8 ms·

A Grand Anticlimax: The New York Times on Scott Alexander

78 points by Shank 6y ago

padastra 6y ago
I don’t understand why the author insists on being willing to speak with future journalists. He’s a smart person who seems to have come down with a serious case of the dumbs.
- jbay808 6y ago
  It's almost certainly thanks only to this particular author's willingness to speak to journalists that the level of journalistic reporting on quantum computers has, for the most part, crawled out of the sticky swamp of absurd miscomprehension onto the gravelly beach of the barely-acceptable.
  - mac01021 6y ago
    Are you confusing Scott Alexander (whatever his real name is) with Scott Aaronson?
    - jbay808 6y ago
      Scott Aaronson, quantum computing expert, is the author of this article about Scott Alexander, and the one who insists he will continue to talk to journalists: > On reflection, then, I’ll continue to talk to journalists, whenever I have time, whenever I think I might know something that might improve their story. I’ll continue to rank bend-over-backwards openness and honesty among my most fundamental values. Hell, I’d even talk to Cade for a future story, assuming he’ll talk to me after all the disagreements I’ve aired here!
mgamache 6y ago
Here's the other thread discussing... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26128752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26128752
jariel 6y ago
"The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements, but just that it constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it does present." My very limited personal interaction with the press boiled down to this and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, kind of a deep rooted cynicism. Growing up in this world, we tend to accept what's in print as 'truthy' at least, it's an incredible form of power. Their job is to keep an eye on more institutional power, so it's kind of a paradox we are stuck in.
- refulgentis 6y ago
  On the flip side, it taught me to be more humble - oftentimes I took things personally or as if any negativity erased put the author in some sort of camp. I see the same sort of response here, which worries me - the NYT article isn't nearly as negative as I see the in-group worrying about: the only negative part I read is some minor slap of the wrist for staging a cancellation drama because journalists can't ethically agree not to share his name when it's already very public information
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    > journalists can't ethically agree not to share his name when it's already very public information Can you elaborate? What is unethical about not sharing someone's name? Even in the published piece, they do not mention that Scott Alexander is ethnically Jewish. Is it unethical not to share the subject's ethnicity?
    - handmodel 6y ago
      tbh I generally like SSC but I'm not sure I agree with him on the name part. He writes a blog and agreed to an interview. His name was elsewhere. I don't see why he gets to set the rules - it isn't like he's an anonymous person in the midst of a sexual assault case or something. He said over and over again that he thought it would hurt his psychiatric (I think) practice. I don't really see how that's the NYTimes issue. If I wrote a blog about computer science but also had a day job as a stand-up (or visa-versa) it isn't every single news outlet's job to only write positively about me or to never mention that I have the other job. If the interview was gotten under false pretense as he said then that is shitty - but I think it is standard practice (and a good standard practice) that a newspaper publishes the identity of impactful people they are writing about.
nexthash 6y ago
This whole series of events went down with such a stink. My ordinary perception of the NYT is that of a beacon of journalism. They publish hundreds of pieces a day, and while the newspaper is left-leaning, it is also known for its high quality going back at least 100 years. My question is, does their utterly childish reaction to Scott Alexander's wish to be anonymous invalidate the whole newspaper's integrity? Don't get me wrong, I don't completely agree with the whole 'liberal MSM' disillusionment, but does this mess point to deeper problems specific to the newspaper? I have no idea, and would appreciate it if somebody clarified this for me.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  I'm somewhat echoing another comment about this that I saw, but the thing I find so atrocious about the NYT article is that it's actually difficult to call it a "hit piece", because it contains so little substantive information of any kind. Instead, it goes to painstaking lengths to paint pretty much everything with the "alt-right extremists like it too, brush!" that the author's preconceived notions and biases are laid so transparently bare.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    The article has two major problems. The first is the one you're describing, that there's barely anything substantive at all. The second is that for what evidence that is linked, if you follow those links and actually read the source material they contradict what the author says in pretty blatant ways (Alexander points this out in his response). For one example he didn't cover, the author deliberately mischaracterizes, again, what Damore said in his memo, saying it claimed it was only biological differences that explain the gender disparities in tech. >That week, a Google employee named James Damore wrote a memo arguing that the low number of women in technical positions at the company was a result of biological differences, not anything else — a memo he was later fired over. One Slate Star Codex reader on Reddit noted the similarities to the writing on the blog. There's so much wrong with these two sentences. The first is just flat out false, and that they didn't link to the original material in the piece - but instead to another NYT article, which links to a Vice article which finally has the primary source - is really telling. The second sentence is just ... what? Some redditor noted some similarities? This is breathtakingly embarrassing journalism. Maybe we can attribute it to just lazy prose. Okay, then where is the editor? It's so poorly written that, you're right, calling it a "hit piece" is giving it too much credit.
