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Statement on New York Times Article

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Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#351

Post by panarky »

taeric wrote: post #118
panarky wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Enli…

This seems a silly line to toe that accomplishes nothing. Worse, it feels in bad faith. The crowd is constantly crying foul. And often shouting noise for the sake of being noisy. As such, it is all too easy for any supposed side to claim that the crowd is intrinsically party of the other sides. To that end, did this person make particular claims that others have to reveal who they are? If not, I'm not clear on how th…

> they could be easily ascribed to the side you appear to be taking up

1) Your argument is whataboutism at its finest.

2) I'm not taking a side in favor of establishment journalism.

3) I'm showing that leaders of the anti-cancel-culture movement are themselves more than willing to intimidate, suppress and cancel the free speech of anyone who criticizes them.

4) Either you're in favor of unrestricted free speech for everyone, or you're not.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#352

Post by CRConrad »

yownie wrote: post #297
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>His own cite of his comment about how there's a thin line between feminism and literally Voldemort is another good example. Yeah he's edited it and seems to be going for "it's just a joke bro", but if you live in the kind of bubble where you casually condemn the whole of "feminism" as an evil then you've probably got a weirdly fascistic friend group and/or auudience. How can you honestly not see the delicious irony…

Are you saying that condemning some feminists for being too militant is equivalent to "liv[ing] in the kind of bubble where you casually condemn the whole of 'feminism' as an evil"?!?

I can't see any "irony" there ar all; IMO because there is none to see.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#353

Post by kodah »

sjg007 wrote: post #309
logimame wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

JetBrains was started in the Czech Republic [0] by three Russians. The same people who started it no longer run it.

Calling it a "Russian" company would be totally inaccurate. The hack that I saw cited, though I believe it was an unidentified source, was one that was injected at compile time. That would be very difficult to notice for any programmer.

So, here's my question:

Why did you refer to them as "Russian" when it's obviously not true?

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBrains

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#354

Post by closeparen »

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…

“Look at the evil ideas that people in the tech community are flirting with” is one more argument towards NYT’s overarching thesis that Tech is too powerful, doesn’t deserve its power, and must be smacked down.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#355

Post by yanderekko »

webmaven wrote: post #349
yanderekko wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They were forced into a distinct reality and stereotypes served to reinforce the segregation that eventually may have led to cultural differences, not the other way around. The thing that I don't accept about this argument is that this would seem to imply then that not expressing these differences could be seen as "white culture." It seems like only you try to disentangle Black Culture from American Culture, then th…

> once you subtract "Latino Culture" and "Black Culture" and "Asian Culture" from "American Culture" why is it so offensive to call whatever residual that's left that's only associated with non-blacks/asians/latinos "white culture"? Perhaps because on the one hand you still need to subtract so many other immigrant cultures (Italian American, Polish American, Irish American, etc.), and on the other the "melting-pot" r…

The same sort of decomposition can be done towards black culture as well though.

It also strikes me as untenable that one can simultaneously support the notion of "white privilege" while attacking the notion of "white culture" - many things that are commonly-cited as reflective of white privilege are cultural in nature.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#356

Post by CRConrad »

molbioguy wrote: post #339
hobs wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in the context of fascism one of those things is an authoritarian government leader that praised dictators and tried to take over the government and another is a paid activity that's voluntary. If you want to make obviously dumb claims about fascists, you might get called out.

Perhaps you should articulate a well-defined definition of fascism and provide arguments for why you clasify someone as a fascist if you are going to criticize someone else whose viewpoint is dfferent. Calling out someone for 'obviously dumb' claims assumes a universal non-subjective definition at the very least. It's also a seriously lazy way to argue a point.

Or perhaps you shouldn't have to ask people to go back and review every axiom and theorem from Eucli-- OK, from Politics 101 onwards -- in order to find some gotcha to make your point.

Starting one's argument from the consensus of the reality-based community may be "lazy", but starting to quibble over basic definitions in a much higher-level discussion is a pretty sure sign one is on the wrong side of whatever the argument is about.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#357

Post by alentist »

newsbinator wrote: post #194
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:…

> ConTracked: A proposed replacement for government contracting. For example, the state might issue a billion ConTracked tokens which have a base value of zero unless a decentralized court agrees that a bridge meeting certain specifications has been built over a certain river, in which case their value goes to $1 each. The state auctions its tokens to the highest bidder, presumably a bridge-building company. If the c…

Reminds me of a concept called dominant assurance contracts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_as...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A100495710953...

> Many types of public goods can be produced privately by profit seeking entrepreneurs using a modified form of assurance contract, called a dominant assurance contract. I model the dominant assurance contract as a game and show that the pure strategy equilibrium has agents contributing to the public good as a dominant strategy.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#358

Post by sjg007 »

kodah wrote: post #353
sjg007 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

JetBrains was started in the Czech Republic [0] by three Russians. The same people who started it no longer run it. Calling it a "Russian" company would be totally inaccurate. The hack that I saw cited, though I believe it was an unidentified source, was one that was injected at compile time. That would be very difficult to notice for any programmer. So, here's my question: Why did you refer to them as "Russian" when…

The CEO operates from St. Petersburg. I mean check his Twitter. They also have three dev offices in Russia.

"Among its customers is SolarWinds, JetBrains Chief Executive Maxim Shafirov said from St. Petersburg, Russia, where JetBrains has offices."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-cyber-jetbrains/fb...

I mean everything might be above board but it's probably bad or lax US policy and/or regulations that Solarwinds was deployed through out the government.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#360

Post by ryl00 »

Junk_Collector wrote: post #340
jhbadger wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confusing cause and effect. Cities like SF aren't crowded because megacorporations are located there, but rather megacorporations are located there because they are crowded. SF, NYC, Paris, and London are cities that people have moved to for well over a century, because they were excited to live in places with so much culture, shopping, and restaurants. This has always meant that housing in these citi…

Silicon Valley was built in the valley because that was cheap available land that was mostly empty but still accessible to a major coastal port. It only became the crowded modern environment after the corporations were built there and became successful. San Francisco became big because it was a major shipping port. Not that long ago it was Detroit, Buffalo, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Princeton, Pittsburgh, Trenton, and…

I can't speak for the others, but why do you think Dallas and Houston are moribund? Based on the last decade of population growth, their respective metro areas certainly seem to be doing well for themselves.
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