8 ms·

Notes on the Slate Star Codex Controversy

82 points by razin 6y ago

jhpriestley 6y ago
Siskind endorsed nazi race science ("human bio-diversity") in a leaked email. The NY times piece hit the nail on the head. https://mobile.twitter.com/arsonatdennys/status/1362153191102677001 https://mobile.twitter.com/arsonatdennys/status/136215319110...
- fallingknife 6y ago
  I don't see anything in there about nazi race science.
  - Veen 6y ago
    HBD is human biodiversity, which is considered by some on the left to be a euphemism for "black people aren't as clever as white people" and aligned with eugenics. In fact, it's the study of human genetic variation [0], which has many implications for fields such as healthcare. As you can imagine, it's an extremely sensitive subject which is widely mischaracterized by people on both the left and the right for their own political ends. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation
    - jhpriestley 6y ago
      Hmm, which geneticist coined the term? Oh, it was VDARE contributor Steve Sailer? The one who writes about black genetic inferiority and Jewish control of the media?
      - jojobas 6y ago
        Well, Jews are 3x over-represented in US Congress and to a variable degree in other high-effort, high-reward areas such as law and yes, media management. Unless you'd suspect a conspiracy, there has to be a genetic or a cultural reason for that and the problem with that is that any such reason could plausibly apply to Black Americans.
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        Biodiversity implies it isn't cultural.
        jojobas 6y ago
        Adoption studies also don't suggest that. Ashkenazi Jews seem to actually have a different brain model.
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        Different brain model? Just say genetic if you mean genetic.
        jojobas 6y ago
        Yes, a genetically different brain model. https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jb...
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        Brain model doesn't seem to be a common term. The linked paper uses the word model several times but not in a way that matches how used it. I'm not going to debate the paper. For the benefit of anyone else reading here's a rebuttal.[1] I suggest reading both. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20131029200900/https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/How%20Jews%20Became%20Smart%20(2008).pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20131029200900/https://www.ncas.r...
      - Veen 6y ago
        No, it was probably the anthropologist Jonathan Marks, in his 1995 book entitled, curiously enough, Human Biodiversity.
        jhpriestley 6y ago
        Ah, you're right, Marks clarifies that racists appropriated the term he coined (http://anthropomics2.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-coined-phrase-human-biodiversity.html?m=1 http://anthropomics2.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-coined-phrase-hu...). Siskind obviously was referring to the nazi/alt-right/nrx meaning of the term, associated with Sailer, though.
    - jojobas 6y ago
      To all the people who consider these ideas criminal, a little thought experiment: A tribe has been discovered that is a close approximation of Homo heidelbergensis. They have basic language (100 words or so) and craft brutish tools, but, whatever you do, do not advance further than a 10 year old Homo sapiens in most areas of their mental development, however are way more aggressive and physically strong. Babies adopted into H. sapiens show improvement, but still markedly fall behind, never able to learn to read. What should the public policy with regards to these people be? Should they be considered sui juris and generally held to the standards of the rest of the world? Should they be isolated and forbidden for contact? Alternatively, a gene has been discovered in 0.01% of humans that, if present in 2 copies, produces an Einstein of sorts, less childhood problems. Should the carriers of the gene be allowed to seek each other out? What should be the policy towards the lucky 25% of their children?
      - wizzwizz4 6y ago
        My take: this is a tricky ethical dilemma that we should thoroughly explore in fiction. I'm glad its premise is incredibly unlikely, but the future is scary and might need a solution to the problem.
        jojobas 6y ago
        That's a copout, not a take.
        wizzwizz4 6y ago
        It's an admission that I don't know the answers. Honestly, I'm suspicious of somebody who claims to have the answers, here; they'd have to have a pretty darn good argument behind it, because people have been trying to solve this since before WWII.
      - jhpriestley 6y ago
        What bearing does this thought experiment have on our reality, where Nazi race science is completely false and discredited?
  - topmerren 6y ago
    The automatic characterization of examining human biodiversity as "Nazi race science" is a little concerning to me. While I understand that 95% of the people intrigued by HBD probably aren't in it for the sake of biology as much as they are for the sake of bigotry, I feel that Scott's treatment of it in that email was fairly reasonable. I certainly don't know enough about genetics, nature vs nurture, impacts of socioeconomics and culture, etc. to have an opinion on HBD, but I'm tentatively willing to acknowledge that there are probably at least two people groups in the world whose brains have adapted differently to different problem domains (though I'm strongly opposed to the idea that those two groups are "black people in the USA" and "white people in the USA"). If this wasn't true, it would be surprising enough to me that I'd need reasonable evidence to the contrary. If it is true, then it's likely significant, and needs to be talked about with the appropriate level of discourse. From his other writing, I feel like Scott understands this, and him limiting his statement on HBD to an email is due to the fact that it's incredibly hard to do so responsibly, and incredibly scary - e.g. my green account and the fact I fired up Tor to write this.
Aqueous 6y ago
He admits ‘At some point Scott would have to choose which role he wanted to play full time.’ And then immediately negates himself by saying ‘But that should have been his decision. What right did the New York Times have to make that decision for him?’ The answer is: because they are a newspaper. I dislike NYT as much as anyone (mostly because of their focus on access journalism). But The New York Times is still a newspaper. Their job is to report the news, and much of the time they do so it is against the personal or professional interests of the people they are reporting on. in many cases not reporting the news against those interests would actually be a violation of their own professional ethics. It is not their job to help someone tightrope walk the ethics of their profession in the precarious way they’ve chosen. The author here admits that the anonymous blogger at the center of this controversy is walking such a tightrope, at their own risk. Isn’t that on them? lots of people would like to remain anonymous. would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to? wouldn’t that be the opposite of journalism? so what’s different here? the fact that we are ok with or even admire what the subject is doing? and why should the ny times care about that?
- Hammershaft 6y ago
  I think that people were frustrated with the large inconsistencies in how the NYT handled that policy.
- kenniskrag 6y ago
  > Their job is to report the news I think they should report news of public interest. Is he of public interst has to be discussed?
