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> Your suggestion that Scott instead write, "I'm making this decision of my own volition but I personally plan to work out a peaceful solution for all parties i

• manfredo 6y ago
  > If your argument is that he had no choice in the matter then I'm not really arguing with you because in my world people can make choices of their own free will. To assume otherwise is a slippery slope and so I'm not interested in making that argument. If you have compelling evidence that Scott had no choice in deleting his blog then present it and we can argue about it. You're using the words "choice" and "voluntary" in a very pedantic way. If someone puts a knife to your throat and demands the contents of your wallet under threat of being killed, you're also handing over the contents of your wallet out of your own free will. You chose to give up your property. You could have chosen to refuse and suffer the consequences. Your decision to give up your property was voluntary, in the sense that you could have chosen otherwise. This isn't technically wrong, but it also isn't what how the overwhelming majority of people use the word "voluntary". When people talk about being forced to do something, they're talking about being pressured into taking a certain action due to the necessity of avoiding some consequence if they don't. In this case, Scott was being threatened with the consequence of having his identity revealed to a much broader audience with the probably consequence of adversely affecting his career and his patients. Yes, he chose to delete his blog. He could have left it up and lived with the adverse consequences to his livelihood. But this decision was made due to the threat of these consequences - it was not voluntary. > Here is an actual trail of evidence for one of the members of the tech community actively harassing a reporter This person isn't talking about either Cade Metz (the New York Times journalist that was writing about SSC), nor Pui-Wing Tam. The mention of Slate Star Codex comes at the end of this thread. How does this connect, in any way, to Scott's blog post? Furthermore, do you realize how absurd it is to form an opinion of an entire community of thousands if not tens of thousands of people based on the actions of a single person? Furthermore, how is this harassment? This person is criticizing a journalist on false claims, and calling them a sociopath. You seem to be under the impression that the simple act of saying unfavorable things about someone is harassment. It isn't. If calling someone a liar and a sociopath is harassment, then a lot of people harassing a certain national leader on a regular basis (and rightly so, IMO. The point is to demonstrate that calling someone a liar and a sociopath isn't harassment).
  • memexy 6y ago
    What point are you making? That my definition of voluntary is incorrect? If so then I disagree because I use the word exactly how I mean it. No one put a knife to anyone's throat and forced them to do anything that they could have avoided if they had taken precautions. In Scott's case, he could have fostered a better community of individuals and been more careful about his anonymity but he didn't and he wasn't. So his problems spilled over into the larger tech community and people adopted the attitude of the free press being "anti-technology" and "evil". Calling someone a sociopath is indeed harassment if you have no compelling evidence to prove your point. Because if you claim someone is a sociopath without providing compelling evidence then you're arguing in bad faith which is a characteristic of sociopathic people. I don't know who Taylor is but I can tell that she's not a sociopath but the person harassing her on the other hand has certain sociopathic characteristics.
    • manfredo 6y ago
      The author of the tweet pointed out that lied, and subsequently attacked others while playing the victim - which are sociopathic tendencies. If what he says it true, he could reasonably claim to have compelling evidence to prove his point. But this is irrelevant. Calling someone a sociopath regardless of whether or not you have evidence isn't harassment. You realize that harassment is a crime, right? It's honestly quite astounding that you believe restrictions on speech are this tight. Being offended or insulted does not make speech harassment. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that banning speech on the basis of offensiveness is not allowed [1]. Speech protections go even further than that - even burning a cross and calling for "revengeance" against minorities is protected [2]. No, Balaji's Tweets aren't harassment. They aren't even near it. Harassment laws almost always revolve around non-consensual speech (e.g. someone following you or otherwise forcing you to be exposed to their speech), or a captive audience (a boss saying something to an employee. The employee is a captive audience, they can't avoid their boss without losing their job). Harassment is about keeping people from having to listen to speech that they do not consent to receiving. Harassment laws are not about preventing people from saying offensive things about other people. Taylor isn't a captive audience - if she does not consent to seeing Balaji's Tweets she can easily block him. And on a side note: using your own expansive definition of harassment, aren't you now harassing Balaji by calling him a sociopath or saying he has "sociopathic tendencies"? If not why is it okay for your to call someone a sociopath, but harassment for him to call Taylor a sociopath? 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_v._Phelps 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio