Hacker News Reader

Comment by perditus | Hacker News Reader

This was in a piece specifically about the blog that was going to be positive, which makes this all the more inexplicable.

View on HN

A lot of political extremists hate people like Scott, and it has caused him a lot of trouble in the past. This is why anonymity is more important now than ever, because just writing a scientific blog about interesting topics can make you the target of witch hunts designed to ruin your life and kill you.

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.

Is there any public figure on the internet who doesn't receive death threats? You could maintain a blog for photos of puppies, and some lunatic would have a deadly-serious problem with it. The web isn't working. 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.

A close friend and I have run a blog about 09/11/2001 since ~2009, timewise it's easily one of the longest in existance (~2004 911blogger.com/faq), and some odd stuff has happened, but never a death threat. The previous owner as far as I know has the same experience. There is a vid in my profile if anyone is curious.

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.

It's extremely random. There are plenty of public figures that don't get that stuff and whom don't get what the fuss it about and plenty of other otherwise indistinguishable people that get piles of it.

> 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.

Is there an author in the United States who has been killed in 2020?

EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Murdered_American_wri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Assassinated_American...

I don't think it's about being murdered. There are very real, non-lethal consequences to writing certain uncomfortable opinions. Just having one's name attached to controversial articles, tweets and posts would be enough for some employers to think "nope, not worth the effort / PR hit" and not hire that person.

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.

This is the correct take. It's not so much about a worry of violence but the far more prolonged concern of never being able to have a normal job and provide for your family again.

I mean he has had people put out bounties to find him on reddit. No doubt it was for violent purposes, but losing your job or clients because of it can be just a slower death. I hope he finds a way to convince the NYT to not wreck his life.

Anonymity cuts both ways. You can keep your personal details secret for a while. It's becoming more and more difficult the more well known you become. On the other hand anonymous people are able to continue making threats, call for violence or otherwise making your life more difficult basically forever without consequences.

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.

> But, having your real name attached to posts that are against certain political topics or narrives, can be borderline-lethal in 2020

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.

It doesn't even need to be about political stuff.

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.

What kind of "people like Scott", and what kind of political extremists?

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.

Scott in his open thread a few weeks ago [0], posted a brief request for help by Steve Hsu, an MSU professor who endorses research into using genetic modification to increase human intelligence and blogs on scientific racism [1].

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200617034621/https://slatestar...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Hsu

Journalists obviously never tell their subject their piece is going to be negative. In fact, as far as I can tell from the few people I know who have been in that situation, they appear to routinely say the opposite.

No doubt, it would be just as interesting of an article without his real name.

In the News, to normal people reading an article, it's more interesting to hear about about a real person with a real life, with a real family, home etc than a pseudonym with no background. It sucks but that is how the News usually works, and how people like reading stories about other humans. Hopefully in this case they might see the damage that this might do.

I'm pretty sure Scott would have been more keen to share details about his personal life if his pseudonymity had been guaranteed; I know I personally would have in his stead.

...and who would know if they'd just used his pseudonym?

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?

Why are you so sure about this? Because the journalist who wanted to disclose his name said so? I've also been interviewed once by a magazine that assured me (and the marketing folks) that it would be a positive piece when in fact it was a hit piece apparently initiated by a major advertiser.

Journalists almost always tell the people they're interviewing that the piece will be positive. It means nothing.

I see no particular reason to believe that the piece was going to be positive.

Can such assurances really be trusted?

No. There is a slightly higher chance with NYT than say TMZ but still. I've read many people saying the journalist told them it was for a fluff piece or positive article.

It becomes a lot more explicable if you assume that the journalist was lying and the piece was not going to be positive.

mostly positive

Reply on news.ycombinator.com