“Silicon Valley’s Safe Space” has misinformed readers
reason.com
reason.com
Isn't this quite common in 'Cancel Culture' as well as in 'Hit Piece Journalism' ?
You can discredit anyone by portraying them as a single dimensional thought - generally stating their words or actions out of context.
Silly Example: A Person X has been seen frequenting a food joint that is participating in alleged inhumane industrial massacre of animals. So we read - The person is an evil animal hater. And so is everyone who has ever eaten at pretty much any fast food chain.
Note the difference, where the author agrees with someone like Damore, he'll go to lengths to say
>Damore qualified his claims throughout the infamous memo with language like "may in part explain"
But for the NYT, who he just doesn't like, he can ignore 4 straight paragraphs in order to get outraged about the 5th.
It's also this bizarre double think - the NYT telling readers that Siskind says the media ignores men being harassed by women is clearly an attempt to get their readers thinking Siskind is some kind of mad extremist. Oh but also, that's actually true and the media does ignore that. Well which is it, are you being discredited for your crazy views, or is the NYT accurately reporting something you do think.
Frankly, the way this comes across is a group of people who have convinced themselves that they're going to be called racist and sexist, and as a result whenever someone talks about them at all they respond as if they've been called racist or sexist. The NYT article actually didn't do that, which just makes it bizarre when they react like it did.
There is another progression that accurately describes click-bate news: 1. Cause disagreements and strife 2. ??? 3. Profit!
“If things get hot, it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out with hostile reporting sent to their advertisers/friends/contacts,” Mr. Srinivasan said in an email viewed by The New York Times, using a term, “Dark Enlightenment,” that was synonymous with the neoreactionary movement.
I don't think they are hostile to the idea of journalism per se. It's the current practice they object to.
That quote is just suggesting they do to journalists what journalists do to other people.
The infamous Richard Nixon quote comes to mind.
Then supposedly he "viewed an email" containing a quote that looks suspiciously similar to the above. Do we have any idea what the context of the broader email is? Is it possible that Srinivasan added "but we wouldn't stoop to their level" in the next sentence? Do we know whether the quote is paraphrased or not? Do we know whether they confirmed authenticity? (Viewed implies that someone sent a screenshot from their phone.)
Frankly, the credibility that Cade Metz has at this point is about the same as The National Enquirer.
I dunno if it is troubling though. Rather, It is revealing. New-Journalism fundamentally opposes the ethos of old Journalism. The journalist is now an activist first, and a reporter second. The conclusion is decided before a story is selected, and lying by omission is the new norm.
I don't mind biased reporting, if the organization openly declares its bias. The Economist is 'pro free trade & free markets'. They do not claim to bring you the truth and the complete truth. I subscribe to 'Theprint.in' which also deeply cares about old journalistic values and is explicit about telling when a person is giving opinions vs news. They too openly declare their bias:'Liberal on economy, liberal on society'.
It is the main-stream media channels that claim to be neutral and fair. But, then use their power to push an agenda 24 hours of the day. I like journalists. I dislike activists, who refuse to face scrutiny for their stances.
I thought this article was pretty insightful on that topic: https://mynewbandis.substack.com/p/slate-star-clusterfuck
> There’s a specific kind of misunderstanding [about journalism] that’s pervasive in tech, and it falls in this taxonomy of fallacies somewhere between the commentary/reporting confusion, and Uncle Chico [who is the most prolific Facebook shitposter I’ve ever met, who thinks journalists who do not work at Fox have all coordinated to ruin Donald Trump’s life]. It is like the former in that it fails to understand processes and classifications that are integral to how journalism is done, and necessary, and it’s like the latter in the sense that it attributes personal qualities to journalists that both comically overstate the level of personal investment journalists have in the people they cover, and assumes that journalists are motivated by (maybe even primarily by) assorted flavors of malice....
> There’s also a related fallacy that’s not universal, but inasmuch as it exists, it seems uniquely endemic to tech: the idea that tech journalism should support the tech industry. This interprets journalism as public relations, which it is not. Journalists are not supposed to cheerlead the industry; they’re supposed to cover it, and that means writing the good things and the bad with no overriding preference for one over the other.
[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
Good faith doesn't mean doing whatever some internet rando thinks is reasonable.
It's funny seeing things I've said for 5-10 years come out as mainstream common knowledge, namely that mainstream journalism is either lazy, extremist, or both. When I first said it I was called reactionary, or paranoid.
I'm far from the typical political persuasion that one might consider to be interested in SSC (check my about text/comments on here) but I think I gain some perspective with the SSC articles I've read that goes beyond pure endless abstract philosophical rumination.
