Hint: epidemiologists specialize in studying the spread of diseases after the fact; asking them about an ongoing epidemic is like asking an expert on Roman architecture to build an office building.)
Here’s some example nonsense in the news. I regularly see the same story argue both points in each bullet:
- Sweden has had too many cases (deaths), and too few cases (people with antibodies).
- Last week 5% of 1000 confirmed cases died; this week 0.5% of 10,000 estimated cases died. “Experts” “baffled” but we are winning and can reopen (the same publication will flip the numbers and conclusion tomorrow)
- Antibodies might not lead to immunity, but the vaccine (which does nothing but cause your body to create antibodies) will be a panacea.
Bonus gem from yesterday:
New study shows kids don’t spread COVID. The numbers are based on studies of areas where schools and daycares were closed, and the kids were quarantined. Adults were more likely to catch COVID at work than from their quarantined kids. There was one (just one) school where the kids spread COVID amongst themselves, but that was probably an outlier. No one really understands how it happened.
Note that the high-level conclusion of this last article was probably right: kids usually don’t get symptoms, and asymptomatic people are less likely to cough / spread it. A stopped clock is right twice a day, I guess.
Just as there are individual dedicated, ethical police who believe deeply in fulfilling their mission the right way, there are good journalists out there who make the world better. But for every Ronan Farrow, there are a thousand Farhad Manjoos and Cade Metzes; for every Foreign Affairs, there are a hundred New York Times or Fox News. The net effect is the same as with police: understand that we've got a horridly imperfect system chock full of dishonest actors and engage with it on those terms. Don't talk to cops without a lawyer; don't talk to a journalist without a PR person and/or a specific plan for what you're getting out of the exchange and how to protect yourself from exploitation[1].
The Internet has greatly accelerated this trend. Pre-Internet, if by some miracle you managed to get enough honest, intelligent people together in a single paper, you could establish a culture of journalistic ethics under the aegis of the slack afforded by your local monopoly on distribution. But in the Internet era, you need to be fully competitive on the terms defined by the market, which, as described above, don't point towards honest, ethical reporting at all.
The tragedy with journalism is that government is usually a useful tool to address this problem: well-crafted regulation can shape incentives such that you don't need to rely on wishing for good cops, which is the direction that police reform discussions are taking. A heavy government hand, however, is anathema to the role that journalists are supposed to play in modern society, so this tool is off the table.
I've thought about this for a very long time, and I don't know how to solve this.
[1] This obviously doesn't apply in narrow cases like "observation from man on the street"
Advertising means the consumers aren't customers to be served but eyeballs to be harvested and served up.
The New York Times didn’t have one for most of its history, though they had one from 2003 to 2017. Other cash-strapped newspapers have been removing or weakening the position too (eg the Washington post replaced their ombudsman position with a “readers’ representative” position; the guardian have a public editor who spends most of their time on holiday). Some broadcasters (eg npr, pbs) do have public editors.
Neither of them can afford 200k a year for either a public editor or ombudsman?
It also seems likely that there would be other costs than the salary of a public editor: typically they would have a column which costs space on paper and the results of the editor’s opinions on ethics could increase other costs for the paper (higher standards, more discarded stories, being slower to print because of higher standards, possibly higher employee turnover or hiring difficulties or exposure to lawsuits)
Forget the rest, the NYTimes and the WaPo can certainly afford a team of public editors, if nothing else but for the long-term credibility of their own institutions, never mind the side benefit of keeping them honest.
[0]: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2016/01/28/the-fake-because/
That's a really toxic model. Such editors/managers inevitably get toxic levels of abuse from a frustrated public (and suffer bad burnout and terrible real life consequences), bad things keep happening regardless and overall trust by the public goes down.
It's hard to describe how bad these things can get out of nowhere without having been through some of it or seeing it yourself. But, having your real name attached to posts that are against certain political topics or narrives, can be borderline-lethal in 2020, and I can't blame him for what he's chosen to do. There's been plenty of scary situations and chilling effects in the past, and they're obviously only getting worse recently.
He's scared, and rightfully so.
Confounding factors are the subject is self-insulating and it breaks traditional party lines. Also, people who experienced that Tuesday are exceptionally good at avoiding it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23571449 ... I certinally was.
> The saner and wiser a person is, the less likely they are to contribute content. The design of the web selects for morons with neither any reputation to lose, nor foresight to worry.
Absolutely.
EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_American_wri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Assassinated_American...
E.g. I have written a bunch of outlandish stuff in my comment history, and some of it would cause people a lot of offense. Enough for them to want to call my employer out of some motivation and escalate to some sort of public/twitter witch hunt. But I promise you, I am not a bad person, and would not hurt a fly. That is the part that's missing here. Reasonable, innocent people are potentially being treated as if they're inciting violence.
There are many problems with the way the Internet works. Having anonymous people with nothing to lose broadcasting political opinions and threats is one of them. This creates anonymous angry mob which is very successful at silencing interesting authors and ruining lives of those who have even slightly controversial thoughts.
I don't know what the solution is. It's not clear to me more anonymity is going to solve anything. I believe the world would be a better place if you had to work to have your opinion heard. Do something interesting, work in certain industry for a few years, achieve something, live through something. Just because you are able to make an account on a website doesn't make what you have to say in any way interesting or worthwhile.
It's also unavoidable in 2020 to be doxxed eventually if you have a lot of enemies, unless you take care not to publish any personal details and hide your identity with the best methods available from the beginning. But when you make it easy to identify you with details such as those on the RationalWiki page, all bets are off and it's a bit late to mourn now.
I'm a moderator on Reddit for a gaming related television-show-turned-into-internet-streaming company with various shows and format.
The related circle jerk subreddit is very vocal and after some minor discussions about normal moderator actions of removing insulting posts, it kind of spiraled out of control and all of a sudden, lots of postings on the circle jerk appear, targeting me.
Somewhat amusing in the beginning but some of those posts were somewhat disturbing enough to let me actually consider for the first time how much information is out there for identifying me or persons in my personal circle.
My real name is easy enough to find out (I never tried to hide it) but it is kind of generic enough to have lots of hits so you can't go from there to where I live or work. But for other people which might even have different personas on the internet, this can be much more difficult.
Was certainly a chilling moment and this only on the topic of something completely apolitical.
I see a dead comment has cited "racial science" and "conservatives", seemingly out of nowhere. Has Scott written something "controversial" that I missed? Something that would offend the left wing?
If so, I can well believe that NYT would take it into their heads to write a semi-hit-piece on someone they perceive to be some sort of Jordan Peterson type.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200617034621/https://slatestar...
It's not like a large % of the NYT readers are going to know straight away that no one exists with the name used in the article deviate from it at all?
Some simplistic possibilities:
1. Never.
2. Always.
3. Don't, if they're a 'good' person. Do, if they're a 'bad' person.
My theory is that it's a sliding scale, depending on one's judgement of the following:
Where does this person fit on the public/private scale? The more public a person, the less right to privacy.
How influential is this person? The more influential, the less right to privacy.
How much of what brought them into public interest was of their own choice?
What threats might the person come under if the name is revealed. The greater the threat, the more right to privacy. Also, are these threats physical, economic, or social?
How sophisticated is the person? Do they know what reporters do for a living? Do they understand the conventions of "off the record" and "pre-interview negotiations"?
I'd like to see more discussion of this and less of "cancel my subscription."
If it's about a blog and its content, I don't see what is won by adding the name of the author if they don't agree. Quite the opposite literally in this case.
By any possible scale, Scott's real identity deserves less publicity than Banksy's.
The "cancel my subscription" wave is well warranted, because that's the only vote people have with the NYTimes.
HN title as of this writing: "I Am Deleting The Blog"
I propose we change the HN title to match the original title. If length is a problem, then I propose "NYT About To Doxx Me, So I Am Deleting The Blog".
The Times has explored and admitted its error.[2]
________________________________
Notes:
1. Generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor
2. One of numerous articles: "Times Should Lose Pulitzer From 30's, Consultant Says" (2003) https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/us/times-should-lose-puli...
It’s not like their ethos were suddenly made worse in 2018 with Sulzberger.
As a bonus, that same columnist argued for arming a Kurdish-Shiite anti-Sunni militia in 2005 and fawning over a civil war.
He’s got three Pulitzer Prizes.
The cream of the crop.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/go-ahead-ruin-my-...
I mean, obviously it's not the case that newspaper policy demands identifying sources. The Times writes about anonymous people all the time. If this article about a pseudonymous blog was going to stand alone, they'd run it.
My strong suspicion is that they have a juicier story about why Someone Important is writing a pseudonymous blog.
And that changes things, IMHO.
Again, the idea that journalists routinely burn their sources as a matter of course is clearly wrong. Source anonymity is inviolate, especially at the level of papers like the Times. They just don't do what is being alleged here.
If they want to tell us who he is, it's because his identity IS the story.
The story that does or doesn’t get published will tell us how central his identity is, I suppose!
I'll say it the last time: what is being alleged here (that the Times is "doxxing" someone for political reasons) simply Does Not Happen in real journalism. It just doesn't.
