SlateStarCodex Is Back Up

https://slatestarcodex.com/

by bkohlmann • 6 years ago

260 155 6 years ago

slatestarcodex.com

meagher• 6 years ago

For those that don’t know, when the posts were republished hundreds of email notifications went out. One for each post.

Quite the splash for coming back online.

andromaton• 6 years ago

383 emails, it seems. I am glad when I search my inbox some of those posts will surface.

krtkush• 6 years ago

Delightfully, My RSS feed has no such problem.

matsemann• 6 years ago

Reminds me of when Libgdx migrated their issues to Github[0], and all watchers got an email. So 300k emails or so were sent. It would have been a couple of millions if he didn't catch it happening.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6387140

IAmEveryone• 6 years ago

Last I checked, SSC was the first hit on google when searching for his real name. That would seem to make it rather pointless to believe in the ability of keeping that content hidden from his patients.

I’m also not entirely certain it isn’t in the public’s interest to allow patients to read their therapist’s writing. Yes, they shouldn’t be privy to the details of their love life and favorite spot to go skinny dipping. But Scott never disclosed much personal information anyway.

I think rather fondly of his writing. But it should be uncontroversial that some of it is, well, controversial. Even if I don’t agree with his critics, I wouldn’t consider it entirely unreasonable to disagree with him on some points. And because so much of it touches on hot-button issues, some of them might very well decide not to share their most private thoughts with him, and could feel betrayed when learning about it only after the fact.

It’s also somewhat strange to see a community (his, and here as well in previous posts) complain about unnamed sources any time the news media is discussed, but getting outraged when one publication actually makes it policy to use real names more often.

There is a case for anonymity on the internet, and even for others to respect that wish. But at some point, when you start having the sort of cultural influence that Scott has, and your efforts of hiding your name were rather half-hearted to begin with, it’s nobody’s job to play pretend on your behalf.

bpodgursky2• 6 years ago

It costs the NYC nothing to respect his efforts at pseudo-anonymity, as halfhearted as they were. The cause of journalism is not advanced in the slightest by publishing the real name.

The problem with "unnamed sources" is there's no fixed point to compare against -- the unnamed source loses nothing by lying or making things up. Scott has a huge amount of reputation to lose if he lies, even if it doesn't directly tie back to his real-life persona. It would be a REALLY long con to blog for a decade to build a reputation, just to be a disreputable unnamed source in an article.

BLKNSLVR• 6 years ago

Do you already know his real name in order to search it on Google?

If you search for "Scott Alexander" then, yes, Slate Star Codex comes up. But that's not the dots he's trying to avoid being connected. He doesn't share his last name on SSC, and his patients probably don't know his middle name.

Imnimo2• 6 years ago

Depending on your search engine of choice, given just his first and last name, you will discover either his middle name or his blog on the first or second page of results. If a patient wanted to look him up online, it wouldn't take much, and if a person familiar with his blog wanted to find his real name, it also wouldn't take much. I did it just now in a few minutes of Googling.

Now, regardless of all that, it still seems like it would be a nice thing to do for news media to respect his wishes. But it also seems like a bit much to say that publishing his name would be all that significant of a change to his level of anonymity.

jmeister2• 6 years ago

It is definitely in patients’ and Scott’s interest to maintain anonymity.

There is a tradition in therapy going back to Freud that the therapist should be a blank slate to the patient(there’s a technical term for this which I can’t recall..)

david-cako• 6 years ago

In a Lacanian sense, the role of the analyst is to be filled up with the images and ideas of the patient. https://nosubject.com/Discourse_of_the_analyst

Some may find the Greek term "kenosis" interesting, meaning "emptying". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenosis

I agree that SSC being separate from his psychiatry is pretty important. I like SSC, and at the same time I would find it difficult to go to therapy knowing Scott is behind SSC. It would cause me to fixate on obsessional traits in myself, knowing that he is predisposed to the same thing.

heavyset_go3• 6 years ago

On the other hand, perhaps his patients should be aware about the fact that their psychiatrist is divulging what they probably thought of as their private information to the entire internet.

