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I Am Deleting the Blog

slatestarcodex.com

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Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#851

Post by kelnos »

catacombs wrote: post #673
gwbas1c wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's best to hear from NYT about why they strictly only use real names.

Factual accuracy is the cornerstone of the profession. In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story. Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter i…

> In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story.

IMO that doesn't apply to a situation like this. By definition, whoever answers email sent to the address on the SSC blog is the author of the blog. It doesn't matter if that person's "name" is Scott Alexander or Santa Claus or SillyBob5319. The piece the NYT is writing is about the blog, not about the specific, identifiable person who writes it. Knowing who that person is does not add credibility to the story; the credibility is already asserted by the fact that the person who controls the email address behind the blog is talking about it.

To your point about "verifiable information": the only verification needed by a hypothetical reader of this perhaps-never-to-be-published NYT article would be 1) visit the blog; 2) find a contact email; 3) send email asking "were those actually your words quote in this NYT article?" The person's name is irrelevant.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#852

Post by smsm42 »

nlpprof wrote: post #619
tinyhouse wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking about this now after reading attacks on Yann Lecun on twitter. He's a prominent AI figure (head of facebook research and turing award recipient). My interpretation - he was saying that bias in AI is mostly a problem of data. He didn't say there's no bias or that you can't solve bias with modeling. Just that the model itself isn't what causing the bias. One woman researcher started attacking him an…

I'm in the field - though not as prominent as Yann (who has been very nice and helpful in my few interactions with him) - and your interpretation is off. People are disagreeing with his stance that researchers should not bother exploring bias implications of their research. (He says this is because bias is a problem of data - and therefore we should focus on building cool models and let production engineers worry abo…

So, your argument is that you disagree with data being the root of the problem by arguing that data "shapes research directions in a really fundamental way", research is "empirical" (i.e. based on data) and his research can't be isolated from data it'd be used on in production?

Looks to me that you're argumentatively agreeing with Yann.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#853

Post by at_a_remove »

kopochameleon wrote: post #843
kerkeslager wrote: post #543

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…

Interestingly in https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/style/women-gaming-stream... from today they seem to possibly withhold discoverable legal names: > (The streamers did not provide their legal names to The New York Times. In years past, women gamers who have spoken out against the industry using their legal names have been subjected to further harassment, hacking and doxxing.)

Nothing like selective enforcement of the rules as your politics so moves you.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#854

Post by smsm42 »

artsyca wrote: post #418
gringoDan wrote: post #394

Reading this made me think of two essays I've recently revisited. 1. The Sound of Silence, by Jessica Livingston Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves because the downside risk of being attacked for (misinterpretations of) their opinions are too high. People are wary of sharing useful information outside of trusted circles, which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those…

I'd say this forum is exactly this. How often have I self censored because I just don't want the downvotes?

There's a bit of a difference between "not saying things because you may lose a dozen of meaningless internet points" and "not saying things because you can have a mob of haters try to get you and you family fired, you life ruined and maybe send men with guns drawn to your home to get you murdered if they're lucky".

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#855

Post by throwaway894345 »

kopochameleon wrote: post #843
kerkeslager wrote: post #543

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…

Interestingly in https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/style/women-gaming-stream... from today they seem to possibly withhold discoverable legal names: > (The streamers did not provide their legal names to The New York Times. In years past, women gamers who have spoken out against the industry using their legal names have been subjected to further harassment, hacking and doxxing.)

One wonders what criteria the Times must be using to determine that it's worth putting Scott at credible risk for further harassment but not women gamers. Is the Times really more sympathetic to gamers than psychiatrists or bloggers? That seems like an unlikely policy, but what else could explain it? I'm stumped.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#856

Post by kps »

cuspycode wrote: post #838
holtalanm wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been this way for a while. Outrage/cancel culture is an absolute pox upon our population that really needs to stop.

I am very likely naive in these circumstances, but I honestly don't understand how cancel culture can work at all. So there are some voices on twitter who loudly express their immature mob mentality. Why don't all the sane people just block them and ignore them, and then go on with their lives as if nothing happened?

> Why don't all the sane people just block them and ignore them, and then go on with their lives

Because ‘sane people’ does not include your employer, who will throw you to the mob to appease them. In the US that also means losing your health insurance, so it can be a death sentence for you or your loved ones.

(I'll regret posting this when I'm starving in a gutter.)

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#857

Post by underwater »

mc32 wrote: post #508
underwater wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul's post has always felt like a wordy defense of the "well, actually". Lots of us passionate techies like to weigh in on every topic and forget that not everything is academic. Sometimes the world doesn't need to hear our opinion. That doesn't mean we're being censored.

Do you think regular people out there who are not experts in housing, policing, government, economics should remain silent and not express opinions on things they don’t have insight to? Everyone has a right to express their opinion even on topics they are woefully unqualified for. Including clueless techies. The only instance I agree is when celebrities spout opinions as fact (or promote a pet diet or cause) only bec…

Usually those topics don't fall prey to moral policing.

An example might be someone arguing "trans women are not really women". If the question doesn't affect them personally, they're just pursuing what they see as a rational debate or stretching their mind. Their lives will not actually be affected by the exercise.

If you're a trans woman then that's an argument you've been exposed to hundreds of times and it's demeaning and emotional.

You can argue that you're just being rational. And you might ever change your mind! But it's a shitty thing to force that conversation on people when they're only the ones who have a stake in the outcome.

It's not censorship if you are choosing to hold your tongue out of consideration for others.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#858

Post by groby_b »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #777
alecbenzer wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication being that the NYT wants to use real names to drive clicks and appease advertisers?

It’s multi-faceted. In some cases NYT (or any news org of any prevailing political inclination) might want to expose real names to exercise control or rally people to cancel someone. Other times it might be more mundane, just wanting a better angle for the story or more solid corroborative details. In the case of SSC I really worry that NYT would be trying to exercise control. They probably like many things written o…

Wait, did you just claim that the NYT is part of "the modern left"?

If so, that's the funniest thing I've read in the last few years. The NYT is the home of bothsidesism. It's certainly not "the modern left".

And as far as the NYT writing a hit piece to shut up a semi-popular blog, I'd suggest a quick reality check how much influence either has on public discourse. The idea the NYT would need to shut up SSC is just... pretty far out there.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#859

Post by kps »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #855
kopochameleon wrote: post #843

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly in https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/style/women-gaming-stream... from today they seem to possibly withhold discoverable legal names: > (The streamers did not provide their legal names to The New York Times. In years past, women gamers who have spoken out against the industry using their legal names have been subjected to further harassment, hacking and doxxing.)

One wonders what criteria the Times must be using to determine that it's worth putting Scott at credible risk for further harassment but not women gamers. Is the Times really more sympathetic to gamers than psychiatrists or bloggers? That seems like an unlikely policy, but what else could explain it? I'm stumped.

> what else could explain it? I'm stumped.

That's irony, right? It's hard to tell these days.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#860

Post by andy_ppp »

I would encourage people to stop linking to and submitting New York Times articles, I didn’t read Slate Star Codex but having just read the clear reasons Scott wanted to keep his anonymity I am disgusted the NYT would abuse someone’s trust like this. I’m going to pretend they don’t exist from now on and I expect a lot of others will too. I won’t read another article by the New York Times no matter how click baity the headline. It won’t really make a difference but this sort of immoral shit seems to happen everywhere now. Once an institution of quality journalism it’s now click baiting with peoples livelihoods. Fuck them.
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