Don't De-Anonymize Scott Alexander
dontdoxscottalexander.com
dontdoxscottalexander.com
It's frustrating, because some of the criticism is actually warranted, but they just fill such articles with so much banal nonsense, like "Scott Alexander criticised communism, but also studied something the USSR did… :thinking_face:" (paraphrased) that the signal-to-noise ratio approaches Uncyclopedia's.
It's really frustrating, because the articles about topics they haven't got a bee in their bonnet about can actually be insightful introductions, beating out the Wikipedia articles. Nowadays, though, those are few and far between.
Scott Alexander is the opposite extreme. He tries to find the good parts even in the Time Cube (yes, literally). Although Scott himself mostly has the usual liberal opinions, he does not enforce them in the comments; he usually only enforces civil behavior. The result is a highly intelligent forum where liberals talk to conservatives, Christians talk to atheists, etc., mostly in a friendly way, on a wide range of topics, some of them political, some not.
Each of these styles is attractive to a different type of personality. Sadly, the former often have a problem with the latter.
He also wrote Unsong, which is a very interesting work of fiction and blogged about various other stuff.
And a popular article was "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" although I think the non-political articles are actually far better (e.g. "My IRB Nightmare": https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VpJS0s...).
One of my favourite articles is actually a work of fiction ("The Proverbial Murder Mystery": https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KNe8Ic...).
Plot twist: Scott's real name has been easily findable for at least a year, based on his own words. So I don't understand why he went full nuclear.
It's also an assumption by everybody that the NYT article was going to be a hit piece, even though there's no evidence of that whatsoever. It was simply going to contain his real name. Scott didn't want that. Therefore Scott deleted his entire 5-8 year history because the big bad NYT was going to do something that Scott didn't like that totally wouldn't impact his life anyway.
Look, I'm a big proponent of anonymity. Heck, I was pseudonymous for years. Sometimes there are valid reasons. But often, it becomes a perpetual thing of "I'm doing this for the sake of doing it, not because people are out to get me."
Scott also recently published a piece raising questions about racism (a good piece, worth reading, but nonetheless ruffled some feathers). So this is possibly a well-timed deflection move.
Secondly, the content is not gone, just hidden (and probably reachable elsewhere).
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. 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.
He pointed out that there’s a difference between googleable by looking up someone’s words, where you have to do a bit of work to find it, and it being published in the NYT.
> It's also an assumption by everybody that the NYT article was going to be a hit piece, even though there's no evidence of that whatsoever.
Is that the assumption? Again, going by his words (as well as others who were interviewed for it) it was going to be a generally very positive article.
Findable in the opposite direction, and that is an important difference.
If you know about Scott's private life, you can find his job. But if you only know about his profession and full name, googling for his full name will show you his professional life, not his private life.
There are many Scotts, many Alexanders, even many Scott Alexanders, and some of them are relatively famous (there is a screenwriten, and a baseball player). Unless you already read Scott's blog, there is no reason to assume he would be the same person as the doctor you are looking for, and the blog will not be shown on the first page of results for his full name.
But if NYT publishes the article as originally planned, when Scott's potential patients enter his full name in search engine, the article about him and his blog can easily be the first result. This is exactly the outcome Scott wants to avoid.
what this is about? NYT was about to run a story about Scott and his blog. By policy, they'd reveal his real name, and they told him so in advance. Scott tried to negotiate, but that failed. So he took down the blog, sort of in protest. See https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...
What does the phrase "Slate Star Codex" mean? It's the blog title, an almost anagram of "Scott Alexander", missing the "n", doubling the "s". I don't think it has any deeper meaning.
I won't address the final question on the content, others have summarised it.
Usually, there is a social punishment for being an asshole. You are not legally required to be nice to people, but the natural punishment is that the nice people will avoid you, you won't get invited to nice parties, etc. The "karmic punishment" for assholes is that they can only associate with other assholes, because everyone else tries to avoid them. Also, unless they are physically very strong, they probably get punched a lot, as a natural reaction.
There are situations, such as online journalism, where the usual mechanisms punishing the assholes do not apply, and it can even become a source of income.
[1] https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/127566532567417241...
The term “Yellow Journalism” is a hundred years old, and I doubt it was new then, either.
NYT and Vice are not tabloid publications nor are their journalists generally considered to be tabloid journalists.
With search engines, if someone is doxed once, you can find it years later when you search their name. The same behavior now has more serious consequences.
That said, considering what a crappy track record the press has with respecting the privacy of pseudonymous Internet personalities (I'm thinking Naomi Wu, sure, but also that one article where the author shamelessly put way way way too much work into trying to track down and out _why), perhaps that's pollyannaish of me.
Did the NYT violate an informal agreement not to use his real name?
Could SA have reasonably expected that a reporter would not trivially find his real name as part of routine research, and thus include it as background?
SA's wishes should be respected by NYT -- the piece should be abandoned -- but his judgement on entering into an interview in the first place is questionable.
Where does your account come from?
If I had to infer what happened from SA's post, it is that he agreed to an interview, did the interview, learned that they intended to use his name, and then raised these objections.
> "He never got around to asking me questions because I started with asking if the article would include my real name and we didn't get past our argument on that subject," Alexander told the Free Beacon by email. "I explained almost word for word the same things I explained on my recent post. He said he would talk to his editor, then came back saying that his editor said the article couldn't be published without my real name. He said he was really sorry about this and I believe him."
https://freebeacon.com/media/well-known-blogger-shuts-down-s...
"Let us know it's actually you? (Optional) For high-profile signees (CEOs, authors, people with 100k+ twitter followers, etc), we'd like to make sure nobody is impersonating you. Feel free to give us an official email address to confirm (we will not use it for any purpose beyond validation and will not share it with anyone), or link to a public post/tweet where you say you signed this petition."
Or is this about some larger point?
There's a large difference between the New York Times printing your name, and it being possible to find your name with careful digging for it.
His employer is probably very unlikely to decide one day to idly google, "slate star codex author real name", figure out that it's him, and make any major decisions based on what they find.
However, almost any employer, upon finding itself unexpectedly exposed to frothy-mouthed Internet rancor as a result of a major news outlet writing a story about the online persona of one of its employees, would at least seriously consider firing them over it.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=now%207-d&geo=...
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...
Why wasn't the outrage over that? Is that because it's a Rationalist Community book, whereas the New York Times is Outgroup?