So from my point of view, Scott deserves at least one cheer, and probably more. His blog may not stand to the level of academic analysis, but in contrast to the quality of other blogs and especially Twitter style argumentation, it's quite a beacon and his writing style and intellectual charity something to emulate in online discourse.
More significant than those factors is time pressure and limited staffing.
You can have your news fast, cheap, or unbiased. Pick two.
It's really quite funny, in a I-want-to-cry kind of way, that a term invented to protect "sissies" (I count myself among them!) is being used to mock people for their lack of masculinity. Its cynical deployment, here, actually serves to reinforce the very macho stereotypes the term was invented to combat. And all this from a supposed standard bearer of liberal orthodoxy.
Metz' cretinitude is surpassed only by his nastiness and shamelessness.
Safe space seems to refer to the article's claim "voices who might push back were kept at bay". Anything about masculinity is your own imagination.
(I actually agree with Scott's request to remain anonymous though. I guess politics are complex.)
Logical thinking is one tool for developing self-awareness but not a necessary one.
For myself, I’m bipolar. Self-awareness is critical to keeping myself grounded and processing extreme emotions safely. Many people have told me I am an expert at this and I still fall into this trap again and again. I just eventually realize it.
I know many smart people who are blind or willfully ignorant of their own assumptions. This includes a number of vocal advocates of theology, philosophy, and rationality.
A more pithy/cheeky way of saying that would be the "Rationalists" are really Rationalizers.
Personally, I dislike rationalism /utilitarianism and still enjoy reading an occasional SSC article.
And this is the most glaring fault of the NYT. They just assume that Silicon Valley types take everything written on SCC as gospel. Which is understandable, since the totalitarian left enforces all-or-nothing views and the NYT is projecting their own shortcomings on Silicon Valley.
But Silicon Valley just wants to return to the free exchange of ideas of the Usenet age.
On its surface, this reads that Scott supports D'amore's memo but doesn't want to be associated with it. Is there more context? In general, anybody advising others to hide their beliefs in order to be more persuasive should expect to invite speculation about what their own true intents are.
This is usually a reasonable heuristic, but it falls over when one person thinks “childhood malnutrition harms brain development, reducing intelligence, so improving the diet of poor children is urgent”⁰ and somebody else thinks “rich people are rich because they've earned their wealth because they're genetically really intelligent; it's social Darwinism”, but the only things the two are saying to each other are things like “poor people / members of minority ethnic groups score lower on average on IQ tests¹”.
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⁰: I've seen Scott make basically this argument – though it was probably about intestinal worms rather than nutrition.
¹: Since I brought this up, I'm going to use the opportunity to suggest that Scott has, historically, put too much credence on IQ tests as a proxy for intelligence. I was basically tutored to be able to do well in IQ tests, as a result of my background, and I've never seen him take things like that into account – despite the decades of academic research backing up my anecdote (IQ tests are culturally-specific).
Interestingly enough, Scott Alexander published an entire essay disagreeing with libertarianism. Your rationalists' views are not representative of Scott Alexander's views. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-liberta...
There are a lot of ideologies calling themselves rationalism, many of which feed into each other. Scott Alexander has basically invented his own, and it changes significantly over any given two-year period (as expected for somebody continuing to learn about the world); the best way (imo) to appreciate his articles is to read them, think about them and assume that around half of each is wrong (or, if you disagree with the core ideas of an article, which happens to me on occasion, that around half is right).
I think it is more likely that you mean this about people who build their identity around rationalism. Most people with a single dominant interest are tedious in one way or another.
- How to combine conflicting intuitions from multiple sources, including your gut reactions, your analytic reasoning, and of course the opinions of others;
- The structure of your own goals and motivations;
- How to learn new skills faster
So perhaps if the only rationalists you've met are haughty libertarians, you've gotten unlucky.
I will say that the rationalist community tends to be liberal on social views, but that's probably because the community tends to be utilitarian, and it's hard to justify, for example, banning homosexuality in a utilitarian framework.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GfMSiorAsYeezpn9o/the-proble...
Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? It's just not a nice thing to do, simple as that. It may be easy to find if you go looking, but most people don't have any reason to go looking, so the pen name serves its purpose of providing anonymity. The NYT author makes it seem as if publishing the guys real name in a widely read paper is the same as it being googleable to someone who looks. Its a COMPLETELY different level of exposure.
