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“Silicon Valley’s Safe Space” has misinformed readers

180 points by Bostonian 6y ago

AnHonestComment 6y ago
Duh? The NYT writes hit pieces for the establishment; social media (including HN) uses shadowbans to enforce narrative conformity. Manipulation is the norm. Case in point: I was shadowbanned on HN for linking to a video where the BLM founder described BLM as a Marxist organization. It’s her own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw The reason the NYT sees a radical conspiracy behind every bush is that’s how communists act — and the NYT staff are projecting.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  It's just not helpful to call broad swathes of people "Marxist" to mean something other than specifically Communist in a fashion favored by Marx. Similarly, folks these days call anything they don't like involving wealthy people "capitalism". It just confuses and escalates. I think there's a good point about teleological approaches to politics and history that are increasingly popular. Marxism is a well known category of that. They tend to create unforgiving worldviews and attitudes. Admittedly words like teleological don't have the same rhetorical punch.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
    Some of the founders of BLM call themselves Marxist. They partner with pro-communist Chinese groups. And the organisation's platform has a Marxist history. The Black Panthers published a 10-point plan in 1966 which promoted a new form of racial Marxism, which was largely adopted by BLM and was posted as part of their syllabus on their website. They quietly toned it down a few months ago so it's not quite so obvious now.
    - dls2016 6y ago
      So?
      - akvadrako 6y ago
        So there isn't anything incorrect about calling them Marxist.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      BLM is a movement. Not an organization. The organization that owns blacklivesmatter.com is called BLM Global Network Foundation. Few people in the BLM movement pay any attention to the BLMGNF organization.
- dahdum 6y ago
  > Case in point: I was shadowbanned on HN for linking to a video where the BLM founder described BLM as a Marxist organization. It’s her own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw BLM the organization has diverged pretty drastically from BLM the movement. Linking them together without acknowledging that is a tad manipulative. It's much like the slogan "defund the police" has been watered down from the original meaning. You can't hold those using the term today to the original intent.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    The organization is the thing many people are donating money to.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      The organization you're thinking of is named Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Not Black Lives Matter. I believe most people donate to The Movement for Black Lives.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Why do you believe "that's how communists act"? Did you learn that in third grade? Imagine if capitalism were tarred with the broad brush of the terrible things that some capitalists have done...
  - emergie 6y ago
    > how communists act OP is more or less correct. As a person who lived behind the iron curtain I can recommend you "Captive mind". It is non-fiction set of observations of an intellectual living in a communist regime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captive_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captive_Mind
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Thank you for the recommendation. This seems like just the sort of book I would enjoy reading. It's not news to anyone that life "behind the iron curtain" had its share of horrors. We anarchists know that life under any giant "national" government is similar, even if particular governments can be better or worse than others. Perhaps my questionable recent reading is to blame, but the first people I thought of when reading about "radical communist conspiracy" were the million Indonesians slaughtered by nationalist military and vigilantes with the firm planning and support of capitalist CIA in 1965 and 1966. These communists had "conspired" to feed the poor and support the existing democratically-elected government. So, blanket statements about communists (or capitalists, or I guess even monarchists), even if motivated by putative life experiences, don't hold much water with me.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
Applejinx 6y ago
That, or it's triggered alt-right folks in a big way.
- robin21 6y ago
  I would argue what you refer to as “alt-right” is just “what most people thought before 2010 or so”.
  - blueflow 6y ago
    I can't believe how we got into this situation - don't people feel shame if "their side" is smearing their opponents? Its this some lack of standards? Don't people sometimes wonder, "what if its us who are the baddies"? Am i missing something here?
    - enriquto 6y ago
      > what if its us who are the baddies What makes this sketch funny is that, no matter how outrageously bad they are, real people never ask this question about themselves.
      - Swenrekcah 6y ago
        That’s too strong of a statement. Those that do ask themselves might then moderate and thus not become the subjects of people’s outrage. They might also be so far down the road of evildoing that every time they do ask themselves, they cling to any excuse that they’re not the baddies.
        enriquto 6y ago
        > They might also be so far down the road of evildoing that every time they do ask themselves, they cling to any excuse that they’re not the baddies. This describes nearly all of us. You can semi-honestly ask yourself if you are acting good, and mostly about non-essential stuff. But deep down it's just a rhetoric exercise. It is essentially impossible to question your fundamental beliefs. Also, it is easy to verify that this is the case: have you ever held contradictory fundamental beliefs? Not at the same time, of course, but along the years? Like, something that you thought was an immutable basis of your opinion when you were 18, and when you become 35 you think about it and it is obviously wrong. Do you think you were capable at 18 of asking that question to yourself? Do you think you are now capable to do so, regarding your current fundamental thoughts? I may lie and say that I do, but I'm actually incapable to really question my deep beliefs about justice and fairness (even if at some time in the past I held the opposite beliefs!).
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
Yuck! What a ridiculous misrepresentation of the New York Times article. Go read it yourself. I think most people here are familiar enough with the "Rationalist" movement to be able to judge it on its own merits. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-codex-rationalists.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-cod... The Rationalist movement is deeply weird. It has curious connections with "race realists" and monarchists. It is deeply insular and rarely survives contact with mainstream scholarship. Eliezer Yudkowsky and other central figures are total crackpots. Any discussion of the movement that leaves those parts out is dishonest. The title is stupid. I'll give 'em that.