AceJohnny2• 6 years ago

going back to Freud

That's not a very solid foundation. Pretty much everything from Freud has since been reconsidered.

My experience with therapists is that I want a certain connection, and I've been rather unsatisfied with most I've seen (though my sample size is only 4). It's not optimal to have to keep rolling the dice to try and find someone I'm comfortable opening up to, and of course both the situation where I'd need to find a new therapist and the US healthcare system (& attitude to mental health) do not make it any easier.

skissane2• 6 years ago

Personally, I like to know professionals' opinions on the major debates of their profession. e.g., for mental health professionals: What is their opinion on the debates around the validity and usefulness of the DSM? Do they think overdiagnosis and/or underdiagnosis are problems? (It is possible to believe both are a problem simultaneously – I have heard some professionals express the opinion that ASD is overdiagnosed in males yet simultaneously underdiagnosed in females.) Are antidepressants overprescribed? Do antipsychotics cause brain atrophy?

For most professionals, however, it is quite hard to work this out, at least without asking them in person. (For a minority, who are involved in research/etc, one can look at their publications.)

So I'd actually encourage more mental health professionals to blog (or otherwise engage with the public) with their opinions on their field of professional expertise.

(SSC mostly isn't doing that, since Scott mostly comments on general topics, and only posts something on his profession every now and again. I often find what Scott has to say on general topics interesting, but I doubt I'd find what J. Random Psychiatrist or J. Random Psychologist has to say on general topics anywhere near as interesting.)

mudita• 6 years ago

I am 100% for respecting Scott's wish for anonymity and in general there seems to be a strong norm of not giving to much personal information to patients in the psychiatrist and therapist communities.

But Scott doesn't exactly try to be a blank slate to patients, given that he mentions details like his time in Japan and his "struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder" in his public profile as a psychiatrist, which seems to be aimed at patients (there's a big button for booking an appointment).

Of course, there is a difference between making a few superficial details like this available to your patients or millions of words of your essays.

Lazare• 6 years ago

Google results are very different for different people. SSC is not returned at all when I search for his real name; a result many others have reported in the ongoing discussion about SSC on Hacker News.

I'm not sure what that means for your conclusion, but I think you may be overestimating how closely connected SSC and his real name are on average.

bpodgursky2• 6 years ago

For the quality of blogging, psychiatry, and writing, I am willing to forgive his sysadmin capabilities... my inbox might not be so forgiving though.

jumelles• 6 years ago

Did the Times ever publish the story? Has it been officially scrapped? Do we even know?

tomcatfish• 6 years ago

The story has not been published yet, though a review of the whole situation was published in the New Yorker [1] that has been met with mixed reviews, but largely positive from what I have seen (mostly from followers of the blog, strangely).

You can check the subreddit for more info on how things have been going down, I peeked in a few days ago and got caught up on all this.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-st...

User232• 6 years ago

I think that their recent experience with Tucker Carlson has gotten the NYT staff to reconsider the relative merits of doxxing the subjects of their articles. It's a most double-edged sword, and they will cut themselves if they keep swinging it around.

lordgrenville• 6 years ago

I was told by the author of the New Yorker piece that the article is still on track. I don't think they paused it because of the controversy, these things just take longer than people think.

snowmaker• 6 years ago

After this whole NYT showdown, I'll definitely appreciate SSC more. I always liked it, but it was just one blog among many. The realization that it could disappear at any time somehow makes it seem more precious.

blueboo• 6 years ago

I'll appreciate it quite a bit less, as this tantrum suggests that he fears being liable for just how much of is patients' experience he shared. The fear-of-doxxing charade never held water, borne out by how comfortable he felt siccing his community on the NYT reporter.

Tucker Carlson recently perfomed the same kind of cynical rhetorical judo. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/21/tucker-carl...)

Influential platforms do, once in a while, see a drop of accountability. The reaction to it is telling

Kinrany• 6 years ago

AFAIK sharing anonymized patient stories is pretty standard.

john_moscow• 6 years ago

I'm not sure if that's intentional, but his name currently appears on the admin profile of the blog [0]. Maybe someone with technical skills and enough time can help him sort it out?