The other key point is that doxxing someone who has been writing anonymously for decades is very different than believing that people should not have the right to write anonymously. Scott began writing under a pseudonym, under the expectation that it would stay anonymous - and so the space of things he said was much more controversial than what it would have been if he expected to be doxxed one day. NYT shows up to the world of blogs 10 years later, knowing nothing and starts pulling the rug out from under people who began writing in a different world, under completely different norms. Its just a shitty, shitty thing to do.
> I woke up the next morning to a torrent of online abuse, as did my editor, who was named in the farewell note. My address and phone number were shared by the blog’s readers on Twitter. Protecting the identity of the man behind Slate Star Codex had turned into a cause among the Rationalists.
One paragraph after detailing why Scott requested his name to be kept out, the reporter complains about the online abuse he received, which could have easily been prevented by not using real names.
I thought the NYT held off publishing the original article, and although the article published in the last week did name him, this was only after Scott relaunched his blog under his real name?
I know they were threatening to reveal his name prior to this, but in the end Scott revealed his own identity first.
The “why” is easy. The first part of this article makes the reason quite clear. This reporter believed that Scott’s site was giving safe harbor to “white supremacists” while making it hard for “social justice warriors’” voices to be heard [1].
So the reason he was doxxed is in keeping with a recent trend in the media: punish perceived right-leaning people for their views. Drag them out in the public square, and get them fired or at least ensure that their life will never be the same. It’s Mccarthyism, 2021 edition.
Welcome to the newly “united” America.
[1] The part of the article I am referring to is this: “...The voices also included white supremacists and neo-fascists. The only people who struggled to be heard, Dr. Friedman said, were "social justice warriors.". The author knew that the left-leaning readers of the NYT would be upset over this, and would want to know whom the person behind such a community was so that cancel culture could carry out its duties.
A better argument would be that Scott isn't the right-winger the article writer thinks they are, and that the article is poorly researched. At worst, I'd say he's probably a little too dismissive of privilege narratives, but that doesn't make him a white supremacist or a neo-fascist. Of course, that doesn't make an article, and we gotta keep the content grill sizzling, so here's some tenuous connections to make an interesting story to meet quotas.
https://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-...
Another is:
https://archive.org/details/josephmccarthyre00herm/page/5/mo...
A perhaps more accessible writeup in the Washington Post from 1996:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/w...
"Cancel culture" is what right-wingers complain about when they've realized left-wingers have rifled through their rhetorical toolbox
Can you give some examples. At least from the perspective of a British person, I cannot recall right wing people ever engaging in "cancel culture" during my life time. Are you thinking of religious people in the USA?
For the record, the rest of my examples here are going to be extremely Amerocentric, too. I'm sure if I spent an hour I could find an example of Tories doing something cancel-y, but I'm more familiar with American politics. So you could argue that Tories specifically haven't cancelled anyone, but I'm not so sure that's the case. Cancelling is not "left wingers taking down people who aren't as left wing as them", it's what happens when the whole of society decides to disapprove of someone due to their actions. Everybody has some kind of button to press, some ideology they will find distasteful enough as to refuse to associate with people who believe in it.
A good example today of right-wing cancel culture would be the far-right primarying moderate Republicans. If you are a Republican politician and you don't think Donald Trump should forcibly lead a military coup to retake America, your days in politics are limited. The party was lost to right-wing radicals decades ago, and they don't tolerate anyone outside their little black hole on the political compass. Hell, state GOP branches are already censuring the seven or so Republicans that voted to convict Trump. The only difference is that the cancelling here is limited to inter-party struggles rather than breaking out into the wider culture.
There's also that time right-wingers tricked Disney into firing James Gunn over vile things he tweeted decades ago. Cancel culture doesn't need to be ideologically consistent. We usually think of it as left-wingers getting angry about right-wingers and purging them; but it can also be right-wingers getting angry about left-wingers, and then making up a story to sick their lefty friends on them. All you need for cancel culture is someone who wants someone else socially gone, and another group of people willing to disassociate with certain ideologies.
Furthermore, to actually fight cancel culture, you either need to compromise on free speech and prohibit people from revealing someone's political ideology; or you need to compromise on freedom of association and make it illegal to disassociate from someone over their political ideology. I'm not sure either of those changes are actually beneficial.
Super curious what the “trick” is that you’re referring to. My understanding is that he did indeed write these things and publish them on his Twitter feed. Simply pointing that out isn’t a “trick,” unless I have missed something about the story.