Journalists, as people, make mistakes. I suppose I would be equally incredulous if I hadn’t read so much of what Scott has written. And I think you have a very good point about “real journalism,” which is why I’m very interested to see what happens.
Second: you don't actually know that. All we have is what Scott tells us he understood the reporter to have represented as the subject of the story. Reporters don't break promises of anonymity, but they routinely lie to sources if they think it will get them to disclose facts worth reporting.
All I'm saying here is that if this is escalating to a "shut it all down" level, there's pretty clearly more afoot here than a mere unmasking.
[0]: "The Times sometimes agrees not to identify people who provide information for our articles...Sources often fear for their jobs or business relationships — sometimes even for their safety."
[1] "If compassion or the unavoidable conditions of reporting require shielding an identity, the preferred solution is to omit the name and explain the omission. (That situation might arise, for example, in an interview conducted inside a hospital or a school governed by privacy rules.) "
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/reader-center/how-the-tim...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/guidelines-on-in...
I've seen the New York Times omit the names of refugees who face persecution in their home countries. (I'm trying to find an example, but it's surprisingly hard to search for.) This is a different case, but I think it's broadly comparable.
I'm pretty sure that is exactly the "possibly detrimental for those he treats" I was referring to. I'm not sure why you sat he didn't state that, unless you're referring to how you dropped the "possibly" from my statement, but that would make your reply a non-sequitur, so I don't think that makes sense either.
> If there was a serious medical ethical concern here about just his full name he would never have used his real first names to begin with - no medical professional would take such a risk.
Not everyone publishes their middle name. Without that middle name being fairly public and a little foreknowledge about that being likely what was done, there's little chance of finding the correct person.
Hell, my first name is a very rare spelling, and middle name is common, probably about as common as his. You won't find a single thing about me searching for that combo, because I've never included my middle name in anything that would be published online.
There's also the possibility he doesn't go by his first name. He could go my his middle name (Alex) and we that would also confound most searching. He didn't even specifically say whether the first and middle name were in the correct order, so you can't really assume anything from that, since they are both very common first names and he was trying to maintain some anonymity.
As a simple example, his full name could be Scott Alexander Papageorgio, and I doubt you would get very far finding what you thought were useful results from any variations of Scott and Alexander.
As to the name, I don't think we really need a convoluted hypothetical - it's not his first brush with exposure and people have found his full name before. He was lightly pseudonymous and aware of it.
Scott's blog will be sorely missed. Some of the best writing on the internet.
Given the current climate and the pretty safe assumption that the NYT author knows that the general public would never read through SSC (because the posts are too long and you actually have to make an effort to "consume" that blog) make me suspicious of the "positive" piece.
That sounds like the reporter was buttering him up before dropping the hit-piece.
While this was pointed at government corruption, this had some kind of utility. When it was used to find a neglected neighborhood bistro of thirty years that was going under due to the loss of foot traffic, this was laudable.
Now it seems as if any sort of secret at all is fair game, and the more you want to hide something the more they want at it, whether or not it is of value, privacy be damned. Right now, these secrets are hunted, devoured, and excreted for the howling Twitter mob to fixate on in a permanent hurricane of outrage, bashing its way up and down the coast, as a result of the temperature of the Internet climbing up, and it has been incredibly convenient for these journos to at least try to guide the storm to whatever targets they've had their eye on in the long march through the institutions, but the collateral damage is immense. We're seeing it here.
I can understand the anger at the NYT journalist's stance here, but I suppose I would say that we only have the blog author's view at the moment. I can think of situations where exposing an identity would be justified.
Sure, but is this one of them?
I can think of situations where killing a guy would be justified - that doesn't mean it's justified in any other circumstance, though.
I don't know - I don't know who the guy is, or what the journalistic justification may be. Hopefully the journalists's editor does.
I mean no insult to you personally, but I think the worse a journalist is the less money there is to pay them with. Pride is still free though. I'd like to see journalists practice some professional humility.
As citizens, we should encourage journalism as a profession and value it.
I was just in SSC's Open Thread a few hours ago opening comment permalinks in tabs to respond to them.
That NYT writer should be fired. I hope Scott recovers soon. SSC is my favorite place on the Web.
I don't want it to be the norm for any journalistic organ/employee to function/perform the way this one did. There are many ways to accomplish adoption of that norm, including (but certainly not limited to) firing people who do that.
When being a responsible journalist is your job, it's not unreasonable to expect to get fired for not being a responsible journalist.
I’m very happy to live in a country where you cannot fire people just like that, even if they do something wrong. You have to give people second chances. I don’t get this “fire them” approach to anything wrong something does.
People make mistakes. That just happens. To always fire people because of that makes no sense to me.
If I was a janitor and spilled a bucket of water on the floor it would be wrong and cruel to fire me for that mistake. On the other hand, if I saw a customer come in to our store and said "Yo customer, we hate you, get out and never come back!" And then grabbed a bucket of water and dumped it on the customer... Well then I think firing me would make sense. The former was a mistake. The latter is an intentional and deliberate bad action.
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/comm...
If people don’t accept that they made I mistake then yeah, that’s an issue – and one where firing should again become an option, sure (basically that unwillingness to accept that is then the second offense).
I do agree that the situation here is bit more complex since the public is involved.
This seems serious enough that, I think, the challenge is more about the NYT making transparent their process, their decisions and what they did.
I think that’s even more valuable than just firing someone. They should investigate which processes, guidelines, rules, etc. contributed to that behavior and how and wether they plan to change that. They should outline what they communicated to that reporter. They should apologize.
I want an explanation and improvements, not someone to be fired. Also because I think more often than not people who actually did make a mistake are unlikely to do that again.
They could be the problem and actually toxic, sure, that’s always a risk. But I think that’s ok.
I don't think this is a "that one writer" issue; I don't think Scott is saying this is a "that one writer" issue. Any such choice is down to newspaper-wide policy.
From a political point of view, anonymous (and more critcally, independent) bloggers are a threat to the (local/global) establishment's propaganda organs. This may in fact be editorial policy, as you suggest. It doesn't matter of the blogger is 'friendly' in terms of political views.
I think the problems with journalism are bigger than this one writer. Simultaneously, I would like to see NYT take a stance against its writers doing what this one did to Scott.
> I don't think Scott is saying this is a "that one writer" issue.
Point taken, but I didn't claim to speak for him.
> Any such choice is down to newspaper-wide policy.
Agreed. I wrote another comment in response to 'rachelshu, adjusting my original comment to something more reflecting my actual views.
It's not the writer anyhow. It's the editor and probably a policy, though I'm sure they'd have no trouble bending their policy if they wanted to.
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23611133
That said: I don't understand how I'm repeating a mistake here. "Cancel culture" has become a problem because people get fired from their day jobs (or suffer other consequences) for opinions not pertaining to their day jobs, which are expressed outside their work hours.
In contrast, the NYT writer engaged in crappy professional conduct.
I agree that the writer is not the root problem. I've changed my mind about whether firing should happen; other solutions addressing journalistic incentives, or this journalist's team, or whatever, would probably go further.
Scott Alexander has been giving more information in the SSC subreddit, including the comment I've quoted below. Having read what he has to say, I've changed my mind, and don't think the journalist should be fired.
https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
> I honestly got the impression that the reporter liked my blog and wanted to write a nice story about it.
> When I told him I didn't want my real name in the article, he talked to his editor and said the editor said it was NYT policy all articles must include real names.
> I got the impression he felt bad about it but had spent weeks writing the article and wasn't going to throw out all that work just for my sake.
> When I threatened to take down the blog, I think he did the decision-theoretically correct move of not giving in to threats.
> Overall I think this is a story about the NYT having overly strict real-name policies that unfortunately put a guy in a bad situation.
https://freebeacon.com/media/well-known-blogger-shuts-down-s...
NYT has a history of selective doxxing.
Journalism is broken. What was news in its imagined golden age, and what news is now are very different things. The essential ingredient that makes a story news is conflict. If there is no conflict, there is no news story. Without it, it's a puff or a think piece, or a listicle, or comment, it's not news. What's missing in news is the legitimacy of the conflict.
The problem, and the reason editors and journalists themselves can't understand it, is that what people popularly call "fake news," is not necessarily about fabricated facts. Reporters and editors will say stuff like a quote is a quote, those were your own words (basically) and you don't get to define context or how people interpret them.
The problem of "fake news" is that it is not necessarily the facts, but the conflict itself that is manufactured. Setting up the subject of a story in opposition to someone who doesn't have standing in their field, elevating fringe views to being on an equal shared platform with mainstream ones, propping up a weak straw man to represent unpopular opinions vs. a protected establishment figure, are all examples of standard news items that people reject as fake. Outing Scott Alexander's personal identity is a way to set up a manufactured conflict between the individual psychiatrist as an imperfect man, and a mob who see his charitable views as equipping their opposition.