ahepp 6y ago
> "The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements, but just that it constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it does present." Seems like projection to me (but I'm not the shrink). I read the article, I'm unfamiliar with SSC outside this affair. Alexander sounds like a thoughtful, friendly, guy with some interesting and quirky beliefs. Some of which I think are pretty great, others I disagree with. That's a pretty normal newspaper article. This is not a PR piece, which seems to be a continuous point of confusion for SV.
- handmodel 6y ago
  Imagine my name was printed in my early HN posts. Then imagine I became the most influential commenter on HN - to the point I was shifting political discourse online. The idea of a newspaper not printing my name in a story about me would be absurd. It wouldn't really matter if I said it would hurt my current business or that my wife would be upset that I was commenting so much online. It isn't really the newspaper's job to worry about those things because, as you said, it isn't a PR piece.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    >It isn't really the newspaper's job to worry about those things... It's not the job of a major newspaper, which not only informs on but explicitly drives opinion, to consider the second order effects of their reporting?
    - handmodel 6y ago
      I think that they have already thought hard about the second order effects of publishing full names and this is the conclusion they have come to for all articles. If I go to any NY Times article there are always full names attached. There is an article on a sex podcaster on the front-page now. She goes by her full name - but let's see she had asked just to go by her first name and also asked the NY Times not to report what medical/therapy qualification she did or did not have. In doing so, she could claim, it would jeopardize people she went to college with finding her talk about sex online on the podcast she publishes herself and spends time promoting. Should the NY Times honor that? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/style/emily-morse-masterclass-instagram-podcast.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/style/emily-morse-masterc...
icefrakker 6y ago
It's kind of pathetic how angry this site is getting over a completely normal article from the NYT. Honestly when the tables are turned, this community sounds just as asinine as the nut liberals they criticize. One of your tribe is criticized (as far as I can tell not a single thing in that article was false) and now everyone is all fired up with not a single critical thought. Pathetic. You tech people are just as clueless as the people insisting children should be able to change their gender. You people in the mob remind me of the gamergate losers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
marshmallow_12 6y ago
what's a "rationalist" (seriously)?
- mac01021 6y ago
  0> By the dictionary: "a person who bases their opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response." 1> I guess someone who chooses to label themselves as a rationalist likely holds the opinion that most people are not rationalists. 2> And I guess someone who offers up that label in order to introduce himself, before the topic of rationalism has even come up, must see it as a major part of his self-identity. (which probably implies <1>)
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    thanks for clarifying. A fundamental flaw in rationalism makes itself clear:At a certain point one has to stop relying on his own intellect when deciding on a particular action due to the constraints of the brains ability to accumulate enough information. This is an insurmountable obstacle. A rationalist can at best be described as one who will rely on his own certain knowledge when possible.
- drdeca 6y ago
  The meaning relevant in this case is generally the community surrounding the LessWrong website and associated other communities (not necessarily exclusive to those who have actually used the website LessWrong though.) (There's also a different older meaning in philosophy which is largely unrelated) a (joke) inductive definition: base case: Elizier Yudkowsky is a rationalist. inductive case: Anyone who frequently argues with rationalists is a rationalist. The community speaks a fair bit about how to deal with psychological bias, and also talks about Bayesian reasoning, decision theory, etc. Also talks about what conversational norms are helpful in facilitating productive discussion especially in the presence of disagreement, etc. There are also those who would be called "rationalist-adjacent" who, well, people who are socially-near "rationalists", but, fairly similar topics discussed. There have been some attempts to use the phrase "aspiring rationalist" rather than "rationalist", and to reserve the term "rationalist" to refer to hypothetical idealized practitioners of the ideas. Also, sometimes people shorten "rationalist" to "rat".
tuatoru 6y ago
An anticlimax indeed, but hardly grand. The NYT piece was a perfunctory, going-through-the-motions rubber hatchet job. Reading betwen the lines, and looking at his random application of the forms of a hatchet job (out-of-context quotes, misleading connections, scare quotes, etc), Cade what's'isname's heart was not in his work at all; perhaps he only wrote it under duress. Richelieu[1] it was not. 1. Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre. If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
dekhn 6y ago
The following quote is interesting to me. Did everybody not learn the techniques to manipulate people through writing (very specifically the ones listed below), both to do it, and to be able to identify it? It's propaganda. "The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements, but just that it constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it does present. I repeatedly muttered to myself, as I read: “dude, you could make anything sound shady with this exact same rhetorical toolkit!”

