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> The article's last paragraph gives the lie to the controversy that has raged in tech circles surrounding publishing Siskind's name. >> In his first post [on

> The article's last paragraph gives the lie to the controversy that has raged in tech circles surrounding publishing Siskind's name. >> In his first post [on Astral Codex Ten], Mr. Siskind shared his full name. Did you actually read the post where Scott explains why? Because at that point it was impossible to keep it private. He was also forced to quit his job. The fact that he landed on his feet doesn't mean there wasn't a cost paid.

tptacek 6y ago
His name wasn't private to begin with. There are huge threads on HN about this from the time it happened and numerous ways to have easily stumbled across his real name, including the fact that he wrote some of his better known pieces first under his real name. Repeating over and over again that Scott Alexander's name was private using different words each time won't change that fact. What was happening in this story was that Scott Alexander was demanding everyone else's assistance in maintaining his pseudonym and pretending the real identity behind it was unknowable. That's a reasonable request to make in a community of peers (it's why I'll keep using "Alexander" on HN, for instance). It is not remotely a reasonable demand to make of strangers, let alone journalists. This is another instance of message board thought seeping into the real world, and it's always alarming to me to see that, because while message board thought is fun, it's also deeply weird and dysfunctional.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Privacy-by-obscurity is still privacy. It seems absurd to argue that's equivalent to his name being front and center in the NYT of all things.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Taking things from obscurity to publicity is literally part of the premise of journalism. Alexander cannot demand that journalists pretend that his identity is secret when it's not, not remotely, not even plausibly.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      Scott is perfectly justified being upset when the NYT tries to parade his name around in a hit piece knowing (probably even hoping) their cancel-happy readers will run with it.
    - remarkEon 6y ago
      > Alexander cannot demand that journalists pretend that his identity is secret when it's not, not remotely, not even plausibly. This isn’t what he asked for. As you note there’s pages of comments and Alexander’s own account on Substack now. Maybe you’re claiming he isn’t being honest about his requests from NYT.
      - tptacek 6y ago
        What is your take on what Alexander asked for?
        remarkEon 6y ago
        That Alexander started the substack under his real name only after leaving his job is a pretty big hint that it wasn’t about “demand[ing] that journalists pretend that his identity is secret”.
        tptacek 6y ago
        I don't want to guess at how this connects to the question I asked, so can you be more specific about what you think it was Alexander was asking of the New York Times? I think he was asking them not to disclose his identity. Do you think he was asking for something else?
        remarkEon 6y ago
        You're moving the goal posts here, pretty significantly. He didn't want them to disclose his identity, because he didn't want his patients to see his name blasted out in major media as that could potentially impact their care. This seems entirely reasonable, and well within the range of requests that NYT grants to many subjects of their articles. You can think it's unreasonable, because if you are trying to connect SSC to an IRL name you could find it, and that's fine. I don't, because I think Alexander should've been given the exact same deference NYT offers others.
- lliamander 6y ago
  Yeah, his name wasn't private. That is partly because of a decision to publish under his real name when he was much younger, and partly because people have been working to keep his name public despite his attempts to scrub his name. But, as Scott has said numerous times, he simply wanted to make it hard for his patients to google his name and find his blog, so that he could continue practicing psychiatry. That's a perfectly reasonable request to ask of anyone, including journalists.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Alexander can certainly want his identity to be obscure, and has legitimate reasons to want that. That preference doesn't bind on strangers. He can't force the world to un-know things it already knows, and so no, that is not a reasonable request, especially not to a journalist. These arguments about why we're all obligated to cooperate with Alexander's attempt to walk his identity back always seem to be inventing new norms, like the norm of "if a doctor slips up and writes political essays under their real name, then, for the sake of the doctor's career, every other person in the world should pretend that real name was never disclosed". It's a reasonable thing to want, but not to expect.
    - lliamander 6y ago
      > These arguments about why we're all obligated to cooperate with Alexander's attempt to walk his identity back always seem to be inventing new norms Not really. The NYT was perfectly willing to protect the anonymity of a different psychiatrist blogger. Yes, this person did a better job of keeping their identity a secret, but the justification was largely the same. And let's not pretend that journalism is only about sharing information. There's a great deal that journalists don't share (or even try to actively suppress) for many different reasons. Partly because there are a lot of ethical considerations when publicizing information. Worth noting that part of the issue is that, with psychiatry and counseling in particular, it really doesn't matter what he was writing about or what his politics are. Any such publicity compromises the blank slate that counselors are supposed to present to their clients. While this does mean that mental health professionals have an obligation to take care with their public image, it's not unreasonable to ask others (including journalists) to respect the particular cost they face with any kind of exposure.