- gipp 6y ago
  Weird, undoubtedly. Think they are smarter than they are? Mostly, yes. "Aligned with race realists and monarchists (?)" Definitely not.
  - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
    >"Aligned with race realists and monarchists (?)" Definitely not. Definitely yes. Ever heard of Moldbug? The dude who claimed the rule of Leopold II (yes, that Leopold II) would be better than our current government? I am not claiming that they are the same movement, but the Dark Enlightenment is closely related to the Rationalist movement. There is a great deal of cross-pollination. The New York Times article is a great jumping-off point to read about this connection! It has several relevant links, including this one that explicitly discusses the monarchists: https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
    - rjsw 6y ago
      Can't see Leopold II being very popular in Silicon Valley, he would certainly reduce the demand for smartwatches.
      - jessaustin 6y ago
everdrive 6y ago
It would be quite nice if his true name were not further publicized. [edit] I had not realized he had gone fully public with his name, to include blogging under his true name currently.
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  I think he is writing under his true name now. That’s why it comes up in google but probably wasnt at a time NYT wanted to reveal it
- Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  He is now blogging with his full real name at: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
- ArnoVW 6y ago
  In the posting he wrote last week he explains that he started writing under his own name because the NYC was about to break his anonymity.
airza 6y ago
It's kinda funny that in his rush to explain why the NYT article is a hit piece, the author has brought his own ideological froth to the forefront. I found a lot of Scott's articles about medicine and psychology to be great, and some of his philosophical musings to be interesting as well. (something that the NYY piece mentions in the first paragraph) But all of the rationalists I have met in life were personally odious, somehow taking that ideology to the logical conclusion that libertarianism was not only the correct way to structure society, but also that disagreeing with it was a moral or intellectual failing. Which, sure, is something that a lot of ideologues would say... but the fact that they confidently claimed to have derived that ideology from first principles made any kind of discussion impossible. :( (I actually agree with Scott's request to remain anonymous though. I guess politics are complex.)
- supergarfield 6y ago
  Really? I feel like having an opinion based on reasoning from first principles should make discussion easier, because you can try and challenge any element in that explicit chain of reasoning. On the other hand, if someone adheres to ideology X because they feel like it's right, I wouldn't know where to start.
  - dmwallin 6y ago
    The problem is their opinion often aren't actually based on first principles. Humans have a strong tendency to form an opinion for various emotional and social reasons, and then build up a set of justifications ex post facto, often without realizing it. The more intelligent you are the easier it is to do subconsciously and it's often harder for your ego to admit the strong role your id played.
    - hardlianotion 6y ago
      But if that is happening, presumably it shows up in your reasoning and can be critiqued.
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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corty 6y ago
In their relation with blogs and social media, traditional press is at the "fight" stage of the three-stage Ghandi progression "first they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win". Can't wait for stage three and good riddance, especially seeing how much they are willing to fight dirty and compromise their supposed principles.
- themaninthedark 6y ago
  I like the Ghandi philosophy but it does not always work out that way. I have seen a couple movements get to step 2 then either fail or give up, Occupy Wallstreet and Anon vs Scientology both come to mind. There is another progression that accurately describes click-bate news: 1. Cause disagreements and strife 2. ??? 3. Profit!
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
The debate about the contents of the blog and ideologies etc. is complex. But here's a simple question - Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? It's just not a nice thing to do, simple as that. It may be easy to find if you go looking, but most people don't have any reason to go looking, so the pen name serves its purpose of providing anonymity. The NYT author makes it seem as if publishing the guys real name in a widely read paper is the same as it being googleable to someone who looks. Its a COMPLETELY different level of exposure. The other key point is that doxxing someone who has been writing anonymously for decades is very different than believing that people should not have the right to write anonymously. Scott began writing under a pseudonym, under the expectation that it would stay anonymous - and so the space of things he said was much more controversial than what it would have been if he expected to be doxxed one day. NYT shows up to the world of blogs 10 years later, knowing nothing and starts pulling the rug out from under people who began writing in a different world, under completely different norms. Its just a shitty, shitty thing to do. > I woke up the next morning to a torrent of online abuse, as did my editor, who was named in the farewell note. My address and phone number were shared by the blog’s readers on Twitter. Protecting the identity of the man behind Slate Star Codex had turned into a cause among the Rationalists. One paragraph after detailing why Scott requested his name to be kept out, the reporter complains about the online abuse he received, which could have easily been prevented by not using real names.
- 88 6y ago
  > Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? I thought the NYT held off publishing the original article, and although the article published in the last week did name him, this was only after Scott relaunched his blog under his real name? I know they were threatening to reveal his name prior to this, but in the end Scott revealed his own identity first.
- downandout 6y ago
  Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? The “why” is easy. The first part of this article makes the reason quite clear. This reporter believed that Scott’s site was giving safe harbor to “white supremacists” while making it hard for “social justice warriors’” voices to be heard [1]. So the reason he was doxxed is in keeping with a recent trend in the media: punish perceived right-leaning people for their views. Drag them out in the public square, and get them fired or at least ensure that their life will never be the same. It’s Mccarthyism, 2021 edition. Welcome to the newly “united” America. [1] The part of the article I am referring to is this: “...The voices also included white supremacists and neo-fascists. The only people who struggled to be heard, Dr. Friedman said, were "social justice warriors.". The author knew that the left-leaning readers of the NYT would be upset over this, and would want to know whom the person behind such a community was so that cancel culture could carry out its duties.
