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Comment by pvg | Hacker News Reader

That's what the NYT said it was going to be.

That's what Scott Alexander said the NYT writer said. Everything we know about this story is entirely his portrayal and version of it. You can give it as much credence as you like but it is, so far, one party's representation.

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I was interviewed for the article, and it did seem like it was likely to be positive. The questions Metz was asking were things like (paraphrased) "how did SSC and rationalists end up being so ahead of the curve on COVID?" and "Does this mean that we should take them more seriously on AI?"

Here I'll out myself as on the "loathing" side of Scott Alexander receptivity so I can ask: what was the SSC take on COVID? In what ways were they ahead of the curve?

(I'll have no trouble believing they were; COVID really seems to have scrombled everyone's brains).

I'm honestly curious, what could make one loathe SSC? Overall it seems pretty anodyne even if you're not into the whole rationalist milieu.

Committed culture warriors often seem to loathe SSC. From their perspective, it gives too much credence and attention to obviously evil ideas, and the author is in thrall to the worst elements of the Other Side (than the one the culture warrior is coming from).

That many people especially admire SSC for even-handedness, which they see as false, is especially infuriating to them.

Is that what I am? A "committed culture warrior"? Could you say more about what that means?

Well, does the rest of the comment ring true to why you think you loathe SSC? I can't reach into your head. Maybe you just really dislike his punctuation. Or, more plausibly, think he has an insufferably smarmy tone.

FWIW I've been admiring your HN posts for many years. When I see your handle in an HN discussion, my learned expectation is of knowledge and insight.

Seconding this, I honestly find it hard to understand having strong feeling one way or another on such a neutral essayist. Though perhaps it's quite telling that I consider him to be "neutral"?

I do not think that's telling. I think a lot of good people think that S.A. is benign. Part of it might be whether or not you're a "read the comments" kind of person; part of it may be whether or not you pay attention to who he's linking to and referencing (or whether you care about that kind of thing). Some of it is overt; he's taken active stands on some issues that are, if nothing else, not neutral. But I'm only rattling those things off so you can understand how someone could come to a different conclusion about SSC than you do. I think what's going on with SSC is subtle enough that it's dangerous to make judgements about people simply based on whether they get value out of SSC.

I've probably read < 10 of his posts and on the whole he did seem extremely benign. He had a large body of work so perhaps I just had a huge sampling bias. I meant to specifically ask for some criticism you had of SSC as a self described person on the 'loathing' side of things as purely a point of curiosity. It's a strong word and I'm specifically curious how someone who to me seemed so benign gained your condemnation.

Honestly I've said about as much about SSC itself as I want to. I don't think it's productive to debate whether SSC is good or bad, because that's not the issue here. I don't think S.A. deserves being outed because he presides over a community I happen to find problematic; I think he's not being outed, since he's been operating in the open for years.

Late to the thread commenter here, but geez, being asked "what criticisms do you have" and deflecting with this response makes me wonder why you're trying to hide the reason(s) you dislike him...

I think anatoly was in the right ballpark, to put it mildly.

Someone's a culture warrior because they don't share someone else's taste in blogs? Which one is supposed to be the culture warrior?

I wouldn’t put it that way; that’s why I said Anatoly was in the ballpark.

The original characterization and the comment manage to be rude, condescending and passive-aggressive all at once. It's straight up explaining to someone what their own motivations and tastes are. I honestly don't understand what the ballpark is supposed to be, the whole sport seems awful.

While I wouldn't pick the exact word "loathe", the thing that really did it for me when I was reading SSC a while back was finding that one of the regular commenters who Scott engaged with positively had written a book that talked about how Obama should have stuck to jobs that were more "genetically suitable" for him. There were plenty of comments about this person being "controversial" on the blog so it isn't likely that Scott just didn't know.

Two weeks or so ahead of the "mainstream" (whatever that is) in realizing it will likely be a huge deal for the world. That said, there were plenty of other larger outlets (like Vox) that were also ahead of the curve in the same sense.

Vox published both "not going to be a pandemic" and "flu is worse" in early February.

Vox was pretty mixed, I think reflecting some internal disagreement. Ex:

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fe... was dismissive: "The public concern from Silicon Valley leaders or companies has not been discriminatory, but the extreme caution some are taking does raise questions about the appropriate level of response. There’s always a chance that the coronavirus could get out of control in tech’s backyard, but to a large extent, people’s individual power to control that is limited, and some may see measures like no-handshake rules as a step too far."

Similarly the now-deleted "is this going to be a deadly pandemic: no" tweet https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1242537366620966912

On the other hand, Kelsey Piper's https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/6/21121303/coronav... was good and timely, and Dylan Mathews' https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/4/21117505/new-cor... was also pretty good.

As I said elsewhere, I have little doubt people who interacted with the journalist thought the story was going to be positive. You don't claim the journalist actually said that to you, even Scott Alexander claims the journalist said the story was going to be 'mostly positive'. But what the story is going to be is not all that important - the important bits are a) we have no idea what the story is going to be like, should it be published and b) it's silly (or at least, not entirely rational) to suggest the journalist misrepresented the nature of the story, story unseen. We have, at best, half the meta-story.

This doesn't make sense - the writer is hardly going to say its gonna be a hatchet job, and if he said it was going to be anything other than positive then Scott Alexander would have mentioned that as it would have made his caution all the more understandable.

There is no reason to disbelieve that the writer said it was going to be positive and that Professor Aaronson believed him from experience.

> This doesn't make sense - the writer is hardly going to say its gonna be a hatchet job

The writer doesn't have to make any representation at all that it will have a spin.

> and if he said it was going to be anything other than positive then Scott Alexander would have mentioned that as it would have made his caution all the more understandable.

It would have made his projected sense of betrayal after cooperation in the piece less understandable if the journalist hadn't explicitly promised favorable coverage.

To characterize intended tone before research is complete is to hold oneself out as doing propaganda (promotion, specifically, when what is promised is positive coverage of a subject) rather than journalism, and it's obviously a betrayal if someone offers you promotion and then turns around and reveals information you'd rather not have revealed, whereas a journalist doing neutral journalism revealing facts about an active participant in public debate that that participant doesn't want publicly disclosed is...not even remotely noteworthy as such (though the facts so revealed might be.)

There is no reason to disbelieve the subjects of this potential story got the impression the story is going to be positive. This happens a lot and sometimes turns out to be inaccurate, it's at the center of lots of post-publication journalism kerfuffles. But we haven't seen the story. We haven't heard the journalist's description of any of these interactions. All we have are the impressions and recollections of one side.

It would be truly strange for the NYT to dox a pseudonymous blogger against their directly expressed wishes in a puff piece about that pseudonymous blogger. I believe that Scott Alexander believes that’s what’s was going to happen, but the motives just don’t line up.

> the writer is hardly going to say its gonna be a hatchet job,

"We have some allegations to put to you and we want to hear your side" would be one way people know it's going to be a hatchet job.

Well it's also what Scott Aaron's on says about the story, as he explains in this post, he knew the writer and knew the story he was working on.

He doesn't really say anything about the story. He says he knows the journalist and believes them to be well-intentioned. A well-intentioned journalist can find something worth reporting that the subject of the reporting doesn't like. We don't really know anything about the story other than what subjects and sources have inferred about it. Such inferences aren't always accurate and they certainly shouldn't be attributed to the writer before they've actually said or published anything themselves.

Aaronson was interviewed for this story and gave has (positive) opinion about the story specifically to Alexander.

It's not what the linked piece says. It says he vouched for the journalist's good intentions. No journalist is going to offer you a promise they're writing a positive story, it's not a sensible way for journalism to work.

No, he indicates his familiarity with that specific story (unless the author was writing two stories on the same community within weeks of each other) and not just the author. He was interview for that story and judged it likely to be positive. Therefore we have two people's opinion of the story, that both have partial information is irrelevant.

> Everything we know about this story is entirely his portrayal and version of it.

This isn't true. Multiple other people on the SSC blog talked with the reporter, and they publicly compared notes on their impressions. Just because you haven't read these other sources doesn't allow you to claim that these versions don't exist.

Wait... Even the linked piece by Aaronson says: So in recent weeks, I’d spent a couple hours on the phone with Cade, answering his questions about the rationality community, the history of my interactions with it, and why I thought SlateStarCodex spoke to so many readers.

So presumably you have read reports from at least two people who had contact with the reporter. Why then do you say that it is solely "one party's representation"?

The comment I'm replying to suggests the journalist maybe misrepresented the nature of the story. The evidence for this is, well, none. And as to the nature of the story itself, we have neither the story nor the journalist's description of the interactions in question.

The comment I'm replying to suggests the journalist maybe misrepresented the nature of the story.

Please don't misrepresent my comment.

I merely clarified that Professor Aaronson's account of the NYT's intent (and even assuming its good faith, the consequences of the piece for Scott Alexander) is opinion only.

I'm ok with how I've represented your comment. You are not 'merely clarifying', you're implying the journalist is being dishonest. Then you slather on the conspiratorial 'certain elements of the Ctrl-Left to warrant a cancel-attack'. It's a comment that would only benefit from some misrepresentation since the more literally one reads it, the worse it sounds.

No. That is entirely your biased reading of my comment, presumably because of your sensitivity to references to the Ctrl-Left.

It's a comment that would only benefit from some misrepresentation

But I thank you for the admission.

'No. That's what the NYT said it was going to be'

This plainly suggests the NYT is misrepresenting something or likely to do so. You even added the emphasis, in case it was unclear. My sensitivity is not to the 'ctrl-left' but the completely unwarranted weird conspiratorial stuff that some mob is out to 'cancel' the blogger, armed with the name they got from the NYT. That they could have just googled. It's, at best, mildly silly.

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