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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

This goes into the how, but to me the more interesting question is the 'why'.

Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?

I only have one example of why; I'm a genuinely curious and open person and I like having my beliefs tested, some of my beliefs are nuanced enough that I sometimes break down my current beliefs and my reasons into blog posts.

Things that I think are dangerous or damaging especially so, and those are usually the most controversial things so it's more difficult for people to engage with a nuanced opinion.

In one case in a job interview I had a person bring up a blog post (I believe it was "On the Merits of Meritocracy" where I actually gave good arguments pro and against) and he spent the entire time telling me why I was wrong and that meritocracy was bad, citing Caroline Ada Ehmke's piece(s).[0]

Which, ironically I had cited extensively and was the impetus for the discussion. Nonetheless the experience left me feeling icky, the interviewer had ascribed a set of beliefs to me which I did not hold because he disengaged completely with the article and read only the headline.

This is a good reason to blog anonymously in my limited opinion; you're free to engage openly.

[0]: https://postmeritocracy.org/

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> why

Cancel culture.

People lose jobs for things said 30 years ago, and that were completely acceptable 30 years ago.

> Niel Golightly stepped down after an employee complained about an article he wrote in 1987 that said women should not serve in combat. He said those views do not reflect his opinion today.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/business/boeing-resignati...

You want to be insured against that.

Absolute insanity right here.

It is pure ridiculousness indeed. Imagine holding people accountable for their actions... that would be personal responsibility and is 100% unacceptable to the current powers that be.

That isn't "holding people accountable for their actions". It's applying today's societal standards on historic commentary. That isn't fair, that isn't 'woke', it's retribution and it's wrong.

So here's the thing: people can and do lose jobs all the time over accusations that they've done something wrong. Often this happens pre-employment when background checks are happening the company finds old posts, or old arrests or whatever. Sure they don't fire you, they just never offer you the job. Other times people are fired over stuff like getting arrested even if it's a case of mistaken identity and the person is cleared, or a case where there are no charges brought. Lives are ruined over it, and it isn't new - it's been going on my whole life at least (b. 1980). The new thing is that it's being applied to people in prominent positions.

I agree that the whole concept is unfair. I disagree that this instance is particularly unfair - in fact I like the "new" cancel culture, because its very fair in the sense that it applies the same standards to public figures that are applied to everyone else. As the old saw goes "the best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it strongly".

So you won't complain when you get fired for this comment in 20 years when I am president?

In what country were public figures ever above the law?

Pre-employment checks search for drug use and crimes, a facebook post should never be a firable or arrestable offence (outside of the 3.3k arrested in the UK).

> In what country were public figures ever above the law?

Is it considered to be “above the law” if victims never report violations, intimidated by abuser’s social capital?

All the issues with cancel culture, wokeness et al. considered, there are upsides to living in a culture where it is possible to call out a very public person who has used their publicity to cause harm to someone and not be ridiculed.

You cant call out anybody and not be ridiculed. Ridicule, criticism, opposition is the basis of western culture. The legal system, the government and respectful debate is built on disagreement.

You can make justice for victims more or less easy, more or less private if you so wish, but seeking retribution for percieved slights against victims that aren't even you, has personal power written all over it.

You don't describe the reasoning of someone who wants to help victims, you describe the reasoning of someone who wants retribution. What you like is social capital and punishment of disagreement. I dont want to live your way, it leads to horrific outcomes. Turn the other cheek to criticism.

If you happen to be horribly mistreated by someone with a lot of fame and power at some point, and you try to bring them to justice, I will support you and I hope you are treated seriously and not ridiculed by general public as well.

If it never happens to you (perhaps thanks to cancel culture serving as a sort of deterrent now?), all the better.

Do downsides of cancel culture outweigh the upsides? Up for a debate, but unless all participants are willing to acknowledge those upsides in the first place I don’t see how such a debate could have a point.

Did you just claim that cancel culture magically is responsible for lower all chances of victimhood? I can't even with this.

