Comment by memexy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by memexy | Hacker News Reader

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His suggestion wasn't civil and I already wrote why so I'm just going to quote the answer I already gave

> I don't think his words were polite, in fact I think it was quite the opposite. If I wanted a civil discussion I would not have listed any contact information about anyone. I would have said, "I am archiving the blog until further notice because I need to think about what kind of content should be made publicly available because words have power and it's important to think about what information and inferences we make available to others through those words".

The fact that he didn't do that means he did not have such intentions. There is now evidence for an actual harassment campaign against the journalists.

Here is the link and the quote

(https://mobile.twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/128066344682499...)

> Community message, pls share around as you like

> If you have spoken with C_de M_tz, or if he has reached out to you, since the day that Scott took down Slate Star Codex: there may be something you can do to help

> Please feel free to reach out to me by DM and I can fill you in

The coded message is referring to the original journalist. I don't understand how people can look at all this evidence and still think the rationalist community isn't acting in bad faith when there is actual evidence on twitter of actual coordination among its members for a harassment campaign.

This was Scott's message to the readers:

> There is no comments section for this post. The appropriate comments section is the feedback page of the New York Times. You may also want to email the New York Times technology editor Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@nytimes.com, contact her on Twitter at @puiwingtam, or phone the New York Times at 844-NYTNEWS.

> (please be polite – I don’t know if Ms. Tam was personally involved in this decision, and whoever is stuck answering feedback forms definitely wasn’t. Remember that you are representing me and the SSC community, and I will be very sad if you are a jerk to anybody. Please just explain the situation and ask them to stop doxxing random bloggers for clicks. If you are some sort of important tech person who the New York Times technology section might want to maintain good relations with, mention that.)

Can you elaborate on what was un-civil about this? How is directly the users towards the feedback page of the New York Times and the editor in charge of the NYT technology section (the sub-group that Carl Metz belongs to), accompanied with explicit calls to be civil uncivil?

The notion that this is a harassment campaign is nothing less than laughable.

Even if the author's real name were used:

> Community message, pls share around as you like

> If you have spoken with Cade Metz, or if he has reached out to you, since the day that Scott took down Slate Star Codex: there may be something you can do to help

> Please feel free to reach out to me by DM and I can fill you in

How would this be considered harassment? This user is asking for people who have spoken to Cade Metz to get into contact. How is this evidence of harassment?

You seem to be inserting your own imagination that this tweet author is planning to release private contact information or something similar. When in reality this could easily be people sharing their experiences with Cade and whether similar situations of doxxing or de-anonymoization by the NYT authoer have occurred in the past.

Why is it laughable? I have already said several times what was uncivil about it. If I was a psychologist who read the comments of my posts I would have realize that subtle suggestions can be blown out of proportions and I would be very careful with what words I was using to express my intent.

A civil phrasing would have been, "I'm making this decision of my own volition but I personally plan to work out a peaceful solution for all parties involved". That would have been civil. Asking anyone to act on your behalf by giving feedback to a 3rd party when it's obvious the intent is negative is not civil. It is sinister.

It's also becoming clear to me these conversations are no longer productive and I have started to re-iterate points I made in other posts. If you want to argue further make sure you understand what point I'm making and why and then make a good faith and pertinent point. Otherwise I will no longer engage with anyone responding to posts in this thread.

You can also email me if you want and make your points in a longer format. I will consider them and respond if you have well researched rebuttals.

> Why is it laughable? I have already said several times what was uncivil about it.

Perhaps this was the case, but you seem to have edited many parent comments in this chain with a '-'. Unless the flagging behavior has changed without my knowing. My understanding is that flagging removes the comment from users without showdead enabled, but does not edit the comment.

> If I was a psychologist who read the comments of my posts I would have realize that subtle suggestions can be blown out of proportions and I would be very careful with what words I was using to express my intent.