Saying that both sides have engaged in it does not make it the correct thing to do. It's a disgusting thing for people to engage in, regardless of the political affiliation of the people doing it. That said, I have seen countless examples of cancel culture in action coming from the left, and comparatively few from the right. Even Obama has decried the left's zealousness to cancel people [1]. When Obama calls you too woke, you're probably too woke.
As to the rest of your response, I was using the general idea of mccarthyism. The dictionary defines it as "a campaign or practice that endorses the use of unfair allegations and investigations". I think that definition squarely fits what happened here.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-ca...
No, this goes far beyond "not nice"
This is an attempt to bully competition (both in ideology and in business) off the internet by putting their personal well-being in danger.
This kind of defamation+doxxing is just utterly despicable. Journalists who repeatedly pull this kind of stunt should be fired.
And setting aside how this type of thing affects the individual victim, consider how it harms journalism as a whole, by painting journalists as untrustworthy immoral backstabbing asshats.
Put bluntly: when populists like trump call the media liars, the saddest part is that they're not wrong.
But members of the media are stoking the fires of division to satisfy their lust for money and attention. It’s wrong, and I hope that everyone can see these actions for what they are. The NYT and the reporter that wrote the article should be roundly criticized by both sides for what they did here. They should be canceled.
How this flips around into the mirror-world that is social media, is beyond my understanding. Either people who discuss on large platforms and those that do it offline or in more personal online communities are two distinct groups of people with little overlap, or some magic switch just flips in peoples heads when they put their hands on a keyboard.
The media are ultimately just following the market: outrage sells, so they deliver. Sure, we can blame them for abusing their power in cases like these, but more importantly, we should ask the question how they ended up in a position where everyone just blindly trusts what they read in a newspaper.
I suspect what makes it really hard to understand is there's a training effect as users subconciously learn what things get more attention, and what attention they see as favorable is a moving target depending on their emotional state.
So you really have no idea what changing the kind of attention they get will do, and even if you did, when you try to make changes to see what happens, you have to wait on the timescale of human learning to see what the result of those changes are; how the dynamic is settling into a new stable state.
Except my comment had nothing to do with downvoting on HN, nor was it a general attack of "the left" (fuck, I am on the left myself) so it isn't really proving anything.
Unless, of course, this the NYT staff raiding HN downvoting comments, but something tells me that's neither the case nor what you're talking about.
This is what I was referring to. The NYT used doxxing to bully him because of how they perceived his views. Much of HN uses downvotes to bully and silence anything that criticizes the left.
In contrast, the original comment (@zaptheimpaler) convincingly argues that the NYT has made a moral error in this case, regardless of where you stand on the ideological issues clouding it. It makes a strong argument by sticking to the facts, carefully avoiding appeals to emotion or bundled claims that could undermine the central point. That is what makes it such a good argument, and it's probably why it's the most upvoted comment here.
It is used that way by many people though. Downvoting out of disagreement is certainly something that happens on the internet.
> The comment from DarkWiiPlayer was very weak
Yes, the original comment already did a good job at presenting the case against the NYT. That wasn't really my intention.
> by making unprovable assertions about their motives
Well, yes, because it is simply impossible to make any provable assertion about anybodies motives. Unless you'd prefer judging actions without consideration for the actors motives (in which case there's no meaningful distinction between murder and a deadly accident), there will always be some degree of speculation about intent. In this case, there is two options: Either the NYT is utterly incompetent at basic text comprehension, or they deliberately lied about the opinions expressed on several blog posts. Assuming the NYT wouldn't have made it to where they are if they were so incompetent, there's only one possible conclusion: They intentionally spread lies with the goal of retaliatory defamation against a blogger that didn't dance to their music.
> It actually weakens the case against the NYT
Did I refute any of the arguments of the original comment? If not, then I couldn't possibly have weakened the case.
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And what's more, your criticism only really addresses the first sentence in my comment.
The second sentence is just a moral judgement of the events. I shouldn't have to point out that this is my personal opinion, as an intelligent reader should just understand that implication.
My third point is: this behaviour ruins the reputation of journalism as a whole. I do consider the reasoning for this thought trivial. If you think it is fallacious, please point out why this is.
My last sentence, again, is simple because it's trivial. Trump is known to repeatedly call media liars on camera. The NYT article is misleading at best, and most would probably agree that it lied by omission in on several occasions. I also imply that I generally don't agree with these populists, hence the "the saddest part". That's two provable factual statements and one completely subjective opinion.
Yes, if you search for the name of the blog you can find his personal name, but the issue is that if you searched for the personal name you wouldn't find the blog. A search of term to result is not symmetric if reversed.
