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I Am Deleting the Blog

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Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#571

Post by epr »

matwood wrote: post #497
_wldu wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great post. I wish more people would genuinely listen to those they disagree with. When we shut people down or make them feel uncomfortable/threatened to the point that they won't speak, what have we gained?

> I wish more people would genuinely listen to those they disagree with. I had a bit of this discussion on HN not long ago. I love to debate and hear ideas from those I disagree with. But, that's not what people are often doing today. They are using your statement to appeal to others to listen and accept their clearly racist ideas or provable wrong, anti-science ideas. IMO, it's intellectually dishonest and a debate…

> I love to debate and hear ideas from those I disagree with

The right may take the cake as far as hypocrisy goes in general, but the one thing that pisses me off the most about the left is their lip service to open-mindedness. I often wonder if they do in fact believe it themselves.

> They are using your statement to appeal to others to listen and accept their clearly racist ideas or provable wrong, anti-science ideas

With the continuously widening scope of what could be considered "racist" or "anti-science", I suppose there won't be much left to debate soon enough.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#572

Post by dlkf »

throwaway4666 wrote: post #435
gringoDan wrote: post #394

Reading this made me think of two essays I've recently revisited. 1. The Sound of Silence, by Jessica Livingston Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves because the downside risk of being attacked for (misinterpretations of) their opinions are too high. People are wary of sharing useful information outside of trusted circles, which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those…

Okay but what does this have to do with the thread? Scott isn't being silenced, he's shutting down his blog out of concern that his relationship with his patients may be jeopardized if they could look him up on the NYT. (Whether he's justified I'm not qualified to say as I'm not a psychiatrist.) What's the hidden truth, controversial opinion or super secret insight at stake here?

If you had bothered to read the article, you would see that Scott lists two reasons why he is shutting down the blog. The reason that you mentioned is one. The other reason is:

> The second reason is more prosaic: some people want to kill me or ruin my life, and I would prefer not to make it too easy. I’ve received various death threats. I had someone on an anti-psychiatry subreddit put out a bounty for any information that could take me down (the mods deleted the post quickly, which I am grateful for).

You write:

> What's the hidden truth, controversial opinion or super secret insight at stake here?

There is no one opinion at stake here. What is at stake is the ability to hold any dissenting opinion. Or not even hold it, but merely discuss it openly.

In the case of the anti-psychiatry lobby it's not even a dissenting opinion! It's basically the opinion that psychiatry ought to exist. There is just a small community of dissidents who disagree and want to get Scott fired (or worse). They now have a lot more leverage, because we've collectively decided that we should foster a culture where it's totally normal to try and get someone fired for things that are totally unrelated to work.

Just as the members of an anti-psychiatry subreddit should have a right to freedom of speech and association without the fear that their posts will get them fired (or worse), so should Scott.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#573

Post by dragonwriter »

nradov wrote: post #558
gringoDan wrote: post #394

Reading this made me think of two essays I've recently revisited. 1. The Sound of Silence, by Jessica Livingston Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves because the downside risk of being attacked for (misinterpretations of) their opinions are too high. People are wary of sharing useful information outside of trusted circles, which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those…

Left-wing social movements, while initially well intentioned, tend to eat their own in escalating purity spirals. Total ideological purity is demanded, and valued above competence or actual results. The apotheosis tends to be something like Communist "self-criticism" sessions where people are forced to confess their thought crimes. https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...

> Left-wing social movements, while initially well intentioned, tend to eat their own in escalating purity spirals.

That's not particularly true of left-wing movements; to the extent it's true of them it's also true of right-wing movements. The relevant factors are orthogonal to the left-right axis.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#574

Post by throwaway894345 »

matwood wrote: post #497
_wldu wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great post. I wish more people would genuinely listen to those they disagree with. When we shut people down or make them feel uncomfortable/threatened to the point that they won't speak, what have we gained?

> I wish more people would genuinely listen to those they disagree with. I had a bit of this discussion on HN not long ago. I love to debate and hear ideas from those I disagree with. But, that's not what people are often doing today. They are using your statement to appeal to others to listen and accept their clearly racist ideas or provable wrong, anti-science ideas. IMO, it's intellectually dishonest and a debate…

> They are using your statement to appeal to others to listen and accept their clearly racist ideas or provable wrong, anti-science ideas.

I don’t think anyone is appealing to others to listen to their racist, anti-science ideas so much as demanding that they be accepted and if not a mob may be sent after them. I wish it were only “appeals to listen”.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#575

Post by forgingahead »

dan-robertson wrote: post #307
forgingahead wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cash-strapped" is a disingenuous way to describe them. The NYTimes is a $6 billion dollar media corporation with $800million in annual recurring revenue, and the Washington Post is owned by the richest man on the planet, whose company is currently worth 1.3 TRILLION dollars. Neither of them can afford 200k a year for either a public editor or ombudsman?