wilsocr88 6y ago
I feel out of the loop for never having read this guy's work before this faux-outrage-turned-scandal, but everything I'm reading of his is great. He's focused, honest, and straightforward, and you can tell her really lets his own voice come out in his writing. It's funny seeing things I've said for 5-10 years come out as mainstream common knowledge, namely that mainstream journalism is either lazy, extremist, or both. When I first said it I was called reactionary, or paranoid.
- dandare 6y ago
  Same here, never heard of SSC before and I am reading his older articles right now. A true Streisand effect moment.
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    I've come from yet another perspective as someone who once read a few SSC articles and found them lacking or outright bad, but this past week, reading more of them has changed my opinion. For sure I disagree with Scott on some fundamental points, but the balance he is able to bring and the nuance he is able to tease out, plus the consideration of ideas which on first glance lead to bad conclusions being shown that need not be the case. I'm far from the typical political persuasion that one might consider to be interested in SSC (check my about text/comments on here) but I think I gain some perspective with the SSC articles I've read that goes beyond pure endless abstract philosophical rumination. So from my point of view, Scott deserves at least one cheer, and probably more. His blog may not stand to the level of academic analysis, but in contrast to the quality of other blogs and especially Twitter style argumentation, it's quite a beacon and his writing style and intellectual charity something to emulate in online discourse.
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y ago
  > mainstream journalism is either lazy, extremist, or both More significant than those factors is time pressure and limited staffing. You can have your news fast, cheap, or unbiased. Pick two.
  - 6y ago
molbioguy 6y ago
One of the points brought up in the article that I think is becoming pernicious is dicrediting by association. Any view that is also positively regarded by an extremist group (right or left) becomes evidence of the author's support for that group, even though there is no connection between the two. That's kind of like saying Apple must have created iPhones for criminals because they're preferred by drug dealers for their privacy! It would be nice if ideas could be judged on their own merit, not by who likes them.
- jaywalk 6y ago
  But judging ideas on merit alone is hard. It's much easier to just dismiss ideas you don't like because "bad people" like them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  You joke, but both people with actual crime-fighting credentials, people in the intelligence community who should know better, and Donald Trump have made that same fallacy regarding iPhones.
- testHNac 6y ago
  > dicrediting by association. Any view that is also positively regarded by an extremist group (right or left) becomes evidence of the author's support for that group Isn't this quite common in 'Cancel Culture' as well as in 'Hit Piece Journalism' ? You can discredit anyone by portraying them as a single dimensional thought - generally stating their words or actions out of context. Silly Example: A Person X has been seen frequenting a food joint that is participating in alleged inhumane industrial massacre of animals. So we read - The person is an evil animal hater. And so is everyone who has ever eaten at pretty much any fast food chain.
sjg007 6y ago
It’s really entertaining to watch Hacker News devolve and eat itself. It’s like contextual complex and nuanced thinking is impossible among those that self select as hackers. Have we gotten to the point where we can’t hold two opposing views of the same thing in the mind? Absolutism abounds here and while I’d say it is disquieting it’s more so simply sad. Sad in that it’s consistent across all facets of society. We’ve lost our critical thinking skills.
meagher 6y ago
The most troubling part of the NYT article is a glimpse into how hostile some tech folks are towards the idea of journalism: “If things get hot, it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out with hostile reporting sent to their advertisers/friends/contacts,” Mr. Srinivasan said in an email viewed by The New York Times, using a term, “Dark Enlightenment,” that was synonymous with the neoreactionary movement.
- quercusa 6y ago
  > how hostile some tech folks are towards the idea of journalism I don't think they are hostile to the idea of journalism per se. It's the current practice they object to.
- fallingknife 6y ago
  I have never heard of a tech person who is hostile to the idea of journalism, just the terrible implementations that exist in companies like the NYT and Fox News. That quote is just suggesting they do to journalists what journalists do to other people.
  - yeetawayhn 6y ago
    > That quote is just suggesting they do to journalists what journalists do to other people. The infamous Richard Nixon quote comes to mind.
    - fallingknife 6y ago
      They didn't tell lies about Nixon.
      - yeetawayhn 6y ago
        I was referring to the "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal", claiming that it's okay for them to do what they do to regular people but not okay for regular people to do the same to them.
dfdx 6y ago
I think it's quite interesting that the NYT hasn't linked Scott's response [1] in their article about him. Surely if their article was written in good faith they would be happy to do so [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-times-article https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I think it's quite interesting that the NYT hasn't linked Scott's response [1] in their article about him. Surely if their article was written in good faith they would be happy to do so Good faith doesn't mean doing whatever some internet rando thinks is reasonable.
bloaf 6y ago
I think the real summary of Scott Alexander's community was written 80 years ago. https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ > Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy. He has been concerned with general ideas since the age of ten and has one of those minds that can scintillatingly rationalize everything. I have known him for ten years and in that time have heard him enthusiastically explain Marx, social credit, technocracy, Keynesian economics, Chestertonian distributism, and everything else one can imagine. Mr. G will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything. His brain operates quite apart from the rest of his apparatus. He will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along. But Mr. G is always a “deviationist.” When he played with communism he was a Trotskyist; when he talked of Keynes it was to suggest improvement; Chesterton’s economic ideas were all right but he was too bound to Catholic philosophy. So we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged. Now this is not to compare modern liberal sensibilities to naziism, beyond the broadest of generalities such as "they are both political movements." I do think we can see that the modern liberal political body is inclined to purge SA's group of "deviationists" who they see as insufficiently ideologically pure.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Ah, nerds are bad. Good to know!
