Pseudonymity as a Trivial Concession to Genius
scottaaronson.com
scottaaronson.com
You can stop right there.
I don't want to get into a prolonged litigation of the Slate Star Codex oeuvre. You can like it or loathe it. But at some point people on these threads need to speak up and say that this blogger is not in fact the second coming of John Stuart Mill --- or at least, that's not the universally held opinion of people in tech. I know, he goes on to hedge his claim the same way. But let's retain candor. You can employ hyperbole if you feel it helps a valid argument, but it remains hyperbole.
I think this also ties into this latest drama because apparently Scott seems himself like some medieval scholar being persecuted by the authorities if his name ever comes up, which is dramatic given that his pseudonym is his actual first and middle name which together with "psychiatrist ann arbor" gives you his actual name on a google search and a picture. Any of his patients who has ever googled his name knows who he is.
Second, and not that it matters, but searching Scott's real name does not link him as the author of SSC, which is what Scott cares about.
Rationalists have written a lot about: - making better arguments, and discursive standards - holding truer beliefs no matter if it goes against your current beliefs or makes you appear "cringeworthy"or "pseudo-intellectual"
Maybe you really ought to check them out?
tried it in an anonymous browsing session. Googling just his real name returns a link to the SSC twitter as the very first result, a rational wiki entry to scott alexander, and plenty of pictures at SSC meetups, so I have to assume any of his patients who ever Googled his name (which I guess is most people) probably know who he is
> . . . but not (I don’t think) to the tens of thousands who read Scott’s essays and fiction, particularly during their 2013-2016 heyday, and who went from casual enjoyment to growing admiration to the gradual recognition that they were experiencing, “live,” the works that future generations of teachers will assign their students when they cover the early twenty-first century.
So he's pretty much saying Slate Star Codex has fans who will miss it a lot.
(I do agree with you that the comparison is pretty nuts, even as someone who thinks Slate Star Codex has a lot of good stuff.)
No, he's not, he's saying, explicitly, in what you quoted, that "future generations of teachers will assign their students" Slate Star Codex as reading material. That's waaaay beyond "fans who will miss it a lot".
Maybe you believe the blog was headed in some genius direction, and lament a lost future. But you can't reasonably suggest that the SSC that exists today is going to be taught in schools.
Or, again, if you do, you can't claim to hold the mainstream opinion on the matter. I believe all sorts of weird shit nobody else believes; I'm not casting stones.
I'm not. But I'm not so sure Scott Aaronson wasn't. Call it hyperbole if you like, since technically Aaronson put those words in the hypothetical mouth of a hypothetical SSC fan, but my reading is closer to "Freudian slip".
I'll take Scott Alexander over Mark Twain any day, and this is my my belief and not hyperbole, thank you very much.
So what? People disagree over the internet, big whoop.
What's your comment supposed to achieve exactly? Chastize us for our profanity? Recast our sincere appreciation as mere hyperbole? Please.
(I agree that in any case, making rankings of writers isn't very useful.)
Aaronson wasn't trying to make an appeal that Scott Alexander should be elevated to the level of Mark Twain. It was just his honest opinion (or, maybe, hyperbole - I'm not in Scott Aaronson's brain), stated while discussing why doxxing Scott Alenxander is bad.
If that - speaking your mind on the level you believe someone to be at - is bad, then it certainly isn't obvious to me.
Saying that one believes it would be as bad to lose Scott's writing as Twain's is not saying he believes Scott should be thaught in English classes. It's just in essence saying "I value this a whole damn lot".
After half an hour, I couldn't ferret out his last name no matter the search I tried, regardless of incognito mode, open session, etc. In fact, google kept trying to point me to some screenwriter, at least whenever I searched while logged in.
Admittedly, I don't remember ever reading his blog nor anything about him... But then again, that is probably true of most of his patients too, so my search results might be more representative of the results he cares about.
Now, something tells me that an NYT article would definitely bring his two personas closer together in anyone's search results. So, even assuming that my google-fu is weaker than I thought it was and it turns out that literally everyone (but me) can immediately know who he is, his fear still seems warranted to me.
And he has already been on the receiving end of the mob pseudonimously, and clearly does not want to be in his own real-name capacity.
Is this really that hard to understand?
As for our incognito results, mine aren't even in English, so that also factors in why they might be so different. Though I doubt this Scott Alexander person cares about someone who won't ever be his patient.
You've been on this thread for hours and have been replying to almost everyone in it...
