You and Spiers have the same problem: You approach credibility, but completely gaslight the obvious bad faith that seeps from Metz's Murray and "Voldemort" references. It's not just that Metz deigns to "mention" these -- he injects then in a fashion so willfully and maliciously misleading that it would be borderline sanctionable in court. If you can't admit there's malice here, you're either deluded or likewise operating in bad faith, which makes it difficult to engage with the remainder of what you've written. Same goes for Spiers.
The leaked emails that Wilkinson mentions in the post (which can be seen full-size at https://imgur.com/a/gWeIK6c ) confirm that Siskind was indeed a believer in Charles Murray style views about there being a significant genetic component to racial differences in IQ, income, educational attainment etc. I had already gotten a strong impression to that effect just from reading things Siskind wrote on Slate Star Codex, and Metz contacted critics who were also close readers of the blog so it's possible Metz had seen many of the same comments. I wrote up a summary on another blog, I'll repost here:
As a regular reader of Slate Star Codex (which I've continually found interesting despite strong disagreements with his takes on a number of issues, including the one below), my memory is that Siskind has also periodically directed his readers to at least seriously consider Murray-style views on race, namely the notion that average differences in IQ between different ethnic groups have a significant hereditary component rather than being completely (or near-completely) due to average environmental differences. Looking around a bit for examples, in https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ he writes 'I find the solution by Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending really compelling', where their solution was to posit Ashkenazi Jews have undergone a selection process at the genetic level that has increased their average intelligence (aside from the complete lack of any genetic evidence for this idea since it was proposed, some additional critiques of this theory can be found at http://www.talkreason.org/articles/chosen.cfm ). Sections 5.4.2 and 5.4.2.1 of Siskind's anti-reactionary FAQ at https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/ also seem to treat it as reasonably plausible (or at least grant for the sake of argument) that differences in test scores between African-American and European-American populations have a significant genetic component, and suggest it's a good thing that public opinion doesn't blame worse outcomes for African-Americans primarily on discrimination.
Also, when I was searching his blog for posts to confirm my vague memory that he has periodically made posts sympathetic to the online “human biodiversity” (HBD) movement, I searched specifically for posts using the term "human biodiversity" and found a 2014 links post at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/14/more-links-for-may-2014/ where he described one of his links as "A black guy writes a FAQ on the human biodiversity movement", and the author of that FAQ, JayMan, was clearly arguing for the Murray-type view that environmental explanations can't account for racial differences in IQ scores (look especially at items 9 and 10 on the FAQ).
JayMan wasn't the the only pro HBD person that Siskind directed readers to or treated as being knowledgeable guides to the subject, in a post at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/16/five-case-studies-on-politicization/ he wrote that "HBD Chick usually writes very well-thought-out articles on race and genetics", where "HBD chick" is a blogger who also takes Murray-style positions on race and IQ, see for example her post at https://web.archive.org/web/20130625075228/http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/why-human-biodiversity-is-true-and-why-jason-richwine-is-right/ . And Steve Sailer, the blogger who coined the euphemism "human biodiversity" for claims about innate racial intelligence and personality differences, got a shout-out in the post at https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/20/links-415-link-and-youre-dead/ for his argument that a finding of location-dependent social mobility was really just a consequence of African-Americans having lower social mobility than European-Americans. In the Sailer post that Siskind links to, Sailer doesn't explicitly argue that this lower social mobility has a genetic origin, but he does heavily imply it by saying "If we want our presidential candidates to get access to better social policy discourse, we need to stop wrecking the careers of the Jason Richwines, James D. Watsons, and Larry Summers for the crime of telling the truth." (Richwine and Watson both suggested a genetic explanation for observed racial IQ differences, Summers suggested biological reasons for fewer women opting for careers in science).
Siskind did also occasionally direct readers to anti-HBD arguments, but the example of his post about an anti-racialist FAQ at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/17/someone-writes-an-anti-racist-faq/ is telling--he talks as though this is one of the few (or only) examples of anti-HBD arguments he's come across that he actually respects, saying 'It’s astounding because it is a piece of writing about race that is so good that I actually have specific criticisms of it. I didn’t even realize how strange this was until about my tenth nitpick, when I noticed that I was nitpicking individual arguments instead of shouting at my computer “WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID?! WHY?! WHY?!”'
Given this history, which Cade Metz may have been at least partially aware of (I know that a rationalwiki editor said they had sent Metz a very detailed list of Siskind's controversial statements) I think one can reasonably infer Siskind at least finds Murray's views on the genetic component of racial IQ differences to at least be reasonably plausible, and I'd say it's fairly likely he finds them *more* plausible than the strictly environmental hypothesis even if his mind isn't entirely made up. And certainly when he's praised Murray in the past, as in the post at https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/12/clarification-to-sacred-principles-as-exhaustible-resources/ where he says "my impression of Murray is positive", he never adds any qualifications about the race and IQ stuff that are surely what Murray is most well-known for by the general public, nor does he always specify that he just has a positive opinion of Murray's views on a specific subject like UBI.
Metz definitely didn't get the story quite right on Scott Alexander's connection to "human biodiversity" and issues with feminism. But there's definitely something in the vicinity that's right. (My bigger objection with the article was that it linked these relevant posts from SlateStarCodex, but didn't link, or even name, "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup", when a chunk of the article was devoted to analyzing it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
I more or less agree with your characterization of the most conspiratorial claims about the NYT as almost certainly wrong. But I have personally revised my priors about how much the Times cares about factual accuracy downward after hearing how internal 1619 Project fact-checks fared and seeing that the NYT story on SSC has at least one clear factual error that lots of people have pointed out but that hasn't yet been corrected. The misleadingness of how the Murray parts are written is pretty bad too. We needn't presume untoward motives to believe that the content of the story is factually wrong in parts and unfairly misleading in others. That's my modest claim.