  - bloaf 6y ago
    That is the level of understanding that the NYT piece seems to be promoting, but it is not at all my point. The point of the quote I posted is that these "deviationists" do not jump on bandwagons of any kind, be they good or bad. Therefore, political movements that expect uncritical acceptance of their ideas see them as opponents even if they mostly agree.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      I confess I like the summary in your reply a great deal more than the excerpt in your original post. It is a fact about humans that many of them think and perhaps even overthink various topics of import, leading to indecision, ambivalence, sometimes even confusion. Those humans are not worse humans than their brethren who seek only to support what they currently perceive to be their tribe. [EDIT:] In fact I think you have completely misunderstood Dorothy Thompson, since the Nazis were overwhelmingly the latter rather than the former sort of human. A complete reading of her essay is a complete reading of a set of wooden stereotypes, interesting only for the fact that it records the propaganda of an era in which a previously apparently peaceful nation was girding itself for world war. Ms Thompson includes such scintillating analysis as "Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi." Good grief.
peteretep 6y ago
This is just blogspam for Scott’s own piece?
jtdev 6y ago
NY Times in its quest to shame anyone who doesn't fit their uber woke mold is losing readers and credibility. I hope 2021 is the year that we start to reject this braindead culture and start to embrace real journalism and fact based reporting.
- testHNac 6y ago
  NYT have been losing journalists too. The journos turned on their own - so much for freedom of speech. https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter To be fair, NYT's motto was ( probably still is ) "All the News that's fit to Print" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-16918787 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-16918787 Reading that resignation letter I wonder who gets to decide if the TRUTH is 'Fit to Print'.
damnyou 6y ago
Fuck this place.
- gotoeleven 6y ago
  Racist AND eugenicist? Wow! How could a plan to give money to everyone be racist AND eugenists! So many -ists and -isms just giving money to people. I had to look it up to see what was so racist AND eugenicist about it. I found his description of it here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-a... I couldn't find any racism or forced sterilization or breeding of a super race in his plan so maybe you're thinking of a different plan?
  - damnyou 6y ago
    Fuck this place.
- username90 6y ago
  To clarify, they want UBI that only applies to people 21 year and older, you could just have said it straight out instead of trying to make it sound worse than it is. Edit: damnyou edited out all his posts. He originally called them out as eugenicists and racists for the style of UBI program they support.
  - damnyou 6y ago
    Fuck this place.
    - thinkingemote 6y ago
      In the states medicine is primarily private and unlike most of Europe not classed as government assistance so you'd use the 10K to pay medical insurance. In the UK your point would be more applicable, UBI brings a lot of uncertainty for healthcare (amongst other things!) Waste management, environment and policing are all things which benefit from a government. Tax seems to be more of a horror to Americans than Europeans and UBI seems to me to be, in the states a tax avoidance strategy, and in the UK it's a strategy to improving social security. Both views miss some complexion
Traster 6y ago
It's kind of strange to watch the prevalence of this victim mentality amongst the 'Rationalists'. The article starts by quoting 5 paragraphs that include calling the blog erudite and funny, interviewing legal scholars about it and referencing rocket scientists who read. Paragraphs that go out of their way to describe the extremely broad range of views of those who read it. This author shows you those 5 paragraphs and concludes by talking 1 sentence out of it and goes "Look! He's calling us white supremacists!". Note the difference, where the author agrees with someone like Damore, he'll go to lengths to say >Damore qualified his claims throughout the infamous memo with language like "may in part explain" But for the NYT, who he just doesn't like, he can ignore 4 straight paragraphs in order to get outraged about the 5th. It's also this bizarre double think - the NYT telling readers that Siskind says the media ignores men being harassed by women is clearly an attempt to get their readers thinking Siskind is some kind of mad extremist. Oh but also, that's actually true and the media does ignore that. Well which is it, are you being discredited for your crazy views, or is the NYT accurately reporting something you do think. Frankly, the way this comes across is a group of people who have convinced themselves that they're going to be called racist and sexist, and as a result whenever someone talks about them at all they respond as if they've been called racist or sexist. The NYT article actually didn't do that, which just makes it bizarre when they react like it did.
- snegu 6y ago
  I think it's important to note that this article was (probably) not written by somebody from the Rationalist movement. It's from a libertarian blog that has its own axe to grind.
seertaak 6y ago
What I find astonishing is the use of the term "Safe Space" - clearly in an attempt to mock Scott Alexander, for -- I guess -- not being "manly" enough. It's really quite funny, in a I-want-to-cry kind of way, that a term invented to protect "sissies" (I count myself among them!) is being used to mock people for their lack of masculinity. Its cynical deployment, here, actually serves to reinforce the very macho stereotypes the term was invented to combat. And all this from a supposed standard bearer of liberal orthodoxy. Metz' cretinitude is surpassed only by his nastiness and shamelessness.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Editors write headlines usually. Safe space seems to refer to the article's claim "voices who might push back were kept at bay". Anything about masculinity is your own imagination.
FeeJai 6y ago
Glad to see that Reason magazine has made it to hacker news. Like Slate Star Codex this is what I consider one of the best researched and most thought through publications

