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Statement on New York Times Article

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Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#71

Post by rafael09ed »

john_moscow wrote: post #53
andrewfong wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that his explicitly stated goal is to move on from this, probably a bad idea. Right or wrong, a lawsuit would invite the Streisand effect. As for whether there's any legal basis to sue, it's doubtful. There isn't a whole lot that's factually inaccurate in the NYT piece. It's innuendo and words taken out of context. California has a "False Light" claim that might apply, but I doubt any court would take that up.…

>At its core, taking stuff you said in a public forum out of context is endemic to free speech in America. If we penalized it legally, a good chunk of Hacker News would be legally questionable. I think, doing it with an explicit goal of misleading your audience in order to cause damage to a specific person should not be OK. I'm not saying censor it, but making NYT liable for any actual damage (like losing a job) + pu…

A major problem in that is proving intent. How do you prove the New York times was intentionally misleading their audience to cause damage?

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#72

Post by ardy42 »

john_moscow wrote: post #34

I am wondering, what are the legal perspectives of suing NYT for libel at this point. If Scott started a crowdsourcing campaign to fund legal defense, I would gladly throw in a couple of grand. Given the support Scott received when the situation with NYT's plans got public in the first place, this could set a very interesting precedent.

> I am wondering, what are the legal perspectives of suing NYT for libel at this point.

None at all.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#73

Post by [deleted] »

themgt wrote: post #30

Steven Pinker maybe says it best, in a thread where he links to some notable SSC posts: A typical essay by Scott Alexander is deeper, better reasoned, better referenced, more original, and wittier than 99% of the opinion pieces in MSM. It's sad that the NYT can see him only through the lens of their standard political & cultural obsessions. Perhaps Alexander's ultimate virtue is epistemic humility: His pieces are lon…

[deleted]

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#74

Post by julianmarq »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #20
mimikatz wrote: post #4

The piece was bad. After all the time they had to work on it, it was a lazy hack job that normally wouldn't make the cut at the NYT. It is a sign of the days we live in when a Mean Girls style burn book page makes it into what used to be the paper of record.

You’re not kidding. It’s surprising how bad it is, and that’s after reading all these comments saying how bad it is. It is plainly a hit piece devoid of any substantive reporting or analysis.

> It is plainly a hit piece devoid of any substantive reporting or analysis.

This is a great summation.

To me it reads like the best attempt the journalist could pull off at writing a hit piece against some guy who just started a low cost medical practice, and has never actually done anything bad in his life. A whole lot of vague insinuations and guilt by association.

If I didn't know better, I'd wonder if this was Metz's way to tell himself that he is a better person than this guy trying to make psychiatric care more accessible, just because he might disagree on some political issues.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#75

Post by sillysaurusx »

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 here convinced me that "They probably weren't going to write a hitpiece. Why would they do that?"

But we were wrong. So I'm wondering why we thought they'd do anything else.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#76

Post by jcranmer »

tensor wrote: post #59
throwmtlsPhD wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I suggest an alternative? The pieces of the NYT that you think are “some of the best journalistic context out there” might be in area that you are less well read than you believe yourself to be. I know this has been true for me many times. Try reading what someone who disagree with the NYT would consider a high quality alternative.

It's pretty hard to find high quality alternatives. There is the wall street journal, maybe a few others, but not many. I personally read a few high quality news sources and science journals. Inexplicably many here seem to think that random blog posts are somehow remotely equivalent. I value opinion at zero, and trust a random person to do quality research at about zero too. Trust is earned. When random internet opin…

Washington Post? It's long been essentially the biggest rival to the NYT in terms of national political coverage, and my opinion is that as of late, it's been higher quality than the NYT.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#77

Post by throw_m239339 »

grapehut wrote: post #42
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…

Third time if you include the bizarre Ayaan Hirsi Ali hit piece too. I guess it's a product of actual-journalism not paying the bills.

No, it's a product of the ideological drivel the NYT chose to embrace, identity politics. Not all news outlets are like that.

It became obvious with the literal journalist purge going on there. You can't be a moderate and work there anymore, you have to subscribe to a certain thought framework, if you question it, you're deemed "offensive" and you're out.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#78

Post by ardy42 »

mrgordon wrote: post #63
bpodgursky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The WSJ produces just as much good content, and you can subscribe there without inadvertently funding rag hit pieces like this.

The WSJ has a ton of dubious articles. The Opinion pieces are garbage compared to the average one in the Times although of course both have misses

> The WSJ has a ton of dubious articles. The Opinion pieces are garbage compared to the average one in the Times although of course both have misses

I agree with you on that. I subscribed to both for awhile, but dropped the WSJ because it had less international content, its articles tended to lack background (great if you're following a story closely, not so great if you haven't), and its opinion section was utterly boring and predictable.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#79

Post by [deleted] »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #77
grapehut wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Third time if you include the bizarre Ayaan Hirsi Ali hit piece too. I guess it's a product of actual-journalism not paying the bills.

No, it's a product of the ideological drivel the NYT chose to embrace, identity politics. Not all news outlets are like that. It became obvious with the literal journalist purge going on there. You can't be a moderate and work there anymore, you have to subscribe to a certain thought framework, if you question it, you're deemed "offensive" and you're out.

[deleted]

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#80

Post by random_ind_dude »

sjg007 wrote: post #23

The Charles Murray thing seems to be about his use of the word "sophisticated"... that was probably a bad choice. To dive deeper look at the criticisms of Murray and draw your on conclusion about the degree of sophistication of his assumptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Criticism_of_as...

You say you have found an ally in someone who is known for his controversial take on intelligence and heritability and who maintains that it is this inherited difference in intelligence that is responsible for social division within the US. You call his ideas on class and culture sophisticated. Then you say that you agree with him only on a certain specific claim about teaching truckers to code. (You = Scott Alexander)

Who is being intellectually dishonest here? NYT or Scott Alexander?

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