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Statement on New York Times Article

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Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#261

Post by Noumenon72 »

outlace wrote: post #39
Tenoke wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of Gell-Mann Amnesia and read from a variety of sources. This was really a comment on how most journalism is even worse. The NYT does occasionally have pieces where I know about the topic and their representation goes into details that others aren't likely to. Those are, however, not a large percentage of their output.

thanks for referencing Gell-Mann Amnesia. Never heard of it before but after looking it up it is quite compelling.

I've known about Gell-Mann amnesia for years but never experienced the feeling of 'this coverage of a thing I know is terrible', even in this piece. Maybe I don't know much about anything, or maybe I'm a conflict theorist, not a mistake theorist, so when I see them get things wrong like this, I assume it was on purpose.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#262

Post by Clewza313 »

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 Naomi "SexyCyborg" Wu, and it was Vice, not the NYT: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3100274...

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#263

Post by edanm »

bnj wrote: post #242
CPLX wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you articulate a coherent framework for how and why an American news publication should be prohibited from revealing legally obtained true information about the leader of a large, popular, or otherwise noteworthy community?

I haven’t thought up a framework, but one thing I’m wondering is why the identity of the person alone is newsworthy. I’m probably missing part of the background here, I’m new to the controversy. Did some kind of mystery arise around the true identity of the author? Your comment implies that NYT obtained the true identity of the author through legal means — how exactly did they do that? I don’t think finding out the i…

> I’m probably missing part of the background here, I’m new to the controversy. Did some kind of mystery arise around the true identity of the author?

Not really.

Originally, the blog was pseudonymous. It was the first and middle name of the author, which he did because he's a psychiatrist who didn't want someone Googling his real name and finding his blog (for various professional and personal reasons).

But it wasn't exactly hidden super well - I found out his full name kind of by accident while googling for some random info about him, it would take most people a few minutes to find his name I imagine. This was ok by him because he mostly wanted to protect the reverse direction - someone googling his full name and finding his blog, not the other direction of someone finding his blog and discovering his full name (mostly - not exclusively).

In any case, after a year of "arranging his life" to allow him to do so, as he puts it, he is now publishing under his full name.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#264

Post by bondarchuk »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #75

Several months ago, people were saying that the Times was probably going to write a sympathetic piece. But they wrote a hitpiece. So, one wonders: Did the NYT write a hitpiece because of Scott's reaction -- deleting his blog, calling on his readers to send angry emails to NYT, etc -- or was it going to be a hitpiece from the beginning? Scott's thermonuclear reaction seems justified now. But back then, some comments h…

Well here is an intelligent guy who writes long-form pieces that are fairly influential within a sector of society that is small, but also relatively powerful. But he's not aligned to the NYT ideological agenda. Of course it was gonna be a hit piece, no question about it IMHO.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#265

Post by Smaug123 »

drdeca wrote: post #219
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…

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

Could you discuss in a bit more detail what you might want from such a study? My first guess was simply that you want a newspaper to be fact-checked from beginning to end.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#266

Post by vjmarkov »

rndgermandude wrote: post #139
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…

>In one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in “The Bell Curve.” In another, he pointed out that Mr. Murray believes Black people “are genetically less intelligent than white people.” This paragraph alone could be a textbox example from "Hit pieces for Dummies". The piece is a hit piece through and through. That they weren't able to dig up any real dirt and instead…

In the McCarthy age guilt by association was "established" by calling someone a fellow traveler.

We are there again. The difference is that in the communist witch hunts at least there was a plausible external enemy.

This time it is all based on delusions, corporate global agendas and the need to stay relevant in one's bullshit job by "fighting" for some cause.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#267

Post by edanm »

Aqua wrote: post #213
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 preserv…

> 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.

I completely disagree. That goes against the very free speech principles that readers of Scott's blog advocate so strongly. I think it was the wrong decision to publish his name, but it shouldn't be illegal. Like it or not, Scott has become a fairly important intellectual given who his readers are (and may I say, completely deservedly so).

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#269

Post by JeremyNT »

eatplayrove wrote: post #125

I have never read the blog, or have any positive or negative association with it, but after all the attention this story has garnered, I just read both the NYT article and Mr. Siskind's response. The main takeaway from the NYT article is that there is a group of people in whose writings/blog comment sections/etc racists/sexists have found a home, and his is one of them. He does not address this assertion, or what the…

It's amusing to watch HN lose its collective shit over the NYT article, which I believe you succinctly and correctly summarize.

This is the highest rated top level post that presents any degree of skepticism at all in Scott's rebuttal, below pages of anger against the NYT "hit." So much for that quality, rationalist examination of the facts. As somebody who read both his blog and HN throughout its run, I find the NYT article on the money.

Scott's own cowardice about revealing his real name is incredibly telling, too. So long as he remained anonymous the NYT actually respected his wishes and buried the story, while this champion of free speech refused to stand behind his own words publicly and lamented the abuse of the MSM coming to dox him. Now that the checks are coming in, he seems to have no problem, though.

My advice to you, dear HN, is to take a look in the mirror. This isn't a hit piece and Scott isn't a saint. If you believe his long winded rants have merit, you should also believe they stand on their own, and you should welcome the scrutiny.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#270

Post by anticristi »

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…

I lost count of the number of times the NYT used the same numbers and switched from praising to blaming and back the Swedish corona startegy.

I want facts and information goddammit. Not a tearjerking drama to fill my inbox. I was already annoyed with the NYT before this incident. This just broke the camel's back. I unsubscribed.

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