- nprz 6y ago
  Do you realize that when covering chapo trap house the NYT referred to Virgil Texas by his pseudonym rather than revealing his real name, which he prefers to keep private? It's just as easy to find his name online and it's often mentioned on message boards. Why provide anonymity to one but not the other?
  - tptacek 6y ago
    I guess I just don't care how they chose to refer to Virgil Texas. If it was me, I'd probably have used his real name.
    - lliamander 6y ago
      It matters because either the NYT is inconsistent, or worse they are consistently biased, in how they respect the anonymity of their subject. But ultimately any justification they provide for publishing his real name rings hollow and comes across as a petty act of power.
      - tptacek 6y ago
        I guess I just don't care how consistent the NYT is in offering people control of their portrayal in stories, because I don't believe the NYT has any obligation to offer anyone that control.
        nprz 6y ago
        You don't think journalists should follow some sort of publicly stated code of conduct or held to a higher standard than an anonymous poster on 4chan when it comes to revealing an individual's personal info?
        tptacek 6y ago
        I think the norms of message boards and the norms of journalism have literally nothing to do with each other, and you can't learn anything about one by analyzing the other.
- reducesuffering 6y ago
  If you read any of those "huge threads on HN" you would easily know the crux of why Scott wanted to remain pseudonymous. "Scott Alexander was demanding everyone else's assistance in maintaining his pseudonym and pretending the real identity behind it was unknowable." Absolutely false. Scott admits many times that it's trivial for his real identity to be known if you search around for Scott Alexander. Scott Alexander -> Scott Sisnick (trivial) What Scott was concerned about what his searching his real name being resoundingly brought to Scott Alexander, a major issue for his psychiatrist-patient relationships, as he demonstrates that psychiatrists need to maintain a blank slate for their patients to project onto, so that the patients don't hide or alter the behavior knowing something about their psychiatrist. That's very mainstream psychiatry. And there were concerns about current psychiatric patients he was seeing possibly being affected by this. Before: Scott Sisnick -> "psychiatrist, bay area, studied at X, etc." After: Scott Sisnick -> "Scott Alexander, rationalist, providing a platform for white nationalists, racism, etc."
  - tptacek 6y ago
    People keep explaining to me why Alexander wants his identity not to appear in a newspaper. I understand that. I just don't understand why his preferences bind on anyone else. By way of example, a friend just told me on Twitter that it's super important that patients not be able to look up their therapists on the Internet and learn more about their personal lives. But that's definitely not a norm! I checked with several therapists I know personally. I feel like people are scrambling to invent Internet rules that allow Alexander to coerce journalists, and I don't find that effort especially persuasive.
    - lliamander 6y ago
      Why should anyone care about how their actions impact anyone else? Is "don't be a dick" not good enough for you?
    - sadgrip 6y ago
      I guess it's just a matter of decency. You certainly don't need to abide by that but don't be surprised when others don't agree with or want to be around you.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Private is not the same concept as secret. My name is not secret. It is, however, private.
ahepp 6y ago
I've read a couple of these blog posts now, and I'm having trouble finding where he talks about quitting his job. Could you share a link?
- Tenoke 6y ago
  >No, seriously, it was awful. I deleted my blog of 1,557 posts. I wanted to protect my privacy, but I ended up with articles about me in New Yorker, Reason, and The Daily Beast. I wanted to protect my anonymity, but I Streisand-Effected myself, and a bunch of trolls went around posting my real name everywhere they could find. I wanted to avoid losing my day job, but ended up quitting so they wouldn't be affected by the fallout. I lost a five-digit sum in advertising and Patreon fees. At the start of the post but there's more further in. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive There's s also this from The NYT initially contacted him with his reasoning for protecting his job (which didn't work out) >I think it’s plausible that if I became a national news figure under my real name, my patients – who run the gamut from far-left to far-right – wouldn’t be able to engage with me in a normal therapeutic way. I also worry that my clinic would decide I am more of a liability than an asset and let me go, which would leave hundreds of patients in a dangerous situation as we tried to transition their care. 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-...
