12 ms·
Update on My Situation
- commandlinefan 6y agoIt's a shame that he won't be able to start blogging again any time soon - I'd REALLY like to read his thoughts on the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
- shajznnckfke 6y agoThe way his writings and audience cut across political lines, I bet he’s happy to skip it.
- zepto 6y agoSo the New York Times cost him his job?
- thatguy0900 6y agoI'm torn on this. On the one hand, there's really no real reason for NYT to have refused to not publish his name, and also refuse to drop the story when he made clear how uncomfortable he was with being doxxed, a reasonable thing for his profession. On the other hand, his response was so extreme and scorched earthy I find it difficult to blame the outcome on the New York Times. I guess I just have to take him at his word of how badly it will affect his patients though.
- Viliam1234 6y agoWhat could be the less extreme response that would make NYT not write about the blog and mention his real name? Clearly, asking politely didn't work.
- bearbin 6y agoYes and no. The recent issue with the NYT is certainly the immediate trigger of Scott Alexander's decision to change jobs; but it seems to me at least that this course of action was inevitable (once the blog became popular). If (you feel that) your job is incompatible with a personal association to a popular 'rationalist' blog, and you write a rationalist blog under your own partial name, and it then becomes popular - well you will have to take that decision at some point - resign, or shut down the blog. Scott has put off that decision as long as he could, and the NYT journalist's behaviour certainly forced him in one direction; but fundimentally this controversy is of his own creation. Evidently he has taken the logical decision that the blog matters more to him (or there are more opportunities as the writer of a popular blog) than his old job and he's actioned this; I don't think it's fair to characterise this as the New York Times 'costing him his job'.
- ggreer 6y ago> If (you feel that) your job is incompatible with a personal association to a popular 'rationalist' blog, and you write a rationalist blog under your own partial name, and it then becomes popular - well you will have to take that decision at some point - resign, or shut down the blog. Scott did shut down the blog and it still cost him his job.
- pseudalopex 6y agoHe brought the blog back. It sounds like Substack made him an offer before he talked to his employer.[1] And he said the plan to leave his job was a mutual decision. What makes you sure shutting down the blog for good wasn't an option? [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i10p4m/survey_on_moving_ssc_to_substack/ https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i10p4m/surv...
- stevenwliao 6y agoIt's too late once a news reporter is interested.
- throwaway815190 6y agoNot just his job, but his entire career.
- brundolf 6y ago> And now that I’ve publicly admitted privacy is important to me – something I tried to avoid coming on too strong about before, for exactly this reason – some people have taken it upon themselves to post my real name all over Twitter in order to harass and threaten me. Has anybody applied the Dark Forest metaphor to internet publicity? It's fascinating (horrifying) how simply catching the attention of too big a piece of the internet can start wreaking havoc on different parts of your life. You don't even have to have done anything controversial. Attention itself appears to be caustic, at the extreme.
- person_of_color 6y agoMore people that know about you, more likely you are to come across a psycho that will tear you down.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago> You don't even have to have done anything controversial. Attention itself appears to be caustic, at the extreme. I haven't read it but I assumed the blog was controversial based on all the concern about anonymity. Is that not the case?
- jbob2000 6y agoHe’s not controversial if you believe in reality. A good example of something that may get him attacked is his anti-creationist post, https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/28/creationism-unchallenged/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/28/creationism-unchalleng... . Any time you criticize the crazies you get attacked.
- the_gastropod 6y agoEhh, I generally like his reasoning and thought process. But his bread-and-butter is writing about controversial topics.
- pas 6y agoIt was "controversial" because it was a safe space for discussion about any topic - as long as participants adhered to some rules, that Scott enforced, and of course exemplified them as best as he could. So it's not hard to find something that "looks bad", even if it's really not.
- m1gerund 6y agoI am sorry that this happened. I loved reading his posts.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoAt this point I think maintaining anonymity is a losing battle. So I am gradually reworking my life to be compatible with the sort of publicity that circumstances seem to be forcing on me. I had a talk with my employer and we came to a mutual agreement that I would gradually transition away from working there. Wait, what? Why? What'd he write that's so incompatible with employment as a psychiatrist? I don't get it. Why is it a risk for any employer anywhere to keep him on payroll? What's the worst possible outcome for the employer? This post is putting on a tough front, but I'd be terrified if I were him. Imagine being forced to start your own business or go bankrupt.
- s3cur3 6y agoBackground: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-... > First, I’m a psychiatrist, and psychiatrists are kind of obsessive about preventing their patients from knowing anything about who they are outside of work. You can read more about this in this Scientific American article – and remember that the last psychiatrist blogger to get doxxed abandoned his blog too. I am not one of the big sticklers on this, but I’m more of a stickler than “let the New York Times tell my patients where they can find my personal blog”.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoBut that doesn't mesh with "start my own private practice." Either those concerns apply to his original job and his new practice, or neither. Something doesn't seem to add up...