78 points by Shank 6y ago

I don’t understand why the author insists on being willing to speak with future journalists. He’s a smart person who seems to have come down with a serious case of the dumbs.

jbay808 6y ago
It's almost certainly thanks only to this particular author's willingness to speak to journalists that the level of journalistic reporting on quantum computers has, for the most part, crawled out of the sticky swamp of absurd miscomprehension onto the gravelly beach of the barely-acceptable.
- mac01021 6y ago
  Are you confusing Scott Alexander (whatever his real name is) with Scott Aaronson?
  - jbay808 6y ago
    Scott Aaronson, quantum computing expert, is the author of this article about Scott Alexander, and the one who insists he will continue to talk to journalists: > On reflection, then, I’ll continue to talk to journalists, whenever I have time, whenever I think I might know something that might improve their story. I’ll continue to rank bend-over-backwards openness and honesty among my most fundamental values. Hell, I’d even talk to Cade for a future story, assuming he’ll talk to me after all the disagreements I’ve aired here!

mgamache 6y ago

Here's the other thread discussing... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26128752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26128752

jariel 6y ago

"The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements, but just that it constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it does present." My very limited personal interaction with the press boiled down to this and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, kind of a deep rooted cynicism. Growing up in this world, we tend to accept what's in print as 'truthy' at least, it's an incredible form of power. Their job is to keep an eye on more institutional power, so it's kind of a paradox we are stuck in.

refulgentis 6y ago
On the flip side, it taught me to be more humble - oftentimes I took things personally or as if any negativity erased put the author in some sort of camp. I see the same sort of response here, which worries me - the NYT article isn't nearly as negative as I see the in-group worrying about: the only negative part I read is some minor slap of the wrist for staging a cancellation drama because journalists can't ethically agree not to share his name when it's already very public information
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  > journalists can't ethically agree not to share his name when it's already very public information Can you elaborate? What is unethical about not sharing someone's name? Even in the published piece, they do not mention that Scott Alexander is ethnically Jewish. Is it unethical not to share the subject's ethnicity?
  - handmodel 6y ago
    tbh I generally like SSC but I'm not sure I agree with him on the name part. He writes a blog and agreed to an interview. His name was elsewhere. I don't see why he gets to set the rules - it isn't like he's an anonymous person in the midst of a sexual assault case or something. He said over and over again that he thought it would hurt his psychiatric (I think) practice. I don't really see how that's the NYTimes issue. If I wrote a blog about computer science but also had a day job as a stand-up (or visa-versa) it isn't every single news outlet's job to only write positively about me or to never mention that I have the other job. If the interview was gotten under false pretense as he said then that is shitty - but I think it is standard practice (and a good standard practice) that a newspaper publishes the identity of impactful people they are writing about.

nexthash 6y ago

This whole series of events went down with such a stink. My ordinary perception of the NYT is that of a beacon of journalism. They publish hundreds of pieces a day, and while the newspaper is left-leaning, it is also known for its high quality going back at least 100 years. My question is, does their utterly childish reaction to Scott Alexander's wish to be anonymous invalidate the whole newspaper's integrity? Don't get me wrong, I don't completely agree with the whole 'liberal MSM' disillusionment, but does this mess point to deeper problems specific to the newspaper? I have no idea, and would appreciate it if somebody clarified this for me.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
I'm somewhat echoing another comment about this that I saw, but the thing I find so atrocious about the NYT article is that it's actually difficult to call it a "hit piece", because it contains so little substantive information of any kind. Instead, it goes to painstaking lengths to paint pretty much everything with the "alt-right extremists like it too, brush!" that the author's preconceived notions and biases are laid so transparently bare.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  The article has two major problems. The first is the one you're describing, that there's barely anything substantive at all. The second is that for what evidence that is linked, if you follow those links and actually read the source material they contradict what the author says in pretty blatant ways (Alexander points this out in his response). For one example he didn't cover, the author deliberately mischaracterizes, again, what Damore said in his memo, saying it claimed it was only biological differences that explain the gender disparities in tech. >That week, a Google employee named James Damore wrote a memo arguing that the low number of women in technical positions at the company was a result of biological differences, not anything else — a memo he was later fired over. One Slate Star Codex reader on Reddit noted the similarities to the writing on the blog. There's so much wrong with these two sentences. The first is just flat out false, and that they didn't link to the original material in the piece - but instead to another NYT article, which links to a Vice article which finally has the primary source - is really telling. The second sentence is just ... what? Some redditor noted some similarities? This is breathtakingly embarrassing journalism. Maybe we can attribute it to just lazy prose. Okay, then where is the editor? It's so poorly written that, you're right, calling it a "hit piece" is giving it too much credit.