Anyhow, what was my bad argument? Wait, scratch that, what was my argument, period? I only mentioned what my results were and some stuff about google results that everyone already knows anyway. I certainly wasn't trying to share any particular view, idea or theory.
Wait, I also speculated on whether an article in one of the biggest news sites in the USA might impact the kind of results google shows about him, was that an incorrect assumption on my part?
I think if a (potential) patient googles him right now, they similarly won't get his blog as a result. If the NYT associates his blog and his full name, googling his name will surely show the NYT article, and people will follow on to his blog. Which he does not want.
No. That's what the NYT said it was going to be.
Despite Professor Aaronson's assurances of the writer's good character and pure intentions in this case, Scott Alexander - apart from his duty of care to his clients - is wise to not take that for granted considering his open-minded approach to various subjects which is liable by certain elements of the Ctrl-Left to warrant a cancel-attack.
That's what Scott Alexander said the NYT writer said. Everything we know about this story is entirely his portrayal and version of it. You can give it as much credence as you like but it is, so far, one party's representation.
(I'll have no trouble believing they were; COVID really seems to have scrombled everyone's brains).
That many people especially admire SSC for even-handedness, which they see as false, is especially infuriating to them.
FWIW I've been admiring your HN posts for many years. When I see your handle in an HN discussion, my learned expectation is of knowledge and insight.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/13/21128209/coronavirus-fe... was dismissive: "The public concern from Silicon Valley leaders or companies has not been discriminatory, but the extreme caution some are taking does raise questions about the appropriate level of response. There’s always a chance that the coronavirus could get out of control in tech’s backyard, but to a large extent, people’s individual power to control that is limited, and some may see measures like no-handshake rules as a step too far."
Similarly the now-deleted "is this going to be a deadly pandemic: no" tweet https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1242537366620966912
On the other hand, Kelsey Piper's https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/6/21121303/coronav... was good and timely, and Dylan Mathews' https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/4/21117505/new-cor... was also pretty good.
There is no reason to disbelieve that the writer said it was going to be positive and that Professor Aaronson believed him from experience.
The writer doesn't have to make any representation at all that it will have a spin.
> and if he said it was going to be anything other than positive then Scott Alexander would have mentioned that as it would have made his caution all the more understandable.
It would have made his projected sense of betrayal after cooperation in the piece less understandable if the journalist hadn't explicitly promised favorable coverage.
To characterize intended tone before research is complete is to hold oneself out as doing propaganda (promotion, specifically, when what is promised is positive coverage of a subject) rather than journalism, and it's obviously a betrayal if someone offers you promotion and then turns around and reveals information you'd rather not have revealed, whereas a journalist doing neutral journalism revealing facts about an active participant in public debate that that participant doesn't want publicly disclosed is...not even remotely noteworthy as such (though the facts so revealed might be.)
"We have some allegations to put to you and we want to hear your side" would be one way people know it's going to be a hatchet job.
This isn't true. Multiple other people on the SSC blog talked with the reporter, and they publicly compared notes on their impressions. Just because you haven't read these other sources doesn't allow you to claim that these versions don't exist.
Wait... Even the linked piece by Aaronson says: So in recent weeks, I’d spent a couple hours on the phone with Cade, answering his questions about the rationality community, the history of my interactions with it, and why I thought SlateStarCodex spoke to so many readers.
So presumably you have read reports from at least two people who had contact with the reporter. Why then do you say that it is solely "one party's representation"?
Please don't misrepresent my comment.
I merely clarified that Professor Aaronson's account of the NYT's intent (and even assuming its good faith, the consequences of the piece for Scott Alexander) is opinion only.
It's a comment that would only benefit from some misrepresentation
But I thank you for the admission.
This plainly suggests the NYT is misrepresenting something or likely to do so. You even added the emphasis, in case it was unclear. My sensitivity is not to the 'ctrl-left' but the completely unwarranted weird conspiratorial stuff that some mob is out to 'cancel' the blogger, armed with the name they got from the NYT. That they could have just googled. It's, at best, mildly silly.
This has to do with incentives. Police, no how nicely they talk to you, ultimately want to close the case. If they can do that by having you take the fall, they will do that. Journalists, no matter now nicely they talk to you, just want to create an article that will optimize for engagement from their readers. If they can do that by a misleading portrayal or something that otherwise harms your reputation or safety, they will do that. It is just business to them.
I think the "flamewar" penalty only kicks in when there are more comments than upvotes, which isn't true for this article. Judging by the drops (http://hnrankings.info/23610416/) I wonder if the site might be penalized in some way, so that it decays faster than one would expect. Or perhaps an editorial penalty added specifically for this story, to kick it out of the top spot to make room for a more technical article.