There are many newspapers that do not have as much money as the New York Times or Washington post, and many of them struggle with tight margins. It also seems likely that there would be other costs than the salary of a public editor: typically they would have a column which costs space on paper and the results of the editor’s opinions on ethics could increase other costs for the paper (higher standards, more discarde…

All these seem like "fake becauses"[0].

Forget the rest, the NYTimes and the WaPo can certainly afford a team of public editors, if nothing else but for the long-term credibility of their own institutions, never mind the side benefit of keeping them honest.

[0]: https://www.scottadamssays.com/2016/01/28/the-fake-because/

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#576

Post by PragmaticPulp »

randompwd wrote: post #336

Geez, patio11 was sure quick to jump in with nonsense: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1275346993296969730 > I feel like Slate Star Codex and the NYT are coming at each other from a substantial expectations gap regarding risk management. > The culture of participating under one’s own name is normative for much of the professional class but not all of it. Maybe stop trying to explain away that which is unabated shi…

Agreed. This feels similar to how armchair security experts will tweet about bad opsec every time someone is identified.

Obviously, Scott didn’t expect the blog to be so big or his anonymity to be such and issue when he started using his real first and middle names. It’s self-congratulatory to imagine that you would have made a different decision given the full benefit of hindsight. It’s not like Scott could go back and change his online name to something more anonymous after the blog became more popular.

> In the financial industry we get around that most commonly by giving people “desk names.” If you’ve called and spoken to Sarah Smith, you are very likely not speaking to someone who answers to Sarah or Smith outside of work.

His Tweetstorm is a long-winded way of saying “Scott should have used a completely fake name instead of a partially fake name.” That’s not really a guarantee that his real name wouldn’t have been discover. It’s also missing the point of the issue.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#577

Post by zajio1am »

I have been reading Slate Star Codex for a long time and consider it a source of many great texts, but i do not really get this step from Scott Alexander.

Term 'doxxing' is a loaded term that may describe both revealing private information and revealing personal information researchable from public sources. While the former is condemnable, the later is more neutral and part of basic journalist work, especially if the exposed is a public persona.

Seems to me that for impartial third person it would look like a reporter wrote a neutral article about SSC mentioning authors name, SSC author overreacted and punished himself and its readers by removing the blog, and by Streissand effect much more people would know autors name now.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#578

Post by tinyhouse »

gringoDan wrote: post #394

Reading this made me think of two essays I've recently revisited. 1. The Sound of Silence, by Jessica Livingston Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves because the downside risk of being attacked for (misinterpretations of) their opinions are too high. People are wary of sharing useful information outside of trusted circles, which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those…

I was just thinking about this now after reading attacks on Yann Lecun on twitter. He's a prominent AI figure (head of facebook research and turing award recipient). My interpretation - he was saying that bias in AI is mostly a problem of data. He didn't say there's no bias or that you can't solve bias with modeling. Just that the model itself isn't what causing the bias. One woman researcher started attacking him and everyone is backing her up... even calling him a racist. I guess a lot of people who work on fairness in AI got offended because they feel he calls their research BS. (which I don't think is what he meant)

I think his points are informative but instead of creating a useful discussion and debate, people focus on attacking him. I wouldn't be surprised if some people will request FB to fire him... (which thankfully won't happen) It's likely next time he will think twice before saying his opinion on social media. That's how toxic social media has become.

Update: Great to see this got so many upvotes so quickly. Just shows how biased (no pun intended) social media like Twitter is, and how concerned people are to say their opinion publicly these days.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#579

Post by cambalache »

entropyneur wrote: post #495
gringoDan wrote: post #394

Reading this made me think of two essays I've recently revisited. 1. The Sound of Silence, by Jessica Livingston Three years ago she argued that the smartest people are silencing themselves because the downside risk of being attacked for (misinterpretations of) their opinions are too high. People are wary of sharing useful information outside of trusted circles, which serves to consolidate power with insiders – those…

I love "What You Can't Say" and have incorporated the conformist test into my moral compass. But I think the shift to use of shame for society regulation is a positive development. I'd much rather be downvoted on HN or called names on Twitter than beaten up or deprived of freedom. But maybe that's just me.

How about you and your partner being fired from your job because your 13 year old wrote 1 year ago in Instagram : "Guacamole nigga penis". Is that shame treatment good enough or you prefer it more severe?

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#580

Post by kerkeslager »

Some highlights of Slate Star Codex over the years (I'm missing archives for two of these, and I'd appreciate anyone linking to archives if you have them):

Mediations on Moloch: https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestar...

I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup: https://web.archive.org/web/20200516181754/https://slatestar...

Proving too Much: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/13/proving-too-much/

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