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

newyorker.com

171–180 of 584 posts

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

#171
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so funny how this community falls squarely on the "Opt-out is bad!" side except for the internet archive!

The Internet Archive provides an important historical archiving mission. Even when the content is made unavailable by express request from the owner, it is still preserved for future generations. This is not a frivolous purpose.

All purpose's defenders will claim that theirs is not frivolous.

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

#172
post #158
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Scott encouraged people to raise objections in a civil way , and he really stressed that point. And yet both you and the article somehow accuse him of orchestrating a harassment campaign despite evidence to the contrary. Honest question, what else could he’ve done? Are you suggesting that he’s a villain for raising objections?

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

#173

Not that the NYT has any business printing somebody's name who doesn't want it to be printed, but I kind of feel like he had been looking for an excuse to shut down the blog for a while - it had been a long time since any of his posts really felt inspired like they were even a year ago. This gives him an excuse to make a clean break.

Scott, answering to a different question: "I’m not sure what kind of evidence you want me to give. But if you want, you can confirm with Cade that I begged him, at great length, many times, over the course of days, not to use my real name in the article. I gave him a warning that I would delete the blog if he used my real name, in order to pressure him to reconsider, and I only deleted the blog after he refused."

https://www.coindesk.com/i-failed-terribly-at-keeping-my-ide...

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

#174
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so funny how this community falls squarely on the "Opt-out is bad!" side except for the internet archive!

The Internet Archive provides an important historical archiving mission. Even when the content is made unavailable by express request from the owner, it is still preserved for future generations. This is not a frivolous purpose.

I'm sure the reasons for collecting your PII are not frivolous to the consumers of that data.

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

#175
post #26

This is fascinating. It's a New York take on the Bay Area take on New York. It's the Media take on the Tech take on Media. It's illuminating, and frustrating. I keep looking for some reflection, some attempt to learn something from another point of view. I'll have to read it again more closely.

Scott Alexander only recently moved to the Bay Area, and as a clinician, he is very unlikely to be associated with any tech companies, although many techies read his blog, of course.

The NYT behavior here was despicable. Not quite Wen-Ho Lee yellow-baiting despicable, but despicable nonetheless. The New Yorker shares the same envious hatred of tech companies most of the New York media scene seems to evince, not surprisingly as their livelihoods are evaporating. That said, the reason this is happening is not tech companies, but the take-over of news companies by entertainment conglomerates, the replacement of actual reporting by infotainment goop, and the turning of reporting from a slightly disreputable working-class scrabble to a respectable profession for fancy liberal-arts college graduates who would never dream of being rude to their fellow classmates working in PR, law or other professions dedicated to preserving the status quo, let alone afflicting the comfortable.

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

#176
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that also mean the very act of "deleting" the blog is disingenuous? If deleting the blog doesn't meaningfully impede accessing the blog articles, then what's the point, other than drawing attention to the situation?

It's just the publicity stunt, leaving the NYT with the options to (a) drop the story, (b) omit a significant detail, or (c) report that he deleted the blog because they said they were going to doxx him. The story hasn't been published yet, so it's working so far. Short-term, this has probably net increased the visibility of Alexander's content (slightly less convenient to access, but much more attention), and I assu…

Indeed, the publicity stunt in question currently seems to be favoring Alexander.

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

#177
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet Archive provides an important historical archiving mission. Even when the content is made unavailable by express request from the owner, it is still preserved for future generations. This is not a frivolous purpose.

All purpose's defenders will claim that theirs is not frivolous.

Meaning that no non-frivolous purpose exists?

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

#178
post #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. I…

There are only two rational explanations here: 1) Scott Alexander wanted more attention, and he realized that deleting his site and blaming the NYT for it would garner dramatically more attention, creating opportunities that he wanted. He recognized that he could become a martyr to a certain group, and use that for future gains. 2) Scott Alexander is an absolute moron who did not foresee the Streisand Effect that he…

I'm surprised you don't consider other possibilities, like that he was genuinely concerned about his real name being made known, for the reasons he stated. You don't address these.

I'm also surprised that you feel able to diagnose someone you presumably don't know as a sociopath. This seem like hyperbole.

Honestly, I don't think this post is up to YC standards.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ad-hominems That's not what an ad hominem is. The word you're looking for is "insult".

you're the 3rd reply saying this so I don't have much hope of fighting the crowd, but, this is pretty much as ad hominem as it gets. The reasoning provides two and only two options for which flaw the speaker exhibits as evidence for the argument

That's a false dichotomy… and it's the conclusion of the (sub)argument, not the evidence.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ad-hominems That's not what an ad hominem is. The word you're looking for is "insult".

you're the 3rd reply saying this so I don't have much hope of fighting the crowd, but, this is pretty much as ad hominem as it gets. The reasoning provides two and only two options for which flaw the speaker exhibits as evidence for the argument

So what's the third option? Do you believe that Alexander deleted his blog because he was trying to hide something, as the sentence I quoted implies?

If so, why did he take an action that he must have known would draw wide public attention (from a wide audience, including people much less sympathetic to his opinions than his usual readers), while leaving the content available with only slight inconvenience? You can read his blog on the Internet Archive now, and cherry-pick whatever fragments you want. As another poster notes, the IA does allow webmasters to request removal, but he doesn't seem to have done so.

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