I guess that might explain why someone who really dislikes SSC might add a lot of short, repetitive comments in this thread :|
> In effect, Scott was trying to erect a firewall between his Internet persona and his personal and professional identities, and was relying on the entire world’s goodwill not to breach that firewall.
And it obviously did matter to him, because he took his blog down over the coming NYT article.
So what I wonder is why he didn't erect a far more effective firewall, one that didn't rely on goodwill. If he was writing pseudonymously, I don't get how his blog's credibility would rely on his true identity. But perhaps it did, in a subtle way.
It seems he is now taking the nuclear route.
I'm skeptical that there's really much damage to be done to him through disclosure at this point.
If he can go to his employer and say “look I deleted the blog, there is nothing else I can do”, they might be sympathetic, even if the outcome is potentially short term negative for his psychiatry patients.
Why? Because he posted controversially?
If he's an academic, perhaps he has tenure. But even if he doesn't, and he's as good as people are claiming, he ought to do well in private practice. And I can't imagine that a psychiatrist would lose their license over blog posts (but perhaps my imagination is outdated). He might lose patients who don't like his views, but then maybe he'd find such patients tiresome.
I haven't read the blog, but I've seen nothing that suggests that he posted PII about any of his patients. If he did, then I retract what I said above.
Scott is not afraid of being outed to nerds at all, but to the PC mob (sure, there's an intersection... let's replace git/master anyone?). It wouldn't especially be negative right now, but it means that his blog would be forever linked to his name. And one day is blog would attract unwanted attention (as it has in the past), and his name would be linked to it.
Also, even if wasn't for this, I think he's right to make a stand for himself. He had very little leverage here, and "deleting" the blog (it's still archived) was a bad move that makes the NYT looks bad if they go and out him.
Did you mean "bold move"?
You can't have a firewall of "nobody is allowed to Google me". That's not how it works.
If it was 50 pages back, I'd agree with you. I'm saying what I'm saying because that is simply not the case. And, again: he was a public, vocal part of the rationalist blogosphere (I think I'm using those words right?) under his real name, for some time.
It really depends on your Google history and demographics the algos slot you into.
For example, whenever I do a search in kanji, Taiwanese sites show up, so I migrated to DuckDuckGo instead which shows up both Chinese (and Taiwanese) and Japanese sites, the latter of which is I want.
My experience is Google tailors results aggressively, and does so using a wide number of fingerprinting techniques. I've demonstrated to my own satisfaction that using an incognito window will not give you "clean" or "average" results.
would you say the same of kendric lamar or mf doom? both fail the google test and yet the nytimes respected their pseudonyms.
At this point, casual observers do not know Scott’s identity. With a few hours of time most people on HN could probably figure it out, but in that same amount of time they’d also probably calm down if they were interested in sending death threats.
I'd expect a more robust defense of personal privacy from a "rationalist", because this reason is bunk, and everyone in modern mental health knows it. I've worked as a clinician in the types of settings Mr. Alexander works in (locked inpatient psychiatric units), and others in mental health as well, and while there's certainly a longstanding debate within psychotherapy (talk therapy) about so-called "self-disclosure", the days when clinicians were expected to be "impenetrable to the patient" and "reflect nothing but what is shown to him" are long over.
Researchers and practitioners from nearly every therapeutic modality that rose up to challenge (and in many cases mostly displace) these leftovers from Freud have challenged the notion of "psychiatrist-as-cipher" from within their own perspectives. And there's even a very good case to be made that hiding oneself as aggressively as Freud wanted clinicians to do (and as aggressively as S. Alexander seems to want to maintain) only augments an already severely lopsided "power dynamic" in the therapeutic relationship. In plain English: it's attitudes like these that allow "the therapeutic class" of which I am a part to lord it over the populations we are ostensibly treating, people who in many cases aren't treated as people and who have valuable expertise and experience in matters relevant to them but who we, historically, have been eager to ignore.
But it's funny because these debates have occurred within the universe of "talk therapy", a universe that psychiatry as such abandoned about fifty years ago. Dr. Alexander is a psychiatrist in 2020 - not a psychologist, not a social worker, not even a nurse. His profession left all pretense of actually talking to patients behind when they fully embraced medications as the first-line treatments for nearly all mental disorders; psychiatrists today do "medication management".