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/author/admin/

jabiko• 6 years ago

Are you sure? It's no secret that "Scott Alexander" are the first and middle name. The author wants to keep his last name secret.

charliea0• 6 years ago

Seems to still be down for me.

adwn• 6 years ago

Scroll down, the old content is visible again.

gadders4• 6 years ago

Are we allowed to mention the NYT wanting to do similar to Tucker Carlson? (I say similar, because obviously his name is known, but they wanted to identify his home location).

rvz• 6 years ago

Not sure why you are downvoted but this is perfectly valid given that his name is already known and public (given his news career) and now they demand his home address. What they're doing to Tucker Carlson, is what they will also do when they find SSC's true identity.

If SSC gets their name doxed, the NYT won't stop. They'll find their home address, employer, etc to cancel SSC.

gadders4• 6 years ago

Sadly I think some people's view of whether doxing is good or bad depends on the political views of the victim.

moultano2• 6 years ago

https://twitter.com/NYTimesPR/status/1285422802569441282?s=1...

gadders4• 6 years ago

Does anyone believe the NYT at this point?

mijoharas2• 6 years ago

Is there any evidence to suggest that this is true? The new york times denies it, and it doesn't really pass the smell test.

If someone can provide a reason for why they might want to do this I might consider it, but I can't think of one that would remotely make sense? It would provoke outrage and reflect badly on the paper, and the address would need to be important to the story. It's not similar to the slate star case, since publishing someones address is not a normal journalistic practice.

Now I know of no reasons that the NYT would publish his address, and there are reasons why Tucker Carlsen might want to accuse them of publishing his address, such as him trying to deflect from the current accusations of sexual harassment.

gadders4• 6 years ago

"Neighbours of sleepy suburb XXX of Washington DC were shocked to find white supremacist Tucker Carlson living in their midst." etc etc Get a few quotes from neighbours and job done.

auganov3• 6 years ago

I'm pretty ambivalent about what many seem to call "doxxing". I get it when publishing phone numbers or addresses for no reason.

But I don't get the notion that you have a moral obligation to protect other's pseudonymity in general. Especially when it's not patently obvious that they've taken steps to conceal it. I mean sure, I get that it can be done in harassing ways too. Randomly brining up someone's full name in a comment reply is probably not nice. But when writing a big piece on some fascinating persona it seems fine to me.

Also purely strategically speaking when your identity is elaborated on to cry "doxxing" only makes you look like you've actually done something wrong, have something to hide. If you don't want to own things you have written, best not write them in the first place.

It's almost as if people desire the ability to be a public figure without any of the downsides.

Inufu• 6 years ago

What value does adding the real name of the person to the article bring to you, the reader? Would you interpret it any differently if the name was different?

Seems like a pretty clear cut case for not mentioning the name.

thinkingemote• 6 years ago

Journalists and writers in general aim to make a story appealing to their readers. One way they do this is bring to life their subjects, and some ways they can do that is to name the subject, tell readers what neighborhood the subject lives in, age, what kind of life they lead etc. People are interested in other people.

It has value but it's a mechanism that isn't necessarily needed in all cases.

One could do a thought experiment imagining a group of newspaper readers evaluating an edition where names of subjects were not given and one where they were. Which edition would be more interesting?

auganov3• 6 years ago

Well, I don't know much about this person or the article that was coming up, hence making a general point. [0]

But generally when writing a piece on anybody it's normal to gather all kinds of details about one's life. Profession/job, educational history, some basic family background and name is usually one of them too.

Now again if the journalist has a good relationship with the person and they say they really want to go by XYZ instead of their full name, this is a perfectly valid request to me. But the notion that one is committing a grave crime if they don't comply (or ask) is another story.

Say back in the day I wrote a little piece on something that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Some journalist got interested in it and called me to discuss it. Spent most of the time discussing my own background. Hardly talked about my story at all. Wasn't enthused about this but I understand that's something people generally want to know.