What once may have been an interesting battle of ideas among public intellectuals is now just a series of predictable fixed fights, using the same hackneyed tropes, and the same story line over and over again of victims and their oppressors, with the same stock underdog characters triumphing over the same cast of cliche villains. Throwing people to an angry mob is manufactured conflict - and therefore I would argue, fake news.
It would be just as harmlessly entertaining as professional wrestling if it weren't the gate keeping institution for public discourse being reduced to a propaganda mouthpiece for an ideology that is predicated on belief in permanent struggle and conflict for its own sake.
Alexander is one of the more popular writers online and his view is important and essential to public discourse. It would be a shame to see him cancelled too, but it is a predictable stage in a path we've marched down before. If nothing else, his blog should be seen as a canary for some grim inevitabilities to come.
Everyone: please take a minute & send a very polite email to the NYT so we can get SlaterCodex back.
See Scott’s response on Reddit: https://imgur.com/PlXBJZI
Not a great time to be part of the grey tribe right now.
~~~
SlateStarCodex shutting down in direct response to the hubris/disregard of one NYT reporter hungry for a story. This parasitic appetite for airtime come-what-may approach to journalism needs to be checked. There's no reason the writer couldn't leave the real full name out of the article once requested and with legitimate concern aired by the person hes naming.
I'm glad "Scott" is taking this stance if only for the fact that it puts the onus of hard/difficult decisions back on the NYT - i.e. why despite legitimate concerns are your writers comfortable doxxing people?
The key highlight for me -
"When I expressed these fears to the reporter, he just said that me having enemies was going to be part of the story. He added that “I have enemies too”. Perhaps if he was less flippant about destroying people’s lives, he would have fewer.
(though out of respect for his concerns, I am avoiding giving his name here.)
After considering my options, I decided on the one you see now. 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."
This is especially important to ask when a big complaint of the NYT staff about the Tom Cotton is editorial was that it was directly endangering their safety.
Apparently the NYT does not have the same concern about other’s safety.
The mainstream P2P communication is your Uncle of whatsapp and random people on Twitter. Journalism might not always be great but I'll take it over that.
Reporting news and investigating is very complicated, so complicated that yes some people are professionals and paid to do it. This is type of job where people easily say "why they didn't say that", "why they reported it this way", "I would have done it better", truth is it's not that simple. I personally think it's a difficult job to do and try not to diminish it.
A lot of what they publish nowadays is often "technically correct" but misleading to the point of being dangerous. That, combined with the philosophy of the younger journalists working there to refuse having any contrasting opinions published (I say this as someone under 30), and it's clear that the NYT feeds off of bipartisan hatred and conflict in order to make money. It's astounding that the same practices they criticize others of they engage in themselves. The nation is becoming ever more deeply polarized, and I put much of the blame on the NYT and similar publications.
It’s not neutral. A direct competitor is not a neutral arbiter. $NYT is one of the hottest tech stocks this year.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-05-28/five-t...
> One that's doing phenomenally well is the New York Times itself. It's well known that many big tech companies (or at least their shares) are booming amid the Covid crisis. But so far this year, the NYT is doing better than names like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Of the tech megacaps, only Amazon is doing better. If it hasn't been clear before, it should be obvious to everyone now that the NYT is a tech company and a tech stock. It benefits from network effects and accelerating economies of scale like any other tech company. It's booming in the podcast space. It's got popular apps for cooking and games. It's even rolling out its own proprietary platform for online ad targeting next year, cutting off third-party players.
I wasn't aware that the NYT was considered equivalently and oppositely biased. The articles I have read have not put up any red flags for me, but I'm not closed off to the possibility that I've missed the signs or haven't read the right articles. Hence my question.
I take it you think virtually all their reporting is sufficiently biased so as not to be considered trustworthy?
This is how every newspaper that is reliant on ad views for revenue operates. You'll notice the ones that depend more on subscriptions, like Financial Times and WSJ, are noticeably less clickbaity or intentionally provocative.
Also, I'll go out on a limb and guess that you work at Facebook - aren't you guilty of the same thing? Sowing ideological division to increase "engagement"?
These are the same journalists who are coworkers with Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, Ross Douthat, etc.?
Or, wait, are you referring to Bret Stephens himself? https://twitter.com/wajahatali/status/1268973742811684864
The Columbia Journalism Review does a lot of "reporting on reporting," and has a very high profile in their field. I CC'd them on my email to the NYT section editor.
One that is surely unexpected by the scumbag reporter. I predict the reporter will be forced to back off, he'll keep his job and go on shitting on other people's lives for a living, but SSC gets to keeps his privacy, for a while longer.
Stuff like this just reaffirms my decision. Good riddance.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-i...
By the way, the Post Gazette seems to have stolen that article, so maybe don't drive business their way. https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1274747185507246081?s=20
Instead, here is Taibbi's substack. If you're off a mind, a subscription is only $40 per year, but the stolen article is nevertheless free. https://taibbi.substack.com/
I am shocked and saddened this is where we are as a society. Literally one man's opinion distressed so many people, in such a way, they felt the need to raise an army and then descend on their employer and demand they remove, recant and say it will never happen again?
We have arrived at a time in place where you cannot have your own opinion without fear of the rage mob coming after you.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
George Orwell
-1984
> Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants. But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence.
Setting aside whether using the Insurrection Act to respond to rioting and looting is an appropriate response, it is quite clear that Tom Cotton is not advocating the use of the the military to "suppress political dissent", which would obviously violate the First Amendment.
People on this forum are usually quick to remark that free speech is powerful and important and worth protecting even at great cost to individuals. Property damage caused by a small number of violent actors falls into this category, especially when the majority of the protests were peaceful and actively discouraged property damage.
So yes, Cotton's plan would have served to suppress political dissent and therefore probably violated the first amendment (and the third). Printing a sitting senator advocating for violating multiple constitutional rights without a disclaimer to that effect is a disservice to nyts readers.
Do you believe deployment of the national guard won't have a chilling effect on people protesting? If you want to protect the speech (or in this case assembly) of the many, you have to be willing to suffer the consequences of the few who will abuse that right.
Otherwise, implicitly, what you're saying is that (a relatively small amount of) property is more valuable than the right to protest an unjust government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Rubicon
For a more contemporary quote from battlestar galactica:
Adama: There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.
There is a spectrum between peaceful protesting and violent insurrection. Burning down police stations, murdering police officers, and stealing rifles from police vehicles is very, very far down the line to violent insurrection. In retrospect I don’t think we were quite there, but we were getting close to it. And ultimately, one of the purposes of the military is to protect our republic from violent insurrection.
Keep in mind when answering that in most cases, escalations to violence by protests were in response to unnecessary escalating by police forces. We have to evaluate so called bad actors in the context of the response to them.
Are you confident that armed statehouse protests wouldn't have devolved to violence if met with teargas and rubber bullets? Are you confident that police protests would have had similar levels of violence if not pushed towards it by police?
By “attacking symbols of the state”, you’re referring to burning down police stations and stealing police rifles from patrol vehicles. Those aren’t “symbols”, they are actual facilities and equipment. In the Seattle incident with the rifles, one of the rioters even opened fire on an abandoned patrol vehicle.
So yes, I would say stealing weapons from a public agency and opening fire with those weapons is much closer to “insurrection” than peacefully carrying your own weapons. For that matter, so do the killings of David Dorn and especially Dave Patrick Underwood.
> Keep in mind when answering that in most cases, escalations to violence by protests were in response to unnecessary escalating by police forces.
It’s clear that your biases are leading you to a very specific judgment of what happened and who is to blame, to the point that you’re bending over backwards to make excuses for arson and murder. To name a more recent incident, the police were not in any way responsible for the act of burning down a Wendy’s in Atlanta; certainly not to the same degree as the extremists who actually burned it down.
But that all distracts from the point. I find your views absurd and morally disgusting, but I would never dream of trying to stop you from expressing them. If you were an elected official who represented the interests and attitudes of some broad group of constituents, I would find value in hearing what you had to say even if I found it reprehensible.
Dorn's killing wasn't obviously connected to protests, and Underwood was killed by far-right "Boogaloo Boys"[0]. Who would be explicitly and vehemently unwelcome at most BLM protests. I'd once again ask you to take the time to re-examine your preconceptions here.
> So yes, I would say stealing weapons from a public agency and opening fire with those weapons is much closer to “insurrection” than peacefully carrying your own weapons.
You've missed the point. I'll reiterate in more detail. There's a respect given to white right-wing protestors carrying your own weapons, both by police and many people that isn't extended to the BLM protests.
For example, you claim that they were "peacefully carrying weapons". Let's ignore for a moment the question of whether "peacefully carrying weapons" is even possible[1], but instead focus on what that respect means.
Most importantly, police actively de-escalate when dealing with armed protestors, but actively escalated with BLM groups. If you take the time to watch videos, you'll see that the large protests are mostly peaceful and self-policing. It's only once police escalate, using weapons and force protestors to break up and lose the civility that was present.
At that point you no longer have a protest but a confused, scared mob. Your solution is to further escalate to requesting military intervention. Mine is to treat unarmed black protestors the same way you treat armed white ones: don't escalate in the first place. Let them protest, peacefully assemble, and leave. In locations where police have allowed that to happen, almost without fail protests have been peaceful, only escalating in direct response to new examples of police violence (Atlanta).
