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Statement on New York Times Article

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Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#211

Post by afiori »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #93
afiori wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It Is also impossible not to get DDoS on the internet, you still would want people not to DDoS you.

You've moved the goalposts. DDoS is against the law. Connecting an anonymous account to a name after confirming it is them is not. It may be libelous if the connection is not factual, but if it is a fact then that's legal to print.

This is also moving the goalpost, just because something is legal (and rightly so in this case) does not mean it is moral.

My point is that doing risky activities does not mean you cannot complain when things go wrong; you can both take responsability for your decision to partecipate in that risk and criticise the system for exposing partecipants to excessive risk.

In this case the criticism wasn't "the internet police should stop bad actors, but (hyperbole warning) "the most respected newspaper in the US should have higher standards than internet trolls"

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#212

Post by JohnStrangeII »

makomk wrote: post #207
Retric wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all partisan mouthpieces are equivalent. You can be factually accurate while leading people to the wrong conclusion. However, it’s much less work to find someone willing to lie, and much harder to detect lies than misleading statements. Journalistic integrity is therefore critical when selecting which biased sources to pay attention to.

Leading people to believe things that are wildly untrue using statements that are technically not lies does as much damage to society as doing it any other way, in my opinion. Sure, in theory smart people might be able to spot that what the article is trying to convince them of isn't backed up by the facts it uses - but in practice they almost never seem to, not even other journalists. (Here in the UK, the BBC seems…

I've noticed this thought pattern with many people who argue against freedom of speech and for tighter control of media or "canceling" them recently:

1. The arguer claims that negative consequences follow from the exercising of free speech, in this case NYT right to freely chose the topics they write about.

2. The alleged consequence is that people are made to believe wrong or false things (where "wrong" and "false" are defined by the arguer).

3. The arguer portrays himself at the same the victim of those media and the person who knows better than those media and therefore can decide between wrong and right, true and false better than the accused media.

4. The arguer presents no evidence of knowing better and when you ask them about their sources, they tend to be highly problematic, based on blogging and websites who often do not even employ journalists.

Paraphrase: "I know better than large group of people X but everybody else is mislead by X" - I don't think so.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#213

Post by Aqua »

dandare wrote: post #199

What I find noteworthy about this story is how contentious and weaponized have gender and race become. Out of the four negative claims, one accused Scott of racism and two accused him of of some variant of misogyny. The fourth associated him with some other form of non-pure thinking. I am afraid things will get worse before they get better. I expect the trumpism/fascism wave will provoke unhealthy reaction and furthe…

The whole story background story is extremely alarming. NYT unilaterally decided to reveal someone's real identity against that person's wishes. It should honestly be made illegal but given the current political climate it's doubtful such course of action will ever be considered. This whole situation gives even more credence to the idea that decentralisation is the only way forward for mankind if we intend to preserve the liberties our ancestors enjoyed for the past 300 years.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#214

Post by raspasov »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #210
raspasov wrote: post #174

Very often when I read a NYT article, I get a paranoid Neo-marxist feeling that NYT doesn’t really care for equality of opportunity, minority rights, women’s rights or any particular oppressed group. They just hate the successful and the rich.

Mark Thompson, CEO of NYT has an estimated net worth of about 10-30 million USD according to a few sites on the Internet. That's not "did a unicorn IPO"-rich but it certainly doesn't align with "NYT hates the rich".

Oh, they for sure monetize their Neo-Marxist activism decently well. I doubt Stalin was eating stale white bread three times a day either.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#215

Post by belorn »

mnky9800n wrote: post #167
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…

They also outed a Chinese Twitter maker a few years ago. Or maybe that was vice and the reporter now works at nyt. I don't remember except that nyt these days is lame.

That was vice, and it involved outed details about the makers family members, her relationship status, and her sexual orientation.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#216

Post by Dma54rhs »

dandare wrote: post #199

What I find noteworthy about this story is how contentious and weaponized have gender and race become. Out of the four negative claims, one accused Scott of racism and two accused him of of some variant of misogyny. The fourth associated him with some other form of non-pure thinking. I am afraid things will get worse before they get better. I expect the trumpism/fascism wave will provoke unhealthy reaction and furthe…

It sure will happen in Europe because people here are not really ashamed to admit they are sick and tired of that American 'justice' bullying. The only hope for America is when slightly more intelligent character than Trump suppress their political gains to put end to this madness.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#217

Post by pcl »

c1ccccc1 wrote: post #200
sunpar wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why people believe that anonymity is a right guaranteed to all people making content on the internet.

Because if we let people be anonymous, then more people will feel comfortable writing insightful things for us to read. I'd rather have a wider selection of content than know everyone's real name. Knowing who writers are "in real life" is useless and uninteresting most of the time. In any case, blogging anonymously is certainly technologically possible. And it's neither illegal nor immoral. So I think that makes it a…

> In any case, blogging anonymously is certainly technologically possible. And it's neither illegal nor immoral. So I think that makes it a right, no?

Taking that line of reasoning further, doxxing someone who does not successfully maintain anonymity is also possible. Is it thus also a right?

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#218

Post by xyzzy123 »

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…

I think you have the right lens.

This is "blue tribe member discovers existence of grays, and denounces them as not true blues".

Blue tribe be wary, the grays are among us and can be hard to tell apart. At first glance they often look like us, believe many of the "right" things. But something is... off?

How can we spot grays? Well, grays (as almost the definition of their in-group) are supposed to value the substance of an argument more than appearances so if you say something nonsensical about, for example, race, you can smoke them out if they don't uncritically agree with you like a proper blue should. They can't help themselves! These optically challenged idiots will try to do _math_ on what you said, or something equally silly. It's perfect.

A side benefit of this identification process is that you get to call them racist.

Since gray tribe is vastly overrepresented here compared to general NYT readership I think this also explains the reaction of many commenters.

Disclaimer: not a blue or red, probably a gray.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#219

Post by drdeca »

nxc18 wrote: post #110
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 c…

I wonder if anyone has done a kind of scientific/statistical study of the whole gell-man amnesia idea?

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#220

Post by foldr »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #133
cowmoo728 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is similar to arguments I frequently make about the paper. The reason it has such standing as it does is because it was a mast of Northeast elite hedgemony. I mean this more in a sociological sense than in a true dynastic political sense. The Northeast had been thought for very long to have the best schools, culture, technology, leadership and values. There was a time when that culture was not just dominant amon…

> Northeast elite hedgemony

This. Housing associations in the Northeast are getting completely out of control. Whatever happened to people trimming their own hedges in the style they see fit?

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