A Grand Anticlimax: The New York Times on Scott Alexander

It wouldn't really matter if I said it would hurt my current business or that my wife would be upset that I was commenting so much online. It isn't really the newspaper's job to worry about those things because, as you said, it isn't a PR piece.

I see the same sort of response here, which worries me - the NYT article isn't nearly as negative as I see the in-group worrying about: the only negative part I read is some minor slap of the wrist for staging a cancellation drama because journalists can't ethically agree not to share his name when it's already very public information

I don't think the fallacy lies in the power of institutions or print but the human desire to attribute deeper meaning, principle, design, intent, or structure where it doesn't exist.

Note: obviously Richelieu being of his time and religion only referred to men as being worthy of smearing.

on edit: changed regions to reasons, tired.

Buddy, the NYT is institutional power. The government listens to them, not the other way around. (Occasionally, NYT does USG a solid, like convincing the public to invade Iraq.)

Oh, and the NYT listens to Harvard, Yale, and other high-status academic sources (and especially, NGOs). You might even call them their mouthpiece.

It's been this way since at least WW2 when FDR disempowered the executive branch in favor of the permanent administrative state. We've been living in that reality ever since…

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-...

https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Regarding reputation: All media outlets big and small have the mutually beneficial habit of copying each others' work with essentially reposted articles. The uniformity of narrative on various events and topics that come up - the circular referencing called the "media cycle" - bolsters the appearance that the original outlet is generally right on things.

Retractions are often printed by the New York Times, and to their credit they are very rigorous in doing so. But it is not on the front page, and only a small fraction of those who read the original pieces or their headlines return to see the retraction. When it comes to online work, silent edits are increasingly common. Luckily there is a tracker to see where those are happening and whether NYT does it more than other outlets:

http://newsdiffs.org/

> wish to be anonymous invalidate the whole newspaper's

> integrity?

There is some content I consumed years ago and thought was quite reliable, until recently, something that was published just rubbed me the wrong way. I did some digging and found that I was right, that there was some issue. I then went back and applied this same skepticism to some of the previous publications - and found that some of them also had problems, and that I had overlooked them. At the time, they seemed correct, but I had simply overlooked some issues based on their perceived credibility.

My point is - now you have seen that it is at least possible for NYT to publish biased and outright incorrect content, they have shown their capability to do so, therefore you must consider that other publications may also be incorrect. I would suggest that at least in the immediate future, you perform your own cross-referencing. You need to determine if this was just a slip up, or one obvious misstep in a long line of non-obvious missteps.

Generally, I encourage people to read both a moderate left-wing and right-wing source. Where they conflict is usually where you have to do your own digging. For example, was that Tweet taken out of context? Did that image/video really show that? Is this person really as they claim? I feel like a lot of modern journalism is really hidden in the framing of the evidence.

It's really sad. This paper had such honor. Now it's a horror show.

1> I guess someone who chooses to label themselves as a rationalist likely holds the opinion that most people are not rationalists.

2> And I guess someone who offers up that label in order to introduce himself, before the topic of rationalism has even come up, must see it as a major part of his self-identity. (which probably implies <1>)

(There's also a different older meaning in philosophy which is largely unrelated)

a (joke) inductive definition:

base case: Elizier Yudkowsky is a rationalist.

inductive case: Anyone who frequently argues with rationalists is a rationalist.

The community speaks a fair bit about how to deal with psychological bias, and also talks about Bayesian reasoning, decision theory, etc. Also talks about what conversational norms are helpful in facilitating productive discussion especially in the presence of disagreement, etc.

There are also those who would be called "rationalist-adjacent" who, well, people who are socially-near "rationalists", but, fairly similar topics discussed.

There have been some attempts to use the phrase "aspiring rationalist" rather than "rationalist", and to reserve the term "rationalist" to refer to hypothetical idealized practitioners of the ideas.

Also, sometimes people shorten "rationalist" to "rat".