The wish was that by publishing the name it connected the name to the blog, even though previously the blog was connected to the name. Thats not the same thing and it requires a bit of effort to understand.
For example, if you use the name of one of my online identities it could probably bring up a wiki page saying that I went to the web 2.0 conference a decade ago, but if you searched for the web 2.0 conference you would never find that identity in the search results.
Doesn’t this imply that the newspaper is simply not competent to report responsibly in the year 2021?
Specifically, (potential) patients of Alexander might have a legitimate interest in knowing about his writing. Personally, I wouldn’t have a problem with being treated by him. But therapy is among the most sensitive subject, and I could easily see people having a legitimate interest in being given the opportunity to decide for themselves.
After all, if it's important to an individual's therapy, it's even more important for government policy (foreign or domestic) affecting the lives and futures of millions of people.
Boy, is that a false equivalency. You do realize that anonymizing a source is part of a bargain for the journalist to get access to information they wouldn't otherwise have had access to, often information the source isn't authorized to disclose (and thus could face punishment for disclosing it)?
It's also worth nothing that, in the real world, revealing someone's real name isn't the high crime of "doxxing," rather it's normal and expected. Journalists aren't typically creatures of pseudonymous web forums, and it's a category error to expect them to abide by the peculiar norms of them.
When i go to a foreign land, or even someone else's home, i try to abide by the rules and norms of the locals there, regardless of whether they are norms in my land or not. Its a basic part of being a guest.
I don't care if journalists typically use pseudonyms or not, its just basic human decency to respect the norms of a space you're a guest in. I don't see much reason why journalists should get a free pass on doxxing in a forum where pseudonomity/anonymity has been the norm for decades.
Even more so, the journo explicitly asked for consent to publish his name, didn't get it, and published it anyways. Like just doing whatever you like without the subjects consent is understandable only in a few rare cases of serious crime, definitely not for the modern "crime" of wrongthink on the internet.
"I was also warned by people “in the know” that as soon as they got an excuse they would publish something as negative as possible about me, in order to punish me for embarrassing them." https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
Isn't it obvious? To put it in mathy terms: if I have to choose from ten things, and I dislike 2. my chance of picking something I dislike is 0.2, if I can disqualify one of the disliked things up front, my chance of picking the remaining disliked thing is 0.11 (i.e. a big improvement).
What’s obvious is that 10, and 2 are not something you know in advance.
More importantly, I am guessing you don’t have any model that predictively associates whether you like person’s writing at a particular instance in time with their efficacy as a therapist.
They don't have to be. The principle holds generally, as long as there's some choice out there you'd like.
More importantly, I am guessing you don’t have any model that predictively associates whether you like person’s writing at a particular instance in time with their efficacy as a therapist.
I don't but you're moving the goalposts and asking a different question. I was talking about personal preferences (e.g. like/dislike), and you're talking about "efficacy as a therapist."
I'm also getting a vibe of a kind weird inversion from you, where it's the therapist's right to see a particular patient unless that patient can prove with a "model" that the therapist won't work for them.
No. You are advancing the position that the interests of people selecting therapists are served by newspapers publishing articles about their writings.
I think that if you ask people whether they would prefer a more effective therapist over a less effective one, most people would say they would prefer the more effective one.
Effectiveness as a therapist is part of how people form preference of therapists. Excluding it is arbitrary.
Nowhere do I suggest anything about therapists having any right to see any particular client. That idea is competely made up by you.
A therapist is supposed to be a blank slate to project what is needed for therapy. The patient is not supposed to know whether the therapist is married or not or divorced, because that may affect (not in a good way) how the patient handles revealing their relationship trauma - the therapist should either appear neutral (to freely allow the patient to project whatever they want to project) or be free to create whatever impression about himself works best for the therapy. It would be near-taboo for a therapist to have a family picture in the room visible to the patient, and in the exact same manner the patient reading about therapist's personal life can only hurt therapy.
The patient should not know the therapists political opinions or moral opinions about various ethical dilemmas, as that may hurt the therapy as it involves the patients' current personal stresses. One patient might need the therapist to show agreement to their viewpoint in order to open up more, another patient might need the therapist to confront and dispute the same viewpoint. The therapist must not be taking sides based on their personal beliefs, they should project whatever viewpoint is needed for the particular patient at this moment. For this reason, various symbols of political or advocacy affiliation are near-taboo, all the therapist profiles are explicitly neutral, and (again) a patient reading their therapists personal blog is bad for the effectiveness of their therapy. A patient isn't supposed to choose a therapist based on their political opinions anyway, if the therapist lets out their politics in therapy, then they have failed at their job and the patient should get a better therapist no matter if they liked those politics or not.
