7 ms·

It’s multi-faceted. In some cases NYT (or any news org of any prevailing political inclination) might want to expose real names to exercise control or rally peo

by mlthoughts2018 6y ago

It’s multi-faceted. In some cases NYT (or any news org of any prevailing political inclination) might want to expose real names to exercise control or rally people to cancel someone. Other times it might be more mundane, just wanting a better angle for the story or more solid corroborative details. In the case of SSC I really worry that NYT would be trying to exercise control. They probably like many things written on the blog, but also hate other things like diving into statistics of gender based pay discrimination or statistics of racial motivation in police violence. These are topics which the modern left (which I’m a million percent a part of) is increasingly pushing out of scope of the Overton window and treating them like they are not allowed to be subject to statistical evidence or neutral discussion. There is only One Right Thing To Believe about police violence (that is targets blacks and minorities, even if this is simply not supported by data). There is only One Right Thing To Believe about gender-based pay discrimination (the popular notion of “women make 70 cents on the dollar” which is not close to the real effect size, and requires a ton of uncomfortable nuance to discuss properly because of confounding effects of women staying at home more often and choosing to stay home after maternity leave). I think they want SSC to write about things that comply with their moral narrative, and see doxxing as a way to turn the screws and essentially promote a vague threat that if he writes something controversial about IQ or sexism or income inequality or whatever, and it doesn’t stick to liberal talking points, they can do a damaging hit piece.

coffeemaniac 6y ago
The modern left is constantly diving into the statistics of these topics, and if you think they're not it probably signals more that you're just not a part of that discussion. If you've let your conclusions be influenced by SSC and other reactionary blogs I'd urge you to check out some leftist spaces and ask around. There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  SSC is not a "reactionary blog" by any stretch of the imagination. The author is well known for their comprehensive debunking of politically reactionary views.
  - coffeemaniac 6y ago
    Oh yes it is. His blogroll is absolutely full of neoreactionaries, and the comments sections are a cesspit of racism and sexism (echoing many of his own views in more crude terms), even before you account for many articles he's written where he takes their argumentative points at face value. We're talking about a guy who once put up cartoons of people making fun of nerds/gamers next to Nazi propaganda to show how they were the same. If that's where you're getting your "arguments" on workplace sexism and police violence, you're probably a reactionary.
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    And the author is ethnically Jewish, atheist/agnostic, and polyamourous, so he definitely doesn't fit into the usual stereotypes of reactionaries if he is one
    - doubleunplussed 6y ago
      Don't forget asexual
      - doubleunplussed 6y ago
        Downvotes? This is not an insult. The guy is asexual.
        randycupertino 6y ago
        I had to google as to how someone could be both asexual and polyamorous and turns out you can. til. https://poly.land/2019/01/31/there-are-asexual-polyamorous-people-you-know/ https://poly.land/2019/01/31/there-are-asexual-polyamorous-p...
        taneq 6y ago
        I've heard it referred to as 'polyromantic asexual'.
        6y ago
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  This is really not accurate. There are many topics where appealing to evidence or statistics is Not Allowed in leftist discourse. There are certain realities that are defined as not possible, politically, and permitted discourse flows from that. The far right is even worse about this, appealing to braindead conspiracy theories, bald religion, fascism. But the left is _really bad_ as well. Not “conspiracy theory gun nut” bad, but nowhere near “well balanced intellectual curiosity.”
  - coffeemaniac 6y ago
    That you would contrast "gun nuts" with modern leftists already tells me you probably don't have a meaningful relationship with many of us -- we love guns. There's really too much diversity of thought on the left to consistently characterize it in this way, and there's very rarely an issue where there even is a definitive "leftist" take. While this isn't the case for far-right arguments, I also wouldn't characterize far-right as "braindead." They're usually arguments crafted very specifically to appeal to a subset of people who already aren't experiencing much distress at our nation's political trajectory. This is why these arguments consistently appeal to HN readers.
groby_b 6y ago
Wait, did you just claim that the NYT is part of "the modern left"? If so, that's the funniest thing I've read in the last few years. The NYT is the home of bothsidesism. It's certainly not "the modern left". And as far as the NYT writing a hit piece to shut up a semi-popular blog, I'd suggest a quick reality check how much influence either has on public discourse. The idea the NYT would need to shut up SSC is just... pretty far out there.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  If NYT has any angle to do a story on the blog, it’s very likely to be along the lines of “while this guy got some interesting things correct, look at these other horrible examples of sexism (eg consider actual data when forming opinions about gender pay gaps) and racism (eg consider actual data when forming opinions about racial motives in police violence).” Your comment seems especially silly given that the NYT did, in fact, shut down this blog by threatening doxxing. So, by definition, the idea is not “far out there” or even remotely questionable.
- coffeemaniac 6y ago
  Yeah I've long held that the NYT serves the purpose of any right-wing rag, by dressing up mostly right-wing arguments and misrepresenting them as being left-wing. I think tech people tend to lean libertarian and thus consistently fall for this ruse.
- belorn 6y ago
  http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/Graphics/Fig7_11.pdf http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G... Under US politics it is clear on the left side. It is not far left, but its not center either.
  - groby_b 6y ago
    The "modern left" is people like AOC. The NYT really isn't representative of that. Is it more left than Fox? Sure. But even in the graph you cite[1], it's maybe 5% to the left. Calling it part of "the modern left" is at best ambitious. Thinking it's left enough that it would be on a crusade to silence SSC is... creative interpretation of the reality. Is their "we must cite real names" policy dangerous? Yes. Is it aggravating they cause SSC to shut down? Yes. But let's keep in the realm of reality, please. It's not a NYT crusade. [1] That thing is brutal on any PDF viewer I tried. If I were to read the source, I'd find the entire yarn of spaghetti as a million individual line elements, wouldn't I? ;) For people wanting to look - have patience, it takes time to load. On macOS, most PDF viewers actually fail to display it. FineReader OCR succeeds, after 25s load time.