180 points by Bostonian 6y ago

Duh? The NYT writes hit pieces for the establishment; social media (including HN) uses shadowbans to enforce narrative conformity. Manipulation is the norm. Case in point: I was shadowbanned on HN for linking to a video where the BLM founder described BLM as a Marxist organization. It’s her own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw The reason the NYT sees a radical conspiracy behind every bush is that’s how communists act — and the NYT staff are projecting.

humanrebar 6y ago
It's just not helpful to call broad swathes of people "Marxist" to mean something other than specifically Communist in a fashion favored by Marx. Similarly, folks these days call anything they don't like involving wealthy people "capitalism". It just confuses and escalates. I think there's a good point about teleological approaches to politics and history that are increasingly popular. Marxism is a well known category of that. They tend to create unforgiving worldviews and attitudes. Admittedly words like teleological don't have the same rhetorical punch.
- akvadrako 6y ago
  Some of the founders of BLM call themselves Marxist. They partner with pro-communist Chinese groups. And the organisation's platform has a Marxist history. The Black Panthers published a 10-point plan in 1966 which promoted a new form of racial Marxism, which was largely adopted by BLM and was posted as part of their syllabus on their website. They quietly toned it down a few months ago so it's not quite so obvious now.
  - dls2016 6y ago
    So?
    - akvadrako 6y ago
      So there isn't anything incorrect about calling them Marxist.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    BLM is a movement. Not an organization. The organization that owns blacklivesmatter.com is called BLM Global Network Foundation. Few people in the BLM movement pay any attention to the BLMGNF organization.
dahdum 6y ago
> Case in point: I was shadowbanned on HN for linking to a video where the BLM founder described BLM as a Marxist organization. It’s her own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM5zUwiCTzw BLM the organization has diverged pretty drastically from BLM the movement. Linking them together without acknowledging that is a tad manipulative. It's much like the slogan "defund the police" has been watered down from the original meaning. You can't hold those using the term today to the original intent.
- rayiner 6y ago
  The organization is the thing many people are donating money to.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    The organization you're thinking of is named Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Not Black Lives Matter. I believe most people donate to The Movement for Black Lives.
jessaustin 6y ago
Why do you believe "that's how communists act"? Did you learn that in third grade? Imagine if capitalism were tarred with the broad brush of the terrible things that some capitalists have done...
- emergie 6y ago
  > how communists act OP is more or less correct. As a person who lived behind the iron curtain I can recommend you "Captive mind". It is non-fiction set of observations of an intellectual living in a communist regime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captive_Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captive_Mind
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Thank you for the recommendation. This seems like just the sort of book I would enjoy reading. It's not news to anyone that life "behind the iron curtain" had its share of horrors. We anarchists know that life under any giant "national" government is similar, even if particular governments can be better or worse than others. Perhaps my questionable recent reading is to blame, but the first people I thought of when reading about "radical communist conspiracy" were the million Indonesians slaughtered by nationalist military and vigilantes with the firm planning and support of capitalist CIA in 1965 and 1966. These communists had "conspired" to feed the poor and support the existing democratically-elected government. So, blanket statements about communists (or capitalists, or I guess even monarchists), even if motivated by putative life experiences, don't hold much water with me.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

Applejinx 6y ago

That, or it's triggered alt-right folks in a big way.

robin21 6y ago
I would argue what you refer to as “alt-right” is just “what most people thought before 2010 or so”.
- blueflow 6y ago
  I can't believe how we got into this situation - don't people feel shame if "their side" is smearing their opponents? Its this some lack of standards? Don't people sometimes wonder, "what if its us who are the baddies"? Am i missing something here?
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > what if its us who are the baddies What makes this sketch funny is that, no matter how outrageously bad they are, real people never ask this question about themselves.
    - Swenrekcah 6y ago
      That’s too strong of a statement. Those that do ask themselves might then moderate and thus not become the subjects of people’s outrage. They might also be so far down the road of evildoing that every time they do ask themselves, they cling to any excuse that they’re not the baddies.
      - enriquto 6y ago
        > They might also be so far down the road of evildoing that every time they do ask themselves, they cling to any excuse that they’re not the baddies. This describes nearly all of us. You can semi-honestly ask yourself if you are acting good, and mostly about non-essential stuff. But deep down it's just a rhetoric exercise. It is essentially impossible to question your fundamental beliefs. Also, it is easy to verify that this is the case: have you ever held contradictory fundamental beliefs? Not at the same time, of course, but along the years? Like, something that you thought was an immutable basis of your opinion when you were 18, and when you become 35 you think about it and it is obviously wrong. Do you think you were capable at 18 of asking that question to yourself? Do you think you are now capable to do so, regarding your current fundamental thoughts? I may lie and say that I do, but I'm actually incapable to really question my deep beliefs about justice and fairness (even if at some time in the past I held the opposite beliefs!).

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

Yuck! What a ridiculous misrepresentation of the New York Times article. Go read it yourself. I think most people here are familiar enough with the "Rationalist" movement to be able to judge it on its own merits. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-codex-rationalists.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/technology/slate-star-cod... The Rationalist movement is deeply weird. It has curious connections with "race realists" and monarchists. It is deeply insular and rarely survives contact with mainstream scholarship. Eliezer Yudkowsky and other central figures are total crackpots. Any discussion of the movement that leaves those parts out is dishonest. The title is stupid. I'll give 'em that.

gipp 6y ago
Weird, undoubtedly. Think they are smarter than they are? Mostly, yes. "Aligned with race realists and monarchists (?)" Definitely not.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
  >"Aligned with race realists and monarchists (?)" Definitely not. Definitely yes. Ever heard of Moldbug? The dude who claimed the rule of Leopold II (yes, that Leopold II) would be better than our current government? I am not claiming that they are the same movement, but the Dark Enlightenment is closely related to the Rationalist movement. There is a great deal of cross-pollination. The New York Times article is a great jumping-off point to read about this connection! It has several relevant links, including this one that explicitly discusses the monarchists: https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/
  - rjsw 6y ago
    Can't see Leopold II being very popular in Silicon Valley, he would certainly reduce the demand for smartwatches.
    - jessaustin 6y ago

everdrive 6y ago

It would be quite nice if his true name were not further publicized. [edit] I had not realized he had gone fully public with his name, to include blogging under his true name currently.