Patients have a legitimate interest in knowing the professional qualifications and professional reputation of the therapist, but all the personal life and personal opinions of the therapist are out of bounds as it disturbs the relationship with the therapist - the patient has a right to read that, but it would force an ethical doctor to "fire" that patient. As far as I understand, currently Scott Alexander has to filter potential patients based on whether they read his blog as it's not anonymous anymore, but that's manageable as he now has a separate practice. But if indeed all his patients would have a "legitimate interest" in reading that and would actually do so, then he would have to stop blogging about pretty much everything meaningful because that would be incompatible with treating patients properly.
Because the Gawker type "journalist" will tell you that there's no such line, and clearly leaked dickpics are a "legitimate interest" of their readership.
That is completely normal thing to publish when you are writing about something like that.
In the past few years at the NYT, all of the old-school journalists in leadership positions have been railroaded by the tattle-tales. Millenial and Gen Z apparatchiks have largely taken full reigns of the paper. In general these generations are broadly more supportive of limits on free speech and open discussion[1]. Even more so among journalists specifically.
We're a long way from the era of journalists like HL Mencken or Tom Wolfe or Hunter S Thompson. But we do have world class tattle-tales.
[1]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-mille...
And it's not even a liberal thing or a social-justice thing. Conservatives and status-quo warriors do this all the time, and I'd argue more maliciously. Project Veritas's entire reason for being was to construct tattle-tale narratives around whatever organization conservatives were expected to hate this week.
That is basically a conspiracy theory.
It's far more likely that the journalists in question don't care one way or another if Scott Alexander continues writing or not, they just wanted to do their work according to their usual standards (e.g. use people's real names, not write a with the goal of making the subject and his fans happy).
As for the NYT believing they should control the parameters of debate, that's not a conspiracy theory. That's exactly what they seem to believe. There have been many incidents showing that in recent years, most recently, the Silicon Valley reporter whose daring investigation of Clubhouse boiled down to trying to cancel Marc Andresseen for dumb reasons. The Tom Cotton op ed, the firings of editors and staff who believed in non-woke speech and so on.
Not really, he made himself relevant again by relaunching his blog.
And it's weird to assume they were continuously slaving away on this story since this kerfuffle started, polishing it to perfection. They probably just shelved it in a draft state and moved on to new things. When it because relevant again, spent a little time dusting it off and updating it, then shipped. My understanding is this story isn't even that long for this kind of thing, and it ran on a Saturday (which IIRC is the least read edition of the week).
This story is BIG NEWS in the Rationalist subculture and adjacent communities, and a small blip pretty much everywhere else.
The intellectual/traditional camp wants to consider ideas independently from social context, so things like doxxing or guilt-by-association are way off-limits. But something that potentially reinforces "bad" behavior is within bounds as long as it's true, relevant, and leads into a worthwhile discussion.
The socially-aware camp is almost the opposite. Facts should be vetted based on whether they fit a story that promotes and reinforces "good" behavior. Off-limits are anything that challenges or complicates the story. But twisting or cherry-picking facts, or personally pressuring those involved in the debate, are in bounds.
I feel the second camp is self-defeating. It's essentially that the ends (e.g. getting Trump out of office) justify the means (nearly anything). The tactics used undermine trust as well as undercutting the values themselves. And the definition of "good" behavior is rapidly shifting away from basic morality (treating all people with respect and fairness) into political convenience (pandering to minority groups without actually helping) and then further into plain power grabs (punishing political opponents). Bad means don't create good ends.
As the saying goes, journalism is writing something someone else doesn’t want published, everything else is public relations.
That said, Metz’s claim that the NYT editors consistently require real names is inaccurate. Notably the NYT previously did a piece on Chapo Trap House and reported on host Virgil Texas using that pseudonym even though his real name is trivially discoverable.
There's a world of difference between this and what's happening here. I'm pretty confident that Scott would not have mind if the NYT run a hit piece on his blog while keeping his real name out.
By thay standard, the NYT, and especially Twitter/FB, are antijournalism. They crush stories and ideas they don't like.
This is a false equivalence. Alexander is an author publishing under a pseudonym, plain and simple.
Elena Ferrante was "unmasked" and while I'm sure she didn't appreciate it, it's not illegal or even particularly unethical. Somebody published a photo of Thomas Pynchon despite his best efforts to avoid it. Annoying sure but hardly a social crisis. Alexander has no more claim to anonymity than any of the above. If you publish long enough in a public forum to gain some amount of fame, it's unrealistic to expect your identity to be protected from all comers.
