I am genuinely baffled how Scott Alexander's post has turned into hundreds and hundreds of comments on cancel culture, as if it was anything near the #1 reason why he'd be in danger if his name was revealed.
Being famous is dangerous in every era, doubly so in an era where anybody unhinged basically has access to the same level of information you used to need a private investigator to get.
Tim Ferris said it well: "The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience." [0]
The focus should be on the Times threatening to out him for no good reason, not his personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
> I am genuinely baffled how Scott Alexander's post has turned into hundreds and hundreds of comments on cancel culture, as if it was anything near the #1 reason why he'd be in danger if his name was revealed.
People in comments sections (doesn’t matter which) don’t really “react to” or “engage with” the article very often. What they’re really doing is being reminded by the article of some thought that’s been affecting them in their own lives lately—which they then hold forth about. Sometimes the tangential thought can be supported by quoting the article (either literally, or in rebuttal); but this is still different from engaging with the article itself, per se.
For most people, the article is grist for the idea-mill of their own “blogging”, which they happen to do in the form of a comment. (Heck, that’s what I’m doing right now, to your comment!)
People who genuinely respond to a post as if they were in conversation with the original author are few and far between, and tend to put their responses on professional blogs rather than comments sections. (Which is funny, because "comments sections" are nominally for engaging with the post. We've all become very mixed up somehow.)
This is pretty true on Hacker News. I engaged with the post as if I were in a conversation with the original author, not by posting here, but by sending an email to the original author.
I can't help but think that this effect isn't what I want from this community, however. I want reasoned discussion that helps me to see issues from various points of view, but instead I get a bunch of uninformed opinions from people who didn't even read the thing they're opining on.
> I can't help but think that this effect isn't what I want from this community, however. I want reasoned discussion that helps me to see issues from various points of view, but instead I get a bunch of uninformed opinions from people who didn't even read the thing they're opining on.
Some of the absolute best discussions I've read and sometimes participated in on HN have been tangents or inconsequential to the article they were attached to. I would miss those types of discussion sorely if they were gone.
There are tools to help manage this though. You can collapse comment threads, and if you find a particular vein of discussion not really to your liking, I suggest doing that so you can focus on what you do enjoy (and others can do the same, even if the items they read and ignore are entirely different than yours).
Personally, since these comments aren't the comments of the article in question (usually. Sometimes they just refer you here!), I think of it less as comments to the author when posting here, and more like a discussion in a group examining that article. Sort of like a book group, where people splinter into subgroups to have discussions that interest them, and even those that failed to read the book might find a place to contribute.
> Personally, since these comments aren't the comments of the article in question (usually. Sometimes they just refer you here!), I think of it less as comments to the author when posting here, and more like a discussion in a group examining that article.
But that's exactly not what they are: you can't examine an article without reading it, and in many cases it's blatantly obvious that commenters didn't read the article.
I'm fine with tangents, it's the on-topic ignorance that bothers me.
> People in comments sections (doesn’t matter which) don’t really “react to” or “engage with” the article very often. What they’re really doing is being reminded by the article of some thought that’s been affecting them in their own lives lately—which they then hold forth about.
Don't want to go off on a tangent, but HN trains its users to do that by posting one article after another that's behind a paywall. Of course there will be comments vaguely related to the article when you've created a culture of commenting without reading.
I don't think that's it. HN trains its users for that by means of culture voting interesting things - because such tangential comments and resulting discussions are often much more interesting than the submitted article.
Scott has been harassed by cancellers for years. It's a well-documented history, which was a serious issue for him and led to banning culture war topics in SSC-affiliated reddit section. There are still people and AFAIK organized communities on Reddit that target him. There were calls to his employers to get him fired and to friends to get them socially shunned.
Now imagine how much more of this one would get if their real name (and, by extension, address, employer, family, etc.) is published by NYT and easily accessible to anyone with rudimentary typing skills. Cancel culture is not the reason for NYT doxxing, but it makes the doxxing orders of magnitude more dangerous. And NYT must know that.
Yes, there are also random crazies. But I don't think I've read any storied about random crazies getting people fired from their jobs. I've read the last one about cancel culture doing that today. And have been reading them almost daily for a while.
> The focus should be on the Times threatening to out him for no good reason, not his personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
> There are still people and AFAIK organized communities on Reddit that target him.
Though one of the more wholesome things I've seen is when I visited that subreddit you're referring to and the consensus seemed to be that doxxing Scott was not justified.
