6 ms·

Slate Star Clusterfuck

66 points by tehwebguy 6y ago

labster 6y ago
Perhaps one of one of my best learning experiences in university student government was getting to see how wrongly the campus paper covered us. These were people who tried, for sure, but because they were always outsiders looking in, they missed context. And sure, we were only 3 floors up from the paper’s office, but deadlines always loomed. Things are not magically better after graduation either — not quite getting it seems to be a human condition. I’m a regular reader of SSC, but also an SJW. It’s not mutually exclusive. I liked HPMoR and it taught me a lot about losing... but it also marginalized the female characters.
gok 6y ago
I find SSC pretty insufferable, but the self-delusion in this essay is wild. A founder of Gawker is claiming she's never been involved with, or even heard of, a hit piece.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Is it? > Only in a bubble as insular and tiny as the SSC community would this theory be even remotely plausible. To put this in context: SSC is influential in a small but powerful corner of the tech industry. It is not, however, a site that most people, even at the New York Times, are aware exists--and certainly, the Times and its journalists are not threatened by its existence. They are not out to destroy the site, or “get” Scott, or punish him. At the risk of puncturing egos: they are not thinking about Scott or the site at all. Even the reporter working on the story has no especial investment in its subject. That reporter is also probably working on six other stories at the same time, thinking about their friends, family, what their kid needs to do in Zoom school tomorrow, the book they want to read, whether Donald Trump will get arrested, whether rats dream of boredom. They do not sit around thinking about how they’re going to “get” people they write about, and when subjects think they do, it’s more a reflection of the subject’s self-perception (or self-importance) and, sometimes, a sprinkling of unadulterated narcissism. I find it pretty plausible that no one gives a shit. It's just another article.
  - gok 6y ago
    > The only time I’ve seen anyone assign a piece with the intent that it be explicitly negative was at a Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, and it was a tiny celebrity gossip item. I can't imagine how this could be true. Gawker was extremely open about their intention to publish negative journalism.
    - tehwebguy 6y ago
      Author talks more about the difference between negative vs malicious coverage in a way I’ve never seen spelled out before: > When I was the editor-in-chief of the New York Observer, my boss Jared Kushner tried a couple of times to talk me into doing “hit pieces” in the paper, and I refused. He even suggested I do one on someone who had bashed me publicly and I had to explain to him that real journalists do not do “hit pieces”; they follow the reporting wherever it goes. Jared thought they did because he conflated negative portrayals with malicious portrayals, much like some people are doing here, albeit in a less obviously stupid way. > Jared’s father, a convicted felon who once tried to blackmail his own brother, was covered negatively by the New Jersey newspapers. In Jared’s view, they were “out to get” his father. In Jared’s mind, because this is the narrative that makes sense to him and is also the most self-serving, his father did nothing wrong. He was railroaded by Chris Christie and the media, the latter of whom wanted to take him down.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - runsWphotons 6y ago
    I find it plausible they don't give much of a shit about what they write, as long as they keep getting work. I find it absolutely wild to claim they don't aim to "get" people. Here is an article by a New York Times writer of hit pieces describing the thrill of writing hit pieces, how it advanced her career, and why maybe she shouldn't do it anymore even though it would be better for her career if she did: https://chosenbychoice.substack.com/p/learning-how-to-and-how-not-to-kill https://chosenbychoice.substack.com/p/learning-how-to-and-ho.... Journalists who write things like that SSC article know what they are doing, and the editors who publish them know too and this is exactly what malice is---purposeful harm/ill-will (even if it is somewhat minor malice on a scale topping off at topped off heads). The fact that they usually don't care about that is why they can have a career being casually malicious instead of succumbing to guilt. Furthermore, I find it striking how much clearer Scott's rebuttal was than either the original article or this article. Maybe the author and other journalists can't see the malice because they have become accustomed to poor writing and thus fuzzy perception.
