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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

#291

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bluntfang wrote: post #275
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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

Let me rephrase. More websites would want to be archived than not. So that should be the default.

This is how defaults are meant to work. Unless the default is somehow harmful or dangerous, they should be the thing that the most people want, so as to reduce the amount of work involved in getting everyone to their preferred outcome. Having 1% of websites opt out is far less work for the websites than having 99% of websites opt in.

> 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!

You do realize how many websites there are. Why would you want to dump a collective million man hours of work on all of them to opt in, or the even worse consequences when they forget and then don't get archived like they would've wanted?

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

#292

Post by nonbirithm »

analyte123 wrote: post #109
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…

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…

EDIT: I'm wrong, Scott Alexander is just his pen name.

The article also calls the author "Scott _____" instead of just "the author of S.S.C.".

Wasn't this exactly what he was trying to prevent with the NYT in the first place? So now other journalists feel like they have to step in and "doxx" him instead? And this New Yorker article ultimately got published in spite of all the controversy surrounding his identity. What kind of backlash is that going to generate? On top of the reaction to all the other veiled attacks on people in the article and irrelevant detours into "controversial" details about SSC and the rationalist community, etc.

I don't see a good outcome to this at all. Maybe it says something if the people who put the most effort into overcoming bias and trying to foster reasoned conversation couldn't prevent all of this from blowing up as it did. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know. It's certainly ugly.

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

#293

Post by astine »

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #276
astine wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You might prefer a looser definition of ad-hominem, but I think that the technical definition holds value. This looser definition reads like a means of implying that the poster's intent was different that what it was.

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

#294

Post by greenshackle2 »

analyte123 wrote: post #234
greenshackle2 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s not that fringe, given the Elon Musk/Grimes connection: https://pagesix.com/2018/05/07/elon-musk-quietly-dating-musi... But you’re right it’s not part of the “discourse” except mostly as a joke.

Well, you're right, it's not fringe in the sense that no one knows about it, everyone has known about it for half a decade - taking it seriously is fringe.

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

#295

Post by tripletao »

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #279
tripletao wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-a…

Since you don't propose a third possibility, it seems like you just didn't like my language? If I wrote "the reporter is either unaware that widely-available backups of the blog exist (despite apparently quoting from one in this story), or trying to create public speculation that something damaging about Alexander might be true when he knows it to be false", then would you agree with me?

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

#296

Post by psds2 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #291
bluntfang wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

> I really don't think you can make that assertion without asking the maintainer of the website. Let me rephrase. More websites would want to be archived than not. So that should be the default. This is how defaults are meant to work. Unless the default is somehow harmful or dangerous, they should be the thing that the most people want, so as to reduce the amount of work involved in getting everyone to their preferre…

If a website that wants to be archived doesn't opt-in that is a failure of the website. If a website that doesn't want to be archived is archived that is a (possibly non criminal) trespass by the archivist.

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

#297

Post by paulgb »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #270
paulgb wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But then they still get a factor of 8.8 more revenue from digital advertising than digital subscriptions. edit: Compare digital advertising to digital subscriptions, not overall subscriptions

Are we looking at the same numbers? See page 3, subscription revenue is ~2.7x ad revenue.

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

#298

Post by TulliusCicero »

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.

No, they engaged the arguments, and then also made a character attack based on their reasoning.

If you, in the midst of a counter-argument, point out that someone was lying in their original argument, calling them a liar is not an ad hominem. It's a conclusion.

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

#299

Post by TulliusCicero »

anoncareer0212 wrote: post #272
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sub conclusion: 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.

No it's not. An ad hominem is saying, "your character sucks, therefore your argument must be wrong", or focusing your attack mostly on their character rather than any line of reasoning. Throwing in an insult here and there may be poor form, but that does not an ad hominem make.

Especially when the character attack is a result of the line if reasoning you're making. If your whole argument is, "between X and Y and Z, we can see that Politician is corrupt", calling them corrupt is an insult but not an ad hominem.

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

#300

Post by mrkurt »

nkurz wrote: post #253
mrkurt wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm cool with saying "revealed". I don't want to link directly to it because I think it's kind of an asshole thing to do, but you can find a last name on a bunch of posts on Raikoth.net in archive.org. He reposted most that without the reveal on SSC.

OK, I presumed by "his blog" you were referring to Slate Star Codex. Yes, if one includes his earlier internet presences (which I don't think are mentioned in the linked article?) I'm willing to believe he has at times posted his full name, and that if you are willing to dig through some links, you can associate his current writings with those older writings. I think that at some point about a decade ago, as his medi…

That's fair. The only real reason I disagree with you (and probably him) is he _did_ continue to publish personal information. Enough to identify him, even without the last name. If someone repeatedly reveals their own first/middle name, location, and occupation, I think it's silly to call "we'll publish your last name" doxing.

It seems like he might have just freaked out over a series of poor choices and didn't really own up to it. Easier to blame the NYT for "doxing" and do the honorable thing to protect his patients.

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