ardy42

>> One side believes that government can be, and should be, improved by collective effort.

>> The other side believes government cannot be improved because government itself is per se bad.

> I know this is usually how americans explain democrats vs republicans, but is it really how the parties function? As an outsider (not american) looking in, and judging by the policies of the last couple decades, it seems republicans always increase government spending (therefore they don't actually believe in "small government"), and democrats pretty much rule for the oligarchs (therefore they don't really believe in the better of the "collective")?

IIRC. Republicans pretty much always try to cut or reduce social spending, regulation, and programs meant to help poor and middle class Americans; and their stated reasons are basically "government itself is per se bad." They don't mind military spending, and tend to increase the deficit through tax cuts (despite making a big deal about how deficits are bad whenever Democrats are in power).

The Democrats generally believe the government can perform useful social functions, so they pursue social spending, regulation, and government programs. However, they're often milquetoast about it and tend to preemptively cave to anticipated Republican objections.

> For example, Google can figure out if you are a bot with its "I'm not a robot" checkbox. This means that they can probably also figure out that fake automated requests are indeed fake.

Not necessarily. Given a noise script doesn't have to run unattended, the script could easily just prompt the user to solve any captchas it encounters, so that couldn't be used to distinguish real from fake.

> But for what? Most heirloom hardbacks are better-than-average novels for well-heeled fans and collectors, not a complete guide to rebuilding civilisation.

They're not a guide for rebuilding civilization. They're something that can last through whatever dark time you're considering in some semi-forgotten corner, so the next civilization can learn about and study what came before. And honestly, they don't need to last the whole time, but rather only until thins recover enough that you start to have copyists, etc.

> That said, Tesla's Bitcoin purchase does make a lot of sense. Elon Musk went on Twitter and called Bitcoin "BS" to drive the price down so they could buy at a discount. They then announced their Bitcoin purchase with fanfare that drove the price up, marking a quick return on their investment. They used Elon's influence to make a quick profit on the frenzy.

Is that even legal? It sounds like pumping and dumping.

> The problem is their opinion often aren't actually based on first principles. Humans have a strong tendency to form an opinion for various emotional and social reasons, and then build up a set of justifications ex post facto, often without realizing it. The more intelligent you are the easier it is to do subconsciously and it's often harder for your ego to admit the strong role your id played.

A more pithy/cheeky way of saying that would be the "Rationalists" are really Rationalizers.

> The most troubling part of the NYT article is a glimpse into how hostile some tech folks are towards the idea of journalism:

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.

> I think it's quite interesting that the NYT hasn't linked Scott's response [1] in their article about him. Surely if their article was written in good faith they would be happy to do so

Good faith doesn't mean doing whatever some internet rando thinks is reasonable.

> 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.

> I thought so too. But it's hard not to notice that this article was supposedly in the work for many months, yet reads as if it took a day's worth of work (being generous). Why did it disappear for months and then come out shortly after Scott Alexander poked his head above the parapet again? That timing is awfully suspicious.

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.

> What’s obvious is that 10, and 2 are not something you know in advance.

They don't have to be. The principle holds generally, as long as there's some choice out there you'd like.

> Because they want him to stop writing. Scott Alexander believes in open debate on any issue and to any participant. The NYT believes that "open" debate should only occur within limits, and that they are entitled to set these limits.

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).

> How will this help them make a choice if they don’t also have access to the writings of other therapists they might consider?

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).

> Good point. I look forward to a time where newspapers stop using anonymous sources and publish their names to let people decide on their credibility.

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.

> As you quote this particular as a supporting reference, would you be able to share some of Gab's specific timeline content that made that comment writer think that?

You might want to ask them.

> The Sinking of the USS Maine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...

> That's over 100 years ago. We can stop pretending that the media has ever been some selfless arbiter of truth and protector of the downtrodden. There is nothing to replace it in that role because it was never in that role. It has always been a tool for one group of powerful people to spar with other groups of powerful people and the truth rarely enters into it.

Oh come on. That's like condemning democracy on account of all those people guillotined during the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, or the whole field of software engineering on account of the Therac-25. Maybe a few changes have happened in the intervening generations?

The idea that "the media has ever been some selfless arbiter of truth and protector of the downtrodden" is an ideal to be strived for, but like any ideal, there will always people examples of people who fail to achieve it.

Also, there's another ideal that the media there cast a skeptical eye on things, to peel back the paint and expose what's really there underneath it, which is probably more pertinent here. That kind of journalism usually pisses of the fans of whatever the journalist is examining. Fans usually want fluffy puff pieces.

> My understanding was that the “first wave”, so to speak, of Gab users were the hardcore folks who genuinely had extremist views.

> Free Speech and censorship resistant platforms tend to attract users in waves. The first wave is the most extreme, as those users get kicked off mainstream platforms first. Then subsequent waves...

I don't think that's true of social networks. Take Gab for instance: its "first wave" has solidly given it a reputation as a place for extreme racists, which repels everyone else (except maybe a handful of civil libertarians with questionable judgement). That reputation prevents "subsequent waves" of more moderate folks, who would rather go to a different platform.

Also Gab, Parler, et al are really reactions against moderation, not censorship. However, most users actually welcome some level of moderation.

> But to me, free speech means anyone can speak their mind, no matter how ghastly others find it.

> And on Gab, I have encountered some pretty unsavoury speech - however, copious use of the Block feature on those I find especially distasteful means that I encounter less of those I find as such.

