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Comment by elipsey | Hacker News Reader

Sigh. I think this article is holding Scott, and a core constituency of posters and meet up people, guilty by association with every rando on the internet, and also about half of the celebrities in the Bay area.

"War against the media" strikes me as ridiculous hyperbole in this context. I have met some of these people in real life, and none of them expressed that attitude to me, nor any kind of utopian superiority. It seemed like they were just trying to live morally considered lives and improve themselves a little at a time if they could -- and maybe do a little networking.

I think if Scott knew that his blog would get so big it would screw up his career and living arrangements, he probably wouldn't have published it in the first place. That might have been a lapse of judgment, but begging the NYT not to make him mainstream famous is hardly war on the media.

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>I think this article is holding Scott, and a core constituency of posters and meet up people, guilty by association with every rando on the internet, and also about half of the celebrities in the Bay area.

Tying Scott and Silicon Valley together is another case where I simply do not understand the way reporters/journos draw cultural ties, boundaries, allegiances, and opposition.

It's like looking at twitter to form an opinion about the market for a product instead of doing market research. Voiced opinions from the type of people to voice their opinions on twitter are insanely different than the purchase habits of the population. But every day some journo is acting like Twitter is a useful cultural barometer.

My (not too confident) assessment is that Scott and whatever amalgamation of "tech" / "the internet" they're lumping in with him are just people that look like the pre-iPhone internet era: online often, and willing to venture into open communication for the sake of the ideas and discussion. That happens to weigh toward computery jobs, where reading (and sometimes writing) online resources are large part of the job and competitors openly collaborate online.

I think it reads like Gonzo journalism without the self awareness of a writer like Hunter S. Thompson.

Too many narratives being constructed from coincidence, because a narrative is more enjoyable to write and read than a set of coincidences.

The "War against the media" is outlined towards the end of the article. When Bay area "thought-leaders" are calling for the blacklisting of reporters and replacing traditional media as a whole, "war" doesn't sound like hyperbole to me.

AIUI, they're calling for individual non-cooperation with unethical reporters. There may be a broader "war" between SV and elite media, but it's not clear that the SSC affair has much to do with it beyond possibly being a case of elite media behaving unethically, and (quite uniquely, all things considered) being held accountable for that.

No, there's a pretty clear call for SSC readers to just not work with anyone from the NYT in future. It's not about individual journalists - at any rate Cade Metz doesn't have a bad reputation and appears to believe his actions are constrained by corporate policy, rather than being his own choice.

I myself have been the (cooperative) subject of a bio piece that landed on the front page of the international edition of the NYT in the past, and notified them that if they go ahead and wreck SSC then I won't work with them again on stories. By myself this is unlikely to have much impact: yes, I've been more than a reader for them but also a story, on the other hand, that only happened once. I'm not appearing in the NYT every week.

The NYT can fix this very easily; promise Alexander their story won't include details about his real life. Then he'll bring back his blog, the NYT will get their story, and everyone is fine.

Obviously the New Yorker managed this feat of journalistic integrity, so none of the NYT's excuses for why they "can't" do it add up. I feel they've led directly to the destruction of a highly valuable resource for no reason at all, it's not a hard decision to say "no" if and when their journalists come calling again.

> guilty by association

True. It's peculiar how a nuanced presentation of Scott's blog and the values of rationalist culture are not sufficient, and a crude description of Scott's purity test results is offered to readers, likely so Lewis-Kraus can avoid worry about being cancelled.

Do readers of the New Yorker really need such blatant reassurance that Scott is not a Trump supporter, and that he was actually a vocal opponent of Trump and strategic supporter of HRC?

The New Yorker can't insulate itself from the many illiberal negatives of cancel culture when it stoops to this level.

C'mon, the New Yorker has been unusually good on this topic, even skewering a few sacred cows here and there: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/the-new-activi...

Perhaps, but can we honestly believe that if Lewis-Kraus had omitted the extra verbose reassurances that Scott isn't a Trump supporter and within hours of the article's publication there were calls for the New Yorker to fire him, that the New Yorker's editors would defend the more nuanced treatment?

Seemingly, Lewis-Kraus does not believe this. I wonder if the extra verbiage was his own decision or the result of editorial feedback.

I guess you can believe whatever you want, but it's equally possible that the author is trying to (accurately) emphasize to his readership that Scott Alexander isn't a member of the alt-right/scientific racism segment of the self-proclaimed Rationalist community.