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  > would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to? I think there's a structural difference between anonymity in actions and anonymity in writing, where in actions it is easy to leverage resources from one persona to benefit in the other, hence anonymity providing you with a structural advantage. But writing generally rests only on your skill as a writer, not your financial or political resources. The one case where writing benefits structurally from political resources in your de-anonymized persona is whistleblowing - a situation where journalists do their level best to keep people anonymous! Likewise, I think there's a difference between a newspaper trying to drag corruption into the light, and a newspaper, made up by writers, depriving another writer of a layer of protection, against community norms and their own standard, in order to (or at least accepting the risk to) destroy their livelihood. The NYT and Scott Alexander are not in direct competition, but it's still hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to bring harm on a fellow writer for their own gain. In other words, the goal of a newspaper should be to increase the views and voices available to the public, not to shut them up.
CompelTechnic 6y ago
>the hunter, logger, and geologist will walk through the same patch of wilderness and see an entirely different forest, for each eye is trained to notice something different. The more abstract the things observed the greater individual variance there will be. For intangible social processes like market exchange, mass movements, and elections, our understanding is all model, no matter. I really like this snippet. Captures an idea I hadn't ever been able to put into words before.
- slibhb 6y ago
  By using that analogy, the author puts himself above his subjects. He understands various perspectives (reporters, editors, rationalists, SV "decentralization" fanatics), and that they are mere perspectives, while also acknowledging their relative validity. This entails a meta-perspective, a perspective-of-perspectives. This kind of consciousness is why people like Scott Alexander: he makes an attempt to understand other people's perspectives and rarely dismisses anything out of hand. The questions is...why is this sort of consciousness, that understands the relative validity of virtually everyone's perspective, so uncommon outside of various internet blogs? Is it too much to ask for editors and reporters with this kind of open-mindedness?
  - fallingknife 6y ago
    This perspective is what high end journalism like the NYT should be, but clearly isn't. I think that part of why the NYT has it in for Scott Alexander is because they know he is light years better than them.
  - tux3 6y ago
    It's possible that too much openness has a failure mode in indecisiveness, and acceptance of any and everything. Not dismissing people's perspectives is one thing, but if you cannot actually understand them, will that really help you make better decisions, or are you getting lost by adding more complex dimensions to a problem you already barely understand? Open-mindedness is beneficial in general, but it cannot be blind. Some perspectives are just wrong. How do you cut through the noise?
sbilstein 6y ago
Anyone could literally find out scott alexander siskind worked at the walnut creek PCPA by a google search or two years before the NYTimes outed him. As an occasional SSC reader I thought it was disingenuous of him to claim an 'outing' when he self-admittedly didn't try very hard (at all? just not usually using his last name?) to cover his tracks.
- np_tedious 6y ago
  All of this is true, but I do think this "outing" still means something. My hackernews account here is "anonymous", but not carefully so. I'm sure any dedicated reporter could figure out who I am (I have no pretensions that I would ever merit attention like this). Still, if one decided to out me after I asked them not to AND it didn't even really advance the story, I would indeed feel violated. And I'm not a therapist with patients to consider, I'm an IC FAANG grunt.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  Again: The point was not to break the Alexander -> Siskind link, but to break the Siskind -> Alexander link. Barring death threats, Alexander didn't care whether readers found out where he lived, but whether patients found his blog on the first page of Google.
- malf 6y ago
  Did a search for “Scott Alexander Siskind” lead to SSC?
- pliny 6y ago
  I think his spiel has been that while blog readers could trivially find out his real name, but his patients could not (searching 'scott siskind' wouldn't bring up his blog in the first n page of results), until this association was made in the NYT. If you search that now the first two results are the wiki for SSC and the NYT stories, and if you look in the wiki for SSC you'll see that his real name was kept off of it (despite weekly-ish edits attempting to re-add his name) up until the NYT story.
  - 6y ago
newacct583 6y ago
I can't find anything in that treatment I'd actually want to argue with. This sounds pretty much exactly right to me. That said, here is as good an example as I am aware of for why the left-leaning world finds rationalists so outrageously exhausting. Including footnotes (footnotes!), this is a seven thousand word treatise on what can only be called a minor quibble. A psychiatrist wrote an anonymous blog, got outed, and doesn't actually seem to have been harmed much in practice. He's back to writing rationalist stuff under his own name. Yet... this is somehow an existential thing we need to revisit (pg himself tweeted out this story this morning) again and again and again? This is where the rest of us just throw up our hands. The whole idea of the rationalist perspective is that it's supposed to be detached from parochial loyalty. It's supposed to be about real problems and real solutions that affect real people in real ways. And... when push comes to shove, it's not. It's just another tribe, waging just another tribal war. The fact that Alexander was wronged here is real. The idea that his wronging is of existential importance is just not remotely "rationalist". At all.
- hawkice 6y ago
  Plenty of people in that community have written at length about how "rational" only applies to "understanding true factual statements" or "achieving your goals". No end goal is irrational. There is nothing you can care about where someone can correct you and say you ought not to care because "rationality". I feel this community generates more reading comprehension failures in the general public than almost any other.
  - newacct583 6y ago
    Isn't reporting the identity of an anonymous author a "true factual statement" important to understand his "goals" though? I mean, I agree this article was bad, but reporting it looks pretty rationalist to me. I'm not saying you "shouldn't care" about this. I'm saying the fact that you clearly care so deeply is evidence that "rationalism" is largely a fraud. You want rationalism except when you get criticized, then you want a safe space.
    - 6y ago
Sebb767 6y ago
Good article! Regarding question two ("was the article misrepresenting SA/the rationalists"), a bit of the misunderstanding is cultural, I think. The NYT article makes heavy use of (what seems to be) guilt by association, i.e. he is in the same scene as "known bad" Peter Thiel etc.. While this is an accepted argument in some circles, it is frowned upon a lot in the rationalist community and seen as cheap smear. I think this is a major point on why opinions diverge on the article and why it is seen as malicious by so many people.
- xkcd-sucks 6y ago
  Bad practice among rationalists, dogma to intelligence, adtech etc... the root of conflict becomes clear
bondarchuk 6y ago
Regarding point 3, the argumentation given about framing and narrative just supports the hit job claim IMHO. Part of the NYT narrative is that anyone who doesn't support the narrative is an enemy. Writing a piece within that frame about someone who does not toe the line almost automatically turns it into a hit piece.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I really appreciated Matthew Yglesias’s take on this a couple of weeks ago. Highly recommended: https://www.slowboring.com/p/slate-star-codex https://www.slowboring.com/p/slate-star-codex