> A civil phrasing would have been, "I'm making this decision of my own volition but I personally plan to work out a peaceful solution for all parties involved". That would have been civil. Asking anyone to act on your behalf by giving feedback to a 3rd party when it's obvious the intent is negative is not civil. It is sinister.

He explicitly tells people to be police, to not be a jerk, and to be mindful that they are representing the SSC community. How is this failing to express his intent that anyone commenting on his behalf to be civil? And how on Earth is it "obvious the intent is negative is not civil" when he explicitly tells any potential commenters to be civil?

Your suggestion that Scott instead write, "I'm making this decision of my own volition but I personally plan to work out a peaceful solution for all parties involved" is not a rephrasing. It's a completely different message. He is not making this decision on his own volition, he was prompted to delete the blog due to the actions of another person. Your suggested phrasing not only completely omits this fact, but says the complete opposite.

> Your suggestion that Scott instead write, "I'm making this decision of my own volition but I personally plan to work out a peaceful solution for all parties involved" is not a rephrasing. It's a completely different message. He is not making this decision on his own volition, he prompted to delete the blog due to the actions of another person. Your suggested phrasing not only completely omits this fact, but says the complete opposite.

If your argument is that he had no choice in the matter then I'm not really arguing with you because in my world people can make choices of their own free will. To assume otherwise is a slippery slope and so I'm not interested in making that argument. If you have compelling evidence that Scott had no choice in deleting his blog then present it and we can argue about it.

Actions have consequences. The kind of community SSC fostered was not able to stand up to scrutiny even though its members pride themselves on reasoned and rational argumentation and scrutiny. When push came to shove they did not uphold and stand up for their own principles, instead they adopted the same tactics that their detractors use (innuendo and vague insinuations of great moral crimes) to defend themselves. You can look at the Twitter threads where people actually "doxxed" the journalist and his interactions and as the kids say "dragged" him on Twitter. It was all very ugly. No sane person would want to associate themselves with that kind of behavior.

Here is an actual trail of evidence for one of the members of the tech community actively harassing a reporter: https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=from%3Abalajis%20Taylor&....

I have no opinions on the editors or journalists at NYT or any other news publication. I have no reason to believe they're the enemy and yet SSC and its members seem to think so. I find such opinions and the people that hold them confused and irrational (the opposite of certain, reasoned, and rational).

> If your argument is that he had no choice in the matter then I'm not really arguing with you because in my world people can make choices of their own free will. To assume otherwise is a slippery slope and so I'm not interested in making that argument. If you have compelling evidence that Scott had no choice in deleting his blog then present it and we can argue about it.

You're using the words "choice" and "voluntary" in a very pedantic way.

If someone puts a knife to your throat and demands the contents of your wallet under threat of being killed, you're also handing over the contents of your wallet out of your own free will. You chose to give up your property. You could have chosen to refuse and suffer the consequences. Your decision to give up your property was voluntary, in the sense that you could have chosen otherwise. This isn't technically wrong, but it also isn't what how the overwhelming majority of people use the word "voluntary".

When people talk about being forced to do something, they're talking about being pressured into taking a certain action due to the necessity of avoiding some consequence if they don't. In this case, Scott was being threatened with the consequence of having his identity revealed to a much broader audience with the probably consequence of adversely affecting his career and his patients. Yes, he chose to delete his blog. He could have left it up and lived with the adverse consequences to his livelihood. But this decision was made due to the threat of these consequences - it was not voluntary.

> Here is an actual trail of evidence for one of the members of the tech community actively harassing a reporter

This person isn't talking about either Cade Metz (the New York Times journalist that was writing about SSC), nor Pui-Wing Tam. The mention of Slate Star Codex comes at the end of this thread. How does this connect, in any way, to Scott's blog post? Furthermore, do you realize how absurd it is to form an opinion of an entire community of thousands if not tens of thousands of people based on the actions of a single person?