- legerdemain 6y ago
  I want to keep thinking that the author is pursuing some kind of rational strategy with this piece. But given how muddled, poorly written, and ungrammatical the writing is, I am forced to consider the possibility that the author is simply mutton-headed. Of course, negative coverage is a hit piece. That's the whole point. Discretion and judgment are hallmarks of adulthood. You don't blurt out every thought that pops into your head. Journalists are adults. They don't just publish whatever they find, the positive and the negative, merely because they found it or because "it's a fact." In that way, journalists are like expert players of the deepest game invented by humanity -- hold 'em poker. They choose what claims to present, in what context and in what order, to reinforce specific beliefs in the minds of their opponents in the service of particular personal goals. Pretending otherwise is either hopelessly naive or pretending to be hopelessly naive.
  - santoshalper 6y ago
    That's fascinating. Can you imagine a scenario where negative coverage is not a "hit piece"? Is any journalism that the person being covered by does not like a "hit piece" Your defensiveness for the subject in question is incredibly obvious, and ironically, deeply irrational.
    - legerdemain 6y ago
      Imagine I was at a party in some friends' home, and I started making loud, unflattering observations about them. "Hey, Bob! What's up with that bald spot! Hey Judy, your fibroids doing okay?" It would be the height of rudeness and possibly even malice, and I would quickly have angry people demanding to know what I think I'm doing. That's negative journalism. What do they think they're doing?
  - strken 6y ago
    She's drawing a distinction between an editor telling a journalist to write a negative piece, and the journalist freely writing one anyway. This is a meaningful distinction between things, but probably not how most of us would define a hit piece. I think most of us would define a hit piece as an article intended to give a falsely negative impression by misleading the reader. This is a critical point, because some of the NYT article is negative but fair, while some of it is taking extraordinary liberties with the truth through omission and guilt-by-association, and it's the latter that makes it a hit piece. To say that Scott allowed white supremacists in his comments provided they didn't do anything too awful is a criticism based in fact, and the reader can decide how bad it is, but to imply Scott himself is a racist because he agreed with Charles Murray on a UBI is what makes it a hit piece.
bloaf 6y ago
I've seen a lot of somewhat-awkward word-of-mouth endorsements of clubhouse lately, enough to make me think something inorganic is going on.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  It's only an iOS app that is invite only, right?
  - tehwebguy 6y ago
    Yes and I feel bad because I’ll never use my invites. Have got 3 but have to sync contacts to use them, which I will never do with basically any app. Can thank LinkedIn & Facebook for burning that bridge for everyone early on.
    - ketamine__ 6y ago
      I have an Android. I've been meaning to become cool but thus far it hasn't happened.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      > but have to sync contacts Agreed. That's an outright showstopper. It's hard to believe any newly launched product would pull that crap in modern times, while still claiming to not be malicious.
    - oh_sigh 6y ago
      It's a pity permissions are an all-or-nothing deal. Why won't iOS let you provide the app with what appears to be your full contact list, but is just the emails of the 3 people you are inviting?
      - tehwebguy 6y ago
        Photo / video access recently got granular permissions (“Select the photos / album you want to grant access to”), hopefully contacts get this upgrade soon too
legitster 6y ago