You mean NYT is actually doing so bad that people who self-select for desire to hunt and harm other people over the internet actually think they've gone too far? Well done, NYT!
The issue here is that he's a psychiatrist. Dealing with random crazies, some of whom might literally try to kill him if they knew where he lived, is his day job.
So the extra danger from that direction associated with the NYT publishing his real name in an article about SSC is that they might read that article, discover that Xxxxx Xxxxx who treats them for paranoid schizophrenia also has this blog that says yyyy yyyyy yyy yyyyyy and that zzzzzz zzz zzzzz, and then go after him (using the real name they already had).
The harm there isn't zero, but I think it's much less than the harm that results from giving his real name to people who already knew about SSC and hated it for some reason.
(Also, at present at least, it's easier to go from Scott's real name to his blogging pseudonym than in the other direction with a couple of minutes and a search engine. Neither direction is terribly difficult, but that's no reason why the NYT should make them both easier.)
It does not. Anything that's obviously politicized in a way that relates to the culture wars (including "Blue Tribe vs. Red Tribe" topics) is inappropriate outside CW-specific spaces. And obvious calls to harassment, violence, blatant bigotry etc. have always been off-limits altogether.
Political discussion relating to the culture wars was not banned, it was corraled in order to encourage non-culture-wars discussion. And by and large, nazi $#!+ and "white people are superior"-style bigotry was banned and got zero attention. (When people refer to racist views at SSC they don't mean that literally as a rule, they're just disparaging uncomfortable views about very well defined issues in social science and the like, that have zilch to do with superiority or supremacism of any sort, naziism etc. Shooting the messenger, basically.)
> When people refer to racist views at SSC they don't mean that literally as a rule, they're just disparaging uncomfortable views about very well defined issues in social science and the like, that have zilch to do with superiority or supremacism of any sort, naziism etc. Shooting the messenger, basically.
Do please specify what those "uncomfortable views" actually are.
The one that comes up the most, relating to 'race' specifically. is opposition to the claim that the comparatively low numbers of BIPOC minority folks in high-skill industries (such as 'tech') are indicative of a systemic racist bias within those industries. The broad consensus among SSC commenters is that this is a pipeline problem, and that concerns should thus be directed earlier in the pipeline. People do disagree, even vocally at times, about what the actual problem is and how to best address it.
Some observers have used this to argue that SSC commenters hold racist views towards BIPOC minorities. Obviously, this is not really the case.
There are other cases where prevailing narratives of systemic racism towards BIPOC folks were examined in careful and nuanced ways, generally with interesting, even compelling results. Unfortunately, some people don't like it when their simplistic views are challenged in such a way.
I sympathize. For whatever reason, many people take any sort of nuanced, academically-formal discussion about highly contentious topics involving politics, society, etc. as prima facie evidence of dishonesty. This peculiar sort of naïve anti-intellectualism is actually quite common across the culture-wars spectrum. I'm not saying that this is what you're doing here: I'm saying that this alone is reason to be highly skeptical wrt. the prevailing rumors within the 'left' about people on SSC being horribly bigoted, racist etc.
Factual and useful observations don't stop being factual and useful just because some people might seek to exploit them as dogwhistling signals. If you've got a problem with malicious dogwhistling, deterring people from exploring these issues is exactly the wrong response. You want to do the opposite, so that honest, careful, nuanced inquiry drowns out any attempt at subverting the discussion.
(For instance, it was historically common to see expressions of concern about e.g. monopolistic industry and large business, damage to the environment, mass poverty etc. being used as dogwhistles obliquely referencing socialist views about the purported inherent evils of capitalism and the market economy, contrasted with bureaucratic central planning and control of the means of production. You don't see this to anything near the same extent nowadays, because most people who talk about these things are factually addressing the issues - often from a broad 'centrist/neoliberal' POV - not dogwhistling about unrelated stuff. So this can actually work.)
> That most are seemingly demographically and politically homogeneous are just the weirdest coincidence.
Demographically homogenous, yes this is a real issue that SSC folks are quite aware of. But it's also an issue about political discourse in general, not merely its awowedly-rationalist subset. Politically homogenous, not really. The whole reason debate was so vigorous within SSC was its lack of that kind of homogeneity.
> You want to do the opposite, so that honest, careful, nuanced inquiry drowns out any attempt at subverting the discussion.