Meanwhile, a group organized to dox a reporter. It doesn't really matter what the reporter wrote: organized doxxing is deliberate, malicious, anti-social and probably illegal.
Go read it yourself. I think most people here are familiar enough with the "Rationalist" movement to be able to judge it on its own merits.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-cod...
The Rationalist movement is deeply weird. It has curious connections with "race realists" and monarchists. It is deeply insular and rarely survives contact with mainstream scholarship. Eliezer Yudkowsky and other central figures are total crackpots. Any discussion of the movement that leaves those parts out is dishonest.
The title is stupid. I'll give 'em that.
Definitely yes. Ever heard of Moldbug? The dude who claimed the rule of Leopold II (yes, that Leopold II) would be better than our current government?
I am not claiming that they are the same movement, but the Dark Enlightenment is closely related to the Rationalist movement. There is a great deal of cross-pollination.
The New York Times article is a great jumping-off point to read about this connection! It has several relevant links, including this one that explicitly discusses the monarchists:
You keep claiming that alt-right/monarchist movements have connections to rationalists, without any kind of proof or references to those connections. Which is exactly what the shitty NYT article did. Can you actually show how they are related, instead of just claiming they are?
"Slate Star Codex was a window into the Silicon Valley psyche."
This is just so obviously, insanely wrong that it's impossible to take anything else in the article seriously.
EDIT: To be clear, I don't know what the geographic distribution of Rationalists is. I also don't care. The fact of the matter is that the movement is irrelevant everywhere except Silicon Valley, and within Silicon Valley it is fairly powerful with several prominent adherents. This is spelled out in the New York Times article and its citations.
X: "This textbook says the earth is flat. It's wrong"
You: "But the earth is flat!"
X: "Citation please?"
You: "Look in the textbook you're holding!"
Uh... okay. I really want to know how the hell you came to that conclusion. It's an area full of companies that have pr campaigns that boil down to "making the world a better place" while still being the most greed filled, ideological oppressive, and privacy violating companies in the country, let alone world.
Maybe you're right. Yes, they are the most rational. It is the academic and corporate elite's job to control and plunder the majority of civilization for their own benefit. So yea, best to go where the rest of them are doing it. Never mind, you're right. If you're a snake, best to go into the same snake pit as other snakes. Let that marinate.
What process of data collection and rational evaluation did you use to test your hypothesis that it’s beneficial to your human development to disregard any story that doesn’t have the degree of supporting evidence you require?
I have a hypothesis that few are truly applying the principles of grey so deeply, as it’s quite a cognitive burden to do so, but to decry the question would contradict their principles to the core, exposing unconsidered cognitive dissonance that - if they’re rational enough - would force them to question their entire belief model to its very core. And so, instead, they will challenge the question itself, rather than apply their belief’s principles of rationality to their own beliefs.
Your datapoint in this matter would be a valuable contribution to my rational evaluation of this hypothesis, but of course I understand if you feel unable or unwilling to contribute. I shall continue developing it regardless, for any future encounters with greyfolk.
It would please me greatly to find that none are willing to respond to it, as that would perfectly contradict your belief using the honorable practices and methods of the greyfolk themselves. But it would please me most to find that they are able to reason and respond to such a question, and acknowledge their own irrationality if any is exposed, because it’s more important to me that they integrate rationality and human nature than it is that I be right.
(One caveat. The question you I expected you to have asked is why I would consider it appropriate to make such a statement without defending it further, and how I could possibly expect any outcome from that other than complete disregard by all readers. Your reply ignored that rational opportunity in favor of being dismissive. It’s a curious choice that conflicts with my read of you as a grey rationalist who’s set out to try and promote rationality at HN. If that is indeed your mission here, feedback duly noted so that you can improve the quality of your evangelism. If you aren’t a rationalist, I apologize for my misread and intend no insult by describing you as such, and I will take no offense if you simply disregard this entire reply.)
"Using the handle xirbeosbwo1234, <your name> posted on Hacker News, a forum where rich San Franciscan tech CEOs and thought leaders could talk about everything from the infamous Damore memo, to Trump advisor Peter Thiel, to race relations and the BLM movement. On an article from Reason magazine, a fiercely libertarian media outlet, he gleefully ventured opinions on monarchy and race realism. For him, the site was a space where the worst consequences he faced were downvotes and the disbelief of his equally pseudonymous peers."
