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Statement on New York Times Article

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Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#101

Post by astrange »

themgt wrote: post #30

Steven Pinker maybe says it best, in a thread where he links to some notable SSC posts: A typical essay by Scott Alexander is deeper, better reasoned, better referenced, more original, and wittier than 99% of the opinion pieces in MSM. It's sad that the NYT can see him only through the lens of their standard political & cultural obsessions. Perhaps Alexander's ultimate virtue is epistemic humility: His pieces are lon…

> Perhaps Alexander's ultimate virtue is epistemic humility: His pieces are long, sometimes inconclusive, and accompanied by diverse commentary because he's committed to his own fallibility and lack of omniscience.

This is good, but the way he does it in respond to actual criticism[1] can be annoying. It reminds me of a squid spraying ink everywhere before escaping.

[1] mostly that they like to make fun of progressives/feminists, but tolerate people doing eugenics in the comment section because the commenters are nicer to them personally

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#102

Post by HideousKojima »

speedgoose wrote: post #100

I thought the New York Times was a decent newspaper until their "French police shoot and kill man after a fatal knife attack on the street" title, that replaced later by a not so much better "Man Beheads Teacher on the Street in France and Is Killed by Police". Even Macron felt the need to tell them they fucked up.

"Syrian man denied asylum killed in German blast"

That one was Reuters, mind you, but does the same thing. The actual story being a Syrian man died from a bomb he was planning on using in a terror attack.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#103

Post by astrange »

john_moscow wrote: post #47
outoftheabyss wrote: post #14

This is the second article I’ve come across today lambasting the NYT for a hit piece, the second in my opinion is much worse given what the subject has been exposed to and has had to endure. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-the-... It seems the publication is in the midst of a takeover by woke radical authoritarians. It used to be that you should be cancelled and/or made a pariah of society for…

There's a huge tension in the society caused by the wealth shift from individuals to corporations. As a rank-and-file millennial, in most of the cases you are priced out of property ownership, are expected to do your shitty job until death, and you starting a family would be directly directly against your employer's interests. The woke movement and is artificially splintering people based on identities. It is redirec…

> As a rank-and-file millennial, in most of the cases you are priced out of property ownership, are expected to do your shitty job until death, and you starting a family would be directly directly against your employer's interests.

That would not be against your employer's interests, because companies need customers to exist. Doesn't everyone know what Ford did there?

In highly-corporatist Japan your boss will personally find you a wife if you don't have one, and will give you a raise if you have kids.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#104

Post by wskinner »

astrange wrote: post #101
themgt wrote: post #30

Steven Pinker maybe says it best, in a thread where he links to some notable SSC posts: A typical essay by Scott Alexander is deeper, better reasoned, better referenced, more original, and wittier than 99% of the opinion pieces in MSM. It's sad that the NYT can see him only through the lens of their standard political & cultural obsessions. Perhaps Alexander's ultimate virtue is epistemic humility: His pieces are lon…

> Perhaps Alexander's ultimate virtue is epistemic humility: His pieces are long, sometimes inconclusive, and accompanied by diverse commentary because he's committed to his own fallibility and lack of omniscience. This is good, but the way he does it in respond to actual criticism[1] can be annoying. It reminds me of a squid spraying ink everywhere before escaping. [1] mostly that they like to make fun of progressiv…

Can you point to any examples that you found particularly annoying?

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#105

Post by panarky »

cowmoo728 wrote: post #48
outoftheabyss wrote: post #14

This is the second article I’ve come across today lambasting the NYT for a hit piece, the second in my opinion is much worse given what the subject has been exposed to and has had to endure. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-the-... It seems the publication is in the midst of a takeover by woke radical authoritarians. It used to be that you should be cancelled and/or made a pariah of society for…

This is nothing new from them. The NYT, as the "paper of record" for America, has always been mired in politics and power. One of my favorite pieces from NYT is their blistering condemnation of MLK after his famous anti-Vietnam speech. Never forget that there is a side that benefits politically from telling you that the NYT is being taken over by "woke radical authoritarians". The NYT is a political organization play…

Either you support unlimited free expression or you don't.

But the "Dark Enlightenment" folks want to have it both ways -- unlimited free expression for themselves even if it means platforming white nationalists, while simultaneously screaming bloody murder when the NYT publishes the well known real name behind the pseudonym Scott Alexander.