- dmurray 6y agoThe full quote is > At some point, I may start my own private practice, where I’m my own boss and where I can focus on medication management – and not the kinds of psychotherapy that I’m most worried are ethically incompatible with being a public figure It seems believable to me that "medication management" (you've been diagnosed with a mental illness, we have an idea how to treat this chemically, but it's a really complex balance that needs constant professional intervention) is less sensitive to being a public figure than other aspects of psychiatry (lie on the couch and open up to me with your personal secrets). I'm sure this is a ridiculous simplification and as I said in another post here I'd like to hear SSC's take on it (but don't expect to). But it's uncharitable to say "something doesn't add up".
- jessaustin 6y agoWhen I expressed these fears to the reporter, he said that it was New York Times policy to include real names, and he couldn’t change that. [0] Hahaha when deep-state TLA assholes want to scare us out of more money and freedom, anonymity is sacrosanct. A regular citizen with opinions? Oh, that's a doxxing! We know where NYT's priorities lie... [0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-... [EDIT:] Haha never underestimate TLA downvote brigading... this comment was +4 five minutes after I posted it but now an hour later it is -4. Impressive!
- indrax 6y agoI did not downvote, but this is a low quality comment. There is a distinction in journalism between protecting a source and revealing the object of a story. I still disapprove of NYT doxing him.
- jessaustin 6y agoThe people who have consistently destroyed lives and wealth around the world for decades are far more appropriate "objects" for journalism than some random psychiatrist with opinions. Since you are a human, I believe that you didn't downvote.
- maxander 6y agoInteresting to speculate on the “extremely generous” offer from Substack. They’re obviously willing to devote a decent amount of dev time to making Scott comfortable, and I’m sure they have a good idea of how having SSC on board would promote their platform on its take-over-the-blog-market mission, so it could be generous indeed.
- peteretep 6y agoIt’ll probably get me to sign up for a Substack account and enter my cc details, at which point they can work out how to get me to pay for more shit. If they’re smart, there have to be some other “loss leader” authors who they can basically salary at $200,000 a year and it’s worth it
- frank2 6y agoAll we know is that Substack is willing to make a lot of promises to Scott. Scott probably lacks (as I do) the expertise to negotiate a contract that would actually hold Substack to those promises. But maybe I am being too cynical.
- mpalmer 6y agoHard to believe Scott Alexander doesn't have the wherewithal to find the right representation for something like this.
- maxander 6y agoI also don’t believe that a blogging platform like Substack would do anything to actively antagonize a superstar blogger like Scott, who obviously has a significant following of blog-readers independent of them.
- pas 6y agoIt's not the promises that are problematic. The long term plans and interests of Substack are not so well aligned with Scott's. Every future development has to either treat him as a special snowflake (so they have to implement a VIP tier) or eventually bulldoze every perk of his blog back into uniformity. I don't understand why doesn't he goes full patreon.
- stevenwliao 6y agoSo the lesson for those who maintain anonymous or pseudo-anonymous identities online- As your pseudonym's popularity grows, chances increase that someone will be interested in unmasking your identity. The only solutions are to reduce your pseudonym's visibility or staying fully anonymous in the first place.
- divbzero 6y agoIncredibly sad but true. There seems to be two opposing imperatives for online social identity. On one hand you want reputation and accountability for what people say to fight trolling, bullying, and misinformation. On the other hand you want some level of anonymity to encourage free speech and expression. I don’t know if this core tension can ever be fully resolved but our current online environment is clearly far from optimal.
- sam_lowry_ 6y agoThis is a solved problem, just rarely implemented in real life on a large scale. Karma systems. You can be anonymous and at he same time have some valuable history of past interactions. Slashdot, Stack Overflow, etc. are good examples.
- BTCOG 6y agoAnd yes, this is how all online interaction should work. Similar to other PGP pseudonymous internet identity. The world needs the 1990's identity segregation via handles once again. Social media is a fad that simply brings out negative.
- BTCOG 6y agoIt's not sad at all, it's the nature of the beast. Nobody should ever be making all their real life identity and actions public online. Doing so is incredibly vapid and irresponsible. The internet still is for consuming information, and regardless of if 5 billion people do the incorrect thing or not, should not be used as a popularity contest gambling with one's real life identity.
- 6y ago
- motohagiography 6y agoSad that Alexander has had to leave his job because some petulant reporter thought he was a sufficiently public figure for a takedown, but good for him and Substack for making sure he landed on his feet. A personal hit job by one of the most powerful institutions on the planet (or rather, their mouthpiece) is no small life event.
- anoncareer0212 6y agoIt doesn't appear that's true, unfortunately - there's no takedown or article :/ As he notes, it was essentially the Streisand effect.
- motohagiography 6y agoSo far he has averted the one that he removed his blog over, and in response, someone else did one instead. It's like there is a war on truth itself or something. I recommend looking the article up.