AzzieElbab 6y ago
I think he is writing under his true name now. That’s why it comes up in google but probably wasnt at a time NYT wanted to reveal it
Tuna-Fish 6y ago
He is now blogging with his full real name at: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/ https://astralcodexten.substack.com/
ArnoVW 6y ago
In the posting he wrote last week he explains that he started writing under his own name because the NYC was about to break his anonymity.

airza 6y ago

It's kinda funny that in his rush to explain why the NYT article is a hit piece, the author has brought his own ideological froth to the forefront. I found a lot of Scott's articles about medicine and psychology to be great, and some of his philosophical musings to be interesting as well. (something that the NYY piece mentions in the first paragraph) But all of the rationalists I have met in life were personally odious, somehow taking that ideology to the logical conclusion that libertarianism was not only the correct way to structure society, but also that disagreeing with it was a moral or intellectual failing. Which, sure, is something that a lot of ideologues would say... but the fact that they confidently claimed to have derived that ideology from first principles made any kind of discussion impossible. :( (I actually agree with Scott's request to remain anonymous though. I guess politics are complex.)

supergarfield 6y ago
Really? I feel like having an opinion based on reasoning from first principles should make discussion easier, because you can try and challenge any element in that explicit chain of reasoning. On the other hand, if someone adheres to ideology X because they feel like it's right, I wouldn't know where to start.
- dmwallin 6y ago
  The problem is their opinion often aren't actually based on first principles. Humans have a strong tendency to form an opinion for various emotional and social reasons, and then build up a set of justifications ex post facto, often without realizing it. The more intelligent you are the easier it is to do subconsciously and it's often harder for your ego to admit the strong role your id played.
  - hardlianotion 6y ago
    But if that is happening, presumably it shows up in your reasoning and can be critiqued.
    - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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corty 6y ago

In their relation with blogs and social media, traditional press is at the "fight" stage of the three-stage Ghandi progression "first they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win". Can't wait for stage three and good riddance, especially seeing how much they are willing to fight dirty and compromise their supposed principles.

themaninthedark 6y ago
I like the Ghandi philosophy but it does not always work out that way. I have seen a couple movements get to step 2 then either fail or give up, Occupy Wallstreet and Anon vs Scientology both come to mind. There is another progression that accurately describes click-bate news: 1. Cause disagreements and strife 2. ??? 3. Profit!

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

The debate about the contents of the blog and ideologies etc. is complex. But here's a simple question - Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? It's just not a nice thing to do, simple as that. It may be easy to find if you go looking, but most people don't have any reason to go looking, so the pen name serves its purpose of providing anonymity. The NYT author makes it seem as if publishing the guys real name in a widely read paper is the same as it being googleable to someone who looks. Its a COMPLETELY different level of exposure. The other key point is that doxxing someone who has been writing anonymously for decades is very different than believing that people should not have the right to write anonymously. Scott began writing under a pseudonym, under the expectation that it would stay anonymous - and so the space of things he said was much more controversial than what it would have been if he expected to be doxxed one day. NYT shows up to the world of blogs 10 years later, knowing nothing and starts pulling the rug out from under people who began writing in a different world, under completely different norms. Its just a shitty, shitty thing to do. > I woke up the next morning to a torrent of online abuse, as did my editor, who was named in the farewell note. My address and phone number were shared by the blog’s readers on Twitter. Protecting the identity of the man behind Slate Star Codex had turned into a cause among the Rationalists. One paragraph after detailing why Scott requested his name to be kept out, the reporter complains about the online abuse he received, which could have easily been prevented by not using real names.

88 6y ago
> Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? I thought the NYT held off publishing the original article, and although the article published in the last week did name him, this was only after Scott relaunched his blog under his real name? I know they were threatening to reveal his name prior to this, but in the end Scott revealed his own identity first.
downandout 6y ago
Why did this reporter have to go and publish Scott's real name when Scott requested him not to? The “why” is easy. The first part of this article makes the reason quite clear. This reporter believed that Scott’s site was giving safe harbor to “white supremacists” while making it hard for “social justice warriors’” voices to be heard [1]. So the reason he was doxxed is in keeping with a recent trend in the media: punish perceived right-leaning people for their views. Drag them out in the public square, and get them fired or at least ensure that their life will never be the same. It’s Mccarthyism, 2021 edition. Welcome to the newly “united” America. [1] The part of the article I am referring to is this: “...The voices also included white supremacists and neo-fascists. The only people who struggled to be heard, Dr. Friedman said, were "social justice warriors.". The author knew that the left-leaning readers of the NYT would be upset over this, and would want to know whom the person behind such a community was so that cancel culture could carry out its duties.