  - ahepp 6y ago
    Thanks for the link. It seems like he's pretty clear that he chose to quit. He says his job was "tentatively willing to try to make it work". It appears to me that he's shown a consistent pattern of overstating the effects of his name being revealed, so I don't put a lot of stock in "tentatively". I am quite convinced he simply didn't want his name in the paper because he knows he's said some edgy stuff (ie, explicitly comparing himself to Charles Murray). The sources he provides as supporting the importance of therapeutic anonymity appear to be debates, as opposed to, say, APA guidelines emphasizing its importance. And that's a one sided picture, where Scott is digging for evidence to support his claim. Part of his argument is that he has already faced threats and harassment. Okay, and he still didn't take basic steps to anonymize himself, so apparently this didn't concern him so much in the past. His argument is that he has a lot of crazy, nutso enemies. But those people could already easily find him. He's been pretty clear about his dislike for SJWs and distrust for the news media (I mean this in the most value-neutral way possible). That's fine, but I think it's silly to make up a bunch of reasons your name shouldn't be in the paper. He even comes out and says that it's simply his preference for anonymity: >Why didn't I do this? Partly because it wasn't true. I don't think I had particularly strong arguments on any of these points. The amount I dislike death threats is basically the average amount that the average person would dislike them. The amount I would dislike losing my job...and et cetera. Realistically, my anonymity let me feel safe and comfortable. But it probably wasn't literally necessary to keep me alive. I feel bad admitting this, like I conscripted you all into a crusade on false pretenses. Am I an entitled jerk for causing such a stir just so I can feel safe and comfortable? I'm sure the New York Times customer service representatives who had to deal with all your phone calls thought so. Again, he did not lose his job. They were willing to keep him, and he quit anyways. >In the New York Times' worldview, they start with the right to dox me, and I had to earn the right to remain anonymous by proving I'm the perfect sympathetic victim who satisfies all their criteria of victimhood. But in my worldview, I start with the right to anonymity, and they need to make an affirmative case for doxxing me. I admit I am not the perfect victim. The death threats against me are all by losers who probably don't know which side of a gun you shoot someone with. If anything happened at work, it would probably inconvenience me and my patients, but probably wouldn't literally kill either of us. Still! Don't kick me in the fucking balls! Replace "dox" with "include my name, which was found on my blog, in a news story about my blog", and yes, that's a default-allow unless you have some really extraordinary circumstances.

tptacek 6y ago

His name wasn't private to begin with. There are huge threads on HN about this from the time it happened and numerous ways to have easily stumbled across his real name, including the fact that he wrote some of his better known pieces first under his real name. Repeating over and over again that Scott Alexander's name was private using different words each time won't change that fact. What was happening in this story was that Scott Alexander was demanding everyone else's assistance in maintaining his pseudonym and pretending the real identity behind it was unknowable. That's a reasonable request to make in a community of peers (it's why I'll keep using "Alexander" on HN, for instance). It is not remotely a reasonable demand to make of strangers, let alone journalists. This is another instance of message board thought seeping into the real world, and it's always alarming to me to see that, because while message board thought is fun, it's also deeply weird and dysfunctional.

Lammy 6y ago
Privacy-by-obscurity is still privacy. It seems absurd to argue that's equivalent to his name being front and center in the NYT of all things.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Taking things from obscurity to publicity is literally part of the premise of journalism. Alexander cannot demand that journalists pretend that his identity is secret when it's not, not remotely, not even plausibly.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Scott is perfectly justified being upset when the NYT tries to parade his name around in a hit piece knowing (probably even hoping) their cancel-happy readers will run with it.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    > Alexander cannot demand that journalists pretend that his identity is secret when it's not, not remotely, not even plausibly. This isn’t what he asked for. As you note there’s pages of comments and Alexander’s own account on Substack now. Maybe you’re claiming he isn’t being honest about his requests from NYT.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      What is your take on what Alexander asked for?
