8 ms·

The NYT article[1] can hardly be called a hit piece at all, considering how little 'dirt' it actually contains. What is telling however is the lengths to which

The NYT article[1] can hardly be called a hit piece at all, considering how little 'dirt' it actually contains. What is telling however is the lengths to which they went to connect Scott to anything negative at all. Look at how they 'connect' him to Peter Thiel for instance: Scott is a prominent figure in a loose group of "Rationalists". Some rationalists are concerned about AI. Some people who are concerned about AI also donated to MIRI. Guess who also donated to MIRI? Peter Thiel! The author then goes on to rattle off a bunch of other names who are in turn connected to Peter Thiel in some ways. Like... really? I just can't figure out why that paragraph should even be the article. Speaking of which, what is that article even about? If there's supposed to be some story or thread stringing it together, I can't see it. It's essentially: 1. He deleted his blog. 2. Here's a list of unrelated things people he may know have done. 3. He now has a new blog. Cool story, NYT. [1]: https://archive.is/b1tyQ https://archive.is/b1tyQ

notmarkus 6y ago
Thanks for including this link. I read the response before I read the NYT article. And while it was a pretty uninteresting article, the tactics used to obfuscate who holds what beliefs are laid bare. It's illuminating to see.
linspace 6y ago
Thank you for the link to the NYT article. I completely agree with your reading. Politicians have known forever that sometimes is more important to control what the conversation is about that what you actually say and traditional media is the way you control the conversation. But they have lost their monopoly. I'm not comfortable with the monopoly being transferred to big tech companies by the way which are usually the main target of their hatred but in this case I think it signals a new low in ethics that they are attacking an independent blogger.
- konjin 6y ago
  Here's that time where the legacy media threatened to doxx someone if they made memes they didn't like again: >CNN is not publishing "HanA*holeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same. >CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/04/politics/kfile-reddit-user-trump-tweet/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/04/politics/kfile-reddit-use...
  - linspace 6y ago
    If some lawyer is reading this I would love to know what it takes for an extortion to become a criminal offense.
  - sunpar 6y ago
    I don’t understand why people believe that anonymity is a right guaranteed to all people making content on the internet.
    - konjin 6y ago
      You don't have privacy in your bathroom either. Yet if CNN was to publish nude photos of you you'd be rightly upset.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - loeg 6y ago
        You absolutely have a right to privacy in your house.
      - dahart 6y ago
        Where’d you get that idea? You not only have a right to privacy in your own bathroom, the courts have declared a reasonable expectation of privacy inside public bathroom stalls, and/or behind privacy partitions. CNN publishing nude photos of anyone going to the bathroom would generally be completely illegal.
    - linspace 6y ago
      Anonimity is certainly not a right but sometimes is the only protection for other rights. And we must acknowledge the consequences of technology, unintended or not. For example, nobody expects privacy in public spaces but I think everybody agrees camera surveillance can be abused. Sometimes quantity is a quality of its own.
    - c1ccccc1 6y ago
rndgermandude 6y ago
>In one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in “The Bell Curve.” In another, he pointed out that Mr. Murray believes Black people “are genetically less intelligent than white people.” This paragraph alone could be a textbox example from "Hit pieces for Dummies". The piece is a hit piece through and through. That they weren't able to dig up any real dirt and instead resorted to name calling - both in the classical sense, and also in the sense of actually mentioning names like Thiel and Murray and Curtis Yarvin, etc to insinuate actual or intellectual closeness between those people and Scott - is what makes it a hit piece in the first place.
- vjmarkov 6y ago
  In the McCarthy age guilt by association was "established" by calling someone a fellow traveler. We are there again. The difference is that in the communist witch hunts at least there was a plausible external enemy. This time it is all based on delusions, corporate global agendas and the need to stay relevant in one's bullshit job by "fighting" for some cause.
geofft 6y ago
My reading of the article was that it wasn't about Scott at all. It was about the comment sections on Slate Star Codex, the Rationalist community (which the general public knows very little about), and its connection to the centers of power in Silicon Valley. If you read it as a story about Scott instead of as a story about Silicon Valley, it's less coherent of an article.
- chipsa 6y ago
  The problem with reading it as a story not about Scott is that there's no reason to use his professional name except to cause him problems.
  - geofft 6y ago
    As the article points out, the name is hardly a secret, and I suspect the important thing is that the NYT has no practice of using pseudonyms. If a writer submits a story and the editor says, "Why'd you use a pseudonym," I'm not sure the writer gets to say, "They asked for one," because then why wouldn't everyone who genuinely is newsworthy and thinks they aren't newsworthy ask for one? If the writer says, "I didn't think it was worth finding out," the editor probably ought to question if the writer has actually done enough research on what they're reporting on - especially if the editor can find the name trivially. Remember that the NYT got in very public trouble recently for telling a story that turned out be false because they trusted a subject of the story too much. And even if it wasn't for that, the NYT is regularly in the business of reporting on situations where people would love to use pseudonyms to avoid accountability. It makes sense to me that they have a default policy/norm against it, and weren't able to justify overriding it in this particular case, especially given that the name was already public information. To be clear, I agree that there was no need to use his name to tell the story they were telling, and I think the world would have been a better place if they were able to. But I don't think it's only attributable to malice that they did.
    - skissane 6y ago
      > I suspect the important thing is that the NYT has no practice of using pseudonyms NYT was happy to write about Virgil Texas of Chapo Trap House without revealing his real name [0]. Implying that their actual rule is: yes to pseudonymity for people with whom we politically sympathise, no to pseudonymity for people with whom we don't. That kind of inconsistency isn't worthy of respect. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sanders-chapo-trap-house.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sander...
sjg007 6y ago
The underlying point of the article is that a large number of tech leaders are rationalists, what is rationalism, what are they reading (the blog), and what does that mean for society.
taylorlunt 6y ago
Part of the problem with journalism is they're expected to publish regularly, even when they have nothing to say.