> If you were an elected official who represented the interests and attitudes of some broad group of constituents, I would find value in hearing what you had to say even if I found it reprehensible.
I'm not clear what the point of saying this is. I'm not saying anything about any representatives, not that they should be silenced. If anything, I'm suggesting you listen to even more people: directly listen to those who are oppressed and aren't represented. In the words of Dr. King, "A riot is the voice of the unheard." When you see one, take some time to listen. Not to the system which is clearly not doing a good job of listening, but directly to the people who felt the need to riot.
[0]: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-17/far-righ...
[1]: Consider that brandishing is a crime in many jurisdictions and open carry isn't legal everywhere. Open carry is an implicit threat, and calling it "peaceful" implies that there's a sort of peaceful intimidation which seems like a questionable premise. Intimidation basically requires the threat of force or harm.
The tactic of openly carrying firearms during protest marches was pioneered by the Black Panthers and there have, in fact, been a number of predominantly black and pro-BLM open carry marches since the killing of George Floyd. There was one over the weekend in Oklahoma.
> Your solution is to further escalate to requesting military intervention.
This is a straw man. To reiterate, my position is that Sen. Cotton’s proposal of invoking the Insurrection Act was a premature but understandable suggestion. I disagree with it but especially given the precedent of the exact same measures being taken during the 1992 Rodney King riots, it wasn’t an unconscionable suggestion and it was perfectly reasonable for the NYT to publish it.
In other words, my position is that it’s justifiable for the NYT to publish an oped neither of us agree with. Your position is that arson is a legitimate form of political protest.
I'm unsure in what sense you mean justifiable. If you mean "rationally explainable from a set of observations" then yes. If you mean "morally justifiable", I don't believe I've made any claim to that effect, and once more I'd ask that you examine what led you to believe such a thing.
I previously responded to this at length, but I think we're leaning into territory that dang would prefer we not. So I'll leave it at that, with two final requests:
First that you take some time to actually listen to the protestors and their complaints. Second, that you look into the use of the Insurrection Act in the US, and ask yourself why since 1965 five of the six times it was invoked were to put down civil rights protests.
I have. Please examine your assumption that I haven't.
However, I'm not the one conflating the protesters with the people committing violent acts. The evidence I've seen appears to indicate that most of the violence has not been carried out by protesters, but rather from a variety of extremists who are trying to exploit their cause. I've seen groups of protesters forming perimeters to guard riot police who got separated from their formations, or seizing vandals and instigators and physically shoving them into the police lines so they can be removed from an otherwise peaceful protest.
Maybe you didn't know that. Maybe you thought the rioting and violence was all at the hands of BLM protesters. You definitely didn't seem to know the history of demonstrators openly carrying rifles. But that all leaves you in a very poor position to be misrepresenting my own statements to me directly and asking me to educate myself about things I'm better informed on than you seem to be.
You are repeatedly asserting the opposite: that "riots are the language of the unheard" (rather than, rioters are bad actors using otherwise legitimate protests as cover), that open-carry protests are something only white people do, and so forth.
> The question I'm asking is not whether we know those things, but if you honestly believe, after having read Tom Cotton's op Ed, that his preference is for the national guard to go in and work with protestors to help control violent groups, or if instead his goal was to quell legitimate protests.
Neither.
Yes, we've been wrong more than once.
Note: that's exactly what the Boston Tea Party did. Protesting by destroying things that do not belong to you has a long, celebrated history in America.
That's wrong. Regardless of how you feel about the tactics used by the protesters, their dissent is clearly political in nature, and Cotton was advocating stopping their demonstrations with the military. It's a terrible mistake to misunderstand or sugar-coat his message and you shouldn't do it.
Calling the burning of buildings, the vandalism of public buildings and monuments, and the violence we've seen "political in nature" is really quite something. It's very revealing in terms of what the end goal is.
I wonder what "end goal" you believe has been revealed, beyond the obvious: the reduction in unjustified police violence that is the subject of the protests. My sense is that you might have misinterpreted my comment.
Protesting police abuses is a political act, i.e., relating to the government or the public affairs of a country. This is true whether you're talking about a purely nonviolent demonstration or one that gets completely out of control.
> ...it is quite clear that Tom Cotton is not advocating the use of the the military to "suppress political dissent"...
Eh, I'm not totally convinced. The devil is in the details, and there have been many cases recently where clearly peaceful protesters were treated like rioters when it was convenient to some of Cotton's allies.
This, of course, is not what he actually said - but it's what you heard that he said. Because that is the nature of the time that we're in, and why what Orwell said is relevant.
This is false, unless you're contesting he did not literally write "we should use the military to suppress political dissent" in that exact sequence of words.
I cannot figure out whether you don't think deploying troops in cities under the Insurrection Act counts as "using the military," whether stopping the protests is not "suppression," or whether you're suggesting the protests should not be defined as "political dissent." All these things are false.
The relevant Orwell quote would seem to be "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
The rest of your argument is a careless strawmanning, or projection, since the words on the page have actual meaning, words which you can put in front of your nose at your own pleasure.
I question whether you've actually read his editorial.
I'm not sure what you think my argument is, since you appear to be conducting a separate but closely related debate entirely in your own mind.
To circle back to the original point of contention, using the military to suppress political dissent, the course Cotton discussed in his op ed (and which you accused evgen of making up), is using the military to suppress political dissent whether or not the protesters are peaceful, whether or not you think the protesters' message is legitimate, and whether or not the troops do anything more than stand in the street looking threatening.
(perhaps we're in violent agreement on these points, in which case I don't understand your objection to evgen's comment, except as a reflexive action)
That one man's opinion was that we should raise an army and then descend on me and my friends.
Paradox of Tolerance.
Maybe you and your friends are doing something wrong. Maybe I should be able to learn about an alternate opinion, and then decide that the opinion is dumb, using my own brain and reasoning.
Do you not see how dangerous it is to stop people from discussing a topic openly and freely? What happens when this censorship and attempt at controlling the narrative is aimed at you? Do you want to be the recipient of this treatment?
"The Change We Need" (by Barack Obama)
"A Partisan Impeachment, a Profile in Courage" (by Mike Pence)
"I Can Defeat Trump and the Clinton Doctrine" (by Tulsi Gabbard)
"Blame the Fed for the Financial Crisis" (by Ron Paul)
"How Short-Termism Saps the Economy" (by Joe Biden)
"Why I Support the Ryan Roadmap" (by Sarah Palin)
"Why Americans Are So Angry" and "Trump Is the Worst Kind of Socialist" (by Bernie Sanders)
"Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders" (by Elizabeth Warren)
Readers of the Journal typically value these pieces as the newsworthy opinions of important figures, even if they disagree with the authors and the politics therein quite vehemently. Very few readers would mistake these pieces' publication for an endorsement, or for depraved and wanton profit-seeking. Rather, publication of these opinions is itself a form of journalism.
Readers of the Times today, however, seem to expect that the ethics of the Times ought to be driven by the Times waging total war on their common political enemies, and that to do otherwise is an offense against decency. The Times does a good job of waging such a war in the general case, sometimes quite laudably; when it does make its exceptions, however, allowing things like the Cotton editorial, it has generally been in the service of Journalism as well, communicating the newsworthy opinions of important figures.
You should not fear, my erstwhile Times-reading comrade! All signs indicate that the Times has capitulated, and your victory over the forces of Journalism has been secured.
(edit: Added the Bernie Sanders and Warren editorials to the list)
What makes this matter? Precisely, why?
Does not the radical character of this editorial highlight, as starkly as ever, that this is grossly at odds with the official opinion of the Grey Lady?
Do you somehow impute a net persuasive power to its appearance in those pages? Do you therefore believe the publication presents an increased risk that such a scheme will be carried out? How?
Do you perhaps believe that many dangerous racists will find themselves emboldened by its publication, as if racists with a military-police fetish were notorious for subscribing to the Times and justifying their opinions with what is written on its pages? I think not, sir, though you may find them watching Fox.
The Times could write a thousand opinion columns to their decent readers, warning that Republicans aspire to quash protests with the military; their combined weight would be as nothing compared to the Republican himself telling you in his own words, putting to rest the possibility of doubt.
The NYT operates on links, this is not cable news. Of course it will be shared on FB and elsewhere, so not getting your point at all.
As for the final point, I think there’s a reasonable debate to be had there! I don’t know exactly where I stand on it, I personally find the piece disturbing and it crosses the line in a functioning democracy. However, it certainly informed me beyond a doubt to Cotton’s and his colleagues’ opinions, so I just have to trust others felt similarly.
I began to write by discussing one of those pieces in the WSJ as a moral equivalent or worse, discussing how I would like to say that no reasonable person could disagree — yet in fact, I must admit that they could.
But forget that. My real point is about journalism.
