(Meta) I’m curious why this isn’t on the front page, given the number of upvotes. Has this been flagged or is it in some way being hidden?
I Am Deleting the Blog
941–950 of 1001 posts
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#942Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not. PZ Myers was on the Atheism+ side of the schism in online Atheism in 2011 (from which my pseudonym derives), and Scott was firmly on the other side. They've been on opposite sides of the culture war since either of them became aware of it. But even if you didn't know that ancient history, Myers is orthodox progressive, Scott is heterodox. They're natural enemies.
Funny how an anti-ideology that purports to be not a religion but rather the absence of religion would spawn so many schisms and holy wars.
Took everyone involved by surprise, but it made sense in hindsight. Half the people were there because religion was oppressive, and half were there because religion was factually wrong.
These two groups were never the same, and they got along only until it became obvious that the first group didn't care about facts and (according to the first group) that the second group didn't care about justice (I would say they do, but not if it means lying about facts).
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#943It 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…
Sure, but thats not the issue here. It is about naming sources.
The article is about Scott, as a person who runs a popular blog. The source is named "Scott Alexander". There is no need to publish his personal information. If the NYT wants to verify that he is actually a practicing psychiatrist etc, then they can gather that information, do the legwork, publish the information ("NYT can confirm that SA is who he says he is"), without jeopardizing that practice.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#944Scott Alexander uses "hyper-rational critism" to push race science that borders on straight on bigotry. Even worse, he's allowed a community to build around him that views iq heritability as the main essentialist frame with which to view the world. This kind of mindset is unfortunately common in technology spaces, and the world will only be better as these kinds of people are pushed out of the overton window.
"...he's allowed a community to build around him that views iq heritability as the main essentialist frame with which to view the world" This is complete nonsense. Anyone who has read SSC knows that both Scott Alexander's posts and the comments cover a very wide range of topics. Occasional mentions of scientific views of human biology that don't fit your ideological preconceptions are a dominant part of the blog/comm…
I read this as "occasional dalliances with race realism are acceptable because he talks about other topics."
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#945Earlier quoted context omitted.
"...he's allowed a community to build around him that views iq heritability as the main essentialist frame with which to view the world" This is complete nonsense. Anyone who has read SSC knows that both Scott Alexander's posts and the comments cover a very wide range of topics. Occasional mentions of scientific views of human biology that don't fit your ideological preconceptions are a dominant part of the blog/comm…
I read this as "occasional dalliances with race realism are acceptable because he talks about other topics."
No. It means that anyone who is not a hopeless ideologue knows that a just and humane society cannot be created on the basis of compelling people to assert things that anyone sane understands are simply not true.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#946Damn. 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…
Add https://theintercept.com to the list.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#947Unfortunate, 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…
> I'm not really sure why they'd dig their heels in here.
I was wondering the same thing, until other HN comments mentioned both his support of Hsu and tirade against paywalls. His support of Hsu seemed to be based on a mutual respect and started off looking like support for academic freedom, but comments on that post did reveal a lot of questionable positions on Hsu’s part with no update from Scott himself.
The anti-paywall article however was much more likely to get the attention of the NYT, because he was viscerally against them and NYT is one of the big paywall sites—it’s their entire business model now and they might feel the need to push back on the criticism. Frankly, I thought Scott’s anti-paywall position wasn’t very rational or well-argued, but I didn’t really have time to follow that comment thread. But in the end, I think he might have attracted the Eye of Sauron on his relatively peaceful little kingdom.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#948Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Is the Times really more sympathetic to gamers than psychiatrists or bloggers? It's more sympathetic to women than men. They won't directly tell you: "We protect women but not men", but that's the implicit policy of many institutions, especially mainstream media.
It pretty implicit culturally I mean how many women's shelters are there in your state vs how many men's shelters? which ones do you hear people complain about? In my town there it quiet the contingent that complain about all of the homeless men near the mens shelter but I also know several of those same people donate to the women's shelter on the other side of town.
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#949Damn. 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…
“ We're better off with organizations who receive their money from donations. ” We get value, in exchange for value.
ITM?
Re: I Am Deleting the Blog
#950I'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."
I'm not surprised that someone who has given tons of thought to prisoner's dilemma type problems can make good moves in this type of game.