This article goes a bit off the rails a bit in the middle where the writer discusses their long journey through ideological shifts as a way to justify a criticism of rationalists. In this regard, it seems Scott Alexander is just a proxy for an internet punching bag. Rationalism is a vague, fluid concept. He has a prolific body of work. Therefor, he must represent the rationalist community. Very little of this addresses the actual questions of journalism. > There’s a specific kind of misunderstanding that’s pervasive in tech, and it falls in this taxonomy of fallacies somewhere between the commentary/reporting confusion, and Uncle Chico. This obviously cuts both ways - isn't it just as easy for journalists to misunderstand other industries? Why is it the responsibility of the ~victim~ subject to know how they are being reported on? > The malicious journalist thesis is the one that was the hardest on my ocular muscles yesterday. Scott Alexander—the figure at the center of the piece—believes this, and has advanced this theory that the journalist who wrote the piece, and perhaps The New York Times institutionally, were out to smear him. If you read his writing, Scott Alexander was actually incredibly gracious about the journalist in question, even going so far to say it was probably not their fault. Ironically enough, if the writer was familiar with SSC, she would know that she is looking for a lot of words to describe "Mistake Theory": https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ But again, it seems like nobody actually cares that the argument isn't that whether the coverage was good or bad. It's a bad characterization of the content! The reporting was inaccurate, and the subject didn't want to be interviewed! > And another structural reality is that organizations--companies, say, startups--are terrible at policing themselves. What journalism seeks to do is illuminate the areas where destructive means are being utilized to achieve ends that might actually be virtuous or worthy in some other way. What if the journalists are the ones doing something destructive??!!!! You don't get to magically absolve yourself of your sins because your pursuit is noble! How do you get off criticizing the tech industry when you engage in the same crime of thinking you are on the side of righteousness? > It makes a lot of people uncomfortable when they can’t control their self-presentation, and this extends to journalistic portrayals. With good right! If anything I learned from this article it's that journalists are too busy to care about making sure they characterize the content correctly.
- runsWphotons 6y ago
npsimons 6y ago
Very illuminating reading. I'm particularly fond of these closing lines: > pay careful attention to what you’re afraid they’re going to write, and why you wouldn’t want it to be public. Then apply some rational thinking. This is precisely the ideal I try to aim for. Sure, I get defensive when I feel attacked; that appears to be part of human nature. But the key to improvement is finding error and trying to correct it. It can be incredibly helpful to have an outside point of view. She should do LessWrong next.
Zarel 6y ago
Journalists may not literally think they're going to write a hit piece, and they may try their best to be unbiased, but that does not make them fully unbiased, either. And it's hard to think there's not some bias going on in the "Silicon Valley's Safe Space" article. The article took 14 pages to say three things: • the NY Times wanted to reveal Scott's full name, and Scott took down SSC because of it • a lot of Silicon Valley are fans of SSC • Scott knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who is a racist Over the course of 14 pages are some very conspicuous omissions: • any mention of why Scott wanted his full name to be private (or that he's a psychiatrist at all; the article uses "Mr. Alexander" rather than the usual "Dr. Alexander" other articles on SSC have used) • more than a single sentence about what SSC the blog is actually about [1] • that SSC (and other rationalists) was warning about a COVID pandemic before everyone else, and had good advice on what to do about it before everyone else (which the author explicitly told sources that the article was to be about that) There are a lot of other omissions I can believe are nonmalicious. I could even believe it was all in good faith if for some reason Metz had just never interviewed anyone who knew anything about SSC. But he spent hours interviewing Scott Aaronson [2] and many other people who loved and hated the blog, and Alexander spent days explaining why he wanted his name to be private. And those three omissions are difficult to explain. If the article had maintained a veneer of neutrality by covering both sides to an extent and just focused on the negative side a lot more, I could believe that maybe it's just me. But the article conspicuously doesn't cover anything very much at all (the SSC haters I know also noticed a lack of any coverage of specific incidents people usually hate rationalists for). Metz interviewed a lot of lovers and a lot of haters and didn't write about any of it except the vague connections. It's difficult to believe _nothing_ weird was going on. [1] https://howthehell.substack.com/p/nyt-ssc-quoting https://howthehell.substack.com/p/nyt-ssc-quoting [2] https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310