The point is I don't want your help, I expect ridicule and opposition, it's part of the west. I don't even argue the downsides and upsides of cancel culture because it's attacking an unassailable problem with the mask of compassion.

> I expect ridicule and opposition

This is exactly why victims would choose to conceal abuse, thus enabling more of it and making public figures sometimes effectively above the law.

As a result of recent developments, knowing that they will receive support and compassion helps people who suffered through this in silence come out, raise public awareness and prevent a powerful person from perpetuating abuse.

I agree with the poster upthread that society is probably fairer and playing field is more level this way.

Hopefully you don't get fired for this comment 30 years from now.

I'm curious, why do you use Sophocles as your name? He doesn't hold up well by modern moral standards.

Go-lightly indeed.

I think the two most common reasons for anonymity are:

* blogging from an oppressive regime

* to isolate yourself from online mobs

If you write something controversial these days, sometimes it catches a wider audience and you can find yourself under a lot of attention. A minority of those poeple will not be nice, and may send death threats or worse. Your experience is a tiny fraction of what this can be like. Being anonymous takes out some of the sting.

I can't think of a better illustration of the latter than https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/04/last-us-2-voice-actor-shares-....

Offline mobs too. As a Japanese I completely don’t understand why most English speakers so casually disclose their identity so publicly.

If you post something in your real name, your colleagues WILL find it out and your boss WILL read it and your neighbors WILL scrutinize it no matter how woke your post may read. There WILL be consequences from being pointed at to losing your job and pension.

People using real names for app reviews, online comments, those are completely insane to me. Including shorthands like “John D.” Unless you are paid to do so that is.

Because there is also professional benefits about writing with your real name. For example the famous patio11: https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/

He also goes into detail in this podcast about the benefits of writing with your real name too: https://player.fm/series/north-star-podcast/patrick-mckenzie...

Funnily enough, he also lives in japan!

Also blogging from a regime that may become oppressive in 5-10 years (at which point your blogging history about how great democracy is will come back to bite you in the ass).

another factor is the desire to separate ideas from their author.

for example, double-blind peer review.

> [1:] blogging from an oppressive regime

> [2:] to isolate yourself from online mobs

If we're talking about common, I'll add:

3: to normalize anonymity so that people in groups 1 and 2 stand out less, have less peer pressure to compromise themselves, and so that attackers have to spend more resources than if they could focus their attacks on the few people they actually want to target (compare HTTPS Everywhere and other "Encrypt all the things!" efforts).

I think it's interesting to take a look at history. Many famous writers used or use a nom de plume or published anonymously because they didn't want their identities to draw the attention away from their writing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudonyms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pen_names

Few people know who Jean Baptiste Poquelin or François-Marie Arouet were. But Molière and Voltaire should ring a bell, right?

Ironically, here, we don't use our own name, but a digital handle when posting comments. This allows us to create this persona on HN which doesn't really have to converge with our real selves.

Or they didn't want their writing to draw attention to their identiies, which is key in the public-shaming debate.

A primary reason you might want to read something written anonymously is because it provides important, actionable information that is not available elsewhere. And the reason that information is only provided anonymously is because that information helps me but harms some other powerful group.

If, for example, someone posts a video of human body parts being ground up to make sausage at Mr. Fred's Delicious Sausage factory, I would really like to know that before I make my breakfast selection at the grocery store. But Mr. Fred probably does not want me to know that, which is why it's likely to be posted anonymously to pretect the author from retaliation.

In a world where some powerful groups are happy to have harm come to others, anonymity is a critical tool to fight back.

But then again, what if it's Mr. Fred's jaded ex-business partner who posted the blog and the video was faked?

Everything should have some form of skepticism. The more ridiculous thing being presented, the more skepticism you should apply. Skepticism does not mean disbelief, but rather that you shouldn't just take things at face value and put on your critical thinking and analyst hat. Or as someone much wiser than me put it

> extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

We're already in a society where it is easy to control narratives and manipulate viewpoints. You don't need CGI or ML to do that.