None of this is to slander the guy, by the way; he's really good at what he does (the blogging, I mean), and I've enjoyed a lot of his output over the years. But this specific reason for remaining anonymous got under my skin a bit, because it's wobbly for the reasons I listed. It's _also_ wobbly, I'll add, because the rest of us in mental health could have no such luxury of privacy these days even if we wanted it - and 99.9999% of us do not maintain ultra-popular and highly public-facing blogs. I value my privacy greatly, perhaps more than Alexander, but citing ancient and highly contested professional mores to maintain it is pulling a fast one on the public he very much needs right now.
It's bunk to call Scott's concerns bunk. You may think that he ought to self-disclose, but that's simply not his call: he has a job as a psychiatrist and has to stick to what his employers require of him if he wants to keep working in the field, and support his patients.
Further, to cite that as his first reason for wanting to remain pseudonymous is odd, because it's flimsy for the reasons I cited. His second reason (that he's gotten death threats) is much more compelling, and to me is all he needs to make a good argument here. Why sully it with things like this?
Is it possible epoch defining ideas are lying around on a blog somewhere, sure, but it's highly unlikely. In order to become an intellectual legend, you need to have ideas with reach stoking the ire of a few thousand redditors and having even a few million views on posts in 2020 is not a significant amount of reach to shape zeitgeists. Yes, sad but true, those who are going through the traditional channels and publishing institutions still have the most impact on the world (it's easy to feel like your contributions and small internet following is a more significant player in shaping the future than it really is). While it's quite possible/likely the ideas on this blog will be immensely important and thoroughly studied in a field of specialization, I will wager they will have no effect on the overall social field. I'd argue pseudonymity is actually harmful in a community of specialists, since it blocks the proper exchange and verification of results and creates opportunity for plagarization.
There is a distinction between internet/niche community "cancellation" and "cancellation" in the real world. In my personal estimation, everyone's fear of "cancel culture" is grossly exaggerated when it comes to the way it operates in the real world. Typically, most of the notable "cancel" incidents are not the result of some "leftists" ruining someone's career over indelicate statements, they stem rather from direct allegations of criminal behavior; sexual assault, abuse of power for personal gain, clear-cut hate crimes, etc. Sure, there may be small communities more susceptible to flimsy, purely speech-based "cancellations" but that is a failure of the community in question to uphold ideals of open discussion (assuming the speech isn't in fact harmful); if you think "cancel culture" is an unstoppable global phenomenon that can ruin anyone's life in a moment's notice you only need look at the current US president to assure yourself otherwise.
Finally, I'd like to say that the vast majority of people that continue to cling to some antiquated enlightenment ideal of reason, in which reason is some pure, untrammeled, untainted instrument that will unite us all and lead us to the promised land, only prove themselves ignorant of all of post-WWII philosophy. WWII blew gaping holes in the entire enlightenment enterprise and philosophers from all sides (even legendary logicians such as Quine, Russell, and Wittgenstein) all make some fundamental appeal to relativity in their work, and clearly state there are problems that logical reasoning (by extension strictly economic/utilitarian reasoning, by extension purely technological reasoning) cannot solve (or in the case of Wittgenstein, cannot even express).
Many people have switched to using so-called "reason" as a defense mechanism for promulgating ideas they know would bring them flak were it not for the guise of "objectivity" or the shield of (usually suspect) statistics (another thing philsopshers have throughly dismantled, by the way, as early as the 1800s with Neitzsche and more recently in the philosophy of science).
Maybe the tech workers you read who are afraid of being cancelled are afraid of being cancelled because tech companies have shown they are totally willing to end people's careers over fairly mundane speech.
Given that his name was already out there to the point where it's trivially discoverable, did he even have pseudonymous status to begin with? I still have to work to recover Dril's name, and I confess I never heard Infosec Taylor Swift's name. But I actually had this name in the back of my head for years now. If an NYT reported had asked me to name him, I probably could have in a heartbeat.
A lot is being said about the transgression of the press here, but if you've got a fan-run reddit where they're using your full name publicly, maybe it's somewhat futile to delete your blog and blame the NYT no matter how much your purported genius entitles you.
I am definitely one of those spooky antifa types that folks here label with derision as the "ctrl-left". If anyone wanted to somehow threaten his safety, they're a google search away. That places him closer to discoverability for most folks than any NYT article which will squat behind a paywall.
Far more likely is that few have bothered Scott or substantially transgressed his safety because he's actually a very small niche blogger with a loyal but admittedly small fan community.
I admit I'm a famously uncharitable audience for bloggers, but I'm much more inclined to think that this entire series of events is either a fit of pique that blew up in Scott's face, or a deliberate attempt to create a controversy to gain publicity.