- iron0013 6y agoI would like to see a link to this hit job, please.
- peteretep 6y agoI would like someone with the funds to do so to simply become his patron, and give him a salary to do what the hell he likes, ala medieval Europe. He’s got to have enough very wealthy fans that this is realistic?
- Aeolun 6y agoI am under the impression that this is essentially what Substack offered him if he started writing on their platform?
- peteretep 6y agoPerhaps — but that’s still a commercial arrangement, rather than a patronage.
- shajznnckfke 6y agoI think the more modern version of this arrangement would be for Alexander to work at/start a think tank, which has the advantage of being tax-exempt for the patron. Or for a less formal, more distributed solution, there is of course Patreon.
- peteretep 6y agoThat’s interesting, although my understanding of Think Tanks is that they’re meant to be following an editorial line
- dredmorbius 6y agoThe philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils." Diogenes replied, "Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king".
- bradj 6y ago
- acituan 6y agoGood psychiatrists who can also do therapy are worth their weight in gold. I think this is a huge loss for anyone that made and could make use of his psychotherapy. It would have also been a loss for the rest of the world to not make use of his writing. Either way this made the world a worse place. Thus is the banality of evil.
- bjl 6y agoWell, if I was black I'd probably like to know if my psychiatrist associated with HBD cranks. Or if I was a woman, I'd want to know if my psychiatrist wrote apologia for incels. And that's just two examples of the countless absurd hot takes hes had over the years. Siskind dug his own grave here, and the NYT has done his patients a huge service.
- m0zg 6y agoNYT hit a new low today, by publishing this bit of Chinese propaganda about Hong Kong: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhqQfJyXgAEHKtr?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EhqQfJyXgAEHKtr?format=jpg&name=...
- mindfulhack 6y ago> At this point I think maintaining anonymity is a losing battle. > I may start my own private practice, where I’m my own boss and where I can focus on medication management – and not the kinds of psychotherapy that I’m most worried are ethically incompatible with being a public figure. This is why privacy is important - to maintain boundaries between different parts of your life, like work and personal. We are all complex human beings and we deserve to be 3-dimensional, not 1-dimensional. Capitalism prefers that humans be one-dimensional cogs in its machine. That we be specialised. One type of personality or field of expertise only. If not, you're paid less, you're respected less, you're listened to less. And it's only because people know more about you than they did before. It is a real shame what has happened here. But even more, it is a shame that humans treat each other in 1-dimensional ways. We dehumanise and objectify one another, in transactional and very non-personal ways. But we're all persons, who deserve to feel, operate, and be treated as such. There is much about capitalism and trade that is problematic. I wish Scott well in his endeavours.
- glial 6y agoI wish people downvoting you would explain why. Your comment seems eminently reasonable to me, but there are no replies to it.
- Viliam1234 6y agoI didn't vote (I don't even see the downvote button, not sure why), but the argument about "capitalism" is nonsense. The author obviously has no idea how people were treated in socialism. (Spoiler: exactly the same.) The main reason we treat people as 1-dimensional is because we interact with many people, and can only deeply care about few. Dunbar's number, etc. The alternative is spending your entire life with only a few dozen people, like in a medieval village or something. This is why we have friends and relatives, who care about us in a complex way, and the rest of the world, which only perceives a selected part. Yes, everyone needs a friend. No, everyone can't be everyone's friend. This is not about capitalism, it is about existentialism.
- 6y ago
- s9w 6y agoInterestingly this time around, Bing and Wikipedia seem to be on the side of censorship, and google now as back then still blasts the name open. Rare teams!
- iron0013 6y agoA tempest in a teapot. Nothing has happened to this man, yet he plays the victim card over and over again.
- mafuy 6y agoWay to get personal without backing anything up... He got death threats, and I'm sure you have no idea what his employer and patients told him. So don't make such assumptions without any evidence. What he described as problems is entirely reasonable and adheres to a professional standard of care.
- ufmace 6y agoScott responded to this line of thought already: 'Fifth, if someone speaks up against the increasing climate of fear and harassment or the decline of free speech, they get hit with an omnidirectional salvo of “You continue to speak just fine, and people are listening to you, so obviously the climate of fear can’t be too bad, people can’t be harassing you too much, and you’re probably just lying to get attention.” But if someone is too afraid to speak up, or nobody listens to them, then the issue never gets brought up, and mission accomplished for the people creating the climate of fear. The only way to escape the double-bind is for someone to speak up and admit “Hey, I personally am a giant coward who is silencing himself out of fear in this specific way right now, but only after this message”. This is not a particularly noble role, but it’s one I’m well-positioned to play here, and I think it’s worth the awkwardness to provide at least one example that doesn’t fit the double-bind pattern.' https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...
- jddj 6y agoIt quite obviously wasn't, but man, if this was all just one big substack marketing exercise.