Live data from Hacker News

Statement on New York Times Article

astralcodexten.substack.com

81–90 of 437 posts

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#81

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…

> It seems the publication is in the midst of a takeover by woke radical authoritarians

It'd say towards the end of it. And yes, it is a very bad and concerning trend.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#82
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.

I would rather read /pol/ than the NYT with articles like this.

Edit: to my commentor, I'm not an SSC reader.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#83
On point 1:

> The Times points out that I agreed with Murray that poverty was bad, and that also at some other point in my life noted that Murray had offensive views on race, and heavily implies this means I agree with Murray’s offensive views on race. This seems like a weirdly brazen type of falsehood for a major newspaper.

In the quote in question, he literally says that Murray "has some very sophisticated theories about class and culture". While I'm not familiar with Murray's writing, it's hard to believe that his theories on class and culture are completely disconnected from his theories on race.

———

On point 2:

> This is true only in the sense that in 2014, I applied this comparison to a specific group of feminists who I accused of bullying and taunting people in a way that made them traumatized and suicidal. I describe my specific concern in the linked post. Lots of other feminists are great, and I continue to support gender equality.

Calling it a "specific group" is downplaying things. In the same 2014 article he wrote:

> We will now perform an ancient and traditional Slate Star Codex ritual, where I point out something I don’t like about feminism, then everyone tells me in the comments that no feminist would ever do that and it’s a dirty rotten straw man. And then I link to two thousand five hundred examples of feminists doing exactly that, and then everyone in the comments No-True-Scotsmans me by saying that that doesn’t count and those people aren’t representative of feminists. And then I find two thousand five hundred more examples of the most prominent and well-respected feminists around saying exactly the same thing…

He has expressed similar sentiments elsewhere; it is safe to say he sees the attitude he criticizes as representative of at least a significant chunk of modern feminist activism. Meanwhile, all the New York Times said is that he described "some feminists as something close to Voldemort". Where is the discrepancy?

> Also, this became a weird go-to thing for people who wanted to do hatchet jobs to hit me with, so much so that sometime before 2017 I edited the post involved telling people not to do that.

His argument is that people who quoted him took his statement "out of context". I am not so sure. The immediate context suggests an element of hyperbole, which slightly takes the edge off the comparison. But add the context of the rest of the post? The New York Times article says he described people as "something close to Voldemort, the embodiment of evil in the Harry Potter books". And… it's no exaggeration to say he was accusing people of being (or at least behaving) truly evil, whatever that means. I mean, he literally writes: "some feminists are evil raving loonies and some manospherites are evil raving loonies". He later mentions "the evil fringes of both movements", which lack "basic human decency". And even setting wording aside, the post does indeed accuse people of being responsible for others being traumatized, which seems pretty evil. (How valid the accusation is is another matter.)

In short, the Voldemort quote is, to a reasonable degree, representative of the post as a whole.

———

Point 3 is highly diffuse; he raises valid points in defense, but they don't really prove the article wrong.

———

On point 4:

> They further presented a more general case that I am six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-style linked to right-wing / pro-Trump figures in Silicon Valley like Peter Thiel.

Not six, two. Scott described Eliezer Yudkowsky as "the guy who taught me most of what I know about rationality". Eliezer Yudkowsky, as the article mentions, is friends with Peter Thiel.

More importantly, the main argument the article makes about Silicon Valley is that Scott's views are influential there (while allegedly providing a "safe space" for prejudice). And to demonstrate that, it mentions several notable people who follow his blog, including quoting Sam Altman praising it at length. Whether those people know him personally is beside the point.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#84
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.

I would rather read /pol/ than the NYT with articles like this. Edit: to my commentor, I'm not an SSC reader.

The idea that /pol appeals to SSC readers isn't surprising.

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#85
Wow, the NYT's actions on this one really made my blood boil. I don't even know how to process this... they typically put out reasonably high quality journalism that I read and enjoy on a regular basis. And then... this. They completely went beserk, like little children, with their heads firmly up their rears despite everything everyone begging them to keep Scott Alexander anonymous to preserve his profession and blog.

They lost literally hundreds of subscriptions (at least $20k worth). Yet they remained so stubborn... so closed to dialogue, and put out their little shitpiece. Can somebody reasonable explain why they would do such a thing? I don't care much for the 'liberal MSM' theories, I just wanna know what was in it for them. It makes no sense. Does it reflect on the entire newspaper to the point where I should stop reading it?

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#86
post #59

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…

I've come to respect The Economist and The Financial Times. Their articles don't go viral as much--I suspect because they aren't as optimized for virality ;-)

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#88

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…

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…

A publication can be politically titled to one side and still be factually accurate and stay true to journalistic integrity principles (or at least that's what I want).

With social media and modern communication/publication mechanisms, it is much easier for individuals who know the ground truth to bring their perspective to the fore and poke holes into a major publication's journalistic flaws. This wasn't possible just 10 years ago.

In the case of NYT, their political tilt is very clear (that's ok) but their journalistic integrity is being called into question more and more (that's problematic).

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#89

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.

What part of the article did you find libelous or untruthful?

Re: Statement on New York Times Article

#90

For anyone interested, seems like a good overview: https://jasoncrawford.org/guide-to-scott-alexander-and-slate... hn discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26128579 (seriously, don't miss on reading some of Scott's posts -- you will be disappointed by almost every piece of nonfiction you read afterwards) It's definitely one of those cases of "If everyone thought a little more like X , Earth would be a much…

Didn't spoil the nonfiction in general for me, but definitely did make me ask "why more people on the left can't be like Scott?" I'm not a leftist myself, and this makes me disagree with Scott - who is definitely on the left - from time to time, but even when I disagree I feel like I learned something and maybe improved my knowledge, understanding and appreciation for opposing points. I wonder if more people were like that, maybe we could have proper political discussions instead of the catastrophic calamity we are witnessing now.
Post reply on HN