[0]: I've been informed that as there is a central controversy over if this man is in fact anonymous, the mods are going to err on the side of caution, and so I've re-presented this post with the item redacted even though it turns out all it took to find the name was to let google autocomplete the name, populated from content 7 years old.
[1]: I've screenshotted what _I_ see when I use an incog to search for him on this tweet: [redacted], it turns out even THIS is too much of a concession to reality. My twitter account has the screenshot if you'd like to see it. But it consists of typing "scott alexander"
That's also clearly not a clean incognito search, as it has your previous search with his name included.
Note that there's no reference to his real name.
The only reference to his real name in your screenshot is the first entry, which is purple and removable because it is coming from your browser's session identity history. If this was in fact in an incognito tab, it's likely you had one or more incognito windows simultaneously open somewhere else where you had searched for him, which carried over into your new tab.
I did this on a computer I don't usually use in an incognito tab.
He is not "the target audience" for this sort of thing.
It was mostly just annoying that they were presenting theirself as being a civil, good-faith rule abider, while also being clearly thrilled at "cleverly" outing Scott Alexander.
As far as I can tell, we're in violent agreement?
1) The weaker one, about link finding
2) and furthermore a stronger one, which I quote in my response.
The stronger one being, "you need at most middling Google-fu to find his real name from his pseudonym if you're motivated."
That stronger claim is still weaker than your "his real name is immediately available to anyone who knows the name Scott Alexander." That said, perhaps we have different thresholds for immediate: mine was spending ~60 seconds searching for his pseudonym and trying to find his real name from it, and I failed to find it. I think it's likely I could within 10 minutes, but I'd put that clearly in the territory of my intermediate claim.
I regret to inform you he cannot escape his reactionary blog just by wishing it so. If anything, this escapade will draw more attention to him. The NYT is not required
I even felt a bit of sympathy for him before I realized his fan reddit has invoked his name many times. I even suggested in public I'm a fan of some of his writing. But this is just ridiculous.
I think the relevant search is, if you search for his real name, do you find him as Scott Alexander of SSC. This is the concern he seems to share in his post. Currently when I search his name, I see no connection in the first two pages of results. I could maybe get there if I spent the time following links. If the NYT publishes his real name in connection to SSC, a google search will probably find it.
Okay so what's with the obsession with a niche subreddit whose sole purpose is to dunk on rationalists/SSCers who talk too often about the IQ of black people. I mean it's not like Aaronson is himself an HBD blogger. I kind of like Aaronson but his online anxiety is really getting the better of his judgement.
"A subreddit devoted to insulting and mocking me personally and Culture War thread participants in general got started; it now has over 2,000 readers." That is SneerClub.
"Some people found my real name and started posting it on Twitter. Some people made entire accounts devoted to doxxing me in Twitter discussions whenever an opportunity came up. A few people just messaged me letting me know they knew my real name and reminding me that they could do this if they wanted to.
Some people started messaging my real-life friends, telling them to stop being friends with me because I supported racists and sexists and Nazis. Somebody posted a monetary reward for information that could be used to discredit me.
One person called the clinic where I worked, pretended to be a patient, and tried to get me fired.
... I had a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t even that bad a nervous breakdown. I was able to keep working through it. I just sort of broke off all human contact for a couple of weeks and stayed in my room freaking out instead.
... The first few [subreddit mods] I approached were positive; some had similar experiences to mine; one admitted that even though he personally was not involved with the CW thread and only dealt with other parts of the subreddit, he taught at a college and felt like his job would not be safe so long as the subreddit and CW thread were affiliated. Apparently the problem was bigger than just me, and other people had been dealing with it in silence."
Please show me the veil.
In mundo's terminology, it's not he veil that's important, but the direction that one is looking through it.
Scott's stated desire is that a search for "Scott [RealLastName] psychiatrist" doesn't turn up his personal blog posts at the top of the results. This is the search that a current or potential client is likely to do, and he would like the results of this search to be professionally oriented. So far as I know (I haven't tried the searches) most casual searches of such terms don't lead to directly to the blog.
He is less concerned with whether a search for "Scott Alexander Slate Star Codex real name" comes up with his real last name, since as you point out this information is already available online and won't be changed by a NYT article. His reasoning (I think correct) is that if a high profile article comes out that uses his full name and his profession, casual psychiatry related searches will highlight his blog rather than his professional career.
Whether or not Scott has a right to this level of privacy is a separate matter, but does this distinction make sense?