[0] I mean correct me if I'm wrong but this person publishe[s/ed] under their regular first and second name. Mentions his actual life and experiences in his publicly available writings. Is generally easy to track down. Has a big cult following. But wants their last name redacted. Again, not saying that the journalist shouldn't honor the request. But nonetheless the whole situation is a bit bizarre. And sooner or later his full name will be out there (probably already is). So he's essentially asking for his full name not to rank too well in search results?

saalweachter• 6 years ago

What value does adding the real name of the person to the article bring to you, the reader?

Honestly, it's hard to tell without the article being published and seeing what comes of it?

It's not like particularly rare for an article to be published where the journalist includes the name and two or three aliases of the subject of the article, and suddenly a lot of people realize that the person they thought they were dealing with in an isolated way is actually engaged in a much larger pattern of behavior -- the person who skipped out on a couple of grand in rent with a sob story under one name did the same thing ten more times under three different names, the guy with a family in one state has a couple more in two different states that didn't know about each other, the "reference" that spoke so well about a former employee is actually said employee, etc etc etc.

panza• 6 years ago

Journalists typically ask two questions here: 'does this person wish to be named?' and 'is it in the public interest to ignore this request?'. It is highly dubious that there is any public interest in revealing Scott's name, hence the outrage.

Second, depending on the story and person, revealing a name can very easily lead to revealing phone numbers and addresses. So this isn't just 'a name'.

Finally, Scott very clearly does not want to be a public figure.

Barrin925• 6 years ago

Finally, Scott very clearly does not want to be a public figure.

If you're writing a blog under a consistent identity pretty much by definition you are a public figure because you're creating public discourse and attaching your name/pseudonym to it.

You can't really have it both ways. If you want to speak publicly but truly don't want to be identified you can do that by just posting anonymously, or you can just not engage in public discourse.

But if you do write even with some invented persona clearly you want others to recognise that.

tomp• 6 years ago

Doxxing is a classical example of the ad hominem logical fallacy. Criticise the argument, not the person making it.

This idea is of course completely lost on the post-modern cancel culture.

nickthemagicman2• 6 years ago

The amount is Sophistry in modern times is stunning. Appeal to authority, appeal to the crowd, anecdotal evidence, straw men, etc

The quality of thought seems to be incredibly low.

brandonmenc3• 6 years ago

It's almost as if people desire the ability to be a public figure without any of the downsides.

This is a dangerous trend in thinking I'm seeing more and more.

Run a blog when you're not at your day job and answer questions for an interview? Congrats, you're a "public figure!" Say hello to Kanye for me.

Sharing a dumb article with friends on Facebook? Nope. You're actually "publishing content on a global news platform."

etc etc

pravus2• 6 years ago

If you are running a blog presented to the public for public access, what do you expect? Yes, you are indeed trying to become a public figure. You are interacting with the public on public terms. Otherwise you would restrict the blog to a more private venue such as yourself (a journal) or some small community (friends, family, etc).

Sharing content is a different matter because you didn't originate the content and you didn't set the public policy on it.

ixtli2• 6 years ago

I was going to comment nearly this exact thing. SSC guy has worked slavishly for years to grow a fan base which has had knock-on effects as the community he’s carefully curated intersects with some that have done incredible harm on twitter and reddit. This just reads like not wanting to have to take real responsibility for what has come of his speech.

brandonmenc3• 6 years ago

a fan base which has had knock-on effects as the community he’s carefully curated intersects with some that have done incredible harm on twitter and reddit

You can say this about pretty much any group of people.

Everyone is now partly responsible for what the other adults they associate with do when they're not around?

This is not the world you want to live in even if you think you want it.

intended2• 6 years ago

Reading the comments here, I’m surprised to realize that his name is already this well known.

In that case, I’m a bit confused - if someone did an article on SSC, without reaching out to the chap - what would have happened then? Articles using publicly available information are beyond routine So his name would be exposed.