Furthermore, how is this harassment? This person is criticizing a journalist on false claims, and calling them a sociopath. You seem to be under the impression that the simple act of saying unfavorable things about someone is harassment. It isn't. If calling someone a liar and a sociopath is harassment, then a lot of people harassing a certain national leader on a regular basis (and rightly so, IMO. The point is to demonstrate that calling someone a liar and a sociopath isn't harassment).

What point are you making? That my definition of voluntary is incorrect? If so then I disagree because I use the word exactly how I mean it. No one put a knife to anyone's throat and forced them to do anything that they could have avoided if they had taken precautions. In Scott's case, he could have fostered a better community of individuals and been more careful about his anonymity but he didn't and he wasn't. So his problems spilled over into the larger tech community and people adopted the attitude of the free press being "anti-technology" and "evil".

Calling someone a sociopath is indeed harassment if you have no compelling evidence to prove your point. Because if you claim someone is a sociopath without providing compelling evidence then you're arguing in bad faith which is a characteristic of sociopathic people.

I don't know who Taylor is but I can tell that she's not a sociopath but the person harassing her on the other hand has certain sociopathic characteristics.

The author of the tweet pointed out that lied, and subsequently attacked others while playing the victim - which are sociopathic tendencies. If what he says it true, he could reasonably claim to have compelling evidence to prove his point.

But this is irrelevant. Calling someone a sociopath regardless of whether or not you have evidence isn't harassment. You realize that harassment is a crime, right? It's honestly quite astounding that you believe restrictions on speech are this tight. Being offended or insulted does not make speech harassment. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that banning speech on the basis of offensiveness is not allowed [1]. Speech protections go even further than that - even burning a cross and calling for "revengeance" against minorities is protected [2]. No, Balaji's Tweets aren't harassment. They aren't even near it.

Harassment laws almost always revolve around non-consensual speech (e.g. someone following you or otherwise forcing you to be exposed to their speech), or a captive audience (a boss saying something to an employee. The employee is a captive audience, they can't avoid their boss without losing their job). Harassment is about keeping people from having to listen to speech that they do not consent to receiving. Harassment laws are not about preventing people from saying offensive things about other people. Taylor isn't a captive audience - if she does not consent to seeing Balaji's Tweets she can easily block him.

And on a side note: using your own expansive definition of harassment, aren't you now harassing Balaji by calling him a sociopath or saying he has "sociopathic tendencies"? If not why is it okay for your to call someone a sociopath, but harassment for him to call Taylor a sociopath?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio

> But this is irrelevant. Calling someone a sociopath regardless of whether or not you have evidence isn't harassment. You realize that harassment is a crime, right? It's honestly quite astounding that you believe restrictions on speech are this tight.

I have never argued for any restrictions on free speech and yet you continue to say that I have. Why is this confusing for you? I have continued to present evidence for why I think what I think and yet all I hear back is my definitions are wrong and pedantic. What in your opinion is not pedantic and correct? Can you provide the definitions so we can have a fruitful argument instead of going around in circles about what words means and how they can be associated with actions that can cause harm.

I also never called anyone a sociopath. I presented evidence for what I consider to be harassment and sociopathic actions. Here is my exact quote

> Calling someone a sociopath is indeed harassment if you have no compelling evidence to prove your point. Because if you claim someone is a sociopath without providing compelling evidence then you're arguing in bad faith which is a characteristic of sociopathic people.

I don't know who Balaji is or what he does. I'm just inferring his characteristics from his obsession with Taylor and his constant combative language about the free press and journalists (specifically targeting Taylor with his tweets and calls to action to harass her along with calling her a sociopath without compelling evidence). Balaji is using exactly the same tactics Trump uses to discredit his detractors.

I will again re-iterate what I said. This is getting tiresome. If you have an actual argument against anything that I have said then my email is in my profile. I will no longer respond to more replies to my posts in this thread.

> I have never argued for any restrictions on free speech and yet you continue to say that I have. Why is this confusing for you?

You have repeatedly said that Balaji's actions are harassment. Again, harassment is illegal. Why is this confusing for you? When you say that somebody is harassing someone, you're saying that their actions are illegal and it's the government's responsibility to put a stop to it. For the third time harassment is illegal.

