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Optimal for what? Sure that might thwart this problematic piece but would it guarantee anything for the future?

At least this way Scott was able to size up his readership and work on solving this problem for good (for himself), plus the cat is out of the bag regarding how fickle the NYT is.

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Optimal for maximizing the chance of the publicity going away and him continuing his job status quo. Most people aren't going to write about a dead blog.

This solution is fine now that there's no chance.

But the blog is very important for him, just as psychiatry.

Yes, but we can infer from his initial actions that he preferred keeping his job over maintaining the blog.

As far as I understand the "hiding of the blog" was an immediate reaction to make the NYT think for a second and so to stop the publication of the article. Basically it was a statement to underline how seriously he takes his request for privacy. So he can keep the status quo, his income, and so he minimizes any harm to his patients.

But that just means he wanted to change the NYT's mind (the journalist's and/or the editor's at least), not to forever give up blogging. (So it seems to me his preferences are rather complex and they depend on various time-frames.)

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