webnrrd2k 6y ago
There has been a long tradition of people writing books under pseudonyms. I don't think the NYT has made it a point to publish, for e.g., every book review with the author's actual name. I honestly don't see why publishing a rather non-controversial blog should be different.
- webnrrd2k 6y ago
  This was my attempt to answer the question: was it ok to 'out' Scott Alexander? I don't mind that someone disagrees - I expect disagreement - but please explain the downvotes. Was it because SSC was somehow exceptionally controversial? Are there some special circumstances that would prevent the usual sort of anonymity extended to, say, any book author that talked about personal mental health problems? I think that what I'm trying to say is that there have been many reasons given, some better some worse, but I personally find this one the most compelling. Anonymity is commonly extended to authors of books, and the fact checking doesn't necessarily need to break that anonymity. So why is this case so different?
  - eternalban 6y ago
    Content matter is not the primary concern for censors. If you consider, for example, that most content comprehension is subjective anyway, it should be clear that what is the concern is the establishment of authoritative and/or trusted voices. [p.s. i.e. this sort of establishment behavior leaks insider knowledge of what it takes to shape opinions in human society. Answer: the soap box.] related: Killing the chicken to scare monkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_chicken_to_scare_the_monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_chicken_to_scare_the_... So not a "CEO" just an unfortunte internet chicken that has been used to obliquely instruct unkown monkeys with aspirations to taking up 'The Pen'. (Remember, that mightier than kinetic weaponry instrument of the intelligent?) Call it a 'hit job rehearsal'.
    - webnrrd2k 6y ago
      I'm not really familiar with the chicken/monkey metaphor, but it seems to be about "making an example out of someone in order to threaten others". So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that Scott was made an example of in order for the NYT to scare him and stop his writing, with the end goal of preserving their authority? Honestly, it sounds very broad and rather conspiratorial. I'm really not clear on the scope of your statements. Maybe I could believe that it's a clash of cultures thing, where a qualitative culture (typified by, say, Liberal Arts/English majors) is in conflict with quantitative STEM/Engineering culture. But I don't think that's what you mean. Am I wrong?
nabla9 6y ago
>For a public intellectual like Will Wilkinson all press is good press; he lives in a world of ceaseless self-promotion, and is not properly situated to understand what being targeted by an international media outlet feels like for folks outside of that world. Will Wilkinson was fired few weeks ago based on one tweet. He knows. He has also been close to the rationalist community from the start and has no ill will. He is in good position to criticize and he does it well. His criticism probably hurts most because it's so insightful.
matthewdgreen 6y ago
> Here is where I break ranks with the rationalists: all the talk about “hit jobs” is silly and conspiratorial. I don't think the "hit job" conspiracy theories are silly, I think they're a big deal. The conspiracy theorizing in the rationalist community right now is what worries me about the way that they're trending. Remember that this is a community that has a great deal to say about the downside of cognitive biases on their entire thought process, and specifically identifies conspiracies and tribalism as biases that can distort our perceptions. Yet the community seems to increasingly be awash in exactly the biases that they identify as most toxic. This is not some small concern, it's a problem that undermines the entire project. And while I agree that "rationalists" aren't some sort of Illuminati that controls Silicon Valley, they've certainly got enough of a following that a "Scientology" level culthood could emerge out of the group if they allow this to happen. I think that there is a dark timeline where that could really happen, and it would be a lousy outcome, especially since I have friends and colleagues who are attracted to this community. TL;DR: I don't know if the NYT is the problem here, but I wish the community would spend more time thinking about its own tendency to identify conspiracy theories and close ranks against the "outgroup" and put serious thought into how they're going to fight this. Because this is antithetical to the purpose of the entire project.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  But what if it's true? Just calling something a "conspiracy theory" doesn't make it false. "The NYT is doing hit jobs on their ideological opponents" is a pretty mainstream opinion at this point, it's really pretty tame as far as alleged conspiracies go.
lalaland1125 6y ago
For the opposite side of this, I highly recommend that people read http://eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method/ http://eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill..., which does a thorough explanation of why Scott is a bad writer and how he promotes incorrect and damaging views. Scott's entire game is to use rhetoric to support poorly backed hypotheses like "feminism is terrible". There was literally a women in the rationalist community who committed suicide due to harassment and Scott's first reaction was to insinuate that all of her accusations were false.
- viburnum 6y ago
  It’s sad that so many people think this creep is intelligent just because he overwrites so badly.
- dexen 6y ago
  The essay begins with a thought-terminating cliche in the third paragraph: >This is someone who repeatedly speaks admiringly of Charles Murray, puts Nick Land, Razib Khan, and various other fashy types on his blogroll, and openly advocates eugenics. >The claim that he’s troublingly invested in racist bullshit is straightforward and, frankly, uninteresting; anyone trying to dispute it has a disingenuous agenda most likely involving racist bullshit. Ironically enough, the essay throws an accusation of "tedious Gish gallop working its way through a host of minor claims" into the mix, also in the same third out of 100-odd paragraphs. Thank you for providing a morning chuckle.
  - lalaland1125 6y ago
    You might want to try reading the article more carefully. The author is giving his quick explanation of why they aren't going to discuss the race stuff. Of course it's a "thought-terminating cliche", the author is explicitly terminating that particular discussion quickly to move onto the topic that they want to discuss. The focus of the essay is to thoroughly explore Scott's rhetoric and views on feminism.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
viburnum 6y ago
People are mad that you get criticized for being racist. The obvious solution is to stop being racist.
chmod600 6y ago
If we frame this era as a struggle for power between the media and everyone else (at least all the other poeple who have power to lose), I think the picture gets clearer. I am not saying that's the only valid way to frame a complex world, just that it clarifies a lot of the important battles. If you ask me, the media has taken way too much power and that's bad for everyone. It might feel like a victory when Trump is taken down, but as we see here, the power can and will be turned against anyone.
- covidthrow 6y ago