This feels right to me. On a related note, although overall I think this essay will nudge the average SSC fan in the right direction, I have a pretty strong reaction to this line:
> " [The NYT] care[s] intensely about whether and how broadly they are trusted; they want to be trusted by everybody, both because it’s a lovely ideal and because they think they’ll make more money that way."
They definitely won't make more money that way, and I don't think many people in the Times are under the delusion that they would. Getting people to pay for their work requires creating fans, and fans require a special level of excitement and deference that goes beyond grudging admission that they probably get most facts right. So there are strong incentives to cater to people on the margins of becoming subscribers, and ignoring people who will likely never become subscribers.
And as for the lovely ideal part of it, their behavior doesn't evince it much, either. Like, if they really wanted to build bridges why wouldn't they have a public Q&A about this story? Clearly a lot of people think it's substantially wrong. Why not curate some questions and have the Metz and his editor sit down for a podcast to discuss the story and reporting process? It seems like they're uninterested in building or repairing trust. Like they assume anyone who doesn't like the story is just a "hater".
To be honest, they're incredibly lucky that you wrote this!
excellent discussion. The way people talk about the output of news outlets is pretty bonkers. The news industry is like the restaurant industry; profits are razor thin and every company walks a tightrope to cover their operating costs while preserving a reputation (not necessarily for credibility, as the Times has prioritized, but for any number of things that might attract an audience).
Attempting to understand the content of articles on the Times through the lens of malice or spitefulness is just not going to carry you very far. There’s very little time for that; writing from a place of malice or spitefulness does not actually help you produce pieces that attract readers, especially readers who might convert to subscribers in the case of the Times.
Malice is a comforting explanation because it implies you matter, that the journalist or even better their institution, cares enough about you or sees you as enough of a threat to specifically single you out for destruction.
To my mind, the real problem with journalists, which Scott touched on a bit in his inaugural post, is their *indifference.* indifference to the impact of making something salient or shining a spotlight in it. When Metz started researching the piece there really was no compelling reason Scott’s name was *needed*. It was basically a fluff piece, on the level of a trend piece, about an eccentric subcommunity. The public wouldn’t gain anything from having his real name mentioned, and Scott preferred not to have it shown, and “it’s our guideline” is a pretty weak reason. Fact is being written about in the NYT, even in positive or neutral terms, can be a pretty high impact event for people. And the only reason that journalists do it is because it’s their job to find interesting things for their audience; in cases like this, there really wasn’t any more compelling reason than that.
All that said, you’re exactly right that Scott’s behavior basically said in big neon lights “there’s a bigger story here!” I don’t think he has really wrestled with the implications of that, and I think the malice narrative is entirely delusional. But I also think the people like Spiers who have argued from the newsroom perspective have missed how the journalist’s indifference to their impact is felt by the subjects of it, and how malice narratives are often the comfort blanket of those who feel like they were kicked in the shin for no real reason.
I agree with this. I also think that the concern about his exposure's impact on his patients is a serious one, which is prima facie reasonable as a claim to anonymity. That's the case whether or not it was really Siskind's main reason for objecting and for ultimately quitting his job.
And that isn't just about non-"woke" views expressed on the blog. Siskind also often specifically writes about psychiatry, and psychiatric conditions, including, for example, whether some of them actually exist as consistent pathological categories! That's got to be sensitive stuff for some patients to be exposed to.
None of that invalidate's Will's arguments - though I do think "it’s apparently important to remain something of an enigma to your psychiatry patients" sounds a little too dismissive. And of course it doesn't mean any and all psychiatrists should have guaranteed anonymity in all circumstances. By all means, if you think they're hiding something important, dig around and see if they are. But it is the sort of area where guidelines should not just be dogmatically applied.
I guess the question I keep on coming back to is: don't his patients have a right to know? Those opinions are both material to the nature and quality of his practice and they're contributed to the public sphere. They can't be dismissed as either irrelevant (who cares what your baker thinks about zoning policy?) or privately expressed. As Will notes, many of his patients might find those opinions offensive and not want to seek treatment from someone who espouses them. So I can certainly see why Scott wouldn't want them publicized - but I can't see why that's a preference that should be given deference.
The NYT Company had 16% operation margin last year. Not gangbusters, but this is a highly profitable enterprise. I don’t think there is any reason to believe that the Times is worried about its reputation being pummeled into unprofitability. In fact, given the ideological contours of its subscriber base, articles like Metz’s are good for business. This incentive structure of course is totally overlooked by Will.
"Globe journalism was never meant to be a permanent obstacle to someone’s success, with the worst decisions and moments in regular people’s lives accessible by a few keystrokes for the rest of time. This initiative aims to empower all people who want to have a fresh start. We will consider updating past coverage with new information and changing how accessible stories are in search engines."
Ironically*, it's part of an attempt to reconsider their behavior regarding racial justice issues so I half-suspect that it might get derided by SSC adherents for being an SJW initiative, though I could be wrong.
I agree with you though that I think Will and others are giving a reasonable explanation of why Metz and journalists generally would be unsympathetic to Scott Alexander's concerns, but that doesn't mean that they are striking the right balance. But, as Will points out, outlets like the NYT produce so much journalism that they're going to be making errors of judgment pretty much all the time.
Why do you constantly refer to him as "Siskind" in this article rather than as "Scott Alexander"? It would seem weird to me for a music reviewer to talk about "Stefani Germanotta (who publishes under