The problem with this crowd's writings is that they are overly verbose and unnecessary lengthy in some sort of war of attrition. And as the saying goes, it takes 10x more time to refute bullshit than to produce it.
> Politically homogenous, not really.
Just a quick very unscientific glance at twitter regarding this "attack" produces 10 right-wing types for every 1 centre-right, 0 remotely left. Even worse if we use the EU left-right spectrum. Being right or hard-right is not politically diverse even though this crowd seems to believe so.
> And as the saying goes, it takes 10x more time to refute bullshit than to produce it.
Have you actually read anything from SSC?
His posts obviously had a lot of effort put into them. Reading them is much easier.
My recommendation: If you want to know how Scott Alexander thinks, read what Scott Alexander wrote, not what people on twitter wrote about him. Especially if they didn't read the piece either. Although I guess you'd have to use internet archive now.
Personally, I'm voting Green this fall and I love his writing.
Hi. EU-leftist generally-pro-SJ type here. I'm a big fan of Slate Star Codex. I just sent an email to the NYT about what a bad idea publishing Scott's real name would be.
I don't think a "quick very unscientific glance at Twitter" is a very effective way of finding out what Scott's readership is like. (I suspect a fair fraction don't use Twitter at all.)
Even a single personal anecdote is good evidence when the claim in question is "basically everyone there is right-wing". As someone else mentioned, there are in fact readership surveys there every now and then, and guess what?, they also produce results wildly inconsistent with what you're claiming.
Here are some numbers from the 2019 survey (it's not the latest one but it's the latest whose results I could readily get at).
"Where do you think you fall on a classic political spectrum?" (1 = far left, 10 = far right). Most common result is 3, at 25.6%. Next most common is 4, at 20.6%. The "left half" 1-5 has about 66% of the responses. 2.2% are 1 (far left) versus 1.6% at 10 (far right).
"With which of these political descriptions do you most identify?" with 7 options (libertarian, conservative, liberal, social democratic, marxist, neoreactionary, alt-right; I have no idea why "socialist" wasn't an option). Largest group, at 31.8%, is "social democratic". Next, at 29%, is "liberal" (which of course is a term with many meanings, but it was clarified as "for example, the US Democratic Party"). Note that these two already constitute a majority. Next, at 21.6%, is "libertarian". Alt-right and neoreactionary between them look like they come to maybe 8% or so, which for sure is a lot relative to how many alt-rightists and neoreactionaries there are in the population at large, but it's still a small minority.
"American political parties", asking about registered affiliation: largest group is "not registered" at 35%, next is Democratic Party at 31%, next is "not American" at 20%, next is Republican Party at 10%, next is Libertarian Party at about 3%.
Some other politically-charged topics:
Global warming (1-5 from "requires strong action" to "does not require action"): 1>2>3>4>5, 1+2 at about 73%, 4+5 at about 13%.
Immigration (1-5 from "should be stricter" to "should be more open"): 1+2 at about 23%, 4+5 at about 50%.
Feminism (1-5 from "very unfavourable" to "very favourable"): 1+2 at about 29%, 4+5 at about 47%.
These do not indicate a community whose range of political views amounts, as you put it, to "right or hard-right".
It is a community with more extreme rightists than average. (8% neoreactionary + alt-right!) It is a community with more people willing to be negative about feminism than its general leftishness would suggest. (29% with unfavourable views of feminism. Not terribly different from the figure for the US as a whole in the 2016 survey at http://files.kff.org/attachment/topline-methodology-washingt... though.) It is a community with more tolerance for kinda-racist[1] "human biodiversity" views than average. (The survey asked about favourable/unfavourable views of "human biodiversity", clarified as "eg the belief that humans differ genetically in socially relevant ways", and the responses were pretty much symmetrically distributed.) So your perception that SSC is a wretched hive of scum and villainy isn't completely without basis in reality, but a better description would be "mostly reasonable and decent people, with something of a leftward lean overall -- but with a small contingent of sometimes very loud right-wing crazies, and more tolerance than most leftish places for some ideas beloved of right-wing crazies". Which might be enough to make you hate it, of course, but it's not the same thing as "almost entirely rightists" which is how you portrayed it.
