Slate Star Codex and Silicon Valley’s War Against the Media • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by vslira » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

avsteele wrote: post #39

Article fails to defend the NYT in any substantive way, and the writer makes obvious their biases with statements like: S.S.C. supporters on Twitter were quick to identify some of the Times’ recent concessions to pseudonymous quotation—Virgil Texas, a co-host of the podcast “Chapo Trap House,” was mentioned, as were Banksy and a member of ISIS—as if these supposed inconsistencies were dispositive proof of the paper’s…

> This article is just more propaganda in the evolving war of words between SV and journalism.

There's no war between SV and journalism, theres a feud between technologically and business savvy content companies and decaying content companies. Op-eds, moral posturing and long forms are not journalism. Journalism is a truthful representation of facts with analysis added for context to inform the readers, which the NYT and many other big names haven't delivered in decades.

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

#222

Post by baddox » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #208

baddox wrote: 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?

No. Read Scott's own reasoning on the situation here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-... In short, he's not worried about dedicated antagonists finding him. He's worried about his psychiatric patients finding his blog, and that interfering with his relationships with them. Deleting the blog makes it moderately more difficult for them to do that.

I don't understand. Publishing his name in the NYT will surely already cause any of his patients who read that to realize it's an article about their doctor. Surely that's where the interference would come from ("whoa, my doctor has been writing about his practice on a public blog for years"), not from the patient visiting the blog. If the patient wants to find the blog, I'm sure they will be able to.

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

#223

Post by baddox » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

tripletao wrote: post #204

baddox wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reporter can't actually believe that Alexander is trying to hide something horrible that he wrote It might be a little farfetched, but no moreso than Alexander's own reasoning for deleting the blog. I think it's a little much to call the whole article "ugly" because of that.

What do you mean? Alexander said himself that he was doing this as a protest and publicity stunt, and he seems to have taken no actions beyond that publicity stunt to make the content less available (e.g., he hasn't (yet) requested deletion from the Internet Archive). His words and actions seem entirely consistent to me, so I'm not sure why you doubt him.

I never said anything about consistency. I'm talking about your claim that the article is "ugly."

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

#224

Post by DavidVoid » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

tripletao wrote: post #28

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 interesting how the HN discussion here is far more critical of the article than the /r/slaterstarcodex discussion is [1]. (although that is a much smaller community.)

[1] https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/ho6g2b/slate...

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

#225

Post by memexy » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

mst wrote: post #218

memexy wrote: post #169

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…

> 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. 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 c…

I don't think his words were polite, in fact I think it was quite the opposite. If I wanted a civil discussion I would not have listed any contact information about anyone. I would have said, "I am archiving the blog until further notice because I need to think about what kind of content should be made publicly available because words have power and it's important to think about what information and inferences we make available to others through those words".

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

#226

Post by mst » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #105

hirundo wrote: post #68

> This plea ... in this case, it seemed to lend plausible deniability to what he surely knew would be taken as incitement. That's unfair given that the alternative was supine acceptance. He made a good faith attempt to amplify his reasonable criticism while leashing the inevitable jerks. Can the author of this article say as much? This is a formula to silence any popular speaker by association. Here's a dangerous per…

I agree with the author that Scott definitely knew what was about to happen. He has consistently tried his best to "leash" his followers, but the response has been quite harsh nonetheless. And the whole SV + conservative politics vs. old media angle has made the situation even more intractable.

Calling it "plausible deniability" implies that he condoned any negative results.

I don't believe that to be true, and I do believe that if he'd made no comment at all about contacting the NYT, many - if not most - of the people who contacted them in an unconstructive fashion would have done so anyway.

I do agree that Scott knew what was about to happen - but I think his attempt to guilt trip his followers into not doing it even though he knew it would probably be futile was genuine.

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

#227

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

greenshackle2 wrote: post #192

analyte123 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parts of this read as a smoothed-over hit piece. An honest and comprehensive effort to rip apart and debunk neo-reactionary ideology is painted guilt-by-association style as "possibly legitimizing" or "describing" it. "[Exploring] and [upholding] research into innate biological differences between men and women" is "[giving] safe harbor to some genuinely egregious ideas". Asking people to politely contact the editor…

I got the same impression. Even though it's couched in "respectful language", they really went out of their way to cover the half-dozen or so most cringe-worthy controversies to ever come out of SSC or SSC-adjacent spaces, whether it's relevant at all or not to the (very tenuous) point of the article. Like, you really have to bring up Roko's basilisk? What is the point, besides "look at how silly these Silicon Valley…

[deleted]

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

#228

Post by mst » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:37 PM UTC

rachelshu wrote: post #125

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.

Right, I think the article shows a certain lack of self-awareness in places, but I see no reason not to believe that the author's heart was in the right place nonetheless.

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

#229

Post by eqvinox » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

paulgb wrote: post #199

eqvinox wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said I was lazy, didn't I? :) Feel free to ignore that item. … But actually… that sheet also says that $51 million of their revenue is from digital advertising, down from $55.5 million a year ago. It's 11.5% of their total revenue, down from 12.7%. Not a huge problem but… it's still a business consideration. And let's not forget zest and sensationalism can sell subscriptions and print media too. (Publishing the ful…

Ad revenue is down but subscriptions and total revenue are up -- so doesn't that go counter to the "did it for clicks" narrative? My (admittedly simple) model of the media industry is that clickbait drives ad revenue, quality journalism drives subscriptions.

I totally agree your logic makes sense too. My model was going along the lines of, "hey, our digital ads are down a few million" -> manager telling the assembled team "hey let's try and get the ad revenue back up, all please set the dial just a little bit higher!"

Not even suggesting malice there, just my imagination :)

[Ed. add:]

It's also that I don't even think Metz was necessarily aware the name would be such a big deal. It's very much normal practice to name people, and even if they saw that Scott was privacy conscious it might not have registered properly and just seemed like a "little bit of extra zest." However, IMHO they just should have backed off after it became apparent to them.

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

#230

Post by fzeroracer » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 6:39 PM UTC

NicolasGorden wrote: post #220

fzeroracer wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. 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 sta…

> Over-reacting is not 'by definition the result of an emotional response'. 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.

The dictionary definition of overreaction is "a more emotional or forcible response than is justified". You're attempting to use the clinical definition of an overreaction in place of someone personally overreacting, which is incorrect. He didn't take down his blog as a result of his immune system overreacting, he had an emotional reaction which made him take down his blog. From a rationalist standpoint you're wrong.

> Otherwise, your lack of accuracy in previous statements makes me dubious about your argument.

This would be an emotional reaction to me defining the term overreaction correctly.