This is ridiculous. You're now litigating if things are "private" if they're below a 1080p page fold in Google.
Searching now for "Scott [RealLastName] psychiatrist" in an anonymous Safari window from Vermont, I get 9 professional results and a link to an Overcoming Bias post by Robin Hanson. The OB link has redacted Scott's last name, doesn't contain anything immediately alarming, has a dead link to a nonexistent previous blog, and importantly doesn't link to SSC.
A search from my regular account returns 100 results (as it should) and starts with the same first 10. The following 90 are mostly professional or for unrelated people. One midway down is a link to Reddit where the excerpt mentions SSC. Another at the bottom is a denunciation of him as a "low iq autist" "Jewish, clinically insane blogger", which I suppose might give a client pause.
I'm also not trying to "litigate" anything. I was just trying to be sure you understood the point that 'undo' was trying to make. You are welcome (and in fact encouraged) to disagree with it as long as you explain your reasoning.
ps. Separately, "reactionary blog" sounds like an odd description. Oddly, "neoreactionary" and "Moldbug" were among the banned terms on the site. Do you mean it in some other sense?
"Reactionary" is originally a definition of a political and social stance essentially characterized as opposed to some or all of the idea of social and economic reforms put forth during the French Revolution.
It has subsequently evolved into a sort of a catch term for a position somewhere near authoritarianism and a specific type of social conservatism. It's often applied to counter-revolutionary types as well, depending on context.
This is a label Scott has earned through his work.
The odd part about calling it a "reactionary blog" is that part of Scott's early notoriety was for being an anti-reactionary on Less Wrong, a blog that had a lot of neo-reactionary support. In particular, he's the author of the "The Anti-Reactionary FAQ (or, Against Moldbug)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6585715. Unfortunately, it's hard to link to right now, as it disappeared along with the blog. Archive.org has a download in an odd format, but no preview: https://archive.org/details/perma_cc_49D9-R67Y. I haven't read it recently, and thus can't summarize, so perhaps it reinforces your belief.
From one of your other comments, I don't think I agree that "No one can really dispute that there is at least one frighteningly racist piece of work and at least one frighteningly sexist piece of work we can all point to from SSC." Or rather, I'd agree if we are to include all the comments written by others on the site, but I probably do not if we are to consider only things Scott wrote himself.
This may be because I probably tend to different definitions of "racism" and "sexism" than you. I'm guessing you might feel it applies to almost all claims that one race or sex is statistically different than another, whereas I tend to reserve it for personal discrimination against individuals for belonging to a particular class. Thus, I don't feel that Charles Murray is racist, or that Larry Summers is sexist, at least not for the reasons that they are generally accused.
As a result, I don't agree that defending Scott implies 'that writers who write racist material have a "right" to not be called to task if that's financially damaging', unless we're using a definition of racism that assumes "everyone is a little bit racist". Rather, I think honest discussion of race and sex include discussion of the possibility that there are genetic differences in intelligence --- as well as discussing the alternatives that the tests are flawed, that maybe there aren't actually any measured differences, or that the differences may be purely cultural or environmental. While there are risks and downsides to this discussion, I think the societal effects of prohibiting the discussion are even worse.
I do appreciate your responses so far, though.
I think Scott is correctly concerned that a Twitter mob might try to get him fired as a result of his blog. I don't really understand his reasoning for taking it down now, but I presume "real name in a national publication" was a pre-arranged line-in-the-sand for him. I think his actual opinions are secondary; the real problem is that he's clearly not fully supportive of team SJW. I suspect the main problem wouldn't be his own opinions, but that he allows others to discuss "unacceptable" topics on his site. His window for acceptable doesn't include everything (white nationalism was out) but is much wider than most.
That said, I found SSC to be the best place on the internet for hearing people calmly explain views I disagree with --- and I disagree with almost everyone! There aren't a lot of places where atheists and Catholics would productively discuss why they felt the way they do about abortion, where former Mennonites could explain how community health care works without insurance, where Marxists could try to explain to gun nuts what they have in common, or where a self-proclaimed a Social Justice Warrior can field questions from an anarcho-capitalist economic professors about redistribution. I probably spent about an hour a day reading comments there, and felt that it was time fairly well spent. Although I'm mostly a reader rather than poster, for a few years now it's been my primary contact with the outside world. I'll miss it, and don't know if there will be anywhere that can replace it.
What I don't understand is why it is that Scott Alexander feels like he's in danger from having his affiliation with the blog exposed, while at the same time it's so clear to everyone who peruses the site that it's open-minded and productive and wholesome. If that's the case, what's so alarming about the attribution?