- sdenton4 6y ago
  The name is inside baseball that really only matters to Alexander Scott and people who are already invested in the site. It seems like the most important thing in the world to AS, but overall it's just noise... (And really, 10k words to generate a lot more heat than light is kinda what I expect from SSC, actually, so the NYT article is on point in that respect!)
smitty1e 6y ago
Cancel Culture is the Information Age equivalent of the French Revolution. Would there were a way both to (a) halt the hideous behavior of those like the NYeT who metaphorically behead people, while (b) hoisting the bullies on their own petards/guillotines. The court of law gets into the 1A, which gets strange respect when accountability for misdeeds becomes a topic. Maybe we all cancel Pravda-on-the-Hudson in the court of public opinion.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
legerdemain 6y ago
> “But tech journalism is overwhelmingly negative!” I hear > a self-described empiricist whining somewhere on Twitter. > No it is not, my friends. You just don’t notice it when > it isn’t. This is a cognitive bias: your brain is wired > to perceive threats in a way that it does not perceive > neutral or positive information. This is a self-serving assertion by a deeply complicit person presented entirely without evidence, and in ignorance of existing evidence in plain view. The entire world of mainstream tech journalism is founded on the business model of converting hate clicks into ad revenue. The more lurid and distorted a worldview they depict, the more their readers salivate to see their biases vindicated. It is best to ignore journalism completely, but if you can't avoid being the subject of a hit-and-run, you should at least treat them with utmost suspicion and skepticism and do exactly what SA has done.
- santoshalper 6y ago
  Man, you are living in a total fantasy. The vast majority of media coverage of technology is fawning and optimistic. Your reasoning is being clouded by emotions and selection bias. Everyone is power gets bad press sometimes. Best to handle it with grace, not like this.
  - tehwebguy 6y ago
    Right! Just from casually scrolling through TechCrunch periodically I’d say that 95 out of 100 stories are positive or positive leaning neutral. Normally the consensus here would be that they are all puff pieces or “submarine” articles.
- jdlshore 6y ago
  I would have like to see more reasoning and less emotional appeal in your argument. I’m deeply skeptical of this commonly-stated theory that people do something because it generates clicks/sells books/whatever. Money is not the only motivator, it’s not a durable motivator, and even if it’s motivating to the business owners of the NYT, the reporter is not getting paid per click. (Or maybe they are! I’d be very surprised. Prove me wrong.) Do we have a systemic problem regarding what sort of headlines attract attention? I believe so, yes. Does that mean that everything—-or even just the things we dislike—-produced on a for-profit site is inherently biased? I doubt it. Such a position strikes me as profoundly naïve; in fact, it’s the same sort of naïvety that this article is talking about.
santoshalper 6y ago
Powerful and influential people never like to get negative or critical press coverage, but it comes with the job. The only thing that surprised me was the almost Trumpian level of sensitivity Scott Alexander demonstrated when he got his first bad press. As a semi-frequent codex reader, I have been super disappointed.
- npsimons 6y ago
  I'm not going to defend his actions, and I won't claim I would have done any better, but I can empathize with the feeling. When you are called out, even when you are clearly in the wrong, your first reaction is defensiveness. I know, I've been there. It's tough addressing one's own issues, but it's the right thing to do, and do it in the most emotionless manner possible. You are right it comes with the job; but I think the first time it happens at a scale one is not used to is a very hard inflection point that can make or break how one grows (or doesn't!) from that point forward. "Fail fast" shouldn't be a mantra simply for startups.

