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Statement on New York Times Article

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Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#301

Post by mtlynch »

Traster wrote: post #279
LeanderK wrote: post #209

I don't understand why the NYT would do something like this. I will continue to read the NYT but with a different feeling, it eroded my trust. More missteps and I will loose my trust. This is just unacceptable, especially in the times of fake news. I think the piece just does not have any arguments, it's just based on held beliefs that some things are wrong. It's just connects dots and quotes sentences that offend a…

>EDIT: And I just don't get why on earth they have to reveal his name if he does not want the NYT to reveal it? What does it add to the story? It's a persons life they are playing with. I recommend you read the NYT peice then, because it points out that if they publish his name as Scott Alexander (as he was going by) people would find out who he was simply by Googling that name. How exactly is the NYT meant to guaran…

>I recommend you read the NYT peice then, because it points out that if they publish his name as Scott Alexander (as he was going by) people would find out who he was simply by Googling that name.

If the NY Times published the article that links his pen name to his real name, that would be a stronger link than anything that previously existed. You can dox most people on the Internet if you put in enough effort, but the NY Times bears responsibility in lowering the effort required when there's no real reason to unmask him.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#302

Post by sjg007 »

mawise wrote: post #289
twicetwice wrote: post #3

A great response, in my opinion. Succinctly and effectively points out what was wrong with the NYT article, then tries to move on. Somewhat more of a sober tone than Scott's typical writing, but still with a dash of his typical wit: > I don’t want to accuse the New York Times of lying about me, exactly, but if they were truthful, it was in the same way as that famous movie review which describes the Wizard of Oz as:…

I don't get it. Scott's response very clearly lays out the ways in which the NYT article was misleading--so clearly that it seems obvious that it was intentionally misleading. But to what end? What are the motivations driving NYT to try and create these poor associations with Scott and his writing? It seems a poor and short-sighted motivation for them to do this out of "revenge" for the bad press they got from the si…

The only way to resolve the dissonance is to read Scott's work and the NYTimes article and see if they are talking about the same thing. Looks for things taken out of context, look for discussion at different levels etc...

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#303

Post by yanderekko »

inglor_cz wrote: post #228
dohnuts1919 wrote: post #162

> I don’t want to accuse the New York Times of lying about me, exactly, but if they were truthful, it was in the same way as that famous movie review which describes the Wizard of Oz as: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.” I laughed out loud at this paragraph, and it's such a perfect example of why I love Scott's wri…

I wonder whether the intended endpoint of this tactics is widespread deplatforming - e.g. support for vaporizing anyone who can be guilted-by-association in the same way that Scott Alexander is in this article. If Scott's reputation is groomed to be cancelable, anyone's is.

>I wonder whether the intended endpoint of this tactics is widespread deplatforming

Isn't this obviously the case? The "Grey Tribe" (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin...) and its "Dark Enlightenment" fellow travelers associated with SV is commonly targeted activist media orgs. The goal is to hobble the grey tribe's narratives by allowing woke mobs to say that they're based in cryptofascism and white supremacy. This has already been partially successful and probably just needs a few more big pushes to get to the point that we can start firing people from tech jobs for publicly saying that they like Scott's posts.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#304

Post by yanderekko »

MrMan wrote: post #177
Hasu wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems pretty crazy to me - you're saying that if I happen to enjoy anything that also happens to be enjoyed by racists/sexists, you would be concerned? Guess what? Racists and sexists like Harry Potter, and Star Wars, and Marvel movies, and Coca-Cola, and everything else that people who aren't racists and sexists like . I guarantee that you enjoy many, many things that are also enjoyed by people who have detesta…

I never read that blog and don’t read the NYT but I will say in response only to your comment that racists and sexists don’t seem to enjoy Star Wars like they used to. Someone should write a (hopefully thoughtful-seeming) long form rumination on the parallels between what has (allegedly) happened to Disney and what has (allegedly) happened to the NYT.

>I never read that blog and don’t read the NYT but I will say in response only to your comment that racists and sexists don’t seem to enjoy Star Wars like they used to.

Most of the ire is directly at the sequel trilogy, notably the last two movies thereof. So if one of your coworkers says they hated The Last Jedi but loved The Mandalorian, then you can reasonably report them to HR for engaging in discomforting behavior.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#305

Post by sjg007 »

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…

The underlying point of the article is that a large number of tech leaders are rationalists, what is rationalism, what are they reading (the blog), and what does that mean for society.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#306

Post by LeanderK »

Traster wrote: post #279
LeanderK wrote: post #209

I don't understand why the NYT would do something like this. I will continue to read the NYT but with a different feeling, it eroded my trust. More missteps and I will loose my trust. This is just unacceptable, especially in the times of fake news. I think the piece just does not have any arguments, it's just based on held beliefs that some things are wrong. It's just connects dots and quotes sentences that offend a…

>EDIT: And I just don't get why on earth they have to reveal his name if he does not want the NYT to reveal it? What does it add to the story? It's a persons life they are playing with. I recommend you read the NYT peice then, because it points out that if they publish his name as Scott Alexander (as he was going by) people would find out who he was simply by Googling that name. How exactly is the NYT meant to guaran…

I've read the article. There's a difference in having your full name in the news vs. the name he writes his blog under. Even if it is easy to find out, that does make a difference. People can associate and recognise hime just by reading the article.