  I'm not sure if you're being downvoted because readers disagree that media has too much power, uses that power inappropriately, or the resolution they infer from your last paragraph. However, I think it's clear that many media institutions have abused their power upon the foundation of their seminal integrity. They've had the power for a long time—and have instances of abuse—but not like we've seen the last few years. The notion that they have "too much" power, however, is a very, very dangerous one. Any forcible resolution for this is—or should be—unpalatable. (And that's usually the insinuation when one discusses "too much" anything.) It's clear that we need a reckoning among the people to help shift perception of what is deemed appropriate forms of news. I don't know that's possible in the current state of our culture, though. The technological landscape has transformed the psyche of the people with such rapidity and force the likes of which has never been seen on this planet. Some self-aware individuals recognize the psychological dangers of our current state and choose not to participate, but I don't know that there's enough of them to make a difference. Laziness, depersonalization, greed, envy... these are all rampant within our online communities, and all forms of media prey on our vulnerability to them. The world has largely transformed to a seething mass of unsustainable behavior. While the media has the power to at least influence a healthy message, they're desperately trying to maintain control... fire with fire. The only ethical response to this is rejection. Rejection of communities that engage in unhealthy behavior. Rejection of media that engage in unhealthy behavior. Rejection in general of the unhealthy behavior. Fortunately, a lot of people who grew up in the world before this insanity took over see how bad it's gotten. Others are burned and leave. Some never got involved. The best we can hope for is rapid acceleration to such a degree that people reject the forms of messaging that have taken the world, en masse. At this rate, that actually may happen. The worst that could happen would be one of either forceful rejection or such a slow burn that not enough jump ship. Who knows what will happen, but we have at most one or two generations for the majority to recognize this or the well is poisoned. For all the worry about global warming or communism or fascism or whatever, very few seem too concerned about the implosion that's been growing the last couple decades. I hate to use the phrase, "but this time it's different," because it's usually not. But this global connection that's been abused to infect our minds by charlatans is truly unprecedented in scale, force, and insidiousness. The world is increasingly addicted to new forms of mind drugs that are anything but apparent, and their use are rationalized, increasingly less optional, and devastatingly subversive. I know I sound like a madman, but if the state of our modern communities—in parallel with the growth of global connectedness over the last decade—doesn't reveal the cause, I challenge anyone to provide an alternative explanation. The internet is quite possibly the most wonderful and most insidious development by the human mind, ever. To enable and amplify the best and the worst of humanity is truly unique, and at such a devastating scale. And I don't think the human race is is equipped do anything but abuse it for the worst. Disclosure: I am a former singularitarian fast turning luddite.
cannabis_sam 6y ago
It’s a bit funny that the main defender of NYT that this article puts forward is a co-founder of gawker of all things. A journalist that then promptly proceeds to explain that it’s the interviewee’s fault that a journalist misrepresents them, with a strange paternalistic argument about this being “how journalism works”. Literally Every Single Person I have talked to about being interviewed have described the exact same experience, the journalist misrepresented what they said. Maybe, just maybe, the common factor here are the journalists? But journalist are completely unable to understand this point-of-view, because they view themselves as the righteous defenders of “the truth”.
abecedarius 6y ago
> Was it a premeditated “hit job” or revenge piece? Or is there a better explanation for what happened? The OP offers as the better explanation that the NYT had a narrative for the piece to fit; and that narrative should not be seen as retaliation, because the trouble SSC gave them was beneath their notice. This might be right, I don't know, but how do you square it with all the sources saying Metz told them he was researching a basically positive piece on the rationalists being right early about the pandemic? Was he just lying? (E.g. this post by Scott Aaronson, C-f for "Cade": https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310) Also, it's not clear that the paper or the writer would only retaliate against a party viewed as powerful -- you don't necessarily see swatting a mosquito as not worth the effort; it's not as if a negative story is more work than a neutral one. Does anyone know more about when papers write hit pieces and when they don't?
- zozbot234 6y ago
  The whole thing is just so weird to me, that it's just hard to even know what a convincing explanation might look like. My current best guess is that the NYTimes journalist felt that they had to write something after the whole kerfuffle we're all too familiar with, and somehow all they managed to come up with was that really sad piece of SneerClub-grade innuendo. You could call it a "revenge" piece from that POV but that's really pushing it, even calling it a hit piece goes way too far. The New Yorker actually published a way more respectable critical piece on Scott, many months before the NYTimes did.
- abecedarius 6y ago
  similar objection from Eliezer Yudkowsky: https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1366120488972427264 https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1366120488972427264
- philwelch 6y ago
  > This might be right, I don't know, but how do you square it with all the sources saying Metz told them he was researching a basically positive piece on the rationalists being right early about the pandemic? Was he just lying? Why wouldn't he be lying? Talking to journalists is like talking to the police. They will play nice with you to get you talking, and then use whatever you say however they want.
kodah 6y ago
> By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line. Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?” I'm shocked this is the case, though I've felt this has been the case. I don't know how one "speaks truth to power" when talking about narratives. It gives the NYT a very Game of Thrones feel, but more like the South Park version with reporting like this in mind. Secondarily, as the author points out, people are looking for place to punch. This the author sets up a dichotomy of "up" for people more powerful and "down" for people less powerful. The problem with power is that it's very perspective based. The author lays out some criteria but even that doesn't seem enough. If you have a Silicon Valley SWE who has saved up $5M and done nothing political, but has a popular blog talking about software and investing, are you entitled to fix them and frame them as you wish? Personally, I have gravitated away from the idea of "punching" because as the author later alludes, punching implies a use of perspective which can change. Your punch cannot though, once send is hit, that is it. > the hunter, logger, and geologist will walk through the same patch of wilderness and see an entirely different forest, for each eye is trained to notice something different. The more abstract the things observed the greater individual variance there will be. For intangible social processes like market exchange, mass movements, and elections, our understanding is all model, no matter. I really liked this perspective, it was very thought provoking. It's always perplexed me why people can witness the same things and derive such different perspectives. It doesn't put those perspectives at less competition with each other, but it does make them more understandable.