The NYT article is perfectly fair. It states that Scott Alexander has sharply criticized neoreactionaries, which is true. It states that he has been a frequent critic of so-called SJWs and has written about possible genetic causes of some of the racial and sexual inequities we see in society, which is also true. Those things are part of the story. You are the one trying to leave them out.
Once you start having scholars and other official positions in the hierarchy of discussion, you can't just ignore what you don't like any more.
I consider the article entirely fair. In fact, you will see that pretty much all I am doing in this thread is telling people to read the original article. Its treatment of SSC is evenhanded and, at times, downright glowing. It says everything I want to say more eloquently than I am able.
The only problem I have with it is the title.
That is only half the truth - you also called people monarchists and crackpots. You got flagged for doing that, rightly so.
You could bring your point across much better if you were to leave out the name-calling and pejorative language. Cade Metz would benefit from this advice as well.
I called the Reason article a misrepresentation and I called Eliezer Yudkowsky a crackpot. If you're going to criticize me for saying that, then why are you leaving the Reason article alone? Cade Metz did not engage in name-calling and didn't use any pejorative language, so why are you criticizing him?
Am I ineffective for saying that? Maybe. But I'm also right. I don't particularly mind if you dislike my tone.
Also, "monarchist" isn't an insult. It's the word we use for people who think we should have a king. People like the neoreactionaries who have a strange tendency to pop up in rationalist circles.
> It was also the epicenter of a community ...
An epicenter is the focus of a earthquake, which is associated with causing great damage and loss of life. Comparing a community to such an catastrophic event is a negative connotation. Is that not a pejorative in your eyes? Even if its not, its a way of making readers disliking said community without factual basis, which is not a very honest thing.
I will stop arguing here. If your view is that you and Cade Metz do not use pejorative language, then there is no common ground between us.
I use pejorative language and make no apology for it. You seem to dislike pejorative language but seem to make an exception for the pejoratives in the Reason article.
Cade Metz did not use any pejoratives. Everything he wrote was correct and presented in context. His coverage of SSC varied between measured and glowing. I do even vaguely understand how someone could take it as an attack. It is fair in its coverage of Scott Alexander and far kinder to the Rationalists than they deserve.
Those countries does not seem to be hostile to their citizens (or anyone else for that matter) and are considered to be quite civilized?
Note to morons: I don't say this because I support monarchy or any authoritarianism. It's just... let's not exemplify the "clueless American" trope.
A real monarchy would be something like Saudi Arabia.
Yes, the rationalist movement is weird, and in some ways, bad. But Scott Alexander didn't start the rationalist movement and doesn't control it. Holding him responsible for what other people post on his website (that he makes no money from), while Twitter, Reddit, Facebook et al continue to enjoy the complicity of the media in the equally awful discourse there, is just a case of stomping on the little guy because you can.
Insofar as the NYT declared SSC to be "a window into the Silicon Valley psyche", there's a much more obvious candidate forum for that, and you're posting on it.
[edit]
I had not realized he had gone fully public with his name, to include blogging under his true name currently.
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
> Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy. He has been concerned with general ideas since the age of ten and has one of those minds that can scintillatingly rationalize everything. I have known him for ten years and in that time have heard him enthusiastically explain Marx, social credit, technocracy, Keynesian economics, Chestertonian distributism, and everything else one can imagine. Mr. G will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything. His brain operates quite apart from the rest of his apparatus. He will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along. But Mr. G is always a “deviationist.” When he played with communism he was a Trotskyist; when he talked of Keynes it was to suggest improvement; Chesterton’s economic ideas were all right but he was too bound to Catholic philosophy. So we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged.
Now this is not to compare modern liberal sensibilities to naziism, beyond the broadest of generalities such as "they are both political movements." I do think we can see that the modern liberal political body is inclined to purge SA's group of "deviationists" who they see as insufficiently ideologically pure.
The point of the quote I posted is that these "deviationists" do not jump on bandwagons of any kind, be they good or bad. Therefore, political movements that expect uncritical acceptance of their ideas see them as opponents even if they mostly agree.
[EDIT:] In fact I think you have completely misunderstood Dorothy Thompson, since the Nazis were overwhelmingly the latter rather than the former sort of human. A complete reading of her essay is a complete reading of a set of wooden stereotypes, interesting only for the fact that it records the propaganda of an era in which a previously apparently peaceful nation was girding itself for world war. Ms Thompson includes such scintillating analysis as "Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi." Good grief.
To be fair, NYT's motto was ( probably still is ) "All the News that's fit to Print" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-16918787
Reading that resignation letter I wonder who gets to decide if the TRUTH is 'Fit to Print'.