I’m not sure what his options would be or what the consensus opinion is for that scenario. Would that have been an issue, but not as much since it would be a fait accompli? How would anyone be able to reverse such an article after it was published ?

red_admiral5• 6 years ago

Ironically, Scott himself has an old (2013) post on "the virtue of silence" that talks specifically about the NYT: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/14/the-virtue-of-silence/

Scott's argument is basically, he is a psychiatrist and his patients will put his real name into google to find out info about him, check he's correctly licenced etc. But this shouldn't lead to them finding out too much as him as a person as that would get in the way of the therapeutic relationship. One thing he does to help with this is not run his public online identity under his full name.

The problem is not people searching for "scott alexander real name", even if they find it. The problem is reverse searches for "scott $surname" by his patients, leading to an article on the politics of his online community, his views on polyamory and transhumanism and gender etc.

If some random blogger made a post using his real name, and it didn't end up ranking highly in the google results for his real name, it probably wouldn't hurt too much - especially as most people don't look at more than the top 5 search results or so. The information being out there by itself is not the big problem.

But if a NYT article gets enough of an impact that it's the number 1 search result for his real name, then we have a problem. And the NYT has a pretty big platform, as Scott pointed out in the linked article, so it's a real hazard.

intended2• 6 years ago

Thanks, that blog post was quite the intellectual indulgence to read and enjoy.

Thank you for engaging.

So if someone just .... wrote an article after doing a few google searches, what would the consensus be in that scenario?

I can see a few options, two of which require having made steps to avoid this outcome intentionally -

1) always separate your personal from digital profiles and

2) have ways to modify your search rankings ?

(He could reach out to The news paper and sue them After the fact I suppose, But Im not sure it would stand up in court if it’s public info)

————-

Side note : I’m assuming people agree, that the creation of large platforms is a natural outcome of the way the world is set up.

(Limited brain storage/attention, competition in media, network effects of leaks, Etc.- these conspire to give a few channels greater reach than others)

——-

opwieurposiu• 6 years ago

It is possible to disagree politically with your psychiatrist and still think he is good at his job. My head shrinker is a hippy kooky leftist and I am a govt-paranoid cabin-in-woods type right-libertarian. I still pay him $200 an hour because he does good work. Politics is only one part of a person. It is a part that is highly visible on the internet and mostly hidden in real life.

par• 6 years ago

But this shouldn't lead to them finding out too much as him as a person

Well he may want to look again, because his real name is pretty strongly tied to SSC now, via a tweet and some other articles that pop up. Google even autocompletes it.

maybelsyrup• 6 years ago

"But this shouldn't lead to them finding out too much as him as a person as that would get in the way of the therapeutic relationship."

Forgive me because I posted something very similar a month ago when Alexander deleted SSC, but I'm a mental health professional in full-time research and clinical practice and this bears repeating: the "damage to the therapeutic relationship with patients" argument for Alexander's anonymity is weak at best, since

(a) psychiatrists in particular have little to no "therapeutic alliance" with their patients as traditionally understood, and (b) professional mores in mental health more generally (including clinical psychology, social work, counseling, and psychiatric nursing) have changed in favor of a great deal more "self-disclosure" being permitted in the therapeutic relationship (or "alliance") than 75 years ago.

In my view, it would damage Mr. Alexander's relationship with his patients very little to know that he has a popular blog about rationalism etc. As another commenter points out above, most adults (and most users of psychiatric / mental health services, believe it or not) are perfectly capable of separating whatever they know about their clinicians' personal lives from their ability to do their jobs.

I'll quote myself from the earlier thread:

"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."

I don't speak for all mental health professionals or researchers, of course, but I feel I owe it to HN (where most are not in the field, I'm guessing) to offer another point of view on this, especially in light of SSC's popularity with the HN crowd.

jccooper2• 6 years ago

Further, this behavior is quite common. Pretty much every mental health professional I know who engages in social media does so under a (light) pseudonym. Its their solution for maintaining a professional relationship with people who may not understand or respect that boundary. A great many teachers do too, for basically the same reason.

Wolfenstein98k4• 6 years ago

I see no public interest value in denying his request to remain pseudonymous.