coffeemaniac 6y ago

The modern left is constantly diving into the statistics of these topics, and if you think they're not it probably signals more that you're just not a part of that discussion. If you've let your conclusions be influenced by SSC and other reactionary blogs I'd urge you to check out some leftist spaces and ask around. There's a lot of nuance, and more importantly, a lot of disagreement even in those spaces on these very issues.

zozbot234 6y ago
SSC is not a "reactionary blog" by any stretch of the imagination. The author is well known for their comprehensive debunking of politically reactionary views.
- coffeemaniac 6y ago
  Oh yes it is. His blogroll is absolutely full of neoreactionaries, and the comments sections are a cesspit of racism and sexism (echoing many of his own views in more crude terms), even before you account for many articles he's written where he takes their argumentative points at face value. We're talking about a guy who once put up cartoons of people making fun of nerds/gamers next to Nazi propaganda to show how they were the same. If that's where you're getting your "arguments" on workplace sexism and police violence, you're probably a reactionary.
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  And the author is ethnically Jewish, atheist/agnostic, and polyamourous, so he definitely doesn't fit into the usual stereotypes of reactionaries if he is one
  - doubleunplussed 6y ago
    Don't forget asexual
    - doubleunplussed 6y ago
      Downvotes? This is not an insult. The guy is asexual.
      - randycupertino 6y ago
        I had to google as to how someone could be both asexual and polyamorous and turns out you can. til. https://poly.land/2019/01/31/there-are-asexual-polyamorous-people-you-know/ https://poly.land/2019/01/31/there-are-asexual-polyamorous-p...
        taneq 6y ago
        I've heard it referred to as 'polyromantic asexual'.
      - 6y ago
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
This is really not accurate. There are many topics where appealing to evidence or statistics is Not Allowed in leftist discourse. There are certain realities that are defined as not possible, politically, and permitted discourse flows from that. The far right is even worse about this, appealing to braindead conspiracy theories, bald religion, fascism. But the left is _really bad_ as well. Not “conspiracy theory gun nut” bad, but nowhere near “well balanced intellectual curiosity.”
- coffeemaniac 6y ago
  That you would contrast "gun nuts" with modern leftists already tells me you probably don't have a meaningful relationship with many of us -- we love guns. There's really too much diversity of thought on the left to consistently characterize it in this way, and there's very rarely an issue where there even is a definitive "leftist" take. While this isn't the case for far-right arguments, I also wouldn't characterize far-right as "braindead." They're usually arguments crafted very specifically to appeal to a subset of people who already aren't experiencing much distress at our nation's political trajectory. This is why these arguments consistently appeal to HN readers.

groby_b 6y ago

Wait, did you just claim that the NYT is part of "the modern left"? If so, that's the funniest thing I've read in the last few years. The NYT is the home of bothsidesism. It's certainly not "the modern left". And as far as the NYT writing a hit piece to shut up a semi-popular blog, I'd suggest a quick reality check how much influence either has on public discourse. The idea the NYT would need to shut up SSC is just... pretty far out there.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago
If NYT has any angle to do a story on the blog, it’s very likely to be along the lines of “while this guy got some interesting things correct, look at these other horrible examples of sexism (eg consider actual data when forming opinions about gender pay gaps) and racism (eg consider actual data when forming opinions about racial motives in police violence).” Your comment seems especially silly given that the NYT did, in fact, shut down this blog by threatening doxxing. So, by definition, the idea is not “far out there” or even remotely questionable.
coffeemaniac 6y ago
Yeah I've long held that the NYT serves the purpose of any right-wing rag, by dressing up mostly right-wing arguments and misrepresenting them as being left-wing. I think tech people tend to lean libertarian and thus consistently fall for this ruse.
belorn 6y ago
http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/Graphics/Fig7_11.pdf http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G... Under US politics it is clear on the left side. It is not far left, but its not center either.
- groby_b 6y ago
  The "modern left" is people like AOC. The NYT really isn't representative of that. Is it more left than Fox? Sure. But even in the graph you cite[1], it's maybe 5% to the left. Calling it part of "the modern left" is at best ambitious. Thinking it's left enough that it would be on a crusade to silence SSC is... creative interpretation of the reality. Is their "we must cite real names" policy dangerous? Yes. Is it aggravating they cause SSC to shut down? Yes. But let's keep in the realm of reality, please. It's not a NYT crusade. [1] That thing is brutal on any PDF viewer I tried. If I were to read the source, I'd find the entire yarn of spaghetti as a million individual line elements, wouldn't I? ;) For people wanting to look - have patience, it takes time to load. On macOS, most PDF viewers actually fail to display it. FineReader OCR succeeds, after 25s load time.