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Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

The stated reason for protecting his identity is that he’s a practicing psychiatrist who regularly receives threats from people who disagree with their perceptions of his blog content (hardly mere “concern for his feelings”). In what way was he “attacking” the free press? TFA notes that he was positively metered (“to a fault”) in his dealings with the NYT. Moreover, what does doxxing him add to the story?

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Isn't that a risk for every writer, not just a practicing psychiatrist?

As I understand it, if a patient Googles him and reads about his views it can affect the patient’s treatment. Even in the general “ordinary writers” case, writing pseudonymously is a well-established convention, and many people including the NYT are happy to protect one’s identity if they have the right politics.

That sounds like nonsense. Is his goal for his patients to never ever get hold of his opinions in case they might disagree with him?

I think the idea is that therapy should focus on the patient and anything that might distract the course of therapy is harmful to the patient (deprives them of effective therapy treatment).

Ideally. Or in case they might agree with him. The therapeutic relationship should be one where the therapist offers the patient a mirror/lens/toolbox regarding their own views and behavior, and a patient's beliefs about their therapist's biases one way or another can interfere with that.

Seems incredibly plausible to me. Not that his patients would disagree with him, but that they would no longer trust him.

The majority of the psychiatric community disagrees with you. They believe the patient should not form personal relationships with psychiatrists and therapists, including not being aware of a psychiatrist’s positions on political and social issues. They have patients with a wide range of views, some of whom rely on their treatment to maintain their psychological well-being and mental health. It can be dangerous for them to have that relationship disrupted by disagreements about orthogonal issues. Psychiatrists are not primarily concerned to protect themselves, although that is a factor; they are largely motivated by a desire to avoid endangering their patient by disrupting their treatment.

You might want to argue that it’s Alexander’s fault for writing a semi-pseudonymous blog in the first place, but that doesn’t help his patients. And I might agree with the view that exposing him is justified if the article actually revealed something of public interest-that he was a Nazi or a pedophile, for example-but it doesn’t. It’s a thin tissue of spurious guilt by association and mischaracterization. The NYT have decided that any risk to Alexander’s patients is less important than naming him in a low-quality hit piece. What they have done is immoral.

So he shouldn't have written a highly publicized psuedo anonymous blog. He chose this avenue, as a rationalist he must have estimated the risk, and took it. NYT didnt doxx him, because he is the one who chose to publicized himself. You can't eat the cake and have it too.

They protect sources exposing things that won't be exposed without anonimity, how does Scott Siskind fit this description?

It’s pretty easy to say in hindsight that Scott should have predicted from the earliest days that journalism in general and NYT in particular would have shifted sharply toward capriciousness and sensationalism and that his blog would have been so successful as to piss off the newspaper of record. Whatever, you can have that point if you want it—Scott should have been more careful.

> NYT didnt doxx him, because he is the one who chose to publicized himself. You can't eat the cake and have it too.

To be clear, you are arguing that “blogging under a pseudonym” is exactly the same thing as one of the most popular papers in the world publishing your real name in a hit piece?

> They protect sources exposing things that won't be exposed without anonimity, how does Scott Siskind fit this description?

I’m having a hard time parsing this. Can you rephrase?

He knew his real name was an open secret. He published at least 1 piece under both names. He thought about starting over with a new pseudonym but decided not to.

Ok, if it's a problem he's a practicing psychiatrist, that's an ethical issue HE has created by doing the blog. I don't think the NYT is responsible for running his practice ethically.

Don't make comments that jeopardize your business, then blame other people for "being irrational", when they correctly attribute those comments to you, it's simple accountability.

Again the doxxing is a complete myth, everyone knew his name already, he just didn't want attention draw to the fact he's actually being paid a quarter million dollars to do what he's doing.

He addresses most of your concerns in his own post on why he was shutting down his blog; rather than restating them here I suggest you go read it. Also, I find it particularly abhorrent that one oughtn’t be able to write about controversial topics anonymously, and at least a little ironic given that we’re both doing exactly that.

Pseudonymously. It would be difficult to match these accounts to real people but not impossible (dang probably has access to enough signal to make an educated guess).

Using your first and middle name is not anonymous by any stretch of the imagination.

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