      - remarkEon 6y ago
        That Alexander started the substack under his real name only after leaving his job is a pretty big hint that it wasn’t about “demand[ing] that journalists pretend that his identity is secret”.
        tptacek 6y ago
        I don't want to guess at how this connects to the question I asked, so can you be more specific about what you think it was Alexander was asking of the New York Times? I think he was asking them not to disclose his identity. Do you think he was asking for something else?
        remarkEon 6y ago
        You're moving the goal posts here, pretty significantly. He didn't want them to disclose his identity, because he didn't want his patients to see his name blasted out in major media as that could potentially impact their care. This seems entirely reasonable, and well within the range of requests that NYT grants to many subjects of their articles. You can think it's unreasonable, because if you are trying to connect SSC to an IRL name you could find it, and that's fine. I don't, because I think Alexander should've been given the exact same deference NYT offers others.
lliamander 6y ago
Yeah, his name wasn't private. That is partly because of a decision to publish under his real name when he was much younger, and partly because people have been working to keep his name public despite his attempts to scrub his name. But, as Scott has said numerous times, he simply wanted to make it hard for his patients to google his name and find his blog, so that he could continue practicing psychiatry. That's a perfectly reasonable request to ask of anyone, including journalists.
- tptacek 6y ago
  Alexander can certainly want his identity to be obscure, and has legitimate reasons to want that. That preference doesn't bind on strangers. He can't force the world to un-know things it already knows, and so no, that is not a reasonable request, especially not to a journalist. These arguments about why we're all obligated to cooperate with Alexander's attempt to walk his identity back always seem to be inventing new norms, like the norm of "if a doctor slips up and writes political essays under their real name, then, for the sake of the doctor's career, every other person in the world should pretend that real name was never disclosed". It's a reasonable thing to want, but not to expect.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    > These arguments about why we're all obligated to cooperate with Alexander's attempt to walk his identity back always seem to be inventing new norms Not really. The NYT was perfectly willing to protect the anonymity of a different psychiatrist blogger. Yes, this person did a better job of keeping their identity a secret, but the justification was largely the same. And let's not pretend that journalism is only about sharing information. There's a great deal that journalists don't share (or even try to actively suppress) for many different reasons. Partly because there are a lot of ethical considerations when publicizing information. Worth noting that part of the issue is that, with psychiatry and counseling in particular, it really doesn't matter what he was writing about or what his politics are. Any such publicity compromises the blank slate that counselors are supposed to present to their clients. While this does mean that mental health professionals have an obligation to take care with their public image, it's not unreasonable to ask others (including journalists) to respect the particular cost they face with any kind of exposure.
nprz 6y ago
Do you realize that when covering chapo trap house the NYT referred to Virgil Texas by his pseudonym rather than revealing his real name, which he prefers to keep private? It's just as easy to find his name online and it's often mentioned on message boards. Why provide anonymity to one but not the other?
- tptacek 6y ago
  I guess I just don't care how they chose to refer to Virgil Texas. If it was me, I'd probably have used his real name.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    It matters because either the NYT is inconsistent, or worse they are consistently biased, in how they respect the anonymity of their subject. But ultimately any justification they provide for publishing his real name rings hollow and comes across as a petty act of power.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      I guess I just don't care how consistent the NYT is in offering people control of their portrayal in stories, because I don't believe the NYT has any obligation to offer anyone that control.
      - nprz 6y ago
        You don't think journalists should follow some sort of publicly stated code of conduct or held to a higher standard than an anonymous poster on 4chan when it comes to revealing an individual's personal info?
        tptacek 6y ago
        I think the norms of message boards and the norms of journalism have literally nothing to do with each other, and you can't learn anything about one by analyzing the other.
reducesuffering 6y ago
If you read any of those "huge threads on HN" you would easily know the crux of why Scott wanted to remain pseudonymous. "Scott Alexander was demanding everyone else's assistance in maintaining his pseudonym and pretending the real identity behind it was unknowable." Absolutely false. Scott admits many times that it's trivial for his real identity to be known if you search around for Scott Alexander. Scott Alexander -> Scott Sisnick (trivial) What Scott was concerned about what his searching his real name being resoundingly brought to Scott Alexander, a major issue for his psychiatrist-patient relationships, as he demonstrates that psychiatrists need to maintain a blank slate for their patients to project onto, so that the patients don't hide or alter the behavior knowing something about their psychiatrist. That's very mainstream psychiatry. And there were concerns about current psychiatric patients he was seeing possibly being affected by this. Before: Scott Sisnick -> "psychiatrist, bay area, studied at X, etc." After: Scott Sisnick -> "Scott Alexander, rationalist, providing a platform for white nationalists, racism, etc."