To publish his name and associate it with his pseudonym - especially in what would obviously become the top Google result - is egregious when he had pleaded for it not to happen.

I'm glad they appear to have backed down but I'm still furious they ever intended to do it, and held the sword of Damocles over his head for so many weeks.

adamsea6• 6 years ago

I'm still furious they ever intended to do it, and held the sword of Damocles over his head for so many weeks.

I think the actual “Sword of Damocles” story does not illustrate what you wish it to. From Wikipedia:

“ According to the story, Damocles was pandering to his king, Dionysius, exclaiming that Dionysius was truly fortunate as a great man of power and authority, surrounded by magnificence. In response, Dionysius offered to switch places with Damocles for one day so that Damocles could taste that very fortune firsthand. Damocles quickly and eagerly accepted the king's proposal. Damocles sat on the king's throne, surrounded by every luxury, but Dionysius, who had made many enemies during his reign, arranged that a sword should hang above the throne, held at the pommel only by a single hair of a horse's tail to evoke the sense of what it is like to be king: Though having much fortune, always having to watch in fear and anxiety against dangers that might try to overtake him.”

The NY Times is equivalent to the King?

Wolfenstein98k4• 6 years ago

Thinking too hard about it.

The point was the dangling sword over his head, being the imminent publishing of the article.

They told him they wouldn't hide his name, but they didn't tell him they wouldn't publish the article.

ipunchghosts• 6 years ago

I canceled my digital subscription to the times over this. I'm not a huge fan of cancel culture, but aside from writing a letter, what else can I do? (serious question)

Verdex• 6 years ago

I think canceling your digital subscription makes sense and doesn't really feel like cancel culture to me.

I'm not a fan of cancel culture, but I am a fan of canceling. I've got similar feelings about boycotts.

If you want to tell someone about how a company is bad, then do that. If you don't want to give money to someone who does things you disagree with, then don't give them money. There are a lot of other options for your time and money.

Where I think it gets a little ridiculous is when you (uh, not you, but like the general person) tell other people that you canceled something because it's bad. You're trying to make yourself look like the good guy/hero when all you did was decide to spend your time and money elsewhere.

And it gets really ridiculous when you go right back to what was canceled when they provide some other thing that you like OR when it turns out nobody else cares about your virtuous canceling and you want to fit back in with the group.

"Hey, we're all going to go see Avengers 10! It will be a huge party and it's going to be great. Oh, hey Josh, I forgot that you swore a blood oath to never see another movie owned by Disney after Walt Disney's zombie ate your dog."

"Uh, I guess it's okay. It was kind of a silly blood oath anyway. And fluffy had a good life I guess. I suppose I can come."

Of course you might also write a letter explaining why you canceled your subscription and say that you'll come back on the condition that they don't continue to pull shenanigans like this and that they take responsibility and apologize. Who knows it might actually change their policy if they see enough of this sort of thing.

kevingadd• 6 years ago

Boycotting a company that did something awful (or threatened to do something awful) to an individual is the opposite of cancel culture. Boycotts are a well-established and effective method for individuals to take action against corporations. It's not as if dropping your Times subscription is somehow going to silence an individual

afiori• 6 years ago

This is not cancel culture. It is at most a boycott. Cancel culture is when the boycotting is transitive that is you decide to boycott also the times' sponsor that refuse to join in the boycott.

AndrewStephens3• 6 years ago

I am not sure what the fuss is about. The NYT hasn't actually published anything yet, Alexander self-cancelled himself in a fit of _something_ and managed to drum up quite a bit of publicity for himself and his blog in the process. Clever.

I must admit I am somewhat on the side of the NYT being able to use his real name. Alexander's blog is related to his work, by staying anonymous (but not really) he is trying to have it both ways: "Hear my words, for I am an experienced psychiatrist with insights and stuff. I'm just not going to tell you which one. I will bask in the glow of accolades but am anonymous to critical articles."

I think it is in the public interest for the NYT to state that Alexander is who he says he is, especially since some of his comments have attracted controversy.