82 points by razin 6y ago

Siskind endorsed nazi race science ("human bio-diversity") in a leaked email. The NY times piece hit the nail on the head. https://mobile.twitter.com/arsonatdennys/status/1362153191102677001 https://mobile.twitter.com/arsonatdennys/status/136215319110...

fallingknife 6y ago
I don't see anything in there about nazi race science.
- Veen 6y ago
  HBD is human biodiversity, which is considered by some on the left to be a euphemism for "black people aren't as clever as white people" and aligned with eugenics. In fact, it's the study of human genetic variation [0], which has many implications for fields such as healthcare. As you can imagine, it's an extremely sensitive subject which is widely mischaracterized by people on both the left and the right for their own political ends. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation
  - jhpriestley 6y ago
    Hmm, which geneticist coined the term? Oh, it was VDARE contributor Steve Sailer? The one who writes about black genetic inferiority and Jewish control of the media?
    - jojobas 6y ago
      Well, Jews are 3x over-represented in US Congress and to a variable degree in other high-effort, high-reward areas such as law and yes, media management. Unless you'd suspect a conspiracy, there has to be a genetic or a cultural reason for that and the problem with that is that any such reason could plausibly apply to Black Americans.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        Biodiversity implies it isn't cultural.
        jojobas 6y ago
        Adoption studies also don't suggest that. Ashkenazi Jews seem to actually have a different brain model.
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        Different brain model? Just say genetic if you mean genetic.
        jojobas 6y ago
        Yes, a genetically different brain model. https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf https://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jb...
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        Brain model doesn't seem to be a common term. The linked paper uses the word model several times but not in a way that matches how used it. I'm not going to debate the paper. For the benefit of anyone else reading here's a rebuttal.[1] I suggest reading both. [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20131029200900/https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/How%20Jews%20Became%20Smart%20(2008).pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20131029200900/https://www.ncas.r...
    - Veen 6y ago
      No, it was probably the anthropologist Jonathan Marks, in his 1995 book entitled, curiously enough, Human Biodiversity.
      - jhpriestley 6y ago
        Ah, you're right, Marks clarifies that racists appropriated the term he coined (http://anthropomics2.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-coined-phrase-human-biodiversity.html?m=1 http://anthropomics2.blogspot.com/2019/12/i-coined-phrase-hu...). Siskind obviously was referring to the nazi/alt-right/nrx meaning of the term, associated with Sailer, though.
  - jojobas 6y ago
    To all the people who consider these ideas criminal, a little thought experiment: A tribe has been discovered that is a close approximation of Homo heidelbergensis. They have basic language (100 words or so) and craft brutish tools, but, whatever you do, do not advance further than a 10 year old Homo sapiens in most areas of their mental development, however are way more aggressive and physically strong. Babies adopted into H. sapiens show improvement, but still markedly fall behind, never able to learn to read. What should the public policy with regards to these people be? Should they be considered sui juris and generally held to the standards of the rest of the world? Should they be isolated and forbidden for contact? Alternatively, a gene has been discovered in 0.01% of humans that, if present in 2 copies, produces an Einstein of sorts, less childhood problems. Should the carriers of the gene be allowed to seek each other out? What should be the policy towards the lucky 25% of their children?
    - wizzwizz4 6y ago
      My take: this is a tricky ethical dilemma that we should thoroughly explore in fiction. I'm glad its premise is incredibly unlikely, but the future is scary and might need a solution to the problem.
      - jojobas 6y ago
        That's a copout, not a take.
        wizzwizz4 6y ago
        It's an admission that I don't know the answers. Honestly, I'm suspicious of somebody who claims to have the answers, here; they'd have to have a pretty darn good argument behind it, because people have been trying to solve this since before WWII.
    - jhpriestley 6y ago
      What bearing does this thought experiment have on our reality, where Nazi race science is completely false and discredited?
- topmerren 6y ago
  The automatic characterization of examining human biodiversity as "Nazi race science" is a little concerning to me. While I understand that 95% of the people intrigued by HBD probably aren't in it for the sake of biology as much as they are for the sake of bigotry, I feel that Scott's treatment of it in that email was fairly reasonable. I certainly don't know enough about genetics, nature vs nurture, impacts of socioeconomics and culture, etc. to have an opinion on HBD, but I'm tentatively willing to acknowledge that there are probably at least two people groups in the world whose brains have adapted differently to different problem domains (though I'm strongly opposed to the idea that those two groups are "black people in the USA" and "white people in the USA"). If this wasn't true, it would be surprising enough to me that I'd need reasonable evidence to the contrary. If it is true, then it's likely significant, and needs to be talked about with the appropriate level of discourse. From his other writing, I feel like Scott understands this, and him limiting his statement on HBD to an email is due to the fact that it's incredibly hard to do so responsibly, and incredibly scary - e.g. my green account and the fact I fired up Tor to write this.

Aqueous 6y ago

He admits ‘At some point Scott would have to choose which role he wanted to play full time.’ And then immediately negates himself by saying ‘But that should have been his decision. What right did the New York Times have to make that decision for him?’ The answer is: because they are a newspaper. I dislike NYT as much as anyone (mostly because of their focus on access journalism). But The New York Times is still a newspaper. Their job is to report the news, and much of the time they do so it is against the personal or professional interests of the people they are reporting on. in many cases not reporting the news against those interests would actually be a violation of their own professional ethics. It is not their job to help someone tightrope walk the ethics of their profession in the precarious way they’ve chosen. The author here admits that the anonymous blogger at the center of this controversy is walking such a tightrope, at their own risk. Isn’t that on them? lots of people would like to remain anonymous. would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to? wouldn’t that be the opposite of journalism? so what’s different here? the fact that we are ok with or even admire what the subject is doing? and why should the ny times care about that?

Hammershaft 6y ago
I think that people were frustrated with the large inconsistencies in how the NYT handled that policy.
kenniskrag 6y ago
> Their job is to report the news I think they should report news of public interest. Is he of public interst has to be discussed?
FeepingCreature 6y ago
> would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to? I think there's a structural difference between anonymity in actions and anonymity in writing, where in actions it is easy to leverage resources from one persona to benefit in the other, hence anonymity providing you with a structural advantage. But writing generally rests only on your skill as a writer, not your financial or political resources. The one case where writing benefits structurally from political resources in your de-anonymized persona is whistleblowing - a situation where journalists do their level best to keep people anonymous! Likewise, I think there's a difference between a newspaper trying to drag corruption into the light, and a newspaper, made up by writers, depriving another writer of a layer of protection, against community norms and their own standard, in order to (or at least accepting the risk to) destroy their livelihood. The NYT and Scott Alexander are not in direct competition, but it's still hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to bring harm on a fellow writer for their own gain. In other words, the goal of a newspaper should be to increase the views and voices available to the public, not to shut them up.