wilsocr88 6y ago

I feel out of the loop for never having read this guy's work before this faux-outrage-turned-scandal, but everything I'm reading of his is great. He's focused, honest, and straightforward, and you can tell her really lets his own voice come out in his writing. It's funny seeing things I've said for 5-10 years come out as mainstream common knowledge, namely that mainstream journalism is either lazy, extremist, or both. When I first said it I was called reactionary, or paranoid.

dandare 6y ago
Same here, never heard of SSC before and I am reading his older articles right now. A true Streisand effect moment.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  I've come from yet another perspective as someone who once read a few SSC articles and found them lacking or outright bad, but this past week, reading more of them has changed my opinion. For sure I disagree with Scott on some fundamental points, but the balance he is able to bring and the nuance he is able to tease out, plus the consideration of ideas which on first glance lead to bad conclusions being shown that need not be the case. I'm far from the typical political persuasion that one might consider to be interested in SSC (check my about text/comments on here) but I think I gain some perspective with the SSC articles I've read that goes beyond pure endless abstract philosophical rumination. So from my point of view, Scott deserves at least one cheer, and probably more. His blog may not stand to the level of academic analysis, but in contrast to the quality of other blogs and especially Twitter style argumentation, it's quite a beacon and his writing style and intellectual charity something to emulate in online discourse.
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y ago
> mainstream journalism is either lazy, extremist, or both More significant than those factors is time pressure and limited staffing. You can have your news fast, cheap, or unbiased. Pick two.
- 6y ago

molbioguy 6y ago

One of the points brought up in the article that I think is becoming pernicious is dicrediting by association. Any view that is also positively regarded by an extremist group (right or left) becomes evidence of the author's support for that group, even though there is no connection between the two. That's kind of like saying Apple must have created iPhones for criminals because they're preferred by drug dealers for their privacy! It would be nice if ideas could be judged on their own merit, not by who likes them.

jaywalk 6y ago
But judging ideas on merit alone is hard. It's much easier to just dismiss ideas you don't like because "bad people" like them.
deleted 6y ago
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kmeisthax 6y ago
You joke, but both people with actual crime-fighting credentials, people in the intelligence community who should know better, and Donald Trump have made that same fallacy regarding iPhones.
testHNac 6y ago
> dicrediting by association. Any view that is also positively regarded by an extremist group (right or left) becomes evidence of the author's support for that group Isn't this quite common in 'Cancel Culture' as well as in 'Hit Piece Journalism' ? You can discredit anyone by portraying them as a single dimensional thought - generally stating their words or actions out of context. Silly Example: A Person X has been seen frequenting a food joint that is participating in alleged inhumane industrial massacre of animals. So we read - The person is an evil animal hater. And so is everyone who has ever eaten at pretty much any fast food chain.

sjg007 6y ago

It’s really entertaining to watch Hacker News devolve and eat itself. It’s like contextual complex and nuanced thinking is impossible among those that self select as hackers. Have we gotten to the point where we can’t hold two opposing views of the same thing in the mind? Absolutism abounds here and while I’d say it is disquieting it’s more so simply sad. Sad in that it’s consistent across all facets of society. We’ve lost our critical thinking skills.

meagher 6y ago

The most troubling part of the NYT article is a glimpse into how hostile some tech folks are towards the idea of journalism: “If things get hot, it may be interesting to sic the Dark Enlightenment audience on a single vulnerable hostile reporter to dox them and turn them inside out with hostile reporting sent to their advertisers/friends/contacts,” Mr. Srinivasan said in an email viewed by The New York Times, using a term, “Dark Enlightenment,” that was synonymous with the neoreactionary movement.

quercusa 6y ago
> how hostile some tech folks are towards the idea of journalism I don't think they are hostile to the idea of journalism per se. It's the current practice they object to.
fallingknife 6y ago
I have never heard of a tech person who is hostile to the idea of journalism, just the terrible implementations that exist in companies like the NYT and Fox News. That quote is just suggesting they do to journalists what journalists do to other people.
- yeetawayhn 6y ago
  > That quote is just suggesting they do to journalists what journalists do to other people. The infamous Richard Nixon quote comes to mind.
  - fallingknife 6y ago
    They didn't tell lies about Nixon.
    - yeetawayhn 6y ago
      I was referring to the "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal", claiming that it's okay for them to do what they do to regular people but not okay for regular people to do the same to them.

dfdx 6y ago

I think it's quite interesting that the NYT hasn't linked Scott's response [1] in their article about him. Surely if their article was written in good faith they would be happy to do so [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-times-article https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...

ardy42 6y ago
> I think it's quite interesting that the NYT hasn't linked Scott's response [1] in their article about him. Surely if their article was written in good faith they would be happy to do so Good faith doesn't mean doing whatever some internet rando thinks is reasonable.

bloaf 6y ago

I think the real summary of Scott Alexander's community was written 80 years ago. https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ > Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy. He has been concerned with general ideas since the age of ten and has one of those minds that can scintillatingly rationalize everything. I have known him for ten years and in that time have heard him enthusiastically explain Marx, social credit, technocracy, Keynesian economics, Chestertonian distributism, and everything else one can imagine. Mr. G will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything. His brain operates quite apart from the rest of his apparatus. He will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along. But Mr. G is always a “deviationist.” When he played with communism he was a Trotskyist; when he talked of Keynes it was to suggest improvement; Chesterton’s economic ideas were all right but he was too bound to Catholic philosophy. So we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged. Now this is not to compare modern liberal sensibilities to naziism, beyond the broadest of generalities such as "they are both political movements." I do think we can see that the modern liberal political body is inclined to purge SA's group of "deviationists" who they see as insufficiently ideologically pure.

