Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomcatfish | Hacker News Reader

The story has not been published yet, though a review of the whole situation was published in the New Yorker [1] that has been met with mixed reviews, but largely positive from what I have seen (mostly from followers of the blog, strangely).

You can check the subreddit for more info on how things have been going down, I peeked in a few days ago and got caught up on all this.

[1] : https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-st...

View on HN

I think that their recent experience with Tucker Carlson has gotten the NYT staff to reconsider the relative merits of doxxing the subjects of their articles. It's a most double-edged sword, and they will cut themselves if they keep swinging it around.

Was there ever actually any evidence that the NYT was about to reveal Carlson's address? The paper has denied any intention to do so, and Carlson's wording was ambiguous.

I don't know of any direct evidence, but my understanding is that Tucker met reporters reporting on him at his new residence.

For context, they moved a while back because they had a crowd of protesters beating on his door and terrifying his wife & kids, who hid in a closet and called 911.

There's absolutely no evidence that the NYT intended to publish Carlson's home address. You only need to think for a moment to realise it's completely not what it does - what do you think the reporters are, walking around wearing Vendetta masks and shouting "EXPECT US"? You should also be able to consider the logical possibility that Carlson was talking bollocks. And then weigh the two possibilities against each other: NYT doing something that it never does (please cite last time you saw it give someone's full home address, rather than "tidy suburb in Pensacola") v Carlson spouting bollocks.

Dismaying that there are people who would lack so little logical capability to be found on what I thought was a site for coders.

Could you clarify the situation with Tucker Carlson? My understanding was that, although he has claimed they intended to publish his home address, they have not thus far done so.

As far as I know that's accurate. Additionally the NYT is denying they were ever planning to do so.

My personal interpretation is that Tucker's statement is more or less true and his reading off the names of everyone allegedly involved at the NYT and implicitly threatening to doxx them on the most watched cable news program in the country was an effective deterrent that caused the Tucker address story to get killed. I also believe that the NYT statement lacks candor and that their denying there ever was such a story is a face saving measure.

I freely admit there are other interpretations that fit the publicly available facts and that others may believe otherwise while being intellectually honest.

I actually find observing my own cognitive biases at work more interesting than the underlying story. I know for a fact that my interpretation is driven to some greater or lesser extent by my own confirmation bias. Sadly, being aware of one's own cognitive biases doesn't generally counter the effect. The best I can do is to try to keep an eye on the facts and at least limit myself to beliefs that don't contradict them. For example, why do I believe that the NYT statement is dishonest but the Tucker statement is honest? Firstly of course my cognitive bias runs that way. However I do believe the circumstantial evidence really does support my belief. Tucker was able to name the specific people involved in the alleged cancelled story which implies that either there was a cancelled story or he just made up some names.

Edit: Added some elaboration.

> For example, why do I believe that the NYT statement is dishonest but the Tucker statement is honest?

Because Tucker Carson says all sorts of racist dog-whistle stuff? And, I don’t know if Carlson apologizes or officially retracts statements when they’re proven false but I know The NY Times makes a consistent effort to do so. And, Carlson is a talking head and The NY Times is a newspaper that has one of the stronger reputations for fact checking?

He claimed that they would "show where he lived," not necessarily publish his address. I don't believe the Times would publish his address, but I do believe they might put enough information in the article to make it easy to figure out.

That's my interpretation as well. They might have been planning to publish what neighborhood he lives in, for example.

I have to imagine the NYT staff, as biased and (IMO) as poor as they are at news-writing, must take no pleasure in being asked to doxx subjects of their stories on the arbitrary and capricious whims of management. Most journalists I know are good people, even when they perpetuate a bad system. They tend to be quite left and sometimes (many times) blindly biased, yet pursuit of the truth is the main goal for the bulk of journalists. Most editors, by contrast, seem genuinely terrible. They thwart honest journalists at every opportunity to sell something fake but salacious. (Something similar can be observed about academia and the faculty vis-a-vis the deans and university administration.)

I imagine many in the NYT are looking at Carlson or Scott Alexander and are saying, "hmm, would I want my own personal details published?"

https://twitter.com/NYTimesPR/status/1285422802569441282?s=1...

I was told by the author of the New Yorker piece that the article is still on track. I don't think they paused it because of the controversy, these things just take longer than people think.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com