Do you believe Balaji's Tweet are illegal? If not then you agree with me: he is not harassing people. Is he being a jackass? Sure. Is this harassment? No.

> I'm just inferring his characteristics from his obsession with Taylor and his constant combative language about free press and journalists.

Right. And Balaji is inferring Taylor's status as a sociopath given her actions. But apparently this isn't harassment when you do it, but it is harassment when other people do the same.

> Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral reasonableness. In the legal sense, these are behaviors that appear to be disturbing, upsetting or threatening. They evolve from discriminatory grounds, and have an effect of nullifying or impairing a person from benefiting their rights. When these behaviors become repetitive, they are defined as bullying. The continuity or repetitiveness and the aspect of distressing, alarming or threatening may distinguish it from insult.

That's the definition of harassment from wikipedia and it characterizes the actions from many people in the tech community. I showed an example of such from Balaji against Taylor. In fact, he goes further into bullying territory because his actions are repetitive and consistently of sinister nature of painting the free press in broad and negative brushstrokes. He's not just bullying and harassing a specific member of the free press but he does so more generally and demeans the entire profession. That's what I call harassment. I don't care about legality. I care about decent behavior. And Balaji is not acting as a decent person so I'm using his actions as evidence of what I mean by harassment and indecent.

Again, the fact that someone calling out a journalist for publishing falsehoods and calling them a sociopath for doing so (lying is a sociopathic tendency) is harassment in your eyes is astounding. It's good that we cleared up that you aren't referring to actual harassment here - only your alternative definition of harassment - but it's still surprising to see just easily people are throwing that term around. The next time I hear someone talk about experiencing harassment in their field I need to be mindful that there's a good chance that the're using the term harassment in the same vein as you.

And again, you've still neglected to establish any sort of link between Baiaji and Scott's post. Baiaji didn't even mention Metz or the editor of the technology section. He didn't post about the New York Times' threat to dox Scott until after he posted about Taylor. So establishing any sort of causal link bewteen Scott's post and Baiaji's behavior.

To top it all off, I can't help but appreciate the fact that you're replicating the same behavior for which you are criticizing Baiaji here:

> In fact, he goes further into bullying territory because his actions are repetitive and consistently of sinister nature of painting the free press in broad and negative brushstrokes. He's not just bullying and harassing a specific member of the free press but he does so more generally and demeans the entire profession.

Yet in your post you characterize many people in the tech industry as harassers:

> That's the definition of harassment from wikipedia and it characterizes the actions from many people in the tech community.

So it's bullying when Baiaji paints a group of people in broad and negative brushstrokes. Yet you feel it's appropriate to write that the definition of harassment characterizes the actions of many people in tech.

Are you done mis-characterizating everything I say? If not, please quote everything else I've said and characterize them however you want so I can point to actual examples of how you willfully keep mis-interpreting whatever I'm saying.

I've repeatedly told you to write an argument in a longer format if you have any actual points to make but you continue responding to the thread even when I've repeatedly said I'm no longer interested in this discussion because it is tiresome to go around in circles.

There's nothing I'd put in an email that I can't put in a comment here. The only reason why you'd want me to respond via email is so that your responses wouldn't be public for other people to see. If you want a longer format, I'm willing to break this whole conversation down step by step.

* Originally you claimed that Scott was being uncivil by directing people to share their feedback on the situation with the New York Times designated feedback contact. Despite the fact that the explicitly directed potential commenters to be civil.

* I asked how this could possibly be uncivil when Scott explicitly tells commenters to be civil, to which you responded that you "have already said several times what was uncivil about it" (you haven't, or maybe it was in the posts that you edited to '-'). You also linked to this twitter post [1] as "actual evidence on twitter of actual coordination among its members for a harassment campaign" despite there being nothing at all indicating the existence of a harassment campaign.