As I understand, being on Gab is pretty much seeking out "ghastly" and "unsavoury" speech. For instance, this comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145412) described it as:

> I signed up for a Gab account purely out of curiosity. There was literally nothing but misogynistic, homophobic, racist, antisemitic trash content on the entire timeline.

So I guess the question is: what content do you see after your "copious use of the Block feature."?

>> It is not about the appeal, it is about contempt towards Twitter. Also Gab is a bit hard to approach for Parler crowd

> Why is that?

IIRC, it's even more extreme (e.g. full of outspoken and unapologetic racists talking about racist things in racist terms).

> Powerful people will still be held in check by public opinion, market forces, and other powerful people. We don't need a centralized MiniTrue gatekeeping with its own agenda.

Actually, in the absence of the professional journalism, they'll be "held in check" by things like QAnon and "Stop the Steal," fueled by things like partisan talk radio.

The media isn't a "centralized MiniTrue" (I mean that's obvious), it's just industry where people with the profession of gathering and disseminating information work. It's taken time to develop professional standards, and if it's destroyed, the main thing that would be destroyed are those standards.

> Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?"

The actual article did not in fact label him as racist, and I don't think you could read it that way without being sloppy.

> this is what just happened with Scott Alexander. they tried to put his head on a pike, because he's a high value node in the tech community that's eroding the power of the legacy press.

Put his head on a pike? They? Come on now.

It will be interesting to see what will happens with this. Ever since the Scott Alexander NYT story, there's been a parade of old media criticism articles getting dredged up and making it to the front page, as well as a lot of broad-brush "I'm done with journalism, those fuckers" sentiment. It frankly sounds a lot like conservatives who are mad that the media wrote so many negative stories about Trump, and think it should have focused instead on positively covering stuff like the Trump administration's self-authored list of great accomplishments. Some people don't want journalism, they just want myside PR.

I mean, the media's not perfect; but it's pretty unreasonable to get mad when your favorite band new album gets a bad review or a newspaper writes articles that fail to abide by the commenting norms of your favorite online message board.

> The WSJ has a ton of dubious articles. The Opinion pieces are garbage compared to the average one in the Times although of course both have misses

I agree with you on that. I subscribed to both for awhile, but dropped the WSJ because it had less international content, its articles tended to lack background (great if you're following a story closely, not so great if you haven't), and its opinion section was utterly boring and predictable.

> I am wondering, what are the legal perspectives of suing NYT for libel at this point.

None at all.

> NYT decided to dox him.

Not really. "Doxing" [1] is from message board culture, but the NYT is not some poster on a message board. To expect them to abide by message board law in their newspaper as if they're just a poster on reddit is like expecting an American to live by Chinese law and custom in America.

[1] At least in the sense of using someone's real name.

> At the moment this question is closed as "opinion based". Which is ridiculous.

The -6 answer [1] also displays one of SO's other ridiculous habits: kinda ignorantly wander in to unhelpfully say the question is wrong and hope for sweet e-points.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/44244140/216353

> Eight of those ten are not even complete sentences, let alone "not blockquotes".

A quote that is not a complete sentence is still a quote.

> Every quote need not be a complete sentence or paragraph, but including almost none strikes me as poor journalism. A good writer would include a bit more information and give Alexander's statements a chance to speak for themselves.

The kind of journalism that has lots of long quotes like that is called an interview. This article was not an interview, nor could it have possibly been, because Scott Alexander refused to be interviewed.

It's incredibly weak to criticize something for not happening to be the random thing you decided it should be instead. You might as well criticize the NYT for publishing this article as a newspaper story and not as a thick book.

> And then a slight bit more research would demonstrate that he wrote some fascinating left-leaning stuff before he jumped off that particular cliff, and that that's the stuff Scott thought was interesting.

And then, after a little more thought, you'd realize SSC's blog roll entry would direct the reader to the more recent neoreactionary stuff, not the "fascinating left-leaning stuff."

It's definitely a bad look to have present-day Nick Land on your blogroll. If you think some of his older stuff was interesting, it's a better idea to link to that directly rather than his home page.

> Hum, your definition of quote is very generous to the NYT, given than most of the 10 list items you mention are four words long or less.

A quote that is not a blockquote is still a quote.

> My take: it doesn't actually quote SSC, what a failure.

> https://howthehell.substack.com/p/nyt-ssc-quoting

Am I reading that right? It complains the article didn't actually quote SSC, then contradicts itself by listing ten actual quotes from SSC that are in the article, and then lists ten other quotes that he happens to particularly like (one of which is a dreamlike thing that appears to be from some fiction).

I kinda get the impression the author of that blog post would have been satisfied with nothing less than something that read like it was written by an enthusiastic fan.

> I think what people find abhorrent are the perceived implication rather than the message itself. I'm going to hazard the guess that you're perceiving the implication that saying class differences are hereditary is implying that inequality isn't a problem, or some social groups won't ever have high incomes, or something else.

I think there's something there. I'd add to that the kinds of ideologies that latch on to the idea that IQ is heritable are another reason to treat the idea as abhorrent. It would be one thing if the question was just one of intellectual curiosity, but it's very much not that. The idea has a looong history of being used to justify racial prejudices.

Irrespective of the correctness or incorrectness of the idea, it's totally legitimate to make it taboo for the above reason alone. Sort of like it's legitimate to make garden-variety political flamebait taboo. Everyone knows where it leads.

That is, everyone except sometimes people who imagine themselves to be "above it all" due to their identification with "reason," or "intelligence," etc.