He's not a public figure, I don't see a reason to so strongly feature his name. The lack of discussion and empathy on the side of the NYT is really concerning, repeating my words before: This is not just an article, it's the life of an ordinary person we are dealing with. He may be unequipped to handle or very afraid of the spotlight he is now in. There's already an article in the New Yorker about the article in the NYT.

I was not defending the person, his actions may be flawed. But the NYT is a journalistic institution that should have high ethical and journalistic standards.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#307

Post by bitcurious »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #95

Seriously, WTF is going on with NYT. I think something has seriously gone off the deep end with their newsroom, but I feel like it must be so culturally ingrained in their newsroom now that even questioning some basic assumptions will get one vilified as a racist or sexist. One of the most recent examples that really struck me was NYT's article about why they decided to capitalize Black, but not White, in their paper…

In terms of Black/white, the tipping point from “good faith” to “performative” was this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/arts/television/lupin-net...

It’s a good article, and largely innocuous, and it uses “Black” to describe a (fictional) French man in France.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#308

Post by yanderekko »

Traster wrote: post #195

So I may have come at this backwards- I read Scott's rebuttal and then read the NYT peice. No offence to Scott but I think he's got this all wrong. The NYT piece isn't about Scott, it's just a writing gimmick. The article is about the self-styled rationalists, Scott is just an entry point to open the discussion around these group of people. It's not trying to tie Scott to Thiel, it's describing the pantheon of people…

>The NYT piece isn't about Scott, it's just a writing gimmick. The article is about the self-styled rationalists, Scott is just an entry point to open the discussion around these group of people.

Do you think Scott actually disagrees with this? Regardless of whether it's a hit piece on Scott or rationalists more broadly, he realizes that if he gets cancelled or otherwise has his livelihood impacted then it impacts the rationalist community as well. I mean, maybe someone with better anonymity would step up to fill his intellectual niche, but it would still representment a blow to the movement.

>The rationalists think they're better than the NYT, largely because they look down on examining the world as it is

Weird complaint, and one that I don't think you'd find many rationalists ascribing to. I'm not sure what the non-strawman version of this claim is supposed to be here though. That rationalists don't bother to check their theories against reality enough? According to whom?

>I don't think it's unreasonable for someone either from the Red tribe or the Blue tribe to say to the Grey tribe - "Sorry, but you can't be indifferent on the topics that you claim to be indifferent on".

You can say that, it's how you attack the other tribe that matters. Hence the Wizard of Oz analogy in Scott's post. Attempts at showing that they Grey Tribe really is the Red Tribe or is somehow empowering them against shared Grey/Blue values need to rely on more than observing that the Grey Tribe is less enthusiastic about cancelling the Red Tribe.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#309

Post by sjg007 »

logimame wrote: post #119
nxc18 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Yeah, the Jetbrains article ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/russia-cyber-... ) was just too over-the-top conspiracy fluff. It’s sad to see some liberals critiquing QAnon and then immediately eating any kind of Russian conspiracy shit without any doubt.

It's not really. SolarWind uses a JetBrains component as a critical piece of infrastructure in the government which may have basically been built by Russia. Now maybe everything is above board but JetBrains does employ developers in Russia and was originally a Russian company. We don't run Kaspersky in the government either.

More to the point this should never have happened.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#310

Post by tfehring »

curun1r wrote: post #206
sanxiyn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I just looked up aspirin and warfarin (comparison used in the article) at NHS.UK, and it really is better. For example, Q. What if I take too much? A. (for aspirin) Taking 1 or 2 extra tablets is unlikely to be harmful. (for warfarin) If you take an extra dose of warfarin, call your anticoagulant clinic straight away. This convinces me it's not that WebMD is a tragedy of legible expertise, but that WebMD is inco…

Even as large as WebMD is, it would surprise me if they weren't using a third-party drug database to drive their public database. When I worked at a similar site, we used First DataBank [0], but there may be others too. The world of pharmaceuticals changes so rapidly that you need a small army of pharmacists and doctors scouring medical journals and materials from big pharma companies to keep your information up-to-d…

Maybe WebMD uses a third-party database for some drugs, but they probably don’t for aspirin, and if they do they shouldn’t.
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