What form does this supposed cancellation take? You've just claimed that white nationalism is off the table --- I disagree, but will happily stipulate. So what is it then? You've got a better imagination for what could happen than I do, since I think there's virtually no risk for Scott Alexander at all. Can you share more about what you foresee happening? Is it some citation to some horrible TheMotte commenter? What is that commenter saying?
I mean, let's be clear right up in front: one thing we can't really debate at this point is whether Scott Alexander is "out". He's out. It's over. The NYT could shitcan the article (I kind of hope it does) and nothing will change; Scott Alexander has seen to that. So what do you think might happen next?
I think Scott's fear (rightly or wrongly) isn't that his own opinions will be his downfall, but that those politically on his own side will attack him for providing a platform to the enemy. I think he sees himself in the same position as Steve Hsu, who was just forced out of his position at Michigan State despite Scott's attempt at public support. The were various criticisms of Hsu, but the main ones seemed to be that he provided a platform for people with unacceptable opinions (Stefan Molyneaux, Ron Unz). I don't think these two are active on SSC, but given anonymous handles, they might turn out to be. Others with bad reputations (Steve Sailer comes to mind) post there civilly, and are treated with respect. I think indisputably there exist some people who consider this to be grounds for "cancellation".
> What form does this supposed cancellation take?
The same as pushed out Steve Hsu: public pressure by a small number of people against his employer for his promotion/tolerance/association with someone who holds less socially acceptable opinions than he does. Scott's view (and mine) is that it's better to have open discussion of unpopular opinions so that they can either be refuted or become accepted. Others think that the ideas are too dangerous to be discussed, and discussion needs to be prevented lest they become more widespread. Some of those who hold this second belief have shown themselves to be effective at pressuring employers to fire those who they choose as their targets.
> one thing we can't really debate at this point is whether Scott Alexander is "out"
I think you are viewing things with more of a binary computer security point-of-view than is appropriate: in normal life obscurity does make a difference. Making up numbers, at this point, 99.99% of the world has never heard of Scott by either his real name or his pen name. Of the remaining .01%, 1 out of 100 know him only by his real name as a local psychiatrist, 98 out of 100 know him by only by his pen name as a blogger, and 1 knows and associates both identities. A prominent NYT article might double the number of people who associate his identities, and he thinks this might double his risk of having professional problems. Is he wrong? Maybe, but I can see why he has the fear even if he thinks his beliefs and approach are overall good for the world.
> You can think it's good while I think it's very bad.
I think this thread has run its course, but perhaps in some future one (if it comes up) you could explain what you think made SSC "very bad". Like HN, I feel it had problems as a community, but was overall a good thing: it enabled better direct communication between people who otherwise communicate only through garbled media proxies. Is this the problem itself, or do you agree that this is a a positive but think it is outweighed by something larger?
The thing about "cancellation" is that it doesn't work if there's nothing there to start with. No one can really dispute that there is at least one frighteningly racist piece of work and at least one frighteningly sexist piece of work we can all point to from SSC.
> Others think that the ideas are too dangerous to be discussed
I'm very mixed on this. One the one hand, the idea that there is forbidden knowledge is anathema to me. On the other, my timeline has someone in it who essentially argues that he learned "the Bell Curve" is correct because Scott argued for it and he trusts "the smart people" who have read it to conclude it is correct and not racist [0].
We have to accept that, however indirect, that is harm to this individual. They've been recruited into an argument for the genetic superiority of a "white" brain by someone who's irresponsibly laid that argument out. So perhaps there are no forbidden ideas, but there are ideas where it's irresponsible to discuss them without the adequate context of 25+ years of debunking and counter-examples. Especially when homed in a country with a famously inadequate primary education system and a history curricula that barely covers the civil war, let alone anything happening after WW2.
[0]: In the interests of not dogpiling a confused individual, I will not share a link to this tweet. You can find it on my timeline if you look, but I really encourage you to leave that person alone for now. They're a victim in my opinion.
But now we've entered a world where Scott has pulled what really looks like a Moldbug-style publicity stunt where he wants to pick a fight with groups that his community have latent biases against ("liberals", "SJWs", "anti-rationalists" and of course the big one: "the press."). Despite mobilizing a substantial fraction of the richest people in America to his defense (and despite doing exactly what he claimed shouldn't be done: fully naming a reporter that might publish a story, I might add), he's still also pretending to be a victim. But the reality is that every consequence thus far has been directly of his own construction. He pulled his own blog down out of "fear" that folks might discover it, despite being "doxxed" at least 3 times before.
