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I Am Deleting the Blog

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Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#951

Post by yesenadam »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #570
yesenadam wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That made me think of an essay I often revisit, Emerson's Self-Reliance (1841): Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. ... For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might we…

> To be great is to be misunderstood. I would be content with being ordinary—permission to ask obvious questions about the narrative handed down from on high—without fear of defamation that costs me my livelihood.

> permission to ask obvious questions about the narrative handed down from on high—without fear of defamation that costs me my livelihood.

Sure, that's not much to ask for. The rights people fight and have fought for are mostly the freedom to do basic, everyday things like that. Wishing, hoping for it is easy. To actually do something about it, to fight for it and achieve it, to give everyone freedom from that fear – that would be greatness.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#952

Post by notoriousjpg »

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…

Another expression i like is 'truth by convention'

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#953

Post by recursive »

norswap wrote: post #364
shalmanese wrote: post #61

I had no idea The Last Psychiatrist stopped writing because he got doxxed. I enjoyed his blog and was sad it stopped updating.

psst: https://hotelconcierge.tumblr.com/ Might or might not be the same guy, but it's close enough to not matter.

Trying to make sense of this reminds me of reading monad tutorials. To dense with references (self- and otherwise) and analogy for me to make sense of.

It's definitely possible I'm just not smart enough to understand this, but how does one go about learning to comprehend stuff like this?

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#954

Post by ninjinxo »

philwelch wrote: post #932
smsm42 wrote: post #847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

> 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.

Less charitably it's self-preservation; reddit has a very low tolerance towards doxxing and has banned multiple subreddits (some sizeable) for it.

Many there would still support the article and his name being published, and would push for his cancellation.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#956

Post by svat »

deleuze wrote: post #944
radford-neal wrote: post #937

Earlier 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."

Relevant post (relevant to this incident even, as a sort of "Round 1" from about a year or so ago): https://web.archive.org/web/20190228161939/https://slatestar... — best to read the whole post, but if not then look for the text around “scarily conservative”, the part from “very easy to moderate comment sections” to “your brand” to “dominated by”.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#957

Post by taneq »

smsm42 wrote: post #847
mshron wrote: post #642

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: "T…

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 thei…

> Yes, there are also random crazies.

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.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#958

Post by enriquto »

iAmAPencilYo wrote: post #901
enriquto wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a history nerd, reading what people wrote 90 years ago you will realize that we are exactly the same species, and our attitudes have not changed a bit. One of my favorite readings are the essays of french philosopher Simone Weil after two visits to germany in the thirties. She was concerned with the rise of the nazis, while at the same time describing the natural and understandable forces that were making…

> One of my favorite readings are the essays of french philosopher Simone Weil after two visits to germany in the thirties. She was concerned with the rise of the nazis, while at the same time describing the natural and understandable forces that were making them gain support. Could you point me to those essays? Would like to examine those!

If you can read in French, they were published on 2015 on a book "Écrits sur l’Allemagne 1932-1933". It is a loose collection of articles and letters that were put together for this book. There are some translations to English of slightly different collections. The most prominent articles that you want to read are

* "The situation in Germany"

* "Germany waiting"

* "Are We Really Heading Towards a Revolution of the Proletariat?"

They have been translated into English and edited several times. For example they appear on the collection "Simone Weil, Formative writings 1929-1941".

They offer a rare insight written by a "leftie" germanophile french jew, and her dismay at the two-pronged attack that the German working class (whom she admiringly describes as the most cultured working class in the world), who were at the same time being destroyed and being seduced by the nazis. Somewhat naively she insists that no matter what atrocious things the nazis do, if they end up conquering Europe they will be seen forever as the good guys. She says that this is the normal course in history, and that the "good guys" in Europe's past were no worse than the nazis of today. She also draws parallelism between the German and the Soviet states, that caused her starch criticism in left-wing french circles. Since all of this was written well before the war, there is an ominous prescience to these texts that makes them extremely interesting to read. Curiously enough, there is no mention to the nazi hatred of the jews, she is mostly concerned with their hatred and exploitation of the working class.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#959

Post by LudwigNagasena »

mshron wrote: post #642

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: "T…

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.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#960

Post by ehnto »

chillacy wrote: post #819
ehnto wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A standards body maybe. But do you not see some ethical concerns of licensing that tells people how to conduct journalism? Freedom of the Press, but only for those who the governing body deems fit? The whole point of a license is to reduce the gamut of people who can practice a profession to just those people who do it the way the license specifies. In a world such as ours, and a country such as the US, it will inevi…

It seems to me that protecting sources and mandating some degree of truthfulness (like don't outright lie about verifiable facts, as some statements are not disprovable) are orthogonal to dictating the subject of the stories? The AMA and bar associations are not without their issues either (they end up driving prices up since they have a monopoly on their service), but it seems to me that people don't have to worry a…

Maybe there could be an independent body like the EFF but capable of issuing penalties to the egregious companies, but not the individuals. Perhaps even cap the type of company that can receive penalties, in order to preserve the ability for small upstarts to succeed without giving a potentially corruptable governing body the tools to squash them under a veil of legitimacy.

If you license individuals, how do you categorize what is and is not journalism, and where do you stop? Photojournalists, blogs, for fun school magazines, local newspapers? Are radio shows journalism? Youtube channels? Do I become an unlicensed journalist if they hold misinformation? Thinking of the worst case, a corrupted governing body could quietly pick and choose who they want to take penalize for not practicing with a license, or penalize them out of existence even if they have one.

That benefits big news corps while stifling open/free journalism with risk. For one example of what I mean by that but in a different industry, I will never run a website that could have users upload media in my country, because we have no safe-harbour laws. If you are at risk of penalties, many people just won't start.

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