- tptacek 6y ago
  People keep explaining to me why Alexander wants his identity not to appear in a newspaper. I understand that. I just don't understand why his preferences bind on anyone else. By way of example, a friend just told me on Twitter that it's super important that patients not be able to look up their therapists on the Internet and learn more about their personal lives. But that's definitely not a norm! I checked with several therapists I know personally. I feel like people are scrambling to invent Internet rules that allow Alexander to coerce journalists, and I don't find that effort especially persuasive.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    Why should anyone care about how their actions impact anyone else? Is "don't be a dick" not good enough for you?
  - sadgrip 6y ago
    I guess it's just a matter of decency. You certainly don't need to abide by that but don't be surprised when others don't agree with or want to be around you.
FeepingCreature 6y ago
Private is not the same concept as secret. My name is not secret. It is, however, private.

ahepp 6y ago

I've read a couple of these blog posts now, and I'm having trouble finding where he talks about quitting his job. Could you share a link?

Tenoke 6y ago
>No, seriously, it was awful. I deleted my blog of 1,557 posts. I wanted to protect my privacy, but I ended up with articles about me in New Yorker, Reason, and The Daily Beast. I wanted to protect my anonymity, but I Streisand-Effected myself, and a bunch of trolls went around posting my real name everywhere they could find. I wanted to avoid losing my day job, but ended up quitting so they wouldn't be affected by the fallout. I lost a five-digit sum in advertising and Patreon fees. At the start of the post but there's more further in. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive There's s also this from The NYT initially contacted him with his reasoning for protecting his job (which didn't work out) >I think it’s plausible that if I became a national news figure under my real name, my patients – who run the gamut from far-left to far-right – wouldn’t be able to engage with me in a normal therapeutic way. I also worry that my clinic would decide I am more of a liability than an asset and let me go, which would leave hundreds of patients in a dangerous situation as we tried to transition their care. 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-...
- ahepp 6y ago
  Thanks for the link. It seems like he's pretty clear that he chose to quit. He says his job was "tentatively willing to try to make it work". It appears to me that he's shown a consistent pattern of overstating the effects of his name being revealed, so I don't put a lot of stock in "tentatively". I am quite convinced he simply didn't want his name in the paper because he knows he's said some edgy stuff (ie, explicitly comparing himself to Charles Murray). The sources he provides as supporting the importance of therapeutic anonymity appear to be debates, as opposed to, say, APA guidelines emphasizing its importance. And that's a one sided picture, where Scott is digging for evidence to support his claim. Part of his argument is that he has already faced threats and harassment. Okay, and he still didn't take basic steps to anonymize himself, so apparently this didn't concern him so much in the past. His argument is that he has a lot of crazy, nutso enemies. But those people could already easily find him. He's been pretty clear about his dislike for SJWs and distrust for the news media (I mean this in the most value-neutral way possible). That's fine, but I think it's silly to make up a bunch of reasons your name shouldn't be in the paper. He even comes out and says that it's simply his preference for anonymity: >Why didn't I do this? Partly because it wasn't true. I don't think I had particularly strong arguments on any of these points. The amount I dislike death threats is basically the average amount that the average person would dislike them. The amount I would dislike losing my job...and et cetera. Realistically, my anonymity let me feel safe and comfortable. But it probably wasn't literally necessary to keep me alive. I feel bad admitting this, like I conscripted you all into a crusade on false pretenses. Am I an entitled jerk for causing such a stir just so I can feel safe and comfortable? I'm sure the New York Times customer service representatives who had to deal with all your phone calls thought so. Again, he did not lose his job. They were willing to keep him, and he quit anyways. >In the New York Times' worldview, they start with the right to dox me, and I had to earn the right to remain anonymous by proving I'm the perfect sympathetic victim who satisfies all their criteria of victimhood. But in my worldview, I start with the right to anonymity, and they need to make an affirmative case for doxxing me. I admit I am not the perfect victim. The death threats against me are all by losers who probably don't know which side of a gun you shoot someone with. If anything happened at work, it would probably inconvenience me and my patients, but probably wouldn't literally kill either of us. Still! Don't kick me in the fucking balls! Replace "dox" with "include my name, which was found on my blog, in a news story about my blog", and yes, that's a default-allow unless you have some really extraordinary circumstances.