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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

#311

Post by InfiniteRand »

lliamander wrote: post #193

> Until recently, I was a writer for the Times Magazine, and the idea that anyone on the organization’s masthead would direct a reporter to take down a niche blogger because he didn’t like paywalls, or he promoted a petition about a professor, or, really, for any other reason, is ludicrous; Niche? A blog that get's 600K page views a month and is highly regarded (aruably even moreso than the NYT) by numerous intellect…

I found that line calling it Scott a niche blogger a little odd as well given that the article as a whole seems to be designed to establish the greater importance of Scott within the wider Silicon Valley and Rationalist communities. Unless those communities are just small little niche groups, but then why end with "Everyone has skin in the game, and the stakes are high."

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

#312

Post by DubiousPusher »

astine wrote: post #280
DubiousPusher wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I did not assert that the NYT and SSC should be friends because they have similar political alignment. Whether they are friends or not is irrelevant to my question. The OP indicated that the NYT might be more inclined towards the politics of Banksy than to the politics of SSC. I am simply asking the basis of that assertion. As a casual reader of both they appear pretty aligned with one another politically.

There are a multitude of reasons the NYT might be biased in favor of Banksy and against SSC. But so far as I can tell political alignment is probably not the issue. Though I could be wrong. That is why I asked for clarity.

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

#313

Post by nonbirithm »

pvg wrote: post #307
nonbirithm wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Wha…

You mean it calls him Scott Alexander? That's the public pseudonym he goes by.

Oops, you're right. I edited my comment. Thanks.

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

#314

Post by oconnor663 »

I think folks who feel like this is a hit piece need to watch out for the biases that Scott himself described in https://web.archive.org/web/20200619200544/https://slatestar.... I don't want to assume that no one has done that accounting, but I want to highlight that it's important.

Some scattered observations:

> Alexander, in another widely circulated essay, published in 2018, has popularized an alternative heuristic—a partition between what he calls “mistake theorists” and “conflict theorists.”

I think it speaks well of the piece that the author spent so much time on mistake theory vs conflict theory. To someone who isn't already an SSC reader, that's probably a pretty boring topic. But it's a big piece of context for what regular readers consider important and interesting. If I were writing a hit piece, or a clickbait piece, I don't think I would've made space for this.

> By their own logic of gamesmanship, some of the positions they tolerate actually have to be extreme, because only a tolerance of a truly extreme position is costly—that is, something for which they might have to pay a price.

This is an interesting take. I don't know if I fully agree with it, but at the same time I don't think it's shallow.

> “Feels like tech pieces would benefit from pre- or at least post-publication peer review by experts in the field, namely the investors and engineers and founders”—in other words, the subjects of stories should be allowed to edit them.

A case of one group misunderstanding the fundamental, traditional values of another group. I haven't thought before about how the "Gell-Mann amnesia problem" might be fundamentally at odds with journalistic objectivity. It's not just that journalists don't have the time or the background to understand technical topics -- it might be that sometimes one must not have that background in order to write about a subject objectively. Or maybe that's one way to be objective, which can work in cooperation with other ways. Who knows. Again, not sure if I totally agree, but it's an interesting observation.

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

#315

Post by zaroth »

dragonwriter wrote: post #237
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…

> 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. But it's a business consideration that exactly supports the claim that NYT isn't about clicks and, in fact, that dependence on click-driven ad revenue is a declining focus…

You can’t make that conclusion from the evidence presented.

The fact that ad revenue is declining doesn’t tell us that they intentionally moved focus away from clicks.

As another matter, all those subscriptions grant access to their website content. More clicks on their site probably lead to more new subscriptions, and better retention of existing subscribers. To the extent that clicks lead to subscriptions, they are undoubtably all about the clicks.

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

#316

Post by AnthonyMouse »

memexy wrote: post #265
mst wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are all entitled to our beliefs. I merely outlined an argument for why I think how I do. The point I'm trying to make here is that "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" does not, in fact, outline an argument. It merely asserts that…

I didn't take very good notes but if you want to point me to the archive and posts you think are good I will be happy to go through them and outline what associations are being made and why. I stopped reading SSC after I noticed certain patterns and decided I did not want those ideas rattling around in my head. So I gave you a high level impression / outline of what conclusions I reached without providing the actual…

> If you want more precision then you will need to point me to specific posts of his so we can argue about them

This was basically a random selection because I'm curious to hear what your objections actually are:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190102011649/https://slatestar...

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

#317

Post by mst »

memexy wrote: post #265
mst wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are all entitled to our beliefs. I merely outlined an argument for why I think how I do. The point I'm trying to make here is that "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" does not, in fact, outline an argument. It merely asserts that…

I didn't take very good notes but if you want to point me to the archive and posts you think are good I will be happy to go through them and outline what associations are being made and why. I stopped reading SSC after I noticed certain patterns and decided I did not want those ideas rattling around in my head. So I gave you a high level impression / outline of what conclusions I reached without providing the actual…

"certain patterns" is still not an outline so it's hard for me to pick a set of posts.

But let's go with this one:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200202214359/https://slatestar...

since I suspect that will comfortably draw out our underlying disagreements (and if you don't know who Phedre no Delauney is, the Kushiel's Dart novels are fantastic and you've missed out).

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

#318

Post by AnthonyMouse »

paulgb wrote: post #297
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oops, I see what I did. I was comparing digital subscription revenue to overall ad revenue. Comparing digital subscription revenue to digital ad revenue is "only" a factor of 8.8 rather than 18 (because just over half the ad revenue is print).

Note that newspapers make little if any profit from print subscriptions in themselves, because they're little better than breakeven with the cost of printing and delivery. The real profit has always come from the advertising. Digital subscriptions are something new in that they're actually making money from subscription revenues instead of just using them to cover unit costs, but they're currently still tiny.

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

#319

Post by lliamander »

InfiniteRand wrote: post #311
lliamander wrote: post #193

> Until recently, I was a writer for the Times Magazine, and the idea that anyone on the organization’s masthead would direct a reporter to take down a niche blogger because he didn’t like paywalls, or he promoted a petition about a professor, or, really, for any other reason, is ludicrous; Niche? A blog that get's 600K page views a month and is highly regarded (aruably even moreso than the NYT) by numerous intellect…

I found that line calling it Scott a niche blogger a little odd as well given that the article as a whole seems to be designed to establish the greater importance of Scott within the wider Silicon Valley and Rationalist communities. Unless those communities are just small little niche groups, but then why end with "Everyone has skin in the game, and the stakes are high."

I would say the Rationalist community in general is probably pretty niche, but the significance of Scott is that his blog appeals to a much broader audience than the Rationalist community or even Silicon Valley.
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