CompelTechnic 6y ago

>the hunter, logger, and geologist will walk through the same patch of wilderness and see an entirely different forest, for each eye is trained to notice something different. The more abstract the things observed the greater individual variance there will be. For intangible social processes like market exchange, mass movements, and elections, our understanding is all model, no matter. I really like this snippet. Captures an idea I hadn't ever been able to put into words before.

slibhb 6y ago
By using that analogy, the author puts himself above his subjects. He understands various perspectives (reporters, editors, rationalists, SV "decentralization" fanatics), and that they are mere perspectives, while also acknowledging their relative validity. This entails a meta-perspective, a perspective-of-perspectives. This kind of consciousness is why people like Scott Alexander: he makes an attempt to understand other people's perspectives and rarely dismisses anything out of hand. The questions is...why is this sort of consciousness, that understands the relative validity of virtually everyone's perspective, so uncommon outside of various internet blogs? Is it too much to ask for editors and reporters with this kind of open-mindedness?
- fallingknife 6y ago
  This perspective is what high end journalism like the NYT should be, but clearly isn't. I think that part of why the NYT has it in for Scott Alexander is because they know he is light years better than them.
- tux3 6y ago
  It's possible that too much openness has a failure mode in indecisiveness, and acceptance of any and everything. Not dismissing people's perspectives is one thing, but if you cannot actually understand them, will that really help you make better decisions, or are you getting lost by adding more complex dimensions to a problem you already barely understand? Open-mindedness is beneficial in general, but it cannot be blind. Some perspectives are just wrong. How do you cut through the noise?

sbilstein 6y ago

Anyone could literally find out scott alexander siskind worked at the walnut creek PCPA by a google search or two years before the NYTimes outed him. As an occasional SSC reader I thought it was disingenuous of him to claim an 'outing' when he self-admittedly didn't try very hard (at all? just not usually using his last name?) to cover his tracks.

np_tedious 6y ago
All of this is true, but I do think this "outing" still means something. My hackernews account here is "anonymous", but not carefully so. I'm sure any dedicated reporter could figure out who I am (I have no pretensions that I would ever merit attention like this). Still, if one decided to out me after I asked them not to AND it didn't even really advance the story, I would indeed feel violated. And I'm not a therapist with patients to consider, I'm an IC FAANG grunt.
FeepingCreature 6y ago
Again: The point was not to break the Alexander -> Siskind link, but to break the Siskind -> Alexander link. Barring death threats, Alexander didn't care whether readers found out where he lived, but whether patients found his blog on the first page of Google.
malf 6y ago
Did a search for “Scott Alexander Siskind” lead to SSC?
pliny 6y ago
I think his spiel has been that while blog readers could trivially find out his real name, but his patients could not (searching 'scott siskind' wouldn't bring up his blog in the first n page of results), until this association was made in the NYT. If you search that now the first two results are the wiki for SSC and the NYT stories, and if you look in the wiki for SSC you'll see that his real name was kept off of it (despite weekly-ish edits attempting to re-add his name) up until the NYT story.
- 6y ago

newacct583 6y ago

I can't find anything in that treatment I'd actually want to argue with. This sounds pretty much exactly right to me. That said, here is as good an example as I am aware of for why the left-leaning world finds rationalists so outrageously exhausting. Including footnotes (footnotes!), this is a seven thousand word treatise on what can only be called a minor quibble. A psychiatrist wrote an anonymous blog, got outed, and doesn't actually seem to have been harmed much in practice. He's back to writing rationalist stuff under his own name. Yet... this is somehow an existential thing we need to revisit (pg himself tweeted out this story this morning) again and again and again? This is where the rest of us just throw up our hands. The whole idea of the rationalist perspective is that it's supposed to be detached from parochial loyalty. It's supposed to be about real problems and real solutions that affect real people in real ways. And... when push comes to shove, it's not. It's just another tribe, waging just another tribal war. The fact that Alexander was wronged here is real. The idea that his wronging is of existential importance is just not remotely "rationalist". At all.

hawkice 6y ago
Plenty of people in that community have written at length about how "rational" only applies to "understanding true factual statements" or "achieving your goals". No end goal is irrational. There is nothing you can care about where someone can correct you and say you ought not to care because "rationality". I feel this community generates more reading comprehension failures in the general public than almost any other.
- newacct583 6y ago
  Isn't reporting the identity of an anonymous author a "true factual statement" important to understand his "goals" though? I mean, I agree this article was bad, but reporting it looks pretty rationalist to me. I'm not saying you "shouldn't care" about this. I'm saying the fact that you clearly care so deeply is evidence that "rationalism" is largely a fraud. You want rationalism except when you get criticized, then you want a safe space.
  - 6y ago

Sebb767 6y ago

Good article! Regarding question two ("was the article misrepresenting SA/the rationalists"), a bit of the misunderstanding is cultural, I think. The NYT article makes heavy use of (what seems to be) guilt by association, i.e. he is in the same scene as "known bad" Peter Thiel etc.. While this is an accepted argument in some circles, it is frowned upon a lot in the rationalist community and seen as cheap smear. I think this is a major point on why opinions diverge on the article and why it is seen as malicious by so many people.

xkcd-sucks 6y ago
Bad practice among rationalists, dogma to intelligence, adtech etc... the root of conflict becomes clear

bondarchuk 6y ago

Regarding point 3, the argumentation given about framing and narrative just supports the hit job claim IMHO. Part of the NYT narrative is that anyone who doesn't support the narrative is an enemy. Writing a piece within that frame about someone who does not toe the line almost automatically turns it into a hit piece.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I really appreciated Matthew Yglesias’s take on this a couple of weeks ago. Highly recommended: https://www.slowboring.com/p/slate-star-codex https://www.slowboring.com/p/slate-star-codex

webnrrd2k 6y ago

There has been a long tradition of people writing books under pseudonyms. I don't think the NYT has made it a point to publish, for e.g., every book review with the author's actual name. I honestly don't see why publishing a rather non-controversial blog should be different.

