I Am Deleting the Blog • Hacker News Board

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#331

Post by himinlomax » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

johan_larson wrote: post #237

I'm sorry Scott has decided to shut down his blog. He posted many interesting things over the years, and the community of commenters that clustered in the blog's open threads was usually a joy to deal with. I was part of that for years. I'm sorry to see it go. That said, this decision to shut down the blog looks like an overreaction to me. Scott seems to think that he should be able to be both a prominent online pund…

> That said, this decision to shut down the blog looks like an overreaction to me

On the contrary, it's the perfect move. It forces the hand of the journalist, who will then have to mention that inconvenient fact. "BTW the thing this article is about does not exist any more because of this article."

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#332

Post by virgilp » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #229

virgilp wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think unfortunately journalists are trained to take phrases out of context so that they sound "sensational" / trigger emotional responses in the readers. You quickly find that out if give out interviews - you need to be very mindful how things may sound if taken out of context. E.g. a while ago a newspaper here took me an interview/ they were building a story about people that had somewhat remarkable results in sch…

Those are not journalists. They are outrage-farming ad impression generators.

Mind you, that was for a so-called "quality", printed paper. I don't even think it was a daily, I think it's a weekly "business" paper.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#333

Post by narrator » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #173

zozbot234 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the NYT is going to blink. If they doxx this guy, then this becomes a huge grassroots story about how they are "fake news media" that doesn't uphold journalism ethics standards. (Even more so if the article is a negative hit piece w/ politicized overtones, as some people are - rightly or wrongly - speculating here. People _will_ stand up for him over his views, however controversial in some places.) He ma…

Lets be honest here. This will be a big story here in Hacker News for a few days, then we will get on with our lives. It will not spread out from that. This is ironically how the News works. It's new - novel, interesting, unique, temporary. We will stand up for Scott - but it won't really change anything, and it will be temporary. It's naive to think that what we find important for a bit will have any impact on the r…

Sometimes it's really interesting to go back and see what happened with stories that the NYT was absolutely freaking out about a year ago. Remember RussiaGate for example? Daily stories on the NYT for 2 years from anonymous sources amounting to nothing.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#334

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

sov wrote: post #322

Unfortunate, for sure. The NYT has no real reason to post his name (as far as I'm aware--the tone of the article could affect that conclusion), so I'm not really sure why they'd dig their heels in here. Though, he really does post a lot of personal and identifying information on his blog--literally any motivated party could find his name very easily. I thought "maybe he doesn't want his real name to link to his blog…

Scott was not "taking umbrage against the Grad student organization at MSU", he was merely defending academic freedom. Hsu ended up resigning from an administrative and politically-sensitive position at the university while still being free to pursue his (somewhat contentious) research interests, and that may well have been the right call. I'm not sure Scott would have any reason to object to that choice.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#335

Post by dbt00 » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #213

jwilber wrote: post #128

I’ve seen a lot of criticism for the NYT as of late, and, sadly, it’s almost all been warranted upon inspection. I’m not sure if it’s a case of the top dog getting all the scrutiny, but it’s crazy to me how a company with so many good journalists can seem to have so many bad. Much criticism is not even new (Manufactured Consent, Judith Miller).

FWIW the publisher/top editor of NYTimes changed in 2017 and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger's [1] stepped down letting his son AG Sulzberger take over [2]. This is around the time it started becoming really clickbaity and 24/7 news channel level intentionally misrepresenting or spinning stories for reactions. I believe his father took on a more old school approach to keeping the news as neutral as possible, while still havin…

I mean, the NYT during the Clinton and Bush years was hardly some golden age of journalism. Off the top of my head, there was Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, the Jayson Blair thing, and the Judith Miller / Curveball / Iraq war stuff.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#336

Post by randompwd » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

Geez, patio11 was sure quick to jump in with nonsense:

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1275346993296969730

> I feel like Slate Star Codex and the NYT are coming at each other from a substantial expectations gap regarding risk management.

> The culture of participating under one’s own name is normative for much of the professional class but not all of it.

Maybe stop trying to explain away that which is unabated shitty behaviour by the reporter.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#337

Post by VBprogrammer » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

Uhrheber wrote: post #75

I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly st…

Having seen the inside of a few events and the reporting produced in response, I'd say a healthy dose of scepticism is usually warranted when reading about something you have no personal involvement in.

In fact one of the worst experience for me in terms of trust for the media was working at a startup. The willingness of journalists to produce puff pieces, or print press releases virtually verbatim, on the basis of 5 minutes of SQL queries cobbled together and cherry picked to produce the desired result was frightening.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#338

Post by krtkush » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

This is so frustrating and rage inducing!

I enjoy reading blogs like gwern and SSC. The fact that the blog has just gone away because somebody threatened to doxx the author against his will is sad and a loss to the community.

Scott, on Reddit[1], has mentioned that there is a possibility for the blog to come back but it all depends on how things pan out in the next few months. So I hope NYT just dumps the story, apologises and reevaluate their ethics.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog...

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#339

Post by reedwolf » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:20 AM UTC

Scott Alexander is reaching Scott Aaronson levels of hysterics.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#340

Post by luckylion » Tue, Jun 23, 2020, 10:21 AM UTC

thinkingemote wrote: post #170

It doesn't take too much imagination to see how easy it would be to write a hit piece. Scott writes eloquently and in depth, but the news is not about either of those things. Scott has written a few times about problematic issues which have surfaced in recent months and it would be very easy to write "some people say that Scott is ${label}" with just a bit of superficial quotes. Today's climate of online mob justice…

The anti-out-of-context-quote-hit-piece-insurance that Sam Harris went to in his recent podcast on police violence etc was insane. I fully understand why, he's been burned by the Twitter mob before, but it's eye-opening to the media-induced reasonable paranoia some "public" people will go through when there's basically three paragraphs of "I'm not saying this is the one and only truth, I believe in equality, justice..." for every one paragraph of stats or opinion they post.

It has a very religious witch hunt feel where you constantly need to assure everybody that you are totally not a member of the out-group and you believe in the same things they do and you really are not possessed by the devil and they really shouldn't burn you, but they may have gotten something a tiny bit wrong in their, of course totally justified, blind rage.