66 points by tehwebguy 6y ago

Perhaps one of one of my best learning experiences in university student government was getting to see how wrongly the campus paper covered us. These were people who tried, for sure, but because they were always outsiders looking in, they missed context. And sure, we were only 3 floors up from the paper’s office, but deadlines always loomed. Things are not magically better after graduation either — not quite getting it seems to be a human condition. I’m a regular reader of SSC, but also an SJW. It’s not mutually exclusive. I liked HPMoR and it taught me a lot about losing... but it also marginalized the female characters.

gok 6y ago

I find SSC pretty insufferable, but the self-delusion in this essay is wild. A founder of Gawker is claiming she's never been involved with, or even heard of, a hit piece.

ketamine__ 6y ago
Is it? > Only in a bubble as insular and tiny as the SSC community would this theory be even remotely plausible. To put this in context: SSC is influential in a small but powerful corner of the tech industry. It is not, however, a site that most people, even at the New York Times, are aware exists--and certainly, the Times and its journalists are not threatened by its existence. They are not out to destroy the site, or “get” Scott, or punish him. At the risk of puncturing egos: they are not thinking about Scott or the site at all. Even the reporter working on the story has no especial investment in its subject. That reporter is also probably working on six other stories at the same time, thinking about their friends, family, what their kid needs to do in Zoom school tomorrow, the book they want to read, whether Donald Trump will get arrested, whether rats dream of boredom. They do not sit around thinking about how they’re going to “get” people they write about, and when subjects think they do, it’s more a reflection of the subject’s self-perception (or self-importance) and, sometimes, a sprinkling of unadulterated narcissism. I find it pretty plausible that no one gives a shit. It's just another article.
- gok 6y ago
  > The only time I’ve seen anyone assign a piece with the intent that it be explicitly negative was at a Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, and it was a tiny celebrity gossip item. I can't imagine how this could be true. Gawker was extremely open about their intention to publish negative journalism.
  - tehwebguy 6y ago
    Author talks more about the difference between negative vs malicious coverage in a way I’ve never seen spelled out before: > When I was the editor-in-chief of the New York Observer, my boss Jared Kushner tried a couple of times to talk me into doing “hit pieces” in the paper, and I refused. He even suggested I do one on someone who had bashed me publicly and I had to explain to him that real journalists do not do “hit pieces”; they follow the reporting wherever it goes. Jared thought they did because he conflated negative portrayals with malicious portrayals, much like some people are doing here, albeit in a less obviously stupid way. > Jared’s father, a convicted felon who once tried to blackmail his own brother, was covered negatively by the New Jersey newspapers. In Jared’s view, they were “out to get” his father. In Jared’s mind, because this is the narrative that makes sense to him and is also the most self-serving, his father did nothing wrong. He was railroaded by Chris Christie and the media, the latter of whom wanted to take him down.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- runsWphotons 6y ago
  I find it plausible they don't give much of a shit about what they write, as long as they keep getting work. I find it absolutely wild to claim they don't aim to "get" people. Here is an article by a New York Times writer of hit pieces describing the thrill of writing hit pieces, how it advanced her career, and why maybe she shouldn't do it anymore even though it would be better for her career if she did: https://chosenbychoice.substack.com/p/learning-how-to-and-how-not-to-kill https://chosenbychoice.substack.com/p/learning-how-to-and-ho.... Journalists who write things like that SSC article know what they are doing, and the editors who publish them know too and this is exactly what malice is---purposeful harm/ill-will (even if it is somewhat minor malice on a scale topping off at topped off heads). The fact that they usually don't care about that is why they can have a career being casually malicious instead of succumbing to guilt. Furthermore, I find it striking how much clearer Scott's rebuttal was than either the original article or this article. Maybe the author and other journalists can't see the malice because they have become accustomed to poor writing and thus fuzzy perception.
legerdemain 6y ago
I want to keep thinking that the author is pursuing some kind of rational strategy with this piece. But given how muddled, poorly written, and ungrammatical the writing is, I am forced to consider the possibility that the author is simply mutton-headed. Of course, negative coverage is a hit piece. That's the whole point. Discretion and judgment are hallmarks of adulthood. You don't blurt out every thought that pops into your head. Journalists are adults. They don't just publish whatever they find, the positive and the negative, merely because they found it or because "it's a fact." In that way, journalists are like expert players of the deepest game invented by humanity -- hold 'em poker. They choose what claims to present, in what context and in what order, to reinforce specific beliefs in the minds of their opponents in the service of particular personal goals. Pretending otherwise is either hopelessly naive or pretending to be hopelessly naive.
- santoshalper 6y ago
  That's fascinating. Can you imagine a scenario where negative coverage is not a "hit piece"? Is any journalism that the person being covered by does not like a "hit piece" Your defensiveness for the subject in question is incredibly obvious, and ironically, deeply irrational.
  - legerdemain 6y ago
    Imagine I was at a party in some friends' home, and I started making loud, unflattering observations about them. "Hey, Bob! What's up with that bald spot! Hey Judy, your fibroids doing okay?" It would be the height of rudeness and possibly even malice, and I would quickly have angry people demanding to know what I think I'm doing. That's negative journalism. What do they think they're doing?
- strken 6y ago
  She's drawing a distinction between an editor telling a journalist to write a negative piece, and the journalist freely writing one anyway. This is a meaningful distinction between things, but probably not how most of us would define a hit piece. I think most of us would define a hit piece as an article intended to give a falsely negative impression by misleading the reader. This is a critical point, because some of the NYT article is negative but fair, while some of it is taking extraordinary liberties with the truth through omission and guilt-by-association, and it's the latter that makes it a hit piece. To say that Scott allowed white supremacists in his comments provided they didn't do anything too awful is a criticism based in fact, and the reader can decide how bad it is, but to imply Scott himself is a racist because he agreed with Charles Murray on a UBI is what makes it a hit piece.

bloaf 6y ago

I've seen a lot of somewhat-awkward word-of-mouth endorsements of clubhouse lately, enough to make me think something inorganic is going on.

