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Thinking too hard about it. The point was the dangling sword over his head, being the imminent publishing of the article. They told him they wouldn't hide his
by Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
Thinking too hard about it.
The point was the dangling sword over his head, being the imminent publishing of the article.
They told him they wouldn't hide his name, but they didn't tell him they wouldn't publish the article.
- adamsea 6y agoMy point was the irony. Damocles wanted to sit in the hot seat, until he found out just how hot it was. Scott Alexander has been a semi-public figure (popular blog, shares pieces of personal information and parts of his name, his location, online) for a while. Now Scott Alexander is in the hot seat (getting an NY Times article written about you). So he hung his own sword of Damocles over his head. Certainly, as a psychiatrist, if anonymity is so important then I do wonder, unless he didn't understand the importance of it years ago, why he wasn't fully anonymous then? IMHO there's a difference between Scott Alexander-level anonymity and Satoshi Nakamoto level anonymity. Which raises a good question - is it in the public interest enough to, say, know the name of who created bitcoin, that, if the NY Times found out, it'd be appropriate for them to publish it?