Unfortunately it feels like we're in the habit that we apply scrutiny when things are simple and take at face when things are absurd.

That valid concern applies equally to non-anonymous information too.

Certainly, knowing the author is a useful part of evaluating some information. But, of course, authorship can be faked too. There's no escape from the need to apply critical reasoning to the information you encounter.

It’s the same reason that many authors publish under a pseudonym.

A friend of mine is a teacher who has written a couple of books. He likes to publish them under a pseudonym because if a parent took exception with part of the story it could create an issue for him professionally.

In today’s climate, it’s hard to avoid offending somebody.

> In today’s climate, it’s hard to avoid offending somebody.

And importantly, offending someone today is much more likely to have serious consequences than it was 10 years ago (that's my perception, anyway). A decade ago if you wrote something innocuous (especially while having the wrong immutable characteristics) and someone wrote your employer demanding your termination on the grounds that your innocuous thing could be interpreted as 'hate' by virtue of some absurd mental gymnastics ("well if we change the definition of 'hate' in such a way as to encompass innocuous offenses, then voila, your employee is guilty of 'hate' and should be fired!"), your employer would likely have told that person to piss off.

Note also that a common use case for pen names was to establish credibility when one's identity (gender, race, etc) would be used against them. I don't know that many anonymous writers are trying to conceal their gender or race these days, but I certainly see many, many more rebuttals that are some variation of "the author is wrong because of their identity" or rather "the author is not only wrong but evil/hateful/racist/otherwise-deserving-of-cancelation because of their identity" than I did 10 or 20 years ago.

> "the author is wrong because of their identity" or rather "the author is not only wrong but evil/hateful/racist/otherwise-deserving-of-cancelation because of their identity"

Nitpick: this is not about the author's identity[1][2], but about incidental physical characteristics[0] or (charitably) aesthetic preferences[3].

0: ie, the person making the 'rebuttal' is themselves racist/sexist/etc.

1: http://paulgraham.com/identity.html

2: http://web.archive.org/web/20200623015648_/https://slatestar...

3: see [2] and search for "Tribe is most classically typified by" and "code word for the Red Tribe".

This is pretty analogous to the reasons why Scott Alexander from Slate Star Codex[1] used anonymity and the reasons he shut the blog down recently.

1: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...

> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?

> you're free to engage openly

This is what I was going to answer.

Sometimes I disagree with my own writing later. It's easier to distance from this writing when I have released it through a pseudonym so that when that old self dies because of a life event or transformation/initiation, I am able to more easily close that chapter of my life, instead of having this old self be connected to my new self.

I also don't think we've reached this stage of the awareness of 'evolving selves' yet in internet culture. That's why taking precautions, like using a pseudonym, go a long way for my personal peace of mind. I do treat most corporate services as compromised because of excessive surveillance/Snowden's NSA leaks, but I think individual data leaks will start happening (where these pseudonyms would be revealed through NSA [and thus Google, FB, Google] metadata) after the current power structures topple, and a Commons-based peer production paradigm emerges.

At the same time, my reluctance to embrace my old selves and their viewpoints also comes from a lifetime of having been told I was not 'smart' (i.e. in school). Now I am learning that my delayed development was actually due to insecure attachments to primary caregivers. Together with frequent moves around the world which disturbed the possibility of forming secure attachments to other adults, this hindered my cognitive development. This means I am behind in some areas, yet it also surprisingly drives my immense interest in adult education/lifelong learning, as well as Sudbury schools etc.

> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?

Once again: Who is harmed by a "Real Names" policy?

https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Re...

That is a very detailed list but I think it’s awkwardly missing “normal men”.

Cancels occurring to a normal, well paid, stable person into jobless of even into suicide aren’t negligible events. In fact isn’t it happening to university professors right now?

Identities without mob support is a universal weakness no matter your social protectedness/minority statuses.

"Cancelling" cis married (or intending-to-get-married) men hurts the women they marry, too.

This is really good and distills the point much better than I could have, thank you.

Interesting example from print media: The Economist doesn't have author names. Critique and appreciation have both been expressed over this, but I don't think there's an answer that will convince you.

It's often said that nobody would read the Economist if they saw the kind of pimply faced recent graduates who actually wrote it.

My cynical side says that this is a way of preventing journalists who work there from accumulating a fanbase which would give them leverage over the magazine (since they could then viably threaten to take to different publications). It fits in with their neoliberalish philosophy.

I actually prefer pseudonyms (or the Economist's anonymity/column name policy) in print media.

It could be simple selection bias - perhaps better quality outlets tend to operate under pseudonyms, rather than pseudonyms themselves improving the quality of the publication.

But I speculate that operating under one's real name might increase the propensity to craft and cling to an "identity". That horrible concept of a "personal brand", if you will. You want people to remember you - which means constant soundbites, hammering the same dumbed-down points from the same angles.

There's no respite - it's under your real name, after all - so you slowly subsume yourself into this talking head that you've created. One day, you wake up, and you've completely lost any capacity for impartiality or objectivity.

Pseudonyms also allow multiple people to write the same column. I've long wondered if the Economist engages in this practice (not that I would be critical if they did, it's out of sheer curiosity).

While mobs have existed since eternity, the internet amplifies mob voices and makes everything you ever said available to a determined adversary. Since it isn't possible to predict what will be acceptable in society 10 years later, it makes sense to blog anonymously, lest the mob comes for you and even your loved ones who may not even share your opinions.

Given recent incidents I’m sure we’re all familiar with, I would never consider writing on any controversial topic under my real identity. Why would I leave my family’s economic security at the mercy of malicious, ignorant mobs?

That doesn’t sound familiar at all to me. Can you give an example of such an incident?

There are links sprinkled all throughout the comments of instances of people having views erroneously attributed to them and the public pressure causing them to lose their jobs. Here's one I just read.[1] How prevalent these are, and whether they outweigh any positive effects of the behavior (or if you even believe there are positive effects) is probably a more nuanced question.

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/stop-firin...

Even ignoring the erroneous attributions, I wan't the right to voice a controversial (or even wrong) opinion. Afterall, how else would I engage and learn that I am wrong.

It seems that the expectation is increasingly that the only evidence people should need to overturn their personal opinions is the fact that they are not in the majority.

Similarly, it seems that very little leeway is given to those who changed their minds, even before their controversial opinions came to light.

I thought that was a poorly-researched article. I'm most familiar with the Holy Land Deli situation, and actually talking to employees and customers results in articles like https://sahanjournal.com/news/as-holy-land-grocery-attempts-... It discusses some of the significant problems they had with pay disparity and treatment of Black customers; racism occurs in the Muslim community as in others.

Mounk indicates oh, American dream ruined because of spoiled daughter, while actual journalism exposes systematic pay disparities and unequal treatment of customers. Huh.

I hope that Holy Land can repair relationships with the community, change its ways, and do better going forward! If it can do that, then this was in fact a net positive for our community. Don't know whether that argues for or against blogging anonymously.

> Mounk indicates oh, American dream ruined because of spoiled daughter, while actual journalism exposes systematic pay disparities and unequal treatment of customers. Huh.

Not to defend the article too much, but does that really matter (I would say it depends on the timeline)? Whether the person persecuted is eventually found to have some reasons why some persecution may have been justified, that does not justify the original persecution. All it does is make people feel better about their past actions, even if those actions were not justified.

Punching a random person on the street is not justified because you later find out they are a horrible person. It may make you feel worse about punching the random person... but it really shouldn't.

Ugh. s/It may make you feel worse/It may make you feel better/

> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?

so interesting, for me "throwing one's name" into things is definitely a negative. It's the content which matters, not the person :-) and hopefully I'm able to judge whether the content is good or not (else does it really matter that I read it anyways if I'm not even able to do that / fact check / etc. ?).

But then I come from a culture where the word "individualist" is an insult so maybe that has some influence.