jessaustin 6y ago
Ah, nerds are bad. Good to know!
- bloaf 6y ago
  That is the level of understanding that the NYT piece seems to be promoting, but it is not at all my point. The point of the quote I posted is that these "deviationists" do not jump on bandwagons of any kind, be they good or bad. Therefore, political movements that expect uncritical acceptance of their ideas see them as opponents even if they mostly agree.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    I confess I like the summary in your reply a great deal more than the excerpt in your original post. It is a fact about humans that many of them think and perhaps even overthink various topics of import, leading to indecision, ambivalence, sometimes even confusion. Those humans are not worse humans than their brethren who seek only to support what they currently perceive to be their tribe. [EDIT:] In fact I think you have completely misunderstood Dorothy Thompson, since the Nazis were overwhelmingly the latter rather than the former sort of human. A complete reading of her essay is a complete reading of a set of wooden stereotypes, interesting only for the fact that it records the propaganda of an era in which a previously apparently peaceful nation was girding itself for world war. Ms Thompson includes such scintillating analysis as "Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi." Good grief.

peteretep 6y ago

This is just blogspam for Scott’s own piece?

jtdev 6y ago

NY Times in its quest to shame anyone who doesn't fit their uber woke mold is losing readers and credibility. I hope 2021 is the year that we start to reject this braindead culture and start to embrace real journalism and fact based reporting.

testHNac 6y ago
NYT have been losing journalists too. The journos turned on their own - so much for freedom of speech. https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter To be fair, NYT's motto was ( probably still is ) "All the News that's fit to Print" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-16918787 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-16918787 Reading that resignation letter I wonder who gets to decide if the TRUTH is 'Fit to Print'.

damnyou 6y ago

Fuck this place.

gotoeleven 6y ago
Racist AND eugenicist? Wow! How could a plan to give money to everyone be racist AND eugenists! So many -ists and -isms just giving money to people. I had to look it up to see what was so racist AND eugenicist about it. I found his description of it here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-a... I couldn't find any racism or forced sterilization or breeding of a super race in his plan so maybe you're thinking of a different plan?
- damnyou 6y ago
  Fuck this place.
username90 6y ago
To clarify, they want UBI that only applies to people 21 year and older, you could just have said it straight out instead of trying to make it sound worse than it is. Edit: damnyou edited out all his posts. He originally called them out as eugenicists and racists for the style of UBI program they support.
- damnyou 6y ago
  Fuck this place.
  - thinkingemote 6y ago
    In the states medicine is primarily private and unlike most of Europe not classed as government assistance so you'd use the 10K to pay medical insurance. In the UK your point would be more applicable, UBI brings a lot of uncertainty for healthcare (amongst other things!) Waste management, environment and policing are all things which benefit from a government. Tax seems to be more of a horror to Americans than Europeans and UBI seems to me to be, in the states a tax avoidance strategy, and in the UK it's a strategy to improving social security. Both views miss some complexion

Traster 6y ago

It's kind of strange to watch the prevalence of this victim mentality amongst the 'Rationalists'. The article starts by quoting 5 paragraphs that include calling the blog erudite and funny, interviewing legal scholars about it and referencing rocket scientists who read. Paragraphs that go out of their way to describe the extremely broad range of views of those who read it. This author shows you those 5 paragraphs and concludes by talking 1 sentence out of it and goes "Look! He's calling us white supremacists!". Note the difference, where the author agrees with someone like Damore, he'll go to lengths to say >Damore qualified his claims throughout the infamous memo with language like "may in part explain" But for the NYT, who he just doesn't like, he can ignore 4 straight paragraphs in order to get outraged about the 5th. It's also this bizarre double think - the NYT telling readers that Siskind says the media ignores men being harassed by women is clearly an attempt to get their readers thinking Siskind is some kind of mad extremist. Oh but also, that's actually true and the media does ignore that. Well which is it, are you being discredited for your crazy views, or is the NYT accurately reporting something you do think. Frankly, the way this comes across is a group of people who have convinced themselves that they're going to be called racist and sexist, and as a result whenever someone talks about them at all they respond as if they've been called racist or sexist. The NYT article actually didn't do that, which just makes it bizarre when they react like it did.

snegu 6y ago
I think it's important to note that this article was (probably) not written by somebody from the Rationalist movement. It's from a libertarian blog that has its own axe to grind.

seertaak 6y ago

What I find astonishing is the use of the term "Safe Space" - clearly in an attempt to mock Scott Alexander, for -- I guess -- not being "manly" enough. It's really quite funny, in a I-want-to-cry kind of way, that a term invented to protect "sissies" (I count myself among them!) is being used to mock people for their lack of masculinity. Its cynical deployment, here, actually serves to reinforce the very macho stereotypes the term was invented to combat. And all this from a supposed standard bearer of liberal orthodoxy. Metz' cretinitude is surpassed only by his nastiness and shamelessness.

pseudalopex 6y ago
Editors write headlines usually. Safe space seems to refer to the article's claim "voices who might push back were kept at bay". Anything about masculinity is your own imagination.

FeeJai 6y ago

Glad to see that Reason magazine has made it to hacker news. Like Slate Star Codex this is what I consider one of the best researched and most thought through publications