webnrrd2k 6y ago
This was my attempt to answer the question: was it ok to 'out' Scott Alexander? I don't mind that someone disagrees - I expect disagreement - but please explain the downvotes. Was it because SSC was somehow exceptionally controversial? Are there some special circumstances that would prevent the usual sort of anonymity extended to, say, any book author that talked about personal mental health problems? I think that what I'm trying to say is that there have been many reasons given, some better some worse, but I personally find this one the most compelling. Anonymity is commonly extended to authors of books, and the fact checking doesn't necessarily need to break that anonymity. So why is this case so different?
- eternalban 6y ago
  Content matter is not the primary concern for censors. If you consider, for example, that most content comprehension is subjective anyway, it should be clear that what is the concern is the establishment of authoritative and/or trusted voices. [p.s. i.e. this sort of establishment behavior leaks insider knowledge of what it takes to shape opinions in human society. Answer: the soap box.] related: Killing the chicken to scare monkey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_chicken_to_scare_the_monkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_chicken_to_scare_the_... So not a "CEO" just an unfortunte internet chicken that has been used to obliquely instruct unkown monkeys with aspirations to taking up 'The Pen'. (Remember, that mightier than kinetic weaponry instrument of the intelligent?) Call it a 'hit job rehearsal'.
  - webnrrd2k 6y ago
    I'm not really familiar with the chicken/monkey metaphor, but it seems to be about "making an example out of someone in order to threaten others". So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying that Scott was made an example of in order for the NYT to scare him and stop his writing, with the end goal of preserving their authority? Honestly, it sounds very broad and rather conspiratorial. I'm really not clear on the scope of your statements. Maybe I could believe that it's a clash of cultures thing, where a qualitative culture (typified by, say, Liberal Arts/English majors) is in conflict with quantitative STEM/Engineering culture. But I don't think that's what you mean. Am I wrong?

nabla9 6y ago

>For a public intellectual like Will Wilkinson all press is good press; he lives in a world of ceaseless self-promotion, and is not properly situated to understand what being targeted by an international media outlet feels like for folks outside of that world. Will Wilkinson was fired few weeks ago based on one tweet. He knows. He has also been close to the rationalist community from the start and has no ill will. He is in good position to criticize and he does it well. His criticism probably hurts most because it's so insightful.

matthewdgreen 6y ago

> Here is where I break ranks with the rationalists: all the talk about “hit jobs” is silly and conspiratorial. I don't think the "hit job" conspiracy theories are silly, I think they're a big deal. The conspiracy theorizing in the rationalist community right now is what worries me about the way that they're trending. Remember that this is a community that has a great deal to say about the downside of cognitive biases on their entire thought process, and specifically identifies conspiracies and tribalism as biases that can distort our perceptions. Yet the community seems to increasingly be awash in exactly the biases that they identify as most toxic. This is not some small concern, it's a problem that undermines the entire project. And while I agree that "rationalists" aren't some sort of Illuminati that controls Silicon Valley, they've certainly got enough of a following that a "Scientology" level culthood could emerge out of the group if they allow this to happen. I think that there is a dark timeline where that could really happen, and it would be a lousy outcome, especially since I have friends and colleagues who are attracted to this community. TL;DR: I don't know if the NYT is the problem here, but I wish the community would spend more time thinking about its own tendency to identify conspiracy theories and close ranks against the "outgroup" and put serious thought into how they're going to fight this. Because this is antithetical to the purpose of the entire project.

bondarchuk 6y ago
But what if it's true? Just calling something a "conspiracy theory" doesn't make it false. "The NYT is doing hit jobs on their ideological opponents" is a pretty mainstream opinion at this point, it's really pretty tame as far as alleged conspiracies go.

lalaland1125 6y ago

For the opposite side of this, I highly recommend that people read http://eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method/ http://eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill..., which does a thorough explanation of why Scott is a bad writer and how he promotes incorrect and damaging views. Scott's entire game is to use rhetoric to support poorly backed hypotheses like "feminism is terrible". There was literally a women in the rationalist community who committed suicide due to harassment and Scott's first reaction was to insinuate that all of her accusations were false.

viburnum 6y ago
It’s sad that so many people think this creep is intelligent just because he overwrites so badly.
dexen 6y ago
The essay begins with a thought-terminating cliche in the third paragraph: >This is someone who repeatedly speaks admiringly of Charles Murray, puts Nick Land, Razib Khan, and various other fashy types on his blogroll, and openly advocates eugenics. >The claim that he’s troublingly invested in racist bullshit is straightforward and, frankly, uninteresting; anyone trying to dispute it has a disingenuous agenda most likely involving racist bullshit. Ironically enough, the essay throws an accusation of "tedious Gish gallop working its way through a host of minor claims" into the mix, also in the same third out of 100-odd paragraphs. Thank you for providing a morning chuckle.
- lalaland1125 6y ago
  You might want to try reading the article more carefully. The author is giving his quick explanation of why they aren't going to discuss the race stuff. Of course it's a "thought-terminating cliche", the author is explicitly terminating that particular discussion quickly to move onto the topic that they want to discuss. The focus of the essay is to thoroughly explore Scott's rhetoric and views on feminism.
- pseudalopex 6y ago

viburnum 6y ago

People are mad that you get criticized for being racist. The obvious solution is to stop being racist.

chmod600 6y ago

If we frame this era as a struggle for power between the media and everyone else (at least all the other poeple who have power to lose), I think the picture gets clearer. I am not saying that's the only valid way to frame a complex world, just that it clarifies a lot of the important battles. If you ask me, the media has taken way too much power and that's bad for everyone. It might feel like a victory when Trump is taken down, but as we see here, the power can and will be turned against anyone.