Interestingly, I have a hyper-individualist background, and I similarly think that the tendency to care about pedigree over content is likely to mislead and misinform you. In theory, this means reading The New York Times with the same level of skepticism as Breitbart; in practice, the correlation is strong enough that I end up avoiding Breitbart, but the principle helps me pick out bad reporting from the Times _constantly_).

> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?

There are still quite some monarchies around in which you go to prison for speaking up against the rulers (in most you will be convicted for unrelated, made up charges).

> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw his/her/their name into?

Are you talking about opinion pieces? Because, if something is well-cited objective+factual content that doesn't bother to express any opinions, I wouldn't care about (or even look for) authorship.

Many writers take on a pen name (pseudonym), for a variety of reasons, some of them related to issues you get at with your post.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pen_names

What is your opinion on "The Meritocracy Trap:..." by Daniel Markovits? I was recently told this would be a good reading to question meritocracy, or at least to understand those who do.

You can listen to Sam Harris' podcast with Markovits for an introduction to the book [1], or Ezra Klein's [2]. I found his argument novel, thoughtful, and quite convincing and have put the book on my reading list.

The claim is that elites have instituted a caste system, more or less, with enormous inequality and very little social mobility, all under the guise of meritocracy which serves to legitimise it.

[1] https://samharris.org/podcasts/205-failure-meritocracy/

[2] link at the end here: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/24/20919030/...

https://www.themeritocracytrap.com

So they brought you into the interview just to have an argument with you over your blog post? Did you get the job? xD

Haven’t you answered your own question?

I want to write about my opinions on software but I'm nowhere near experienced enough to have good opinions and I don't want my blog posts to get attached to my professional persona.

> I only have one example of why;

I think there are plenty of reasons why. But if someone's arguments are good, it does not matter who they are. If someone doesn't want the limelight, that is fine. I mean look here, my handle isn't my name. Though I wouldn't call it exactly anonymous/secret either.

> it's more difficult for people to engage with a nuanced opinion.

It is more difficult, but recognize that a common fallacy is "my opinion is nuanced, and yours is simple."

Which you experience here

> ascribed a set of beliefs to me which I did not hold

There's a tactic that I've found that has a decent success rate. The key comes down to that language is messy and that it is difficult to capture someone's nuanced position quickly. Your brain fills in missing information and does the best it can to figure out what the other person is trying to say. There's three parts to communication: what you mean, what you say, and what is heard. So if you don't know that these things are different and that your brain is filling in stuff (that this goes both ways) you're going to have a difficult time communicating, especially in a divided time with extra tribalism. This is essentially why divide and rule/conquer tactics work, because we are actually unable to communicate with one another.

So if you recognize this and when it is happening, stop the conversation. Divert and establish a foundation. "Hey, I think we're having some miscommunication. When you mean x do you mean f(x) or g(x)?" Then you listen carefully and don't interrupt (I bet they will develop nuance, if not they will add more later). At some point it is natural for you to speak again and address the misunderstanding and explain your nuanced point. If they start interrupting calmly explain "Hey, I have a nuanced point and I do not feel like I'm being able to finish an idea and thus we won't be on the same page and both be frustrated. I would like to finish the idea first." Because you listened to them carefully before and gave them time they now feel obliged to do this. The whole conversation has slowed down but everyone is now speaking the same language and hostility is gone. The pace will naturally pick back up.

As an example I was talking with my roommate the other night and we were getting heated. I had to apply this method and basically say "Hey, we're throwing in too many things at once. I don't feel like I can finish an idea before I address a specific issue. It is impossible to for me to talk about 30 different and nuanced subjects at once." He did slow down. Mind you he also said "Well that's how <insert nationality> people speak, I guess we can just handle that many topics." Don't let that kind of thing phase you, because if you want to have a real conversation you have the be the better person. This is probably the hardest part (let someone make themselves the asshole and let them realize it, you don't always have to point it out).

tldr: disengage, slow down, reestablish definitions, reengage.

But if you want to fight, win, or get one up on the other person, these techniques will not help you accomplish that.

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