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Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

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Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#51

Can you really be both a public figure and keep your identity hidden by way of asking? There’s a playbook for this. Look at Banksy for example. If you don’t want your identity out there it’s your job to protect it. Not the New York Times.

A reasonable claim of principle, but difficult in practice. Consider that quite a few people believe they know the true identity of Banksy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#53
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point me to an era of journalism where it wasn't largely used to condemn certain figures over their words or actions?

Largely used? A scan through my local paper, and frankly most of my experience, is that journalism is largely used to report the news. I'm not going to wade in on the moral debate here, but I count among the new stories in the first few pages today: 3 stories about a major storm that came through last night 1 story about changes to unemployment rules 1 story about a major conference being canceled due to travel restr…

"Largely" probably was the wrong word. The usage I describe will probably always be a minority, but my assumption is that it's been a relatively constant minority since journalism started. There's always an incentive to demonize and vilify someone somewhere.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#54

Can you really be both a public figure and keep your identity hidden by way of asking? There’s a playbook for this. Look at Banksy for example. If you don’t want your identity out there it’s your job to protect it. Not the New York Times.

Banksy is an interesting example because the NYT probably does know who he is. It's not that much of a secret.

Is it really obvious? I just skimmed the Wikipedia page and didn't see it - who is it?

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#55
Sigh. I think this article is holding Scott, and a core constituency of posters and meet up people, guilty by association with every rando on the internet, and also about half of the celebrities in the Bay area.

"War against the media" strikes me as ridiculous hyperbole in this context. I have met some of these people in real life, and none of them expressed that attitude to me, nor any kind of utopian superiority. It seemed like they were just trying to live morally considered lives and improve themselves a little at a time if they could -- and maybe do a little networking.

I think if Scott knew that his blog would get so big it would screw up his career and living arrangements, he probably wouldn't have published it in the first place. That might have been a lapse of judgment, but begging the NYT not to make him mainstream famous is hardly war on the media.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#56
post #49

What an ugly article. A couple quotes: > It remains possible that Alexander vaporized his blog not because he thought it would force Metz’s hand but because he feared that a Times reporter wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason for negative coverage. The reporter is unaware that the Internet Archive exists? The content is obviously still readily available, so the reporter is either…

It didn't strike me as ugly as all.

Reading the Scott Aaronson affair described as being about the trouble of male nerds on the "dating market," was awfully ugly. Of course, this doesn't mean that the New Yorker has it out for "rationalists," it's just an example of the callous and not-exactly right coverage that subcultures usually get from the mainstream. The truth is that the Aaronson affair was that he had crippling anxiety when he was young, got mixed up with Judith Butler literature, and it didn't really help him. He never had any trouble finding a partner once his anxiety had resolved, so you really have to do some free word association to get from the reality to the description.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#57
post #49

What an ugly article. A couple quotes: > It remains possible that Alexander vaporized his blog not because he thought it would force Metz’s hand but because he feared that a Times reporter wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason for negative coverage. The reporter is unaware that the Internet Archive exists? The content is obviously still readily available, so the reporter is either…

It didn't strike me as ugly as all.

It could have been much worse, but it's certainly not charitable.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#58
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last name is easy to find. My first name is Kurt, I live in Chicago, I work on startups. I've published with my last name within the last decade. Scott Alexander's last name is also easy to find. His first name is Scott, his middle name is Alexander, he's a psychiatrist, and he lives in Michigan. This is all information he publicized. And he has also published under his last name, even on SSC, within the last deca…

I'm confused, are you agreeing with Scott? Both of you have last names that are "easy to find," but neither of you are purposely making it easily available. You both believe that there is a difference between "technically can be found" and "is printed everywhere my pseudonym is." If I were to write your last name in this comment, I would be going against your implied wishes, where your implied wishes are visible beca…

Is the bar for doxing really that low now? My last name is not private. Nor is Scott Alexander's.

My implied wishes (and really, his wishes) aren't terribly important. If either of us do something newsworthy, it's not doxing to attach our name to the news.

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#59

I was a very loyal reader of SSC and thought I followed the "doxing" incident and fallout rather closely. I read numerous related blog posts about it and followed the discussion on the main remaining discussion space the community has, /r/slatestarcodex. Never once did I see the comments of said "Bay Area attorney" or Srinivasan, or see them discussed. It's certainly possible they were there and I missed them, but th…

basically you're saying you don't have the same twitter-centric experience of the world as the author of the piece apparently might

Re: Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media

#60

What an ugly article. A couple quotes: > It remains possible that Alexander vaporized his blog not because he thought it would force Metz’s hand but because he feared that a Times reporter wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason for negative coverage. The reporter is unaware that the Internet Archive exists? The content is obviously still readily available, so the reporter is either…

It's disingenuous, he knows the blog posts are compiled into an ebook and says as much.

If you really want to paint SSC in a negative light the optimal tool isn't the posts-- it's the comments.

Some of the posts were pretty cringe worthy but the comments were far more reliably cringe worthy.

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