We are met, on one side, by those like Cotton, who fête thuggish, authoritarian, militaristic oppression, as you are well aware. It is one threat to our freedom. Journalism by itself will not save us, of course, but at the same time, I do not see how we can be saved without journalism.
But those who oppose it, especially the journalists? They are cut from grain of Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy. Did you learn in your history lessons about the Red Scare? There were once bona fide Communist spies in our nation's government, in great number, and he set out to bring them down — and yet, when we speak today of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and when we speak of McCarthyism, it is not because they saved us from these spies. It is because they fomented a culture of repression, paranoia and fear which chilled our freedoms and harmed our democracy — and, incidentally, did a poor job of rooting the spies.
Today we do not have the benefit of a single leader like McCarthy to illustrate in so concentrated a manner the disgusting nature of what is being done. We have no singular Mr. Welch to ask him, "Have you left no sense of decency?" when, for nothing more than his own self-aggrandizement, this leader smears an innocuous nobody in a Congressional hearing. But we do have the Washington Post, smearing an absolute nobody in the national press for not being refused from a non-company holiday party two years prior. We have the self-righteousness of those would-be crusaders, and we have the self-censorship for fear of bringing down their wrath.
And in particular, we save a special set of poisons, not for the overt racists, nor even for those who fail to oppose them, but for those who would dare temper their opposition with some other principle. James Bennett's true crime was poisoning the purity of his allegiance to the cause by favoring Journalism. For this he was ejected from the paper. He is far from the only one who will lose his job or be blacklisted in the purges.
So good on you and everyone else for unsubscribing in the name of purity.
The rest of the paper is generally outstanding, though they have some high profile screw ups. Can’t trust anything 100% ever, but I don’t think this incident reflects on the rest of the paper. Regular NYT subscribers (myself included) already know what they’re getting in Opinion, and I personally think it’s trash.
http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-a...
Cotton could have written a far better editorial and people would complain a lot less. I tried to read it giving him the best intentions but it didn't take long to realize that he really just wanted to send out the military to beat people up.
However, the poster is trying to put the Cotton op-Ed in the same league as fairly mild policy debates in the WSJ. I find that dangerously close to legimitizing it.
I understand you are in it, but not many people are, I would wager.
That's about when I started reading multiple sources to figure out wtf happened anywhere.
It's super prevalent. If a reporter wants to chat, tell them to fuck off.
Mediations on Moloch: https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestar...
I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup: https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestar...
Proving too Much: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/
You can blame NYT but at least they have a clear policy, whether you agree with it or not. I feel a lot of people here are reacting emotionally, as part of the SSC community.
Is the problem a journalist revealing a name, or is it virtual trolls and mobs?
1. They are professionals. SSC is a hobbyist.
2. No, I don't think they receive a lot of threats. This days people expect very very little of journalists. Many consider journos to be the lowest form of life.
Given that NYT has been happy to preserve Banksy's anonymity in their reporting, or that of Virgil Texas, their policy certainly isn't clear to me.
I enjoy reading blogs like gwern and SSC. The fact that the blog has just gone away because somebody threatened to doxx the author against his will is sad and a loss to the community.
Scott, on Reddit[1], has mentioned that there is a possibility for the blog to come back but it all depends on how things pan out in the next few months. So I hope NYT just dumps the story, apologises and reevaluate their ethics.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...
I wish journalists would come up with some professional standards and make the title licensed, like doctor or lawyer. Right now we all recognize how important journalism is but journalists themselves run the gamut from ethical investigative journalists to clickbait manufacturers. Imagine if journalists also had to adhere to the equivalent of attorney client privilege for sources.
Honestly I think it's time journalists take back some of the responsibility and importance of their roles that's been stripped by colleague and company malpractice (and the side effects of a business model twisted inside out in rapid succession), as many DO recognize their importance. But like politics any real "talk" of media quickly devolves into sports-like tribalism and never gets beyond hating the 'players' not the game itself.
CAJ particularly has done some good explanations in the past (though I haven't read it since I was forced to, in university!) https://caj.ca/Ethics
If biggest media companies were interested in upholding any ethical standards - the would have been doing that already. Allowing them to create a coalition and giving that coalition any more power would make things only worse.
I see limited to no news value in publishing his name and substantial risk of harm, but I'm a frequent reader and admirer of the blog.
I think anyone who is not a sociopath would consider this proof of a “substantial risk of harm”.
I wouldn't be opposed to the story running under a fictional name, even though that would probably not be to Scott's liking either.
In the specific case though, given a really well established pseudonymous online identity, that is the central subject of the article, the marginal utility of the additional information you can check seems uniquely low. At least if the subject is just the pseudonymous activity of the author.
At the point where the NY Times is reaching out to write an article about you, I think you have likely crossed that threshold. Scott's best move would have been to refuse an interview in the hopes that it would kill the story. But even that might not have mattered. If your goal is to be both famous/influential and pseudonymous, you probably need to work a little harder to protect your anonymity.
There's so many instances of abuse, lying and laziness that seems low standards are common through the profession and countries.
In general I tend to see them as activist, with very few exceptions of people that tries to approach truth.
Nowadays it really doesn't matter if they write for a local newspaper or WAPO, it's just so common that your default approach should be looking at every piece as propaganda.
You can't expect the journalists to uphold ethical standards when the market rewards garbage rage-inducing clickbait.
The whole point of a license is to reduce the gamut of people who can practice a profession to just those people who do it the way the license specifies. In a world such as ours, and a country such as the US, it will inevitably become the target of corruption and a position of immense power over the media. Even if it could be a good idea, I don't believe we live in a world where it would be executed in a way that maintains freedom of the press.
It probably shouldn’t be “licensing” in the sense of using state or otherwise organized violence to seek out people who violate the norms. We generally don’t teach people to punch anyone in the face who is rude. But having general standards of conduct don’t seem to bad to me.
I am on board with ethics education as a way to impart societal values. I'm pretty sure it's a component in most journalism degrees, but perhaps it should be part of early education more distinctly as well.
If you want an easy example look at this Super Micro spy chip story [2] by Bloomberg Businessweek. It's absolutely unsubstantiated [3], caused 40% drop for SM share price, but two years later it's still up.
[1] except that one time Tiel funded a lawsuit
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2018/10/22/super_micro_chinese_s...
I must admit, the ability to sway stock prices is pretty far from what I worry about when I think of bad ethics in press, but it does happen to be the kind of thing that would make licensing prone to corruption. The money influencing that kind of corruption would be right at the door of the licensing body, just waiting for the first person to crack the door open.
It's not that rogue journalist influencing stock market is bad, it's bad, but that's not the point. What really bothers me is that that there are no mechanisms on media company level to punish or at least disincentivize faulty reporting.
We encounter misinformation on a daily basis, but can't do anything about it. We can't even notice it, unless topic in question happens to fall in our area of expertise.
My optimistic side would hope that putting education in schools about misinformation and how to critically think about and analyze journalism could at least help the issue.
The AMA and bar associations are not without their issues either (they end up driving prices up since they have a monopoly on their service), but it seems to me that people don't have to worry about doctors doxxing their patients on social media or lawyers making deals behind a client's back as much. When it does happen, these professionals are usually ejected from their profession, which is a pretty big disincentive.
If you license individuals, how do you categorize what is and is not journalism, and where do you stop? Photojournalists, blogs, for fun school magazines, local newspapers? Are radio shows journalism? Youtube channels? Do I become an unlicensed journalist if they hold misinformation? Thinking of the worst case, a corrupted governing body could quietly pick and choose who they want to take penalize for not practicing with a license, or penalize them out of existence even if they have one.
That benefits big news corps while stifling open/free journalism with risk. For one example of what I mean by that but in a different industry, I will never run a website that could have users upload media in my country, because we have no safe-harbour laws. If you are at risk of penalties, many people just won't start.
Same problem with so-called fact-checking. It's politicized, which means it adds nothing over the chaotic political debate we already have, except a false veneer of objectivity.
This is possibly one of the easiest ways to create a police state if you make journalism "regulated" (i.e. government approved) ((or if you're a nutter, corporation approved))
But the people this is deliberately not recognising is bloggers. And to be honest, I'm seeing better journalism being done by (some) bloggers than (some) paid journalists now (not their fault - the business model for journalism is a mess, while the model for blogging is working).
But this obviously fails as seen in this instance (and many others). Companies have interests that do not align with the public's interest of ethical standards. Much like we've generally understood (but unfortunately not really everywhere) that letting other industries regulate themselves isn't a good idea, I don't think it's any different in the media.
Also an easy target to politicise, and dangerous to society if the far left/right end up running such a board and dictating that their opponents are wrong.
How do you prevent independent journalists selling pieces to certain outlets without unfairly placing the burden on the journalist? Is it a list of proscribed publications? How does a publication get on the list? What happens to all the "good" journalists who work for an organisation when it gets put on the list?
What, exactly, is a journalist? Does it include columnists who write opinion pieces? If not, how do you prevent an outlet from running more and more "opinion pieces" masquerading as news? If you get defrocked for doing something your employer considers highly profitable, they can just rebrand you as a columnist.