It would be different if this was some underground blog about model trains or something, but Alexander is a licensed professional. He likes that his words carry weight based on that or else he would go by AnonMemberOfThePublic375.

SilasX2• 6 years ago

"Hear my words, for I am an experienced psychiatrist with insights and stuff. I'm just not going to tell you which one. I will bask in the glow of accolades but am anonymous to critical articles."

Huh? I don’t think he has ever used his status as a psychiatrist to claim credibility, nor do I think his readers care about that beyond the occasional anecdote. People (including me) were drawn to his writings long before they were aware of that aspect about him. When he moved to SSC c. 2013 he even made a post about just staring his residency, which isn’t “experienced”.

AndrewStephens3• 6 years ago

I can see why Alexander might desire anonymity but even his list of reasons why he is deleting his blog post contains several pieces of potentially identifying information - far more than the hypothetical NYTs article would have contained, including details of his housing situation.

I find his response confusing. Full marks on managing to get of lot of publicity off the back of the NYT not writing are article though. He is really getting is very-slightly-obfuscated name out there.

bnjms• 6 years ago

I disagree on your latter points. Of he had known he might become (semi) famous he might have kept his me properly anonymous or down to initials. Didn’t we lose The Last Psychiatrist to de-anonymizing? And he was definitely anonymous. His coverage for being a psychiatrist was that he wrote in a way a psychiatrist would.

mijoharas2• 6 years ago

I've noticed this mentioned somewhere else, but I'm not aware of "The last psychiatrist".

I tried googling around and I don't see much information on what happened. Why was he deanonymised?

Could you give me a quick rundown of the situation?

say_it_as_it_is• 6 years ago

this is how you increase readership exponentially

CM30• 6 years ago

I still can't figure out any legitimate reason why the Times thought it was a good idea to try and use his real name in an article about the site.

I mean, if someone goes by a certain identity online when running a blog or working on something, what's wrong with just using that name in an article or video about them? Whenever I interview a game developer that uses a pseudonym, or a YouTuber/Twitch streamer/blogger in the same situation, that's the name I use in the article. I might ask them for a bit of background info at one point sure, but I won't push for it, nor will I go around trying to dox them to get said information.

Is there any real reason that 'Scott Alexander [last name]' would be used rather than just 'Scott Alexander'?

Still, it's nice to see the blog's back up, and I hope people learn from this debacle in some way or another.

BitwiseFool• 6 years ago

This is pure speculation on my part, but it may just be due to organizational inflexibility and poor communication. I remember reading somewhere that internally The Times said it was having a credibility problem when it came to "unnamed sources" and there was an effort to confront this.

So, the author of the article, knowing Scott's real and full name, would be obliged to use it in the article. I can imagine Scott's request to protect his identity going back and forth between layers of management. And each of those managers realized they had nothing to gain by granting Scott's request.

Natsu2• 6 years ago

There's a huge difference between pure "unnamed sources" that are highly partisan and publishing the pseudonym someone publishes under rather than their actual name.

Also, most of the credibility loss has been because a lot of those anonymous sources flat-out lied to them, but that's another story and I have yet to see them write about it.

nyolfen• 6 years ago

scott wasn’t an unnamed source; from the sound of it this was in large part an article about him, eg the journo was going around and asking questions about him specifically. i guess we’ll see if those sources are named.

drewrv• 6 years ago

There are different types of reporting, specifically there's a difference between reporting a story and running a profile.

If your piece is about morale within the state department, an unnamed source who works there could be acceptable. If your piece is "here is this interesting person who runs this community" then identifying who the person actually is seems defensible.

http://egmncorp.com/student-journalist-toolbox/how-to-write-...

juliend2• 6 years ago

For those who like me didn't know about the blog until today, and why it's a big deal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex#New_York_Time...

viburnum• 6 years ago

The guy has so much contempt for his patients, disclosing his name is a public service.

jimrandomh• 6 years ago

It doesn't sound like you've actually read the blog. It isn't about his patients, and it's pretty much never written in a contemptuous tone.

SlateStarCodex Is Back Up

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