To me, the most challenging part of all this is that we're suggesting that writers who write racist material have a "right" to not be called to task if that's financially damaging. It suggests that because you find his writing pleasant, that we should protect it from the consequence of its substance. And the specific consequence is that, "His patients might make informed decisions about what he's said." They might not appreciate him naming dates, locations, diagnosis and specific medications prescribed. They might not want to be treated by someone who doesn't believe in their unique bigotry against trans people. They might not want to listen to someone who quietly believes they're genetically predisposed to inferiority.
Given that Scott has essentially made NO effort to keep a pseudonym and has explicitly said, "I don't want this piece to come out because I'm concerned about the impacts to my business," I can't avoid the conclusion that I should treat Scott exactly the same way as I treated Moldbug. And just like then, I got a lot of pushback here for that decision. A pushback that evaporated with not so much as a whoosh of air when Milo Yiannopoulos's email leak revealed long dissertations by Moldbug on specifically how to engage with militant nazis to enlist them to his cause.
To be clear: I don't think such a revelation is in the background for Scott. I think his racism is the quiet self-assuredness of the American intellectual that's socialized to accept racist policies and ideas if you can place enough layers of indirection around the concepts. I think he's the sort of person for whom grammarian arguments really are a compelling counter-argument to racism. This makes him unremarkable in every way except that he can mobilize so many rich and connected people to his "defense."
Many of us have had the experience of being unhappy with what Google chooses to surface for our names. I never thought to declare "Anonymity!", Michael Scott style, to resolve that problem for myself.
I don't know why you keep repeating that him deleting his blog ensures the lack of anonymity (in this sense) where there'll be a NYT article or not. I suspect he'd disagree, and I think that if this story ends with no NYT article that outs his name, all the discussions and media articles about this story that happened so far won't change the desirable status quo re: his patients not connecting his name to Online Controversies through cursory Googling.
SneerClub was always ever about venting about rationalists when the dumb speculation about evopsych and the IQ of black people went out of hand, and people who have attempted to doxx Scott on there have been banned. (Doxxing people at all is against the rules of reddit anyway.) Yes, it's a circlejerk subreddit, yes it's petty etc. But it's not the evil den of terrorists rationalists think it is.
>Would you say that you, personally, have ever experienced true free will? And if so in what situation(s)?
Here are some examples:
– In 1994, when I pushed my parents and the administrators at Hong Kong International School to let me start skipping grades.
– In 1996, when I left home at age 15, to attend a program at Clarkson University that I’d literally learned about from a mass-mailed brochure.
– In 2000, when I set up a website called “In Defense of NaderTrading” to try to prevent the election of George W. Bush. (Had I exerted my free will some more, and gotten more attention for the site, maybe we would’ve gotten just 539 more vote-swaps in Florida…)
– In 2001, when I dropped everything else I was doing to work on a ridiculously ambitious problem, one that even Andris Ambainis hadn’t solved: namely, lower-bounding the quantum query complexity of distinguishing 1-to-1 from 2-to-1 functions
– In 2002, when I decided to waste a month building a huge zoo of complexity classes, and another month reading and reviewing Stephen Wolfram’s book (despite being a totally unknown grad student)
– In 2005, when I started a blog called (of all things) “Shtetl-Optimized”
– In 2006, when I asked my boss, Ray Laflamme at the Institute for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, if I could teach a crazy course called “Quantum Computing Since Democritus”
– In 2009, when I spent a whole weekend in a difficult, contentious, incredibly personal email exchange with some postdoc in Princeton who I barely knew, then accepted her invitation to take the train there to continue arguing in person. (Over the next 3 years, that postdoc would become my girlfriend, fiancee, wife, then mother of my first child.)
With these examples in mind, I can finally explain something that seems to have perplexed many people: namely, why I reacted to SneerClub and its fellow travelers, not merely as some annoying nobodies shitposting on social media, but as an existential threat, a coronavirus of the mind. And this despite the fact that, at least 3/4 of the time, I’m politically closer to the sneerers than to those they attack.
The reason is that, with laser precision, the sneerers target the urge to “exercise one’s free will.” Like, they spend hours perfecting and refining mental kryptonite against the impulses of nerds like me to say what they’re thinking or do what they want, and damn the disapproval or the quizzical looks of those around them. The sneerers’ worldview, even when one happens to agree with them, is poisonous to the little hothouse flower of nerdian freedom that led to almost everything that was good in my life.
Source: https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4684#comment-1833463