ketamine__ 6y ago
It's only an iOS app that is invite only, right?
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  Yes and I feel bad because I’ll never use my invites. Have got 3 but have to sync contacts to use them, which I will never do with basically any app. Can thank LinkedIn & Facebook for burning that bridge for everyone early on.
  - ketamine__ 6y ago
    I have an Android. I've been meaning to become cool but thus far it hasn't happened.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    > but have to sync contacts Agreed. That's an outright showstopper. It's hard to believe any newly launched product would pull that crap in modern times, while still claiming to not be malicious.
  - oh_sigh 6y ago
    It's a pity permissions are an all-or-nothing deal. Why won't iOS let you provide the app with what appears to be your full contact list, but is just the emails of the 3 people you are inviting?
    - tehwebguy 6y ago
      Photo / video access recently got granular permissions (“Select the photos / album you want to grant access to”), hopefully contacts get this upgrade soon too

legitster 6y ago

This article goes a bit off the rails a bit in the middle where the writer discusses their long journey through ideological shifts as a way to justify a criticism of rationalists. In this regard, it seems Scott Alexander is just a proxy for an internet punching bag. Rationalism is a vague, fluid concept. He has a prolific body of work. Therefor, he must represent the rationalist community. Very little of this addresses the actual questions of journalism. > There’s a specific kind of misunderstanding that’s pervasive in tech, and it falls in this taxonomy of fallacies somewhere between the commentary/reporting confusion, and Uncle Chico. This obviously cuts both ways - isn't it just as easy for journalists to misunderstand other industries? Why is it the responsibility of the ~victim~ subject to know how they are being reported on? > The malicious journalist thesis is the one that was the hardest on my ocular muscles yesterday. Scott Alexander—the figure at the center of the piece—believes this, and has advanced this theory that the journalist who wrote the piece, and perhaps The New York Times institutionally, were out to smear him. If you read his writing, Scott Alexander was actually incredibly gracious about the journalist in question, even going so far to say it was probably not their fault. Ironically enough, if the writer was familiar with SSC, she would know that she is looking for a lot of words to describe "Mistake Theory": https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/24/conflict-vs-mistake/ But again, it seems like nobody actually cares that the argument isn't that whether the coverage was good or bad. It's a bad characterization of the content! The reporting was inaccurate, and the subject didn't want to be interviewed! > And another structural reality is that organizations--companies, say, startups--are terrible at policing themselves. What journalism seeks to do is illuminate the areas where destructive means are being utilized to achieve ends that might actually be virtuous or worthy in some other way. What if the journalists are the ones doing something destructive??!!!! You don't get to magically absolve yourself of your sins because your pursuit is noble! How do you get off criticizing the tech industry when you engage in the same crime of thinking you are on the side of righteousness? > It makes a lot of people uncomfortable when they can’t control their self-presentation, and this extends to journalistic portrayals. With good right! If anything I learned from this article it's that journalists are too busy to care about making sure they characterize the content correctly.

runsWphotons 6y ago

npsimons 6y ago

Very illuminating reading. I'm particularly fond of these closing lines: > pay careful attention to what you’re afraid they’re going to write, and why you wouldn’t want it to be public. Then apply some rational thinking. This is precisely the ideal I try to aim for. Sure, I get defensive when I feel attacked; that appears to be part of human nature. But the key to improvement is finding error and trying to correct it. It can be incredibly helpful to have an outside point of view. She should do LessWrong next.

Zarel 6y ago

Journalists may not literally think they're going to write a hit piece, and they may try their best to be unbiased, but that does not make them fully unbiased, either. And it's hard to think there's not some bias going on in the "Silicon Valley's Safe Space" article. The article took 14 pages to say three things: • the NY Times wanted to reveal Scott's full name, and Scott took down SSC because of it • a lot of Silicon Valley are fans of SSC • Scott knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who is a racist Over the course of 14 pages are some very conspicuous omissions: • any mention of why Scott wanted his full name to be private (or that he's a psychiatrist at all; the article uses "Mr. Alexander" rather than the usual "Dr. Alexander" other articles on SSC have used) • more than a single sentence about what SSC the blog is actually about [1] • that SSC (and other rationalists) was warning about a COVID pandemic before everyone else, and had good advice on what to do about it before everyone else (which the author explicitly told sources that the article was to be about that) There are a lot of other omissions I can believe are nonmalicious. I could even believe it was all in good faith if for some reason Metz had just never interviewed anyone who knew anything about SSC. But he spent hours interviewing Scott Aaronson [2] and many other people who loved and hated the blog, and Alexander spent days explaining why he wanted his name to be private. And those three omissions are difficult to explain. If the article had maintained a veneer of neutrality by covering both sides to an extent and just focused on the negative side a lot more, I could believe that maybe it's just me. But the article conspicuously doesn't cover anything very much at all (the SSC haters I know also noticed a lack of any coverage of specific incidents people usually hate rationalists for). Metz interviewed a lot of lovers and a lot of haters and didn't write about any of it except the vague connections. It's difficult to believe _nothing_ weird was going on. [1] https://howthehell.substack.com/p/nyt-ssc-quoting https://howthehell.substack.com/p/nyt-ssc-quoting [2] https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310

