7 ms·
What's the TL;DR? Who is this? Why are they important? Why would NYT write about them? And threaten them? Sorry there's just so much text I don't have time to
by enw 6y ago
What's the TL;DR?
Who is this? Why are they important? Why would NYT write about them? And threaten them?
Sorry there's just so much text I don't have time to read through it all, but I'm curious!
- barry-cotter 6y agoScott Alexander, a very, very popular blogger deleted his blog because the NYT was going to dox him. After uprooting his life to deal with that he has returned to blogging. Many people expressed their support, for which he is very grateful. The NYT is still committed to doxxing people if they feel like it, which Scott abhors. As part of radically changing his life he quit his previous psychiatrist job and is going to see if it’s possible to make a living treating the uninsured for a lot cheaper than most psychiatrists. He signs off with his real name.
- tptacek 6y agoAlexander's name was public (in fact: it was, before the drama occurred, exposed by one of the most naive possible Google queries for it --- as well, some of his better-known writing was originally published under his real name) prior to his encounter with the NYT; Alexander's demand was that the NYT pretend the fact of his name was a secret. The principled arguments about how the NYT was in the wrong revolve around an NYT story simply being more visible than the other public places you could read his name; of course, that's true for practically anybody and any source, the NYT being one of the most visible sources in the world. He gives good reasons for not wanting his name more public than it already is; they're hard to argue with. But some genies are hard to put back in the bottle, and reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which the NYT is obligated to help with the attempt.
- mcphage 6y ago> reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which the NYT is obligated to help with the attempt. How far was he asking them to go?
- yellowstuff 6y agoHis concern was not that people familiar with his blog could deliberately find his real name, but that patients who searched for his real name would find his blog, which would make him unable to do his job. He justifies his concern pretty convincingly in the first post on the new blog.
- tptacek 6y agoI buy the concern. It's just not dispositive of the issue.
- DominikPeters 6y agoExactly. The concern was that you'd immediately and mostly find Slate Star Codex (or NYT articles discussing it) when googling "Dr Scott Siskind", i.e. the name of your psychiatrist. The other direction, successfully googling "Scott Alexander real name" is much less problematic.
- pdonis 6y ago> reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which the NYT is obligated to help with the attempt Just framing the issue this way tilts the playing field in the NYT's favor. As Scott says in the article, in the NYT's worldview, they start with the right to dox anyone they like, but if you make a strong enough case, maybe they'll decide not to dox you. But why should the right to dox be the default? Why shouldn't respecting everyone's privacy be the default?
- ridaj 6y agoMedia in the US is a competitive field, so if a newspaper (NYT or other) withholds information that another media also has access to, then another media will likely publish the story anyway. In the US it's ok to republish facts that were published elsewhere, even if someone had sought at some point for the facts to remain secret. The same principle also gives us things like revenge porn, mugshot publishing, and the like. Some places might have more protections against publishing information, for example when it relates to private persons, but usually in the US what I've seen is that it ends up considered to go against the principle of free speech.
- sigstoat 6y ago> so if a newspaper (NYT or other) withholds information that another media also has access to, then another media will likely publish the story anyway and yet, a bunch of other news organizations wrote about the issue without disclosing his name.
- tptacek 6y agoWhich news organizations are you thinking of? The top tier newspapers are the WSJ, NYT, WaPo, and the LA Times. It's less interesting if, like, Reason wades into the controversy about story and doesn't deliberately poke a stick in Alexander's eye. Frankly, at the point where we're batting the process story around rather than the substantive piece about Alexander, even the NYT would be unlikely to use his real name; what would be the point?
- Aeolun 6y agoI think the NYT is obliged to withhold the name of anyone they specifically interviewed, if that person wishes them to. I literally see this in other newspapers all the time. The NYT is not some magic unicorn.
- tptacek 6y agoI don't believe this is the case.
- JamesBarney 6y agoIf I was writing a blog post about an online persona and they requested that I not use their real life name due to fear of job loss or violence, and their given name added no journalistic value to the piece, I'd be a real dick to print their name anyway. I don't think anyone at the NYT intended to cause him any harm, but organizationally they acted like a dick.
- tptacek 6y agoIt's your last predicate there, about "journalistic value", that the whole debate take place within. Further: the NYT will studiously refer to Lana Wachowski as Lana, and not Larry, because deadnaming people is a dick move. But the NYT does not avoid pointing out that Lana used to be named Larry.
- JamesBarney 6y agoI don't see any "journalistic value" in linking Scott Siskind to Scott Alexander. I don't remember anyone at the NYT or elsewhere arguing there was any value. (Plenty of publications posted about the incident without dropping his irl name). Do you think there was journalistic value in linking the two in this instance?
- tptacek 6y agoThe key word in the sentence "I don't see any journalistic value in linking Scott Siskind to Scott Alexander" is "I". But it's also an easy argument to knock down: he wrote other stuff under his real name. It's valuable to know there's a link between those writings and the writings he chooses to surface today.
- JamesBarney 6y agoUnless there are some of his writing I'm not familiar with, he's written under Yvain, Squid, shireoth(sp?) and he's published a journal article under his real name. Having written something online under your real name is a bar that is so low that effectively everyone meets it.
- JadeNB 6y agoAt the end, he says his name is Scott Siskind. Is that a pseudonym? Was Scott Alexander a pseudonym? Did he change his name?
- ridaj 6y agoSo just now I did a small experiment. I used Google to try to figure out his last name. It was pretty hard, took me a good ten minutes, but not so hard once I went to image search. On the other hand, once I had his last name, I typed it into Google and I immediately had search suggestions for slate star codex. So if, as I understand it, the worry was that patients of his would discover based on his actual name that he was writing on the side, well, that cat was well out of the bag NYT or not...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoThe results of that experiment are badly confounded by the recent kerfuffle and in particular that experiment yielded the other result previously.
- OscarCunningham 6y agoI tried this when Scott first posted about the NYT article, and the cat was not out of the bag then.
- jamessb 6y agoRobin Hanson had a 2013 blog post titled "Hail Scott Siskind" - the surname was redacted from both the post title and the URL slug sometime between 8 Jan [1] and 24 June 2020 [2] (Slate Star Codex was deleted on 22 June 2020 [3]). So if a patient had googled "Scott Siskind" before the NYTimes contacted him, they may well have found the post linking the name to the blog. [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200701000000*/https://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/01/hail-scott-siskind.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200701000000*/https://www.over... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200701000000*/https://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/01/hail-scott.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200701000000*/https://www.over... [3]: 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-...
- psawaya 6y agoI know it's a lot of text, but if you're at all curious, I highly recommend at least giving it a shot. He's such an amazing writer that this post will likely hook you after a few paragraphs. (It did me.)
- rosywoozlechan 6y agoHe's an anti-feminist, Bell Curve supporter whose community tolerates white nationalists: https://web.archive.org/web/20180912215243if_/https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6j9yse/what_are_some_true_beliefs_deep_down_you_knew/djde7xb/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180912215243if_/https://www.re...
- theoreticalmal 6y ago“At some point I realized most weren't honestly seeking an accounting of racial gaps; It was just something they could stick you with and disqualify you from debating“ Your post is a grade A example of a bad-faith “he’s a racist, and therefore has bad arguments” ad hominem.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DanBC 6y agoHe is a racist, his arguments are bad, and his site tolerated fascists for years.
- ggreer 6y agoI’ve read his blog since 2008 (back when he was posting on LiveJournal). That doesn’t describe him at all. Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with Scott knows your accusations to be false.
- x3haloed 6y agoYeah. Maybe he could bless us with the story of who he is and what this is all about before we get into the sob story of what was done to him.