Hacker News Reader

Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

I'm struck by this in TFA:

> In effect, Scott was trying to erect a firewall between his Internet persona and his personal and professional identities, and was relying on the entire world’s goodwill not to breach that firewall.

And it obviously did matter to him, because he took his blog down over the coming NYT article.

So what I wonder is why he didn't erect a far more effective firewall, one that didn't rely on goodwill. If he was writing pseudonymously, I don't get how his blog's credibility would rely on his true identity. But perhaps it did, in a subtle way.

View on HN

Likely, he started out blogging when he was comparatively unknown. His audience grew, but he could not flip a switch a fix his prior lack of opsec without nuking his community.

It seems he is now taking the nuclear route.

He is definitely maximizing whatever damage could accrue to him through his outing, because he is fully into Streisand territory here. Just about the worst conceivable thing you could say, if in fear of being outed to nerds, is "I haven’t always done great" at hiding my identity.

I'm skeptical that there's really much damage to be done to him through disclosure at this point.

Cynically, I think he is just trying to save his job. If he is a nationally known blogger, he risks losing it (for reasons stated elsewhere).

If he can go to his employer and say “look I deleted the blog, there is nothing else I can do”, they might be sympathetic, even if the outcome is potentially short term negative for his psychiatry patients.

> If he is a nationally known blogger, he risks losing [his job] (for reasons stated elsewhere).

Why? Because he posted controversially?

If he's an academic, perhaps he has tenure. But even if he doesn't, and he's as good as people are claiming, he ought to do well in private practice. And I can't imagine that a psychiatrist would lose their license over blog posts (but perhaps my imagination is outdated). He might lose patients who don't like his views, but then maybe he'd find such patients tiresome.

I haven't read the blog, but I've seen nothing that suggests that he posted PII about any of his patients. If he did, then I retract what I said above.

Maybe. Bit of a crapshoot between both approaches - I don't think Scott think it would blow up quite like this?

Scott is not afraid of being outed to nerds at all, but to the PC mob (sure, there's an intersection... let's replace git/master anyone?). It wouldn't especially be negative right now, but it means that his blog would be forever linked to his name. And one day is blog would attract unwanted attention (as it has in the past), and his name would be linked to it.

Also, even if wasn't for this, I think he's right to make a stand for himself. He had very little leverage here, and "deleting" the blog (it's still archived) was a bad move that makes the NYT looks bad if they go and out him.

> ... "deleting" the blog (it's still archived) was a bad move that makes the NYT looks bad if they go and out him.

Did you mean "bold move"?

Indeed, good catch!

Yeah, I make precisely that mistake a lot.

I've done that a few times. And yes, it nuked my reputation, not that I've ever had a lot.

I don't believe it's reasonable to claim that any "firewall" existed. There are very basic things you can do to protect your identity, especially if you blogged at length and with a fair amount of notoriety under your real name, that Scott Alexander didn't do. I'm genuinely confused as to how he could in good faith claim his identity to have been a secret.

You can't have a firewall of "nobody is allowed to Google me". That's not how it works.

There’s a pretty big gradient between “in a national news article with his name” and “only posts on his blog using tor, from a coffee shop, on a burner device, under a pseudonym, with no personal details revealed” (or whatever constitutes a “firewall”).

At this point, casual observers do not know Scott’s identity. With a few hours of time most people on HN could probably figure it out, but in that same amount of time they’d also probably calm down if they were interested in sending death threats.

No. You've comically overestimated the amount of effort required. I understand why: the way he wrote his announcement, you'd think it'd be tricky. I'd say more, but I'll respect the norm --- you may have to take my word for it --- and just say: people I've talked to have been shocked to discover how easy it was to find out. No firewall existed here at all.

The firewall wasn't burner phones and foreign VPNs, it was Scott emailing people who use his real name to respond to his blogging, and asking them not to do that. And it has worked pretty well up til now - when I search his real name I see nothing about SSC in the first 50 google results.

It's on the first page of Google search results for me. I won't relate the query --- that seems out of bounds --- but, uh, it's a pretty obvious one.

If it was 50 pages back, I'd agree with you. I'm saying what I'm saying because that is simply not the case. And, again: he was a public, vocal part of the rationalist blogosphere (I think I'm using those words right?) under his real name, for some time.

The point is, if one of his patients casually googles him, they find stuff about his job and not his blog. That you can find his blog is neither here nor there (and the first ten comments to that effect probably covered it).

No, that's not true either. Go search his real name: you'll probably see links back to his writing on the first page, the way I do.

I did, obviously. You're either including his middle name (not common when googling your doctor), or counting a Robin Hanson essay that links to Scott's old deleted blog as "his writings", which is not reasonable since it would require considerable further delving to get from there to SSC. Or google is serving us different results for some reason.

I do not. Google search results, I find, are extremely inconsistent.

Extremely tailored to each person, not inconsistent, I think

It really depends on your Google history and demographics the algos slot you into.

For example, whenever I do a search in kanji, Taiwanese sites show up, so I migrated to DuckDuckGo instead which shows up both Chinese (and Taiwanese) and Japanese sites, the latter of which is I want.

That's what I meant, yeah.

My experience is Google tailors results aggressively, and does so using a wide number of fingerprinting techniques. I've demonstrated to my own satisfaction that using an incognito window will not give you "clean" or "average" results.

>You can't have a firewall of "nobody is allowed to Google me". That's not how it works.

would you say the same of kendric lamar or mf doom? both fail the google test and yet the nytimes respected their pseudonyms.

I don't even understand the question. Both Kendrick Lamar and MF Doom have their real names in the first sentences of their Wikipedia pages. The NYT has reported things in at least Duckworth's name; I didn't bother looking hard for Dumile's. Is your question "would I be upset if the NYT reported MF Doom's real name, Daniel Dumile"? No, I would not be.

Uhh, kinda off topic but you've got a great username and you mentioned two of my favorite artists to make a point. Feel free to email me if you wanna be friends. :3

Reply on news.ycombinator.com