3 ms·

Thanks, and I agree that there's an increased and harmful tendency to assume bad faith in political and other discussion--we should engage as much as possible w

Thanks, and I agree that there's an increased and harmful tendency to assume bad faith in political and other discussion--we should engage as much as possible with the arguments presented, regardless of what motivations we think exist behind them. I try to avoid suspecting bad faith myself, but in this case I didn't see how. > For example, the reporter obviously has access to several of SSC posts. If the reporter believed that deleting the blog caused it to be forever lost to history, then he couldn't possibly have written this piece. So obviously he's aware that at least some of the controversial content of SSC is still accessible. In fact, he believes that enough of the content is accessible to write an entire long-form New Yorker article about the controversial content. So surely he must believe that enough of the content is available to write an NYT article about the content. So we agree that the content remains readily available, to journalists and others. So I think that means if Alexander "feared that a Times reporter wouldn’t have to poke around for very long to turn up a creditable reason for negative coverage", then we agree that deleting the blog wouldn't (and didn't) help. > It doesn't seem to impact his argument in any way, because it's possible to simultaneously know about the Internet Archive and also believe Alexander deleted his blog to dodge/mitigate negative press. So this is where I don't understand. Alexander surely knew about the Internet Archive (and his e-book, and whatever other countless copies of his popular content existed). So why do you think it's possible that he'd delete his blog in order to dodge/mitigate bad press due to content that a journalist might uncover there, when he knows that action would be ineffective (and indeed probably counterproductive, due to the Streisand effect)? That seems so implausible to me that I'm unable to believe the argument was presented in good faith. In any case, I agree that journalists do important work, and I have great respect especially for those who reveal information of public importance, against the wishes of powerful governments, companies or other entities that seek to conceal it, sometimes at the cost of the journalists' lives. This (and most "tech" and "culture" journalism) seems pretty far from that, though.

SquishyPanda23 6y ago
> why do you think it's possible that he'd delete his blog in order to dodge/mitigate bad press due to content that a journalist might uncover there This is a reasonable question. I don't honestly know enough about the topic to make even a hypothetical argument that such a thing is likely. But it does seem possible any time a high profile blogger shuts down in the face of a news story, that this is one of the reasons for the shut down. For example, Alexander gives one reason it's possible on his blog: "If there’s no blog, there’s no story." The NYT doesn't really have an incentive to run a story about an ex-blog. So by shutting down, he puts pressure to shut the story down altogether. Regarding the Streisand effect, I'm not sure. But I think, based on his blog post, that he thinks the story is less likely to run now. Plus, accessing the blog is now at least an order of magnitude harder. Can you access some of the pages? Sure. Will NYT readers? No, probably not. Search doesn't work, it's painfully slow, only some URLs are snapshotted. It may even be that most readers probably don't even know about the Archive. So yeah at least to me it seems possible. For example, he's come out as saying he likes eugenics. It's reasonable to fear that if a NYT story ran giving his surname and saying he supported eugenics, then he may have a hard time practicing as a psychiatrist.
- tripletao 6y ago
  I agree that deleting the blog makes it less likely that NYT readers would investigate and find something objectionable, both because the blog becomes less accessible (but not inaccessible) and because if the story doesn't run (as it seems not to have) then there's no readers in the first place. The New Yorker claim was about the NYT reporter, though, not the readers. If I had an embarrassing secret out in public and a reporter was sniffing around, then conspicuously deleting some but not all copies of it seems like the stupidest possible thing I could do, just encouraging them to dig further for it. That's the reason I doubt that could be Alexander's motivation in deleting the blog. As to the Streisand effect, we're talking about this now at least, and you're aware that he "likes" eugenics[1]--indeed, if anyone's still reading this thread then perhaps they learned that Alexander likes eugenics specifically because of this article, which appeared specifically because he deleted the blog. I can't imagine the NYT reporter doesn't know too. So as a tactic to conceal his writing, I think deleting the blog has empirically failed. Though I agree that he probably did fear that an NYT story that said "[Scott Alexander's full name] likes eugenics" would harm his ability to practice as a psychiatrist, and reasonably so. Eugenics obviously has an abhorrent history in its purported application, and he treats the subject casually enough to creep me out too. I didn't read his blog extensively, but the creepier stuff always felt to me more like autistic-style disregard for social context than a desire to revive those horrors. I think the remedy to that should be for someone to point that out to him (as they have, of course), rather than for a journalist to quote his worst phrasing out of context and thus end his career. 1. Literally with the word "like", too, https://web.archive.org/web/20200109033206/http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200109033206/http://slatestarc...

SquishyPanda23 6y ago

> why do you think it's possible that he'd delete his blog in order to dodge/mitigate bad press due to content that a journalist might uncover there This is a reasonable question. I don't honestly know enough about the topic to make even a hypothetical argument that such a thing is likely. But it does seem possible any time a high profile blogger shuts down in the face of a news story, that this is one of the reasons for the shut down. For example, Alexander gives one reason it's possible on his blog: "If there’s no blog, there’s no story." The NYT doesn't really have an incentive to run a story about an ex-blog. So by shutting down, he puts pressure to shut the story down altogether. Regarding the Streisand effect, I'm not sure. But I think, based on his blog post, that he thinks the story is less likely to run now. Plus, accessing the blog is now at least an order of magnitude harder. Can you access some of the pages? Sure. Will NYT readers? No, probably not. Search doesn't work, it's painfully slow, only some URLs are snapshotted. It may even be that most readers probably don't even know about the Archive. So yeah at least to me it seems possible. For example, he's come out as saying he likes eugenics. It's reasonable to fear that if a NYT story ran giving his surname and saying he supported eugenics, then he may have a hard time practicing as a psychiatrist.

tripletao 6y ago
I agree that deleting the blog makes it less likely that NYT readers would investigate and find something objectionable, both because the blog becomes less accessible (but not inaccessible) and because if the story doesn't run (as it seems not to have) then there's no readers in the first place. The New Yorker claim was about the NYT reporter, though, not the readers. If I had an embarrassing secret out in public and a reporter was sniffing around, then conspicuously deleting some but not all copies of it seems like the stupidest possible thing I could do, just encouraging them to dig further for it. That's the reason I doubt that could be Alexander's motivation in deleting the blog. As to the Streisand effect, we're talking about this now at least, and you're aware that he "likes" eugenics[1]--indeed, if anyone's still reading this thread then perhaps they learned that Alexander likes eugenics specifically because of this article, which appeared specifically because he deleted the blog. I can't imagine the NYT reporter doesn't know too. So as a tactic to conceal his writing, I think deleting the blog has empirically failed. Though I agree that he probably did fear that an NYT story that said "[Scott Alexander's full name] likes eugenics" would harm his ability to practice as a psychiatrist, and reasonably so. Eugenics obviously has an abhorrent history in its purported application, and he treats the subject casually enough to creep me out too. I didn't read his blog extensively, but the creepier stuff always felt to me more like autistic-style disregard for social context than a desire to revive those horrors. I think the remedy to that should be for someone to point that out to him (as they have, of course), rather than for a journalist to quote his worst phrasing out of context and thus end his career. 1. Literally with the word "like", too, https://web.archive.org/web/20200109033206/http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200109033206/http://slatestarc...