sdenton4 6y ago
The name is inside baseball that really only matters to Alexander Scott and people who are already invested in the site. It seems like the most important thing in the world to AS, but overall it's just noise... (And really, 10k words to generate a lot more heat than light is kinda what I expect from SSC, actually, so the NYT article is on point in that respect!)

smitty1e 6y ago

Cancel Culture is the Information Age equivalent of the French Revolution. Would there were a way both to (a) halt the hideous behavior of those like the NYeT who metaphorically behead people, while (b) hoisting the bullies on their own petards/guillotines. The court of law gets into the 1A, which gets strange respect when accountability for misdeeds becomes a topic. Maybe we all cancel Pravda-on-the-Hudson in the court of public opinion.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

legerdemain 6y ago

> “But tech journalism is overwhelmingly negative!” I hear > a self-described empiricist whining somewhere on Twitter. > No it is not, my friends. You just don’t notice it when > it isn’t. This is a cognitive bias: your brain is wired > to perceive threats in a way that it does not perceive > neutral or positive information. This is a self-serving assertion by a deeply complicit person presented entirely without evidence, and in ignorance of existing evidence in plain view. The entire world of mainstream tech journalism is founded on the business model of converting hate clicks into ad revenue. The more lurid and distorted a worldview they depict, the more their readers salivate to see their biases vindicated. It is best to ignore journalism completely, but if you can't avoid being the subject of a hit-and-run, you should at least treat them with utmost suspicion and skepticism and do exactly what SA has done.

santoshalper 6y ago
Man, you are living in a total fantasy. The vast majority of media coverage of technology is fawning and optimistic. Your reasoning is being clouded by emotions and selection bias. Everyone is power gets bad press sometimes. Best to handle it with grace, not like this.
- tehwebguy 6y ago
  Right! Just from casually scrolling through TechCrunch periodically I’d say that 95 out of 100 stories are positive or positive leaning neutral. Normally the consensus here would be that they are all puff pieces or “submarine” articles.
jdlshore 6y ago
I would have like to see more reasoning and less emotional appeal in your argument. I’m deeply skeptical of this commonly-stated theory that people do something because it generates clicks/sells books/whatever. Money is not the only motivator, it’s not a durable motivator, and even if it’s motivating to the business owners of the NYT, the reporter is not getting paid per click. (Or maybe they are! I’d be very surprised. Prove me wrong.) Do we have a systemic problem regarding what sort of headlines attract attention? I believe so, yes. Does that mean that everything—-or even just the things we dislike—-produced on a for-profit site is inherently biased? I doubt it. Such a position strikes me as profoundly naïve; in fact, it’s the same sort of naïvety that this article is talking about.

santoshalper 6y ago

Powerful and influential people never like to get negative or critical press coverage, but it comes with the job. The only thing that surprised me was the almost Trumpian level of sensitivity Scott Alexander demonstrated when he got his first bad press. As a semi-frequent codex reader, I have been super disappointed.

npsimons 6y ago
I'm not going to defend his actions, and I won't claim I would have done any better, but I can empathize with the feeling. When you are called out, even when you are clearly in the wrong, your first reaction is defensiveness. I know, I've been there. It's tough addressing one's own issues, but it's the right thing to do, and do it in the most emotionless manner possible. You are right it comes with the job; but I think the first time it happens at a scale one is not used to is a very hard inflection point that can make or break how one grows (or doesn't!) from that point forward. "Fail fast" shouldn't be a mantra simply for startups.