[1] Only kinda-racist? Well, (a) it's possible to hold those views and also think that discrimination against (say) black people is stupid and evil, and I'm fairly sure some SSC commenters hold roughly that position, and (b) strictly speaking "differ genetically in socially relevant ways" is obviously true, because e.g. the colour of your skin is socially relevant if you live in a society with any racists in it. But if you'd prefer the "kinda-" deleted, I understand and I suggest you pretend I didn't write it. That won't much change my meaning.
> Even a single personal anecdote is good evidence when the claim in question is "basically everyone there is right-wing".
Uhm, no.
Thanks. I wouldn't be too comfortable using a community that's often accused of being alt-right/light's own polling to prove that they're not. But assuming this is true it's particularly interesting how these tendencies can co-exists within both "social-democrats" and academics (usually left leaning afaik).
FYI, SSC actually has demographic surveys of its readership. Of course, the blog is down now, but I bet if you search the Internet Archives you can find some. As I recall, there were quite a number of dimensions along which the readership could be classified as diverse.
Of course, if you are hell-bent on judging the man and his readers along those demographic dimensions where they aren't diverse, or even just your own assumptions about the kind of people that read SSC, then carry on.
We have above mentioned demographics. We have controversial topics that seemingly panders to this particular demographic's confirmation bias. We have an academic pseudo-intellectual writing style that usually concludes in conservative or reactionary conclusions, much to this particular demographic's liking.
But however, this is all just a coincidence and simply based on unbiased facts.
> We have controversial topics that seemingly panders to this particular demographic's confirmation bias.
Race and gender are minor topics within SSC. You could say that the community has an undue emphasis on the culture wars, but it also has a unique way of addressing those debates which - to many participants - justifies that very emphasis. And if it's as uniformly right-wing ("conservative or reactionary") as you posit, it certainly goes to strenuous lengths to disguise this fact to the casual observer, specifically wrt. culture-wars discussion.
> I cannot stand the smug "we're objective academics that base our beliefs on nuanced logic and facts" of, to add insult to injury, self-declared "rationalists".
The rationalist community has that tendency, but they also possess a willingness to listen to people no matter how cooky/bigoted/ignorant their opinions are, and that is very humble and empathic. SSC is the prime example of that ethic.
> I think it's time for some introspection if this is all it takes for mainly young privileged [white] men to start considering race science and the likes as unfortunate but actually true.
Calling for introspection among people with whom you share some mutual bond or allegiance is fair. Telling strangers on the Internet that they need to do some "introspection" on account of their wrongthink after judging them on the basis of their race and sex is pretty arrogant and despicable.
> need to do some "introspection" on account of their wrongthink
Did you miss the if statement? If someone is on so shaky ground wrt their ethical boundaries that all it takes is some fancy wording for them to actually consider race science legitimate, they should indeed to take some time for introspection.
Anyway, according to your comment history you definitely fit the introspection mold. Zero surprises there.
No, but it's not clear to me what work that 'if' is doing. Is this just a purely hypothetical, or do you just assume the antecedent is always true? Do you perhaps take a middle path and concede the possibility people might be persuaded by "race science" for reasons other than mere "fancy wording"?
> they should indeed to take some time for introspection.
Or they could engage in dialogue with people who disagree with them but exercise good faith, which is exactly what happens on SSC.
> Anyway, according to your comment history you definitely fit the introspection mold. Zero surprises there.
If I aggravated you enough that you feel the need to dig through my comment history, I apologize. But don't presume to know my inner mental states. My tone is definitely hostile, but I consider it an fair response to your rather dismissive (and largely false) characterization a group of people I (and many others here on HN) have come to greatly respect.
>I am genuinely baffled how Scott Alexander's post has turned into hundreds and hundreds of comments on cancel culture, as if it was anything near the #1 reason why he'd be in danger if his name was revealed.
Isn't it obvious that the upcoming NYT articles is going to be a hit piece with the goal of ruining his personal credibility and professional career.
I hope to be wrong, but somehow I don't think so.
>Being famous is dangerous in every era, doubly so in an era where anybody unhinged basically has access to the same level of information you used to need a private investigator to get.
Nobody would really care if it was just some twitter people bitching on twitter. The problem is that media, employers, sponsors, advertisers, etc. listen to them and act on what they think the mob wants.
