781–790 of 1001 posts
I unsubscribed from the NYT after the Tom Cotton editorial. That's when it became clear to me that their ethics were driven by a need to drive traffic to their site and I wanted no part in it. Stuff like this just reaffirms my decision. Good riddance.
I understand you are in it, but not many people are, I would wager.
Feel free to use Trim to remove all paywalls and JavaScript from places like the New York Times: https://beta.trimread.com .
How is this not theft? Journalism is expensive. Of course, there are other business models (full disclosure, we're building one too: https://blog.nillium.com/what-can-napster-teach-local-news/ ) but circumventing a paywall is not the answer. Yes, the NYT is one of the few outlets that is doing reasonably well right now. But many newspapers are going out of business, or at least furloughing employees -- employees who…
I call it peaceful protest.
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I'd say this forum is exactly this. How often have I self censored because I just don't want the downvotes?
I read somewhere that downvotes are capped to -4 and it made me much less likely to self-censor when I felt like I had a valid point. I know that the people who disagree with me outnumber those that agree, but the way that the upvotes bounce up and down tells me there are more people out there that agree with me than I would have assumed. (Plus I think I've only made it down to -4 once or twice)
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The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?
> The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers? This shows a lack of how journalism works. Using real names isn't to "drive clicks" and "appease advertisers." It's to add credibility to a story. Think about it: Does a furniture business advertising in the local paper care whether the victim of a shooting is named in a piece? Sure, the owner might know the victim,…
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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.…
Slate Star Codex says they were expecting a relatively nice article, not a hit piece. Are you referring to Episode 207? https://overcast.fm/+KhqFMR3J4 I think Sam did a very poor job in that episode -- he was preaching exclusively to the choir. He spends the start of the podcast explaining the important distinction between justified and unjustified police involved killings. This is a very important distinction, and I…
Yeah, I wasn't referencing the article specifically, but the general state. What Sam Harris said at the beginning of that episode (I was talking about the one you linked, but I only read the transcript, I don't have the attention span for podcasts) rang true for me: opening your mouth is risky for normal people, but it's extra risky if you're a publicist/commentator/celebrity and that has an extreme chilling effect.
I don't want to debate his opinions, I don't regularly listen to Harris, but the fact that he felt it's necessary to add so much "please don't take this out of context" left me impressed, and I haven't marked Harris down as somebody who'd do that for effect, to claim victimhood etc. I also don't believe that he does so for his usual audience, because they most likely know his general positions, know that he's not alt-right or a white supremacist and that he may say something that doesn't intuitively sound "okay" but usually has at least some reason for it. On the contrary, I think he does it purely for the Twitter mob who is sure to look for material in whatever he says. And that's really just a sad state of affairs, when any public utterance is basically "my lawyer has advised me not to answer that question" because whatever you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, will be taken out of context and will be enhanced with rumors and lies.
That's not specific to Sam Harris, of course, and the tactic isn't specific to whatever you want to label the people who hate him. It's pretty universal in both the targets and those that target them.
Scott's had a pretty amazing run of being able to write edgy-enough-to-possibly-get-you-cancelled essays on the internet without getting cancelled, and on a personal level I've found him to be extremely kind and thoughtful and I wish this weren't happening to him, but at the same time it seems as inevitable as the flooding of a house built on low ground.
Damn. I've been reading Slate Star Codex for a long time, and he's always been one of the most insightful voices on the internet. I'm really sorry to see him go. After reading this, I looked up NYT's policy of using real names, and it turns out this isn't the worst time that the NY Times has done this[1]. I've long said that if you want to know who an organization serves, see where its money comes from. The NY Times…
The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?