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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

#321

Post by astine »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #302
anoncareer0212 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dear God, the number of people who think any kind of insult constitutes an ad hominem would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing. Ad hominem means you're replacing a reasoning based argument with character attacks. Throwing in character attacks on top of a reasoning based argument -- especially when the insults are just used as a conclusion -- is not what an ad hominem is. This is important, because the fact that…

It took me a moment to realize that the poster is trying to use a different definition of ad-hominem which isn't actually a logical fallacy. He's just criticizing the fact that the OP is bothering to criticize article's author at all. Personally, I don't like that usage because it cheapens the definition of ad-hominem and makes it harder to call someone out when they make an actual logical fallacy.

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

#322

Post by tripletao »

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #305
tripletao wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

First, thanks for responding. I really didn't intend for my comment to derail a discussion so far into the weeds. > I doubt the character of the journalist because of the disingenuous nature of his arguments, not the other way around. I believe you experienced it that way. But I don't believe that was communicated well. IMO you intended to make a case against the article but ended up actually make a case against the…

Thanks, and I agree that there's an increased and harmful tendency to assume bad faith in political and other discussion--we should engage as much as possible with the arguments presented, regardless of what motivations we think exist behind them. I try to avoid suspecting bad faith myself, but in this case I didn't see how.

> For example, the reporter obviously has access to several of SSC posts. If the reporter believed that deleting the blog caused it to be forever lost to history, then he couldn't possibly have written this piece. So obviously he's aware that at least some of the controversial content of SSC is still accessible. In fact, he believes that enough of the content is accessible to write an entire long-form New Yorker article about the controversial content. So surely he must believe that enough of the content is available to write an NYT article about the content.

So we agree that the content remains readily available, to journalists and others. So I think that means if Alexander "feared that a Times reporter wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason for negative coverage", then we agree that deleting the blog wouldn't (and didn't) help.

> It doesn't seem to impact his argument in any way, because it's possible to simultaneously know about the Internet Archive and also believe Alexander deleted his blog to dodge/mitigate negative press.

So this is where I don't understand. Alexander surely knew about the Internet Archive (and his e-book, and whatever other countless copies of his popular content existed). So why do you think it's possible that he'd delete his blog in order to dodge/mitigate bad press due to content that a journalist might uncover there, when he knows that action would be ineffective (and indeed probably counterproductive, due to the Streisand effect)? That seems so implausible to me that I'm unable to believe the argument was presented in good faith.

In any case, I agree that journalists do important work, and I have great respect especially for those who reveal information of public importance, against the wishes of powerful governments, companies or other entities that seek to conceal it, sometimes at the cost of the journalists' lives. This (and most "tech" and "culture" journalism) seems pretty far from that, though.

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

#323

Post by ajkjk »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #306
ajkjk wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really disagree. I thought it was a balanced take, for the most part, and represented the SSC extended community in a way that did much better than naively misunderstanding it, and much better than the community understands _itself_. I think that a lot of commenters on here have the exact self-righteous tone that this article criticizes (well, discusses with a bit of an air of judgment, but let's just agree that it…

It's "balanced" in so far as some parts are charitable, sure, but then it's also peppered with insinuations: > This plea conformed with the online persona he has publicly cultivated over the years—that of a gentle headmaster preparing to chaperone a rambunctious group of boys on a museum outing—but, in this case, it seemed to lend plausible deniability to what he surely knew would be taken as incitement. I just can't…

Why not? imo it's not an implausible take, even if you don't agree with it.

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

#324

Post by whatshisface »

baddox wrote: post #104
whatshisface wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the Scott Aaronson affair described as being about the trouble of male nerds on the "dating market," was awfully ugly. Of course, this doesn't mean that the New Yorker has it out for "rationalists," it's just an example of the callous and not-exactly right coverage that subcultures usually get from the mainstream. The truth is that the Aaronson affair was that he had crippling anxiety when he was young, got m…

It seems to me that simplifying the entire Scott Aaronson affair was necessary, since it was just a brief part of this article. I thought their choice of simplification was reasonable and in good faith, but of course others might disagree (and unfortunately, whether we agree or disagree is likely to be effected by our overall level of agreement with the article).

There's simplifying, and then there's misrepresenting. Simplifying it would be calling it "crippling anxiety exacerbated by uncritical childhood exposure to radical literature."

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

#325

Post by astine »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #312
astine wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you weren't making an argument then I'm sorry for assuming you were.

I'd suggest that you are probably dismissing political alignment too quickly, however. Even if they seem similar to you, the difference might seem important to them. Late Roman Christians fought literal wars over the presence of a letter 'i' in a single word, denoting a difference that probably wouldn't seem all that important to someone who wasn't a Christian, for instance.

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

#326

Post by [deleted] »

psds2 wrote: post #296
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#328

Post by at_a_remove »

JoblessWonder wrote: post #63
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…

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 honors robots.txt, even retroactively across changes of owners of domain names.

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

#329

Post by coffeemaniac »

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…

Assertion 1: deleting his blog is a meaningful way of hiding his surname, by way of adding an extra step to anyone who wants to search for it.

Assertion 2: deleting his blog is NOT a meaningful way of hiding gross and reactionary discussion happening on his blog, by way of adding an extra step to anyone who wants to search for it.

These seem contradictory to me. He is absolutely trying to hide or obfuscate something, we're just debating what it is.

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

#330

Post by andrewprock »

mst wrote: post #317
memexy wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

From the post you link to:

"Why not assassinate prominent racist and sexist politicians and intellectuals?"

I would definitely qualify these kind of straw-men as a "certain pattern" of language designed to incite rather than for insight.

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