* You then wrote that a civil phrasing would have been for Scott to say that his deletion of the blog was voluntary. I point out that this isn't a rephrasing of the original message, it's a completely different message and one that doesn't capture the fact that the deletion of the blog wasn't voluntary.

* You then claim that it was voluntary, because Scott could have just lived with the negative consequences of leaving it up. I then point out that doing something out of fear of consequences is what it means for something to be involuntary. You also then link to this twitter post [2] as evidence of "one of the members of the tech community actively harassing a reporter". But this tweet doesn't even mention Cade Metz or Pui-Wing Tam. And it doesn't even mention Scott until after the supposedly harassing tweets are made.

How is explicitly telling a community to be civil indicative of incivility? Nothing in your first twitter link even so much as mentions harassment yet you claim it's "actual evidence on twitter of actual coordination among its members for a harassment campaign". How do you convince yourself that taking action under the threat of doxxing and negative impact on your career and patients is voluntary? How is Balaji's tweets supposed to support the claim that Scott is being uncivil - especially when he only mentions Scott after the "harassing" tweets?

Each of your comments gets further from the original claim, and more and more outlandish.

1 https://mobile.twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/128066344682499...

2. https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=from%3Abalajis%20Taylor&...

> The only reason why you'd want me to respond via email is so that your responses wouldn't be public for other people to see. If you want a longer format, I'm willing to break this whole conversation down step by step.

I have no fear of public scrutiny. My actions have clearly demonstrated that because I have engaged everyone that has contacted me in good faith but I have not received the same treatment so I'm getting tired of re-iterating my points. If you think it's a trick then you can contact me on keybase and I will happily sign any statement that you want attributed to me and that I think is a fair assessment. If you don't think cryptographic proof is sufficient then we have nothing to argue about.

I stand by all my original claims. If you have specific arguments then quote me, and state your argument. I'm not looking for out of context quotes and mis-characterizations. If you want to continue arguing then provide actual quotes, state what you think I said and why, and make a counter-point for why you think my claim is incorrect with compelling evidence. You can contact me on keybase and cross-post our conversation on whatever public forum you want.

Great, you can start by addressing the points raised in the previous comment. They did indeed include specific arguments with quotes from you.

Which one. Quote it and send it on keybase and I will address it when I have time. You can then copy and paste it wherever you want with cryptographic proof that I said it.

> I would have said, "I am archiving the blog until further notice because I need to think about what kind of content should be made publicly available because words have power and it's important to think about what information and inferences we make available to others through those words".

That's not a way him to raise objections. You're demanding that he shut up.

> His suggestion wasn't civil

The fact that you keep repeating this doesn't make any of this true. He didn't make any suggestions to harass anyone.

> I don't understand how people can look at all this evidence

Your "evidence" is unrelated to Scott himself, and it doesn't show any sort of harassment taking place either.

I did not [demand] that anyone do anything. I stated an opinion and backed it up with reasoning about why I believed what I believed. It's silly to jump from what I actually said to what you inferred.

> You're demanding that he shut up.

I did not demand anything. I gave reasons and arguments about what I thought. He silenced himself by deleting his blog, no one demanded that he do so, he took the action of deleting his blog of his own volition.

> I did not [demand] that anyone do anything.

But you repeatedly criticized him for voicing his objections to being de-anonymized. When asked how he could’ve done so differently, you said that he should’ve wrote about how terrible his blog posts were instead. How is this different from demanding that he shut up?

> It's silly to jump from what I actually said to what you inferred.

That’s an explanation of what you’ve been doing all along with the whole “making suggestions” nonsense.

Is criticism no longer allowed? Isn't that the foundation of rational debate?

I have no opinions on his anonymity. I personally don't care or want to know who he is and wasn't planning on reading the NYT article. I have my own conclusions about SSC and its community that I doubt would be changed by the article and no one here has yet convinced me otherwise or given any compelling evidence to the contrary.

I have explained why I used the words that I did. If you have any more points to make then quote me in context and provide an actual rebuttal instead of calling what I wrote "nonsense".

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