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

newyorker.com

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

#271

Post by nkurz »

mrkurt wrote: post #32
whatshisface wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your last name? I think an extremely small fraction of the accounts here would want to tell people their full real life names.

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 not sure how to best capture it, but I think there is some irony to be found in the way you state that his last name is "easy to find" and "he lives in Michigan". The first paragraph of the linked article introduces him (correctly, I believe) as "Scott Alexander, the pseudonym of a Bay Area psychiatrist". He once lived in Michigan, but no longer does. One wonders if there is another psychiatrist named "Scott Alexander [something]" who currently lives in Michigan who has been having a really bad few weeks.

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

#272

Post by anoncareer0212 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #179
anoncareer0212 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

por que no los dos?

It sounds like we agree, ignoring qualifiers like subconclusion: the lanuage was directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining, the definition of ad hominem is "(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining." QED.

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

#273

Post by tripletao »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #240
TulliusCicero wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The term I'm looking for is ad hominem. "this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself." tripletao chose to attack the character of a journalist instead of engaging with the arguments.

I doubt the character of the journalist because of the disingenuous nature of his arguments, not the other way around.

To be clear, do you think Alexander actually intended to conceal a "creditable reason for negative coverage" by deleting his blog? If so, why didn't he e.g. request deletion from the Internet Archive, to at least make the reporter's job noticeably harder? In any case, Alexander surely understands how the Streisand effect works, and that a big public gesture that makes information slightly less available (but still available with modest effort) tends to disseminate that information, not conceal it. So do you really think that was his goal?

And do you think the journalist really believed what he wrote? I don't, and I think he was disingenuously reaching for stuff to smear Alexander with. I think that's ugly.

Finally, I didn't intend to express anger in my last paragraph. I intend to express caution, that anyone dealing with a journalist should consider the possibility that the journalist is out to cause them serious personal harm. This is true regardless of whether that's deliberate and targeted based on their opinions (which I suspect, based on the inconsistent application of the NYT's policy on anonymity, but which I agree no one can prove), or just out of habit (which is fairer I suppose, but doesn't make the harm any less).

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

#274

Post by astine »

tshaddox wrote: post #114
TulliusCicero wrote: post #12

> For one thing, the S.S.C. code prioritizes semantic precision, but Metz—if Alexander’s account is to be taken at its word—had proposed not to “doxx” Alexander but to de-anonymize him. Oh? From Wikipedia: > Doxing, or doxxing (from "dox", abbreviation of documents), is the Internet-based practice of researching and publicly broadcasting private or identifying information (especially personally identifying informatio…

It seems to me that the level of "privateness" of the information is relevant. Obviously just saying the real name of a famous person who goes by a pseudonym is not considered doxxing. This article claims that his full name "can be ascertained with minimal investigation," and Scott's own blog deletion announcement seemed to agree. Where precisely to draw that line is an area where we can reasonably disagree.

I looked up his name a few weeks ago after the blog was brought down. It took be a couple of days to find it and even then I only found it because I've seen him in person. People here are discussing tracking down his old blog through archive.org, but I didn't think to do that. So, 'minimal investigation' is a relative term.

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

#275

Post by bluntfang »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256
recursive wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it means that. I'm just sure that for each purpose, we can find someone that relies on it.

Let's try it this way. For any given website, more likely than not they would want the Internet Archive to archive it. For any given internet user, more likely than not they wouldn't want a website to track them for the purposes of advertising and price discrimination. This tells us what the defaults should be in each case, and let the exceptions change the setting if they want.

> For any given website, more likely than not they would want the Internet Archive to archive it.

I really don't think you can make that assertion without asking the maintainer of the website.

AND if that's the case, IA can either reach out to the maintainer via the email address gotten from the public WHOIS data OR the maintainer can easily go to the IA website and opt in!

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

#276

Post by anoncareer0212 »

astine wrote: post #258
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term I'm looking for is ad hominem. "this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself." tripletao chose to attack the character of a journalist instead of engaging with the arguments.

Uh, no. " You made a bad argument and therefore you are stupid " is not an ad-hominem argument " You are stupid and therefore your argument is bad " _is_ an ad-hominem argument. The OP's comment clearly follows the pattern of the former, not the later, so it is not an ad-hominem. Bear in mind that tripletao's thesis is clearly that the NY article is a bad faith essay. That's his conclusion , not his premise.

This is one of the most intense HN nerdsnipes I've seen in a while, reminds me of code reviews :P

TL;DR: google.com -> define ad hominem -> "(of an argument or reaction) directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining" -> go back to the quote we're arguing about, it reads: "so the reporter is either stupid or disingenuous" -> looks like those are words directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining

y'all are mistaking doing a technical word by word breakdown of an argument and picking which words are which logical fallacies with, well, the definition of ad hominem

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

#277

Post by baddox »

tripletao wrote: post #257
baddox wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To be clear: 1. I believe the New Yorker reporter disingenuously made a statement that he knew to be false (because deleting the blog is clearly effective as a protest and publicity stunt, and clearly ineffective in removing access to content that's been widely mirrored elsewhere already) in order to create the false impression that Alexander might be trying to hide something. 2. I consider knowing falsehoods intende…

I think that both the New Yorker reporter and Alexander know that deleting the blog will not meaningfully impede people from accessing it who want to access it. I think that the reporter's claim that deleting it might impede people looking for dirt in past posts and Alexander's claim that deleting it might protect his practice and his patients are both far-fetched although not completely impossible.

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

#278

Post by lliamander »

reedwolf wrote: post #266
lliamander wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, although I suspect things would have turned out poorly for the author if they had not.

What are a bunch of angry nerds gonna do?

If they are so impotent, why hasn't the NYT published their article yet?

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

#279

Post by anoncareer0212 »

tripletao wrote: post #180
anoncareer0212 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

This whole thing flummoxes me and honestly I don't care enough to speculate on it. I do believe that's a reasonable explanation for his behavior, and most definitely reasonable enough that I don't need to accuse the writer of bad faith.

When I first heard about it on Twitter two weeks, there was a ton of angry mob behavior and unfounded assertions over a non-anonymous writer's claim that he was going to be made non-anonymous by a newspaper article.

I have an mob budget, and can't afford anymore on this topic until the non-anonymous writer is named by the newspaper article, and I'll give him a 2 for 1 at that point and keep pretending his name isn't readily available and hear out his argument further.

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

#280

Post by astine »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #112
modeless wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banksy's identity is right on his Wikipedia page for anyone who really wants to know. I think NYT and other media are keeping him "anonymous" by way of asking. They could easily publish his name if they wanted. Unlike SSC, Banksy seems to hold similar political views to NYT, so they have no problem playing along. The only truly anonymous public figure I'm aware of is Satoshi Nakamoto and I'm pretty sure that the only…

> Banksy seems to hold similar political views to NYT, so they have no problem playing along. Genuinely curious of your basis for this. As far as I can tell SSC and most rationalist adjacents are basically neo-libs which the NYT has been a bastion of for decades.

SSC has been critical of the way the news media works in the past. Just because they might fit in the same ideological bucket in your schema doesn't mean that the NYT would see SSC as a friend. I'm not saying that's why we're at this impasse, just that your argument is flawed.
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