covidthrow 6y ago
I'm not sure if you're being downvoted because readers disagree that media has too much power, uses that power inappropriately, or the resolution they infer from your last paragraph. However, I think it's clear that many media institutions have abused their power upon the foundation of their seminal integrity. They've had the power for a long time—and have instances of abuse—but not like we've seen the last few years. The notion that they have "too much" power, however, is a very, very dangerous one. Any forcible resolution for this is—or should be—unpalatable. (And that's usually the insinuation when one discusses "too much" anything.) It's clear that we need a reckoning among the people to help shift perception of what is deemed appropriate forms of news. I don't know that's possible in the current state of our culture, though. The technological landscape has transformed the psyche of the people with such rapidity and force the likes of which has never been seen on this planet. Some self-aware individuals recognize the psychological dangers of our current state and choose not to participate, but I don't know that there's enough of them to make a difference. Laziness, depersonalization, greed, envy... these are all rampant within our online communities, and all forms of media prey on our vulnerability to them. The world has largely transformed to a seething mass of unsustainable behavior. While the media has the power to at least influence a healthy message, they're desperately trying to maintain control... fire with fire. The only ethical response to this is rejection. Rejection of communities that engage in unhealthy behavior. Rejection of media that engage in unhealthy behavior. Rejection in general of the unhealthy behavior. Fortunately, a lot of people who grew up in the world before this insanity took over see how bad it's gotten. Others are burned and leave. Some never got involved. The best we can hope for is rapid acceleration to such a degree that people reject the forms of messaging that have taken the world, en masse. At this rate, that actually may happen. The worst that could happen would be one of either forceful rejection or such a slow burn that not enough jump ship. Who knows what will happen, but we have at most one or two generations for the majority to recognize this or the well is poisoned. For all the worry about global warming or communism or fascism or whatever, very few seem too concerned about the implosion that's been growing the last couple decades. I hate to use the phrase, "but this time it's different," because it's usually not. But this global connection that's been abused to infect our minds by charlatans is truly unprecedented in scale, force, and insidiousness. The world is increasingly addicted to new forms of mind drugs that are anything but apparent, and their use are rationalized, increasingly less optional, and devastatingly subversive. I know I sound like a madman, but if the state of our modern communities—in parallel with the growth of global connectedness over the last decade—doesn't reveal the cause, I challenge anyone to provide an alternative explanation. The internet is quite possibly the most wonderful and most insidious development by the human mind, ever. To enable and amplify the best and the worst of humanity is truly unique, and at such a devastating scale. And I don't think the human race is is equipped do anything but abuse it for the worst. Disclosure: I am a former singularitarian fast turning luddite.

cannabis_sam 6y ago

It’s a bit funny that the main defender of NYT that this article puts forward is a co-founder of gawker of all things. A journalist that then promptly proceeds to explain that it’s the interviewee’s fault that a journalist misrepresents them, with a strange paternalistic argument about this being “how journalism works”. Literally Every Single Person I have talked to about being interviewed have described the exact same experience, the journalist misrepresented what they said. Maybe, just maybe, the common factor here are the journalists? But journalist are completely unable to understand this point-of-view, because they view themselves as the righteous defenders of “the truth”.

abecedarius 6y ago

> Was it a premeditated “hit job” or revenge piece? Or is there a better explanation for what happened? The OP offers as the better explanation that the NYT had a narrative for the piece to fit; and that narrative should not be seen as retaliation, because the trouble SSC gave them was beneath their notice. This might be right, I don't know, but how do you square it with all the sources saying Metz told them he was researching a basically positive piece on the rationalists being right early about the pandemic? Was he just lying? (E.g. this post by Scott Aaronson, C-f for "Cade": https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5310) Also, it's not clear that the paper or the writer would only retaliate against a party viewed as powerful -- you don't necessarily see swatting a mosquito as not worth the effort; it's not as if a negative story is more work than a neutral one. Does anyone know more about when papers write hit pieces and when they don't?

zozbot234 6y ago
The whole thing is just so weird to me, that it's just hard to even know what a convincing explanation might look like. My current best guess is that the NYTimes journalist felt that they had to write something after the whole kerfuffle we're all too familiar with, and somehow all they managed to come up with was that really sad piece of SneerClub-grade innuendo. You could call it a "revenge" piece from that POV but that's really pushing it, even calling it a hit piece goes way too far. The New Yorker actually published a way more respectable critical piece on Scott, many months before the NYTimes did.
abecedarius 6y ago
similar objection from Eliezer Yudkowsky: https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1366120488972427264 https://twitter.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1366120488972427264
philwelch 6y ago
> This might be right, I don't know, but how do you square it with all the sources saying Metz told them he was researching a basically positive piece on the rationalists being right early about the pandemic? Was he just lying? Why wouldn't he be lying? Talking to journalists is like talking to the police. They will play nice with you to get you talking, and then use whatever you say however they want.

kodah 6y ago

> By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line. Reality usually had a way of intervening. But I knew one senior reporter who would play solitaire on his computer in the mornings, waiting for his editors to come through with marching orders. Once, in the Los Angeles bureau, I listened to a visiting National staff reporter tell a contact, more or less: “My editor needs someone to say such-and-such, could you say that?” I'm shocked this is the case, though I've felt this has been the case. I don't know how one "speaks truth to power" when talking about narratives. It gives the NYT a very Game of Thrones feel, but more like the South Park version with reporting like this in mind. Secondarily, as the author points out, people are looking for place to punch. This the author sets up a dichotomy of "up" for people more powerful and "down" for people less powerful. The problem with power is that it's very perspective based. The author lays out some criteria but even that doesn't seem enough. If you have a Silicon Valley SWE who has saved up $5M and done nothing political, but has a popular blog talking about software and investing, are you entitled to fix them and frame them as you wish? Personally, I have gravitated away from the idea of "punching" because as the author later alludes, punching implies a use of perspective which can change. Your punch cannot though, once send is hit, that is it. > the hunter, logger, and geologist will walk through the same patch of wilderness and see an entirely different forest, for each eye is trained to notice something different. The more abstract the things observed the greater individual variance there will be. For intangible social processes like market exchange, mass movements, and elections, our understanding is all model, no matter. I really liked this perspective, it was very thought provoking. It's always perplexed me why people can witness the same things and derive such different perspectives. It doesn't put those perspectives at less competition with each other, but it does make them more understandable.