So, I made two claims in the original (and unedited) comment that spawned this thread: 1) The weaker one, about link finding 2) and furthermore a stronger one

So, I made two claims in the original (and unedited) comment that spawned this thread: 1) The weaker one, about link finding 2) and furthermore a stronger one, which I quote in my response. The stronger one being, "you need at most middling Google-fu to find his real name from his pseudonym if you're motivated." That stronger claim is still weaker than your "his real name is immediately available to anyone who knows the name Scott Alexander." That said, perhaps we have different thresholds for immediate: mine was spending ~60 seconds searching for his pseudonym and trying to find his real name from it, and I failed to find it. I think it's likely I could within 10 minutes, but I'd put that clearly in the territory of my intermediate claim.