Then we have luminaries like Balaji Srinivasan wanting to "sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out".

The inconsistency and hypocrisy of "free speech for me but not for thee" is revolting.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#106

Post by colinmhayes »

NhanH wrote: post #13

This is shameful, and the second time this month NYT puts out such a shameful piece (the first time was the JetBrains/ Solarwinds article). I guess this should be enough to disregard everything NYT will write, and stop reading them. Another commenter said that NYT still produces comparably some of the best journalistic content. I will have to stop reading news if this is the case. After the whole fiasco of Scott dele…

The times is very pessimistic on tech, largely I believe because they're upset about being run over by google/facebook. It's definitely unfortunate, but the future of journalism is really not bright at all. No one is willing to pay for unbiased news, so you need to find a niche to attract people or churn out clickbait. The times has found their niche as technocrat skeptics.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#107

Post by colinmhayes »

musicbizsucks wrote: post #7

You can play a fun game with this snippet from the NYT article. You can replace the word "Rationalists" with the name of any group at all and the resulting statement seems vaguely true due to the imprecise nature of the language. > Many Rationalists embraced “effective altruism,” an effort to remake charity by calculating how many people would benefit from a given donation. Some embraced the online writings of “neore…

That's also a pretty bad definition of effective altruism. For how much they spout "do the most good" you'd think the author could just use that?

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#108

Post by astrange »

wskinner wrote: post #104
astrange wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps Alexander's ultimate virtue is epistemic humility: His pieces are long, sometimes inconclusive, and accompanied by diverse commentary because he's committed to his own fallibility and lack of omniscience. This is good, but the way he does it in respond to actual criticism[1] can be annoying. It reminds me of a squid spraying ink everywhere before escaping. [1] mostly that they like to make fun of progressiv…

Can you point to any examples that you found particularly annoying?

"Against murderism" was the last time it came up, I think? In context I believe it was supposed to be anti-anti-Trumpism, or at least that you should talk to Trumpists more rather than deplatform them.

The reason I don't remember is that the effect of reading his essays is that they're so long you forget why he wrote them and what you were thinking before you started it.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#109

Post by notmarkus »

chmod775 wrote: post #64

The NYT article[1] can hardly be called a hit piece at all, considering how little 'dirt' it actually contains. What is telling however is the lengths to which they went to connect Scott to anything negative at all. Look at how they 'connect' him to Peter Thiel for instance: Scott is a prominent figure in a loose group of "Rationalists". Some rationalists are concerned about AI. Some people who are concerned about AI…

Thanks for including this link. I read the response before I read the NYT article. And while it was a pretty uninteresting article, the tactics used to obfuscate who holds what beliefs are laid bare. It's illuminating to see.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#110

Post by nxc18 »

NhanH wrote: post #13

This is shameful, and the second time this month NYT puts out such a shameful piece (the first time was the JetBrains/ Solarwinds article). I guess this should be enough to disregard everything NYT will write, and stop reading them. Another commenter said that NYT still produces comparably some of the best journalistic content. I will have to stop reading news if this is the case. After the whole fiasco of Scott dele…

I recently dropped my NYT sub; jetbrains nonsense was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I know it's a meme to bring up Gell-mann amnesia here, but I will raise it as a basic test for quality in journalism.

When NYT writes about something I know about, I almost always have serious problems with it. Jetbrains in particular. And honestly some of the writing is so bad that even without knowing about the subject, I can tell it is crap, like the article about the SlateStarCodex. I had never read it before that post, but had heard it mentioned in passing. Also, NYT Opinion is Hannity/Shapiro level crap and should be dumped. Stick to the facts please.

On the other hand, The Economist has consistently impressed me; I read/listen with a critical ear and they do a wonderful job even with very niche topics. I've worked on some AR tech and they had a special report that just really nailed it and got into the weeds. Every time I thought "but they didn't mention..." they would mention or clarify a paragraph later.

Economist has a liberal viewpoint and they're not shy about it. I prefer that approach and accept that I disagree with the conclusions/advice from time to time, but the facts are right and error corrections are almost always very minor in nature.

There is good journalism out there, just maybe not from NYT. Please don't give up hope.

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