What does it mean to be licensed? What does having a licence allow you to do that you can't do without one? Is this your "press pass" allowing you to ask questions at briefings? There have been cases recently when this has been revoked on a whim. Is it just to get a byline in a printed newspaper? Again, they can rebrand unlicensed journalists as runners, and print the piece under the name of a real journalist.
Journalism is not a terminal career like medicine or law. If you get thrown out of one of those professions, you lose your livelihood. There is nothing else that you are as well trained for that pays as well. You have to start at the bottom of something else. Most journalists are not particularly well paid. Former journalists can earn as much, if not more, writing press releases and advertising copy.
A more interesting argument against doing this is considering the tradeoffs if implemented:
* e.g. the AMA has pretty successfully restricted the supply of doctors and driven the prices of medicine up,
* people are so paranoid about giving medical or legal advice they have to say things like "I'm not a doctor but... I'm not a lawyer but..."
etc.
In the case of doctors, pharmacists and lawyers,things like surgery, controlled drugs, rights of audience are easy to restrict. If you are not one and try to do the job anyway, you won't get very far.
As a client, I cannot use a partitioner who is not licensed in my jurisdiction. If I have a video consultation with a real foreign doctor, they still can't write me a prescription I can take to my local pharmacist. No matter how good the doctor is, they are made deficient by not being registered with the GMC.
A journalist writes and publishes articles about current affairs. You can't legally prevent people doing that without a catastrophic infringement of free speech.
Every day, I read articles from publications from many countries. Those articles are not made deficient by the fact that they are not written by NUJ members.
Plenty of people read and believe bunkum written by people who don't even pretend to be journalists. Sticking little "licenced by..." Logo on the real stuff won't make a difference there.
Now, for me google autocompletes "scott $REALNAME slatestarcodex", but it's not clear whether that is personalsied to me since I'm an avid slatestarcodex reader and have been googling this all over the place.
> Unfortunately, he told me he had discovered my real name and would reveal it in the article, ie doxx me.
It's not clear from the post whether there was any conversation with the journalist about this aspect of the planned article, and/or whether there were any requests not to include the person's full name.
I think most of us agree that staying well-informed is useful and important, and I'd argue that news organizations contribute effectively to that.
Blogging and tweeting are useful additional mediums, but they can't always achieve the same results as publications that have research teams, archives, experienced investigative reporters, and legal teams to defend them when they encounter powerful opposition.
It could be worth taking a pause and waiting for more details before attributing all of the blame to the NYT (or even more wildly, journalism as a whole) here.
Edit (append-only): as noted elsewhere (see child comments) there had been some two-way conversation with the journalist regarding publication of the author's name.
It could be useful to learn more about what the nature of NYT's policy on publishing real names is, and the intent and reasoning behind that.
There were; this has been made clear elsewhere. The reporter was also made aware that the blog would be shut down if it came to that, and still refused to redact OP's real name from their article.
(Allegedly, it seems that NYT general policy can allow a person to be anonymous if warranted, but it's less clear that pseudonimity is contemplated.)
Often in conflicts like this it's worth considering what the outcome of the battle will be and what the implications are.
The thread you linked to here sounds reasonable and it's good to see that it doesn't assign blame to the journalist and appreciates that they've been acting within what may be the confines of their workplace policy.
That said -- the real name policy probably exists for a reason, perhaps to ensure that subjects of news that is in the public interest find it more difficult to evade scrutiny. (edit: add word 'perhaps'; conjecture)
I'm not implying that scrutiny of the blog and community are necessarily a good thing. I honestly don't know how much influence they have. But policy changes can have lasting effects in other, potentially very different, circumstances, so I'll take a bit of time and update my comment based on this.
> When I expressed these fears to the reporter, he said that it was New York Times policy to include real names, and he couldn’t change that.
What more details are needed?
It's also possible that the article - even if hardly read today - could become relevant in future in ways that we can't currently understand.
It could be argued that deleting the blog was an attempt to influence or close down aspects of the yet-unpublished article and reporting process. In other ways it may have actually added additional context.
I am not going to post his name here as it tends to get comments deleted. Youtube will even automatically delete your comment if it contains his name (maybe even relieving his gender goes too far, I guess we will find out). If anyone doubts this you can just try it yourself. Or just believe the company's own spokesperson https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/08/tech/facebook-whistleblower-n...
His name is Eric Ciaramella for anyone else wondering. Took me a frustrating 30 minutes of googling to figure it out.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2020/06/18/look-for-...
Money quote:
> I’m with Kevin Bird. Seeing the oppressive capitalist foundations of American wealth inequality getting shaken up is a good start. It’s not quite the change we saw with the fall of the Berlin Wall, though — we’re going to need to see Wall Street dethroned from its power and influence on government to be comparable.
But even if you didn't know that ancient history, Myers is orthodox progressive, Scott is heterodox. They're natural enemies.
These two groups were never the same, and they got along only until it became obvious that the first group didn't care about facts and (according to the first group) that the second group didn't care about justice (I would say they do, but not if it means lying about facts).
we can try to help you - at least a bit - JoinDeleteMe.com
I. Rationality and Rationalization
II. Probabilism
III. Science and Doubt
IV. Medicine, Therapy, and Human Enhancement
V. Introduction to Game Theory
VI. Promises and Principles
VII. Cognition and Association
VIII. Doing Good
IX. Liberty
X. Progress
XI. Social Justice
XII. Politicization
XIII. Competition and Cooperation
[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vwqLfDfsHmiavFAGP/the-librar...
In fairness, they overtly slandered a group of schoolchildren and sent a nationwide mob after them (including celebrities who made very thinly veiled threats against them on social media). That didn’t seem to drive much ethical change within the NYT, so I don’t have much hope for this (“merely” doxxing a psychiatrist/blogger) to reform them.
This is complete nonsense. Anyone who has read SSC knows that both Scott Alexander's posts and the comments cover a very wide range of topics. Occasional mentions of scientific views of human biology that don't fit your ideological preconceptions are a dominant part of the blog/community only in your distorted perceptions.
> Some people think Charles Murray and The Bell Curve were right about everything. Some people think Islam represents an existential threat to the West. Some people think women are biologically less likely to be good at or interested in technology. ... Each of these views has adherents who are, no offense, smarter than you are. ... I disagree with most of them but don’t want to be too harsh on any of them.
These kinds of people should be kept out of "marketplace" entirely. The world is better off without blogs like this.
If you get your wish, you may be quite surprised when it turns out that you are one of those killed. Deluded ideologues who think they are virtuously persecuting the heretics are useful up to a point, but when they become inconvenient for those who are manipulating them to achieve power, they're eliminated.
- quoted anonymous source behind the White House "Op-Ed",
- used "well-connected", (but anonymous) sources reporting on the "Russia collusion" news?
I must be missing something here?
This strikes me as an off way for a mental health professional to publicly refer to his patients, even anonymously ...
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/*/slatestarcodex.com
Edit: there are some references in the comments already (didn't spot them because I missed the "More" link).
As Scott did publish his own name I don't think the GDPR would be a very sharp sword in this case.
[0] The impetus for most articles is usually the publication of a new paper, but this always seems weird because it’s really more of a hook: papers are almost always incremental progress on a problem and most of the article ends up being background and context anyway.
Originally I just believe that journalist just had a terrible understanding of IT, but when you think about it, there's no reason why it's just IT. Why would journalist have a better understanding of medicine, politics, climate, finance or any other topic covered. Basically you're left it a situation where you can only trust highly specialized publication, who hire subject matter experts and let them act as the journalist.
This raises the question: Are journalists actually required?
Depends. The alternative is bloggers.
This situation is ugly. All sorts of motives are being tossed at the journalist, here, but it may be as simple as they think they have a “scoop,” which is pure gold, for journalists (especially young ones).
That said, there are standards that journalists are supposed to meet; usually about things like the number of independent sources they use, and whatnot. It’s fairly obvious that many journalists don’t meet those standards, but they are supposed to.
We’ve all seen what happens with bloggers. There’s good ones, which are basically the same as top-quality journalists, and there are bad ones, which are nightmares that make Joseph Goebbels smirk from his lava pool.
I have been getting downright despondent over the quality of the writing in today’s journalists. I see at least three typos in pretty much every publication I read, every day. Sometimes, terrible ones, in the headline.
I think it’s a shame that the first ones out the door were the editors.
Thing is, they make ministers and sometimes entire French governments fall when they uncover corruption scandals, they have an impeccable reputation for protecting their sources, and they publish scoop after scoop after scoop. The value they offer is unique, you won't be able to read the information they publish anywhere else, and I believe this is how they maintain their integrity and value to the public.
The issue is that this would apply to bloggers; even more than journalists. Bloggers chase clicks. A quick shufti at the junk that populates Clickbait Row, in any site, will show what drivel people will publish, chasing clicks.
Looks like an opening for a new model of journalism begins to appear - something that captures the grassroots spirit of blogs, but filters out biased, disingenious and clickbait stuff, traces provenance of information and allows for fact-checking from multiple angles. Of course, the problem is genuinely hard because any startup that attempts this without new ideas about how the thing will be financed will fall prey to the same incentives as the conventional media and fail to make a difference.
