211–220 of 584 posts
For all the other reasons that people on this site might hate this article, nevertheless it succeeds in doing the one thing that Scott asked of journalists: that they respect his pseudonym.
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It seems the goal lines have been moved to KiwiFarms’ brand of doxxing. As to whose ends that serves, I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader.
Have they? The real name of anyone posting anonymously or under a pseudonym has always been the gold standard of doxxing. It's usually easy to go from full real name to business and private addresses, emails and phone numbers, especially when the person has a web presence, but also for anyone with a few bucks to spare who's happy to pay a data broker.
Bronze at best if the pseudonymous person has already told you most of their name, their profession, and where they work.
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> he clearly intended to rile up his followers into a frenzy and get them to attack the reporter that was going to write the piece I find this an interesting reaction. Could you defend "clearly intended"? I feel familiar with Scott's writing, and familiar with his audience, and I think his clear intention was exactly what he said --- "please be polite" and "I will be very sad if you are a jerk". I could understand if…
It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister (in fact the comments would take his ideas to their natural conclusion and I did not like what was in the comments and the people that were writing them). If he did not intend his followers to attack…
You mean I've been reading SSC wrong all this time and missed out on secret messages encoded in kabbalistic puzzles?
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> he clearly intended to rile up his followers into a frenzy and get them to attack the reporter that was going to write the piece I find this an interesting reaction. Could you defend "clearly intended"? I feel familiar with Scott's writing, and familiar with his audience, and I think his clear intention was exactly what he said --- "please be polite" and "I will be very sad if you are a jerk". I could understand if…
It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister (in fact the comments would take his ideas to their natural conclusion and I did not like what was in the comments and the people that were writing them). If he did not intend his followers to attack…
> If you really wanted a civil discussion, would you have used the type of language that he did?
Maybe, it depends on how aware I was of my audience. If my intended audience was the primary public posters on SSC, I can see saying just what he said. If I remembered in my fluster that 98% of the readers who never post might react differently, then probably not. If you picture Scott (as I do) as a really bright semi-autist who communicates online primarily with self-declared "rationalists", it doesn't seem impossible that he might forget in the heat of the moment (this had to be a stressful decision for him) that some percentage of his audience is going to interpret his words counter to his stated intent, even if that intent is real.
(I appreciate your response, by the way. I don't think you needed to delete your earlier comments. Yeah, they'll be flagged and downvoted, then we'll vouch for them to recover them and vote them back up. As long as you try to phrase things politely, there are enough people here who'll stand up for you even if we disagree with your conclusion.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister (in fact the comments would take his ideas to their natural conclusion and I did not like what was in the comments and the people that were writing them). If he did not intend his followers to attack…
> his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister. You mean I've been reading SSC wrong all this time and missed out on secret messages encoded in kabbalistic puzzles?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister (in fact the comments would take his ideas to their natural conclusion and I did not like what was in the comments and the people that were writing them). If he did not intend his followers to attack…
I think he put in the contact information because he very much did want people to contact the NYT, and for them to make clear their displeasure with the policies of the organization. I think his genuine hope was that this would cause them to change their policies in the future, both for him and for others. So yes, he wants to "pressure the editor", but in a manner that is applicable to their job rather than as any so…
I think your interpretation is valid but I still think his writing caused harm even if it was inadvertent and someone should have pointed these things out to him much sooner but the SSC echo chamber did not allow for dissenting opinions so it had to be NYT journalist to make these things obvious to him and he did not respond well.
No, burn the witch-burners!
No, burn the witch-burner-burners!
But then what about the witches? Burn them too or...?
Okay, just burn people who burn any people!
Er, doesn't that mean we have to burn ourselves?
Why don't we just not burn anyone at all?
Burn that guy!
And so it goes...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> he clearly intended to rile up his followers into a frenzy and get them to attack the reporter that was going to write the piece I find this an interesting reaction. Could you defend "clearly intended"? I feel familiar with Scott's writing, and familiar with his audience, and I think his clear intention was exactly what he said --- "please be polite" and "I will be very sad if you are a jerk". I could understand if…
It's hard to explain but his intention in much of his writing was coded. He would consistently use certain keywords and phrases to make certain associations and when you follow through the logic it becomes very sinister (in fact the comments would take his ideas to their natural conclusion and I did not like what was in the comments and the people that were writing them). If he did not intend his followers to attack…
This reads to me like "his words were perfectly polite but I've decided that he must have intended a certain subtext and the subtext I believe that he intended is evil". Which ... I mean, you can certainly claim that, but when you're talking about the writings of somebody who used a lot of words to do his best to make his meaning clear in the text, accusation-via-subtext at least needs some sort of evidence to be a reasonable thing to do.
> If he did not intend his followers to attack anyone then he should not have named anyone or put any kind of contact information in his post.
The complaints form and the relevant editor are precisely how feedback is supposed to be given to news organisations. Some publications have a "Public Editor" position to handle such things, in which case they should have been contacted instead, but the NYT axed that position a while back.
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FWIW, the Internet Archive is willing to remove content if you can prove you are the owner and request it using the proper methods.
It's so funny how this community falls squarely on the "Opt-out is bad!" side except for the internet archive!
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You can consider it an over-reaction. But calling it a tantrum, using that specific word, really highlights your flared emotions. When people resort to value laden language instead of more objective, reasonable language, it says a lot about their mindset. On the actual subject, scale and magnitude are issues that most rational beings consider. His avoiding people knowing his name on scale makes sense. Our society in…
> You can consider it an over-reaction. An over-reaction is by definition the result of an emotional response. Pretending that it's not is being just as emotional even if they're pretending to be objective. > Our society in general has even codified this difference in law by separating 'public figures' from 'private individuals'. Scott Alexander is far more likely to be on the side of a public figure than a private i…
Over-reacting is not 'by definition the result of an emotional response'. I'm not sure why you feel the need to make things up. My immune system over-reacts to many external stimuli and causes allergic reactions. These are not emotional. So you're stating things that are easily and demonstrably wrong. This is the epitome of disingenuous.
> Scott Alexander is far more likely to be on the side of a public figure than a private individual
If you're a lawyer and want to expand on this, I'll listen. Otherwise, your lack of accuracy in previous statements makes me dubious about your argument.