Yes, and I hope that is the correct explanation. But I think we should be wary of the tremendous pressure that publications face to lean away from nuance and anything that requires careful reading and to rely on broad and pat generalizations.

In my view, the New Yorker is an incredible publication that typically features writing that is superb and also well edited (if edited at all). So that's why this one stood out.

Maybe the issue is that so many people are quick to label anything that sounds like rationalism as alt-right.

I read the thing James Damore wrote and the problem was not the content he claimed was factual, it was the tone. He could have made the same point without sounding like he was on a "side" in an ongoing battle.

The elderly Richard Dawkins gets into political sides taking, as does Sam Harris. Both do little to hide their islamophobia. This appeals to those who were looking for scientific justifications of their beliefs, but also alienates anyone who wanted dispassionate science.

> Maybe the issue is that so many people are quick to label anything that sounds like rationalism as alt-right.

That is an issue, but I'll hope it's uncontroversial to point out that people like, say Curtis Yarvin, who are closely associated with both the alt-right and rationalist movements. There is in fact some significant overlap between those communities.

I'm not all that familiar with Yarvin. Could you contextualize how he fits into the broader rationalist movement? I want to understand how someone with such strongly authoritarian beliefs finds common ground with rationalists.

He doesn't, when you really get into it. But the rationalist movement is generally willing to engage neutrally with new and interesting ideas, and there's no reason why neo-reaction would be an exception.

More: of course it never occurs to the author that NYT readers could include a similar number of randos who might just have taken enough prior offense to run off and be "unfriendly" to Scott. Physically in his face.

There are only two rational explanations here:

1) Scott Alexander wanted more attention, and he realized that deleting his site and blaming the NYT for it would garner dramatically more attention, creating opportunities that he wanted. He recognized that he could become a martyr to a certain group, and use that for future gains.

2) Scott Alexander is an absolute moron who did not foresee the Streisand Effect that he was going to cause.

I personally do not think he is a moron. I think he is a manipulative sociopath who knew that people who agree with him on other matters would line up to create future opportunities for him if he pretended that his hand was forced.

It saddens me that so many "smart" people fall for such transparent nonsense. There was no lapse of judgment. He is just a selfish sociopath. Nothing more.

I'm surprised you don't consider other possibilities, like that he was genuinely concerned about his real name being made known, for the reasons he stated. You don't address these.

I'm also surprised that you feel able to diagnose someone you presumably don't know as a sociopath. This seem like hyperbole.

Honestly, I don't think this post is up to YC standards.

What's your definition of smart? Left wing?

Not who you're replying to, but pretty much.

Scott is extremely popular in the rationalist community (second only to EY and possibly RH), and has a sizeable following outside of it. He doesn't need to "pretend[] that his hand was forced" to get any sort of "future opportunities" he might want; he just needs to ask. This whole kerfuffle doesn't exactly help him, even from that POV.

Who are EY and RH?

They're prominent members of the rationality community, who also happen to be mentioned in the article in connection with the same.

I think they were asking for someone to expand the abbreviations and save others from having to dig for all the EY/RH people mentioned.

EY = Eliezer Yudkowsky, I don't immediately recognize an RH.

Edit: Ah, Robin Hanson, I guess?

Eliezer Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson.

Funny you should use the word "rational" here.

What's funny about his use of the word?

hey, are you on reddit memexy? i'm /u/foobanana, ping me if you are. admire your attempts at reasoning with the unreasonable here.

Thanks for the kind words. I stopped using reddit some time ago but good to know there are still good people there like you working to uphold standards. I am on keybase and I'm always happy to chat with fellow reasoners: keybase.io/memexy.

I dislike getting swept up in groups and that's what happened to me on reddit and other social media sites so now I make sure to deliberately talk with individuals without worrying about performing in front of a group.

I agree with you. His actions paint a very dark picture and I also don't understand why people are defending him.

It's like you said, he's either smart enough to know what he's doing, in which case his actions should be scrutinized as such, or he has no clue what he's doing and he should be called a "moron" and left to his own devices. It can't be both at the same time. He can't be a moron and a genius that was forced to do something he didn't want to do.

He's had mental breakdowns over harassment tangential to the site's function (culture war debates). His relative degree of anonymity and obscurity shields him from the worst of the internet. He may write rationalist essays but he's human.

I understand that you're celebrating his loss, but that's just not a charitable read. He provided one the last bastions of nuance on the internet.

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