1) The journalist's work is sometime a soul-crushing effort to turn complex things that can't really be made simple into a readable summary. I cover Quantum tech as someone who has at least a grasp of physics: it's insanely difficult.
2) Journalists that behave like the ones you describe, are bad for the whole profession. What you describe is a systemic problem in journalism, which I think it's especially bad in the big newsrooms of big newspapers that are struggling to survive or have still to figure out a proper business model for their future.
That said, I think there are a lot journalist who, like yours truly, tend to stick to what they've studied and know. I would never write about medicine, but I know I'm able to write about tech avoiding the complete lack of knowledge some colleagues show. The real problem: this works for me as a freelancer. Staff writers are considered fungible, and they have to adapt to whatever needs to be written.
Sorry for the sparse thoughts, I have to much in my mind about this, but not enough time to put it down properly right now. I still wanted to chime in, though. :)
P.s. Journalism schools are also part of the problem. They form a cohort of people who think they can do exactly that: write about anything. It's bullshit, and it does not work well for the category. The best colleagues I know all come from very different study fields, and they sort of fell into journalism by chance.
This.
100% this.
(I spent about a decade in the trenches as first a part-time then full-time tech journalist -- wrote a column for the UK Computer Shopper for several years -- and the reason CS's feature quality stayed high was because the editors recruited techies who could write and trained them in the basics of journalism, rather than hiring generalist journalists and expecting them to pick up a CS degree by osmosis.)
If you are writing from your own knowledge rather than attributing your information to others, I would argue that you aren't really practicing journalism. (There's nothing wrong with that, I just think it's something else.)
I don’t totally understand why, but I think they were a little unclear on what most scientists want, which is more like checking language and details (a lot of words that seem synonymous aren't in technical contexts) than controlling the overall message.
https://www.sciencemediacenter.de/en/
for journalists to quickly find an expert to ask.
Journalists gather, assemble and interpret information, and sometimes they build the dreaded 'narrative' for the reader. In this case they must not only _source_ knowledge but consume and comprehend it - at which point they _are_ operating in the specific domain of the information they gathered.
Different knowledge requires differing degrees of investment to comprehend, and for non-trivial subjects being an SME that covers most of the domains involved is going to allow you to validate interpretations made on assembled knowledge i.e the stuff you are operating on rather than merely regurgitating.
I am open to the idea that a journalist could separately have good investigative skills and other journalistic things I am not aware of while not being an SME in much of anything - but in which case they should always work with one or more SMEs, much like the sibling comment's suggestion from 'cousin_it'.
By contrast, if journalists were solely focusing on the science, the article would simply be a reprint (or summary) of a research paper. Now, to be fair, some news outlets do a very nice job of this, while others turn everything into a human story, or at least, focus on a part of the story the journalist can understand.
I think this is partially due to the limitations being described. The journalist likely can't understand the science in a meaningful way, but can understand the people, and how they talk about their research, and how the public perceives that. Helpfully, this will also likely be the story that will appeal to more readers. And so, the incentives are aligned in a few directions against the "better" (read: more precise, and requiring more expertise) story.
Isn't there a serious risk of bias, there, though? For example, if a journalist is specialized in CS and have to write about the ecological impact of technology, you can expect them to be biased in favor of technology, even in good faith.
While what you're suggesting seems common sense and is indeed better than current situation, I think it could be even better if rather than having one journalist writing one piece, every piece was a joint effort by several journalists, some expert on the subject and some not.
Although, I guess that rather than having experts and non-experts co-writing the article, it would even be better to have experts on all identified topics. So here, it would be both the journalist with a technological background and the one with an ecological background.
It seems a bit unrealistic to have experts on all subjects at hand, though, so I guess mixing non experts could at least be a minimum effort.
All journalists are biased. Pretending they can be unbiased is silly.
Beyond that, a journalist specialized in CS writing about the ecological impact of technology is no longer "sticking to what they've studied and know" any more than a sportswriter would be writing about the ecological impact of a new stadium.
There are also journalists that become activist over a specific study (Nina Teicholz is a good example here). Where the more they dig into a topic, the more they take up a cause to expose corruption, even if they have a reasoned bias.
I wish more publications themselves would have an editorial oversight to reduce instances of narratives injected into their news feeds. Some are better than others at presenting news as closer to just the facts... others do better at balancing bias with multi-sourcing, which works better in video that written.
I've been watching the Rising morning show from Hill.tv lately, which is pretty centrist and more balanced than most sources. I try to avoid CNN, MSNBC and Fox News specifically at this point. Fox is good with "news" but they have too many commentary shows that offset this. CNN and MSNBC conflate it all as news and misrepresent all around. None of it can be trusted though.
Unfortunately, news sources tend to be more about being a profit center, and "journalism" is more about the narrative.
There’s also “embedded journalism”, where the journalist needs to maintain an ongoing relationship with non-affiliated subject-matter experts. This can end up with some propaganda-like bias in favour of the embedded-in group’s beliefs; but if you can read past that, you’ll find that at least the journalist is being actively fact-checked by the people they’re embedded with. Those people are effectively working together to serve as an editor.
These are the hurdles reporters face when reporting on complicated topics.
When people are complaining about how a format doesn't suit what it is trying to present, I don't believe the correct response is to underline how difficult it is to properly format things that way. If the format is set in stone for various reasons, perhaps the solution is to not publish things that are complicated rather than failing in an attempt to simplify complex issues.
As a programmer I know that my the screen I'm looking at is the visual output of a house of cards. It's amazing the whole thing works. I suppose you might say the same about society in general.
This makes me think of that Steve Jobs quote where he talks about poking things. I guess one reason why you can change things is because there's a low bar for improvement. ;)
Relevant Steve Jobs quote.
> The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.
I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
This is the argument behind the Gell-Mann amnesia effect:
As soon as I read the grandparent comment, I knew there was going to be a flood of people arriving to supply us with some wiki link.
This way we can just cut to the chase with "Ah, I smell a case of /glossary#4 going on!".
E.g. I can verify that on the information security topic Joseph Cox from Motherboard is constantly on topic, but that information is useless to me personally, because by the time Vice publishes something it's already old news for people in the industry (or anyone following infosec twitter really). But that information could be useful for someone else and in return I would like to know which journalists actually know a thing or two about say ML/AI or astrophysics.
Carl Zimmer, New York Times (science); Dennis Overbye, New York Times (physics, astronomy); Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post (technology); Nicole Nguyen, Wall Street Journal (technology); Dexter Filkins, New Yorker (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan); Ben Smith, New York Times [ex-BuzzFeed] (media); Bob Woodward
This is a bad idea.
Edit: looks like this was already answered by @the-dude
Make sure this person understands the basics properly and they make sure the journalist understands. After some time explaining the same topic you both usually know the common misunderstandings and easiest-to-understand explanations. Then, give the journalist a phone number and tell them to call for any questions whatsoever.
At least for us, during field measurements, that usually worked quite well, I didn't find any significant mistakes afterwards.
It was awkward and I don't think I saw him again past that first week.
In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term Gell-Mann amnesia effect. He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding. He explains the irony of the term, saying it came about "because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have
But I think in the time since then I have allowed for the idea that it's more complex than this. The "getting it wrong" part is not universal - some people do better than others. Further, when we are experts in something, we are more opinionated, and those firm opinions are not always universally held or appropriate for a general audience, they may even be distracting.
I think the more general thing to say is it's hard to assess the quality of reporting and quoted sources when it's a topic we're less familiar with -- not that the reporting is necessarily all terrible.
After NYT's all-too-credulous parroting of Barr's mischaracherization of the Mueller report I tried to cancel mine, but spent over an hour on the phone with no progress, and gave it up. I should have persisted — I don't want to give them my money any more, and this is all the more reason to cancel. At the same time, I don't have the time or patience to subject myself to phoning them again in the near future. Surely there must be an easier way? Certainly there should be.
Especially for low value things, even a few percent chargebacks will be really costly.
Source:. Was selling $1 physical items online... The business was profitable until a few percent of packages started going missing in the mail, and rather than contacting us, customers would just chargeback, forcing me to double the price of the service.
I decided to cancel last month due to the Tom Cotton Op-Ed and couldn't figure out an easy way to do it on-site so I just cancelled from the PayPal end. On a lark, I decided to try and cancel from the NYT end as well just to see how difficult it would be. I connected to the live chat and finally got connected to a representative after TWENTY FIVE HOURS on hold and was given 20 minutes to respond before being cut off.
I did that a week ago, worked great.
Scummy business practices like that make it very difficult for me to recommend any of that company’s products to anyone, even though I’m sure the people actually making the products have little or no influence on the people who control the transaction mechanics.
(In precisely the same sense as All Cops Are Bastards, namely that they have a job which purports to be in the public interest, but which is highly distorted by a bunch of societal factors and mostly winds up serving powerful interests. Any given interaction with a journalist/cop has a chance of going badly, and if it does go badly you can be damn sure that you're going to the one that suffers, while the cop/journalist gets away with it.)
@dang, you might consider somehow incorporating the name of the blog into the title. I almost didn't click on this because "his blog" is quite generic. Slate Star Codex is frequently posted on HN and is fairly notable.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200419232247/https://slatestar...
It's also not clear to me that someone with such a huge public audience deserves anonymity. Scott had a choice -- he could post anonymously to message boards and not be exposed to doxxing. But he chose to cultivate fame. And he used two-thirds of his real name and his publicly licensed profession.
Journalism is expensive. Of course, there are other business models (full disclosure, we're building one too: https://blog.nillium.com/what-can-napster-teach-local-news/) but circumventing a paywall is not the answer.
Yes, the NYT is one of the few outlets that is doing reasonably well right now. But many newspapers are going out of business, or at least furloughing employees -- employees who already were not earning huge salaries.
If you read the article, and they ask for money to let you do that -- then honor that request. Just because you can hop over a paywall doesnt mean you should.
Who even cares about the copyright violation vs theft distinction at this point? They're offering access to their content for a price, they're not bothering with draconian DRM and so it's a dick move to just take it.
I call it peaceful protest.
But if there was a way to subscribe to all of them and pay $1 per article
(But I'd like to use Trim for 2 years, for Nyt.)
I do wish more people would pay for content, but the market hasn't really adjusted to the way people read 1% of dozens of different publications.
@catacombs -- those, + the economist, + 3? more in my home country
Most of all I'd like to support small local newspapers
Way easier said than done.
Scott Alexander does important journalistic work in deeply analyzing the issues.
It’s worth noting that the story is about how he was right about coronavirus in ways that the NYT was not.
The NYT is knowingly attacking his livelyhood and person by exposing him in this way.
Edit for clarification:
I mean 10 commentators with his level of diligence who are willing to engage with difficult issues without ignoring the complexity.
We desperately need more of that in our society, and this action by the NYT will have a chilling effect.
It is profoundly wrong and antidemocratic.
EDIT: Thanks for the clarification, zepto. I see your point now.
They're bound to clash.
The Trump Curse in action! "Fake News Media", indeed.
(disclaimer: Please don't take this as some endorsement of Trump. Even though some of his claims are right, he apparently isn't so much opposed to that corruption as an outsider looking into get in on the action. Also after being elected, most presidents tone down the divisive pandering)
Agreed, of course.
Contrary: A majority of his statements have been proven false.
You have no evidence to back up this claim.
Yes, the fact SSC was fast to publish information about the coronavirus than other organizations. But, do you really think the NYT, a behemoth in the media world, considers an obscure blog -- to many -- a threat?
They seek exciting and sensationalist stories without regard for any consequences in the real world. They twist their stories to manipulate the readers towards their viewpoint.
But worst of all, they have the gall to present themselves as the upholders of morality and the paragons of democracy. Any criticism you may have for these people is deemed "anti-democratic", which in most peoples heads already is a trigger word for "evil", no amount of arguments can sway them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_French_journalism#M...
"At the world's centre lies a place between the lands and seas and regions of the sky, the limits of the threefold universe, whence all things everywhere, however far, are scanned and watched, and every voice and word reaches its listening ears. Here Fama (Rumour) dwells her chosen home set on the highest peak constructed with a thousand apertures and countless entrances and never a door. It's open night and day and built throughout of echoing bronze; it all reverberates, repeating voices, doubling what it hears. Inside, no peace, no silence anywhere, and yet no noise, but muted murmurings like waves one hears of some far-distant sea, or like a last late rumbling thunder-roll, when Juppiter [Zeus] has made the rain-clouds crash. Crowds throng its halls, a lightweight populace that comes and goes, and rumours everywhere, thousands, false mixed with true, roam to and fro, and words flit by phrases all confused. Some pour their tattle into idle ears, some pass on what they've gathered, and as each gossip adds something new the story grows. Here is Credulitas (Credulity), here reckless Error (Error), groundless Laetitia (Delight), Susurri (Whispers) of unknown source, sudden Seditio (Sedition), overwhelming Timores (Fears). All that goes on in heaven or sea or land Fama (Rumour) observes and scours the whole wide world. Now she had brought the news [to Troy] that ships from Greece were on their way with valiant warriors: not unforeseen the hostile force appears."
-- Ovid, Metamorphoses 12. 39 ff
For example, I'd consider some of what Scott does (did?) on SSC as "journalism" in that he's writing about recent news in an informative way.
So it's an OPSEC failure. Why not learn from it and start a new blog under a different, better pseudonym, then avoid giving details that can get you doxxed.
Scott is such a nice, open-minded, compassionate and careful, educated, well-Red intellectual who gives everyone the benefit of the doubt, goes out of his way not to be mean to his critics. If even he gets thrown under the bus, it's a sign of bad times coming. I'd say I'm glad I'm in Europe, but "we're all living in America", these things spread quickly over the pond.
I fear that this whole debacle will attract enough attention to him that many curious people will doxx him and his job could be at great risk. I hope I'm wrong. But it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle, once it's out.
Unfortunately, all of American society is now such a community, so all investigative journalism about someone's identity is now also doxxing. I'm not any happier about that than you are, and hope we can return to better norms so that investigative journalism is less of a danger for its targets.
Still run by the BBC's Mark Thompson I see.
Being quoted by name is not being doxxed. If you don't want to be named in a newspaper article, do not talk to a newspaper reporter.
My main takeaway here is that this is yet another example of people co-opting the language of woke victimhood to avoid accountability.
This will make the backroom media Slack quite pleased, I'm sure, especially if the article attempts to tie him back to white supremacy. It'll be seen as a good score, and might appease the mob for a short time. But they'll be back again for fresh blood soon enough.
One of the most interesting pieces of insight we got at the time was from Matthew Yglesias of Vox Media, who tweeted[1] about discomfort with what was going on in a private media Slack group the day the NYT was reportedly going through turmoil. The tweets were shortly deleted, for clear reasons. From his description, it sounded like an effective struggle session was taking place in the Slack channel, which had been kicked off by the Cotton op-ed.
So the direction has been mounting for years, yes. But the significant shift in internal leadership, direction, and principles within the last few weeks cannot be overestimated.
[1]: https://twitter.com/JimLaheyTPBs/status/1268718489654697984
To clarify: you say that Yglesias deleted his tweets "for clear reasons" - are the reasons really clear (e.g. Yglesias confirmed his reasons) or is that just your surmise? Also, you mention a private media Slack group but the tweet thread you linked doesn't say anything about a Slack group - is there another link where I can learn more about this?
I remember there was some other woke controversy at the NYT a couple of years ago where a private NYT Slack thread was leaked; I can only imagine the inner turmoil at the NYT given recent controversies (and an extra two years' worth of new, woke graduates entering the org.)
You have a fair point - looking back on the tweets, I think I conflated two things: that he mentioned something in (presumably Vox) Slack, and that his concerns stemmed from a Slack conversation. The latter has no evidence, and I incorrectly assumed it.
I'm still expecting that the discussion was happening between multiple media orgs - at minimum, NYT and Vox, given context and timing - but I can't speak to more than that.
Also I am not sure what you mean about Wikipedia - I don't see a current article about him (there was an old one with a wrong name but it was marked for deletion).
After Steve Hsu was cancelled a few days ago due to the Twitter mob wilfully misinterpreting his words, I reqd a comment somewhere saying “Scott Alexander is next” (which could make sense, as he’s posted “wrong” opinions on his blog before).
Maybe the NYT story is just a cover, or maybe the article wouldn’t be that “positive”...
And I believe (not 100%) it started before the Hsu story
> After considering my options, I decided on the one you see now. 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.
So his blog will be offline for a bit but it is clearly not permanent (if everything goes as planned).
Great move and probably will gain him even more clout within the rationalist community.
He just went from "big interesting blog" to "very suspicious behavior".
Think about it from a reporter's perspective, they were about to write about an interesting blog, and suddenly the blog gets deleted because his real name will be revealed. Well, that's a pretty big reaction, so big we can't ignore it. The reporter's first question now will be "Wow, what's he trying to cover up?"
One thing is certain, reporters are now trying to dig up the thing that they're imagining he's trying to cover up.
And maybe he does have something to hide given his irrational behavior, who knows?
This won't end now until reporters find something, and they're gonna go to great lengths to find something.
He just made things worse for himself by deleting that blog and drawing attention to himself.
Now it's not just the original reporter looking into this story, a whole bunch of journalists have dived in, and are now looking for an even bigger story.
And Scott has no reason to care about "drawing attention to himself" at this point - you can't beat a NYT article (even a sympathetic one!) as far as "attention" goes, and that was already in the cards.
But journalists don't stop at "plausible" and then write, they keep digging until they have "the facts" (or their biased version of the facts) right?
Fuck that reporter.
Some people can't handle the judgment that comes with being a somewhat public figure, and Scott is one of them.
… is he? I think you've been reading a different blog to me; I have read all of SlateStarCodex. Can you give some examples?