And we are way past targeting famous people. The step-mother of the Atlanta cop who shot Brooks was fired for having the audacity of defending her step-son on social media. Imagine a world where you fault a mother for not disowning her son!! WaPo put together a 3000 word article attacking and naming a staffer for a Halloween costume she wore two years ago (with no ill intent!). She profusely apologized, but that doesn't matter - she was fired after being publicly humiliated by a noted paper of record who was also her employer. WaPo did that to their own employee!! How about that "Karen" (a modern day slur against women) in San Francisco who merely inquired, very very politely, if a gentleman who was writing out a BLM slogan on a property if he lived at that property .. she was dragged through the mud, forced into a public apology, which was not accepted (apologies are never accepted but instead are used as evidence of guilt) her small business was shut down (after the mob targeted her customers), and her husband was fired from his job.
> Isn't it obvious that the upcoming NYT articles is going to be a hit piece with the goal of ruining his personal credibility and professional career.
I suppose if i had and axe to grind against NYT it might be "obvious". Even the blog author mentions it would be a "mostly positive piece". Where are you getting your information from?
>I suppose if i had and axe to grind against NYT it might be "obvious".
Like I said, I hope to be wrong, but I am cynical about the motives of NYT, especially given this quote from the blog post: "He told me it would be a ___mostly___ positive piece about how we were an interesting gathering place for people in tech, and how we were ahead of the curve on some aspects of the coronavirus situation." (emphasis mine) - that's a reporter buttering up Scott Alexander to get a quote and compliance until the hit piece drops.
When that article drops, we'll see. If it is balanced and fair I will own up to being wrong. Gladly. I just don't thinks so.
The NYT has previously respected the anonymity of others, including an ISIS fighter[0]. That the NYT has a blanket policy about publishing real names is possible, but certainly suspicious.
> Tim Ferris said it well: "The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience."
True, but a big part of why Scott has such a big audience is his willingness to write about the problems of cancel culture, and cancel culture would almost certainly come after him if he is doxxed.
one explanation: the policy exists and symbolizes the ideal for a news organization that prides itself on integrity and transparency. when this journalistic ideal conflicts with the practical concern of creating a story, the organization allows for discretion and trusts the writer to make an ethical decision.
in the ISIS case, the article likely doesn't happen without the fighter's cooperation, so the writer must defer to the subject or risk losing the story.
in the scott alexander case, the article can happen with or without subject cooperation, so the writer can afford to obey the stated policy and increase "transparency" on this story.
> one explanation: the policy exists and symbolizes the ideal for a news organization that prides itself on integrity and transparency. when this journalistic ideal conflicts with the practical concern of creating a story, the organization allows for discretion and trusts the writer to make an ethical decision.
There's no indication that the cited policy allows for such discretion.
> in the scott alexander case, the article can happen with or without subject cooperation, so the writer can afford to obey the stated policy and increase "transparency" on this story.
Does that also apply to Virgil Texas of "Chapo Trap House"[1]?
It's clear that the NYT does not, in practice, have a blanket policy against pseudonyms. The writer's claims that it does are therefore at least somewhat BS. Violating the privacy of a practicing mental health professional who is obligated to hide his personal life from his patients is a pretty serious mistake. This could all be some sort of bureaucratic bungling, but as the saying goes: mistakes of this magnitude are rarely innocent.
Ya. And even if he was writing on totally un-emotional topics, like a food blog or something, his job is such that patients being able to discover these aspects of his personal life would be likely to pollute his doctor-patient relationship with them. Psychiatrists understandably want to limit what their patients know about them, to keep the focus on the patient and their needs, rather than the personality of their psychiatrist.
I think this is what Scott's more concerned about than anything. I'm sure he worries about canceling and stuff too, but this is really out of concern for his ability to treat patients effectively at his day job.
I agree with you that we should focus on the doxxing, not his reasons for staying anonymous. As far as I'm concerned, people don't need a reason to want to be anonymous.
But I think cancel culture is still relevant because it very well may be why the NYT was threatening to dox him.
Most people don’t have to hide their identity as long as they babble correct talking points. Turn on TV, for example. This is an absolutely ridiculous statement.
>> Tim Ferris said it well: "The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience."
And that is why we need to abolish anonymity on the internet and ensure traceability. If people can trace threats and harassment, it either won't happen or can be reported.
Being famous is dangerous in every era, doubly so in an era where anybody unhinged basically has access to the same level of information you used to need a private investigator to get.
Tim Ferris said it well: "The point is this: you don’t need to do anything wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audience." [0]
The focus should be on the Times threatening to out him for no good reason, not his personal reasons for wanting to stay anonymous.
[0] https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/