ahepp 6y ago

> "The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements, but just that it constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it does present." Seems like projection to me (but I'm not the shrink). I read the article, I'm unfamiliar with SSC outside this affair. Alexander sounds like a thoughtful, friendly, guy with some interesting and quirky beliefs. Some of which I think are pretty great, others I disagree with. That's a pretty normal newspaper article. This is not a PR piece, which seems to be a continuous point of confusion for SV.

handmodel 6y ago
Imagine my name was printed in my early HN posts. Then imagine I became the most influential commenter on HN - to the point I was shifting political discourse online. The idea of a newspaper not printing my name in a story about me would be absurd. It wouldn't really matter if I said it would hurt my current business or that my wife would be upset that I was commenting so much online. It isn't really the newspaper's job to worry about those things because, as you said, it isn't a PR piece.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  >It isn't really the newspaper's job to worry about those things... It's not the job of a major newspaper, which not only informs on but explicitly drives opinion, to consider the second order effects of their reporting?
  - handmodel 6y ago
    I think that they have already thought hard about the second order effects of publishing full names and this is the conclusion they have come to for all articles. If I go to any NY Times article there are always full names attached. There is an article on a sex podcaster on the front-page now. She goes by her full name - but let's see she had asked just to go by her first name and also asked the NY Times not to report what medical/therapy qualification she did or did not have. In doing so, she could claim, it would jeopardize people she went to college with finding her talk about sex online on the podcast she publishes herself and spends time promoting. Should the NY Times honor that? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/style/emily-morse-masterclass-instagram-podcast.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/style/emily-morse-masterc...

icefrakker 6y ago

It's kind of pathetic how angry this site is getting over a completely normal article from the NYT. Honestly when the tables are turned, this community sounds just as asinine as the nut liberals they criticize. One of your tribe is criticized (as far as I can tell not a single thing in that article was false) and now everyone is all fired up with not a single critical thought. Pathetic. You tech people are just as clueless as the people insisting children should be able to change their gender. You people in the mob remind me of the gamergate losers.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

marshmallow_12 6y ago

what's a "rationalist" (seriously)?

mac01021 6y ago
0> By the dictionary: "a person who bases their opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response." 1> I guess someone who chooses to label themselves as a rationalist likely holds the opinion that most people are not rationalists. 2> And I guess someone who offers up that label in order to introduce himself, before the topic of rationalism has even come up, must see it as a major part of his self-identity. (which probably implies <1>)
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  thanks for clarifying. A fundamental flaw in rationalism makes itself clear:At a certain point one has to stop relying on his own intellect when deciding on a particular action due to the constraints of the brains ability to accumulate enough information. This is an insurmountable obstacle. A rationalist can at best be described as one who will rely on his own certain knowledge when possible.
drdeca 6y ago
The meaning relevant in this case is generally the community surrounding the LessWrong website and associated other communities (not necessarily exclusive to those who have actually used the website LessWrong though.) (There's also a different older meaning in philosophy which is largely unrelated) a (joke) inductive definition: base case: Elizier Yudkowsky is a rationalist. inductive case: Anyone who frequently argues with rationalists is a rationalist. The community speaks a fair bit about how to deal with psychological bias, and also talks about Bayesian reasoning, decision theory, etc. Also talks about what conversational norms are helpful in facilitating productive discussion especially in the presence of disagreement, etc. There are also those who would be called "rationalist-adjacent" who, well, people who are socially-near "rationalists", but, fairly similar topics discussed. There have been some attempts to use the phrase "aspiring rationalist" rather than "rationalist", and to reserve the term "rationalist" to refer to hypothetical idealized practitioners of the ideas. Also, sometimes people shorten "rationalist" to "rat".

tuatoru 6y ago

An anticlimax indeed, but hardly grand. The NYT piece was a perfunctory, going-through-the-motions rubber hatchet job. Reading betwen the lines, and looking at his random application of the forms of a hatchet job (out-of-context quotes, misleading connections, scare quotes, etc), Cade what's'isname's heart was not in his work at all; perhaps he only wrote it under duress. Richelieu[1] it was not. 1. Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre. If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

dekhn 6y ago

The following quote is interesting to me. Did everybody not learn the techniques to manipulate people through writing (very specifically the ones listed below), both to do it, and to be able to identify it? It's propaganda. "The trouble with the NYT piece is not that it makes any false statements, but just that it constantly insinuates nefarious beliefs and motives, via strategic word choices and omission of relevant facts that change the emotional coloration of the facts that it does present. I repeatedly muttered to myself, as I read: “dude, you could make anything sound shady with this exact same rhetorical toolkit!”