notmarkus 6y ago

Thanks for including this link. I read the response before I read the NYT article. And while it was a pretty uninteresting article, the tactics used to obfuscate who holds what beliefs are laid bare. It's illuminating to see.

linspace 6y ago

Thank you for the link to the NYT article. I completely agree with your reading. Politicians have known forever that sometimes is more important to control what the conversation is about that what you actually say and traditional media is the way you control the conversation. But they have lost their monopoly. I'm not comfortable with the monopoly being transferred to big tech companies by the way which are usually the main target of their hatred but in this case I think it signals a new low in ethics that they are attacking an independent blogger.

konjin 6y ago
Here's that time where the legacy media threatened to doxx someone if they made memes they didn't like again: >CNN is not publishing "HanA*holeSolo's" name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same. >CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change. https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/04/politics/kfile-reddit-user-trump-tweet/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/04/politics/kfile-reddit-use...
- linspace 6y ago
  If some lawyer is reading this I would love to know what it takes for an extortion to become a criminal offense.
- sunpar 6y ago
  I don’t understand why people believe that anonymity is a right guaranteed to all people making content on the internet.
  - konjin 6y ago
    You don't have privacy in your bathroom either. Yet if CNN was to publish nude photos of you you'd be rightly upset.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - loeg 6y ago
      You absolutely have a right to privacy in your house.
    - dahart 6y ago
      Where’d you get that idea? You not only have a right to privacy in your own bathroom, the courts have declared a reasonable expectation of privacy inside public bathroom stalls, and/or behind privacy partitions. CNN publishing nude photos of anyone going to the bathroom would generally be completely illegal.
  - linspace 6y ago
    Anonimity is certainly not a right but sometimes is the only protection for other rights. And we must acknowledge the consequences of technology, unintended or not. For example, nobody expects privacy in public spaces but I think everybody agrees camera surveillance can be abused. Sometimes quantity is a quality of its own.
  - c1ccccc1 6y ago

rndgermandude 6y ago

>In one post, he aligned himself with Charles Murray, who proposed a link between race and I.Q. in “The Bell Curve.” In another, he pointed out that Mr. Murray believes Black people “are genetically less intelligent than white people.” This paragraph alone could be a textbox example from "Hit pieces for Dummies". The piece is a hit piece through and through. That they weren't able to dig up any real dirt and instead resorted to name calling - both in the classical sense, and also in the sense of actually mentioning names like Thiel and Murray and Curtis Yarvin, etc to insinuate actual or intellectual closeness between those people and Scott - is what makes it a hit piece in the first place.

vjmarkov 6y ago
In the McCarthy age guilt by association was "established" by calling someone a fellow traveler. We are there again. The difference is that in the communist witch hunts at least there was a plausible external enemy. This time it is all based on delusions, corporate global agendas and the need to stay relevant in one's bullshit job by "fighting" for some cause.

geofft 6y ago

My reading of the article was that it wasn't about Scott at all. It was about the comment sections on Slate Star Codex, the Rationalist community (which the general public knows very little about), and its connection to the centers of power in Silicon Valley. If you read it as a story about Scott instead of as a story about Silicon Valley, it's less coherent of an article.

chipsa 6y ago
The problem with reading it as a story not about Scott is that there's no reason to use his professional name except to cause him problems.
- geofft 6y ago
  As the article points out, the name is hardly a secret, and I suspect the important thing is that the NYT has no practice of using pseudonyms. If a writer submits a story and the editor says, "Why'd you use a pseudonym," I'm not sure the writer gets to say, "They asked for one," because then why wouldn't everyone who genuinely is newsworthy and thinks they aren't newsworthy ask for one? If the writer says, "I didn't think it was worth finding out," the editor probably ought to question if the writer has actually done enough research on what they're reporting on - especially if the editor can find the name trivially. Remember that the NYT got in very public trouble recently for telling a story that turned out be false because they trusted a subject of the story too much. And even if it wasn't for that, the NYT is regularly in the business of reporting on situations where people would love to use pseudonyms to avoid accountability. It makes sense to me that they have a default policy/norm against it, and weren't able to justify overriding it in this particular case, especially given that the name was already public information. To be clear, I agree that there was no need to use his name to tell the story they were telling, and I think the world would have been a better place if they were able to. But I don't think it's only attributable to malice that they did.
  - skissane 6y ago
    > I suspect the important thing is that the NYT has no practice of using pseudonyms NYT was happy to write about Virgil Texas of Chapo Trap House without revealing his real name [0]. Implying that their actual rule is: yes to pseudonymity for people with whom we politically sympathise, no to pseudonymity for people with whom we don't. That kind of inconsistency isn't worthy of respect. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sanders-chapo-trap-house.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sander...

sjg007 6y ago

The underlying point of the article is that a large number of tech leaders are rationalists, what is rationalism, what are they reading (the blog), and what does that mean for society.

taylorlunt 6y ago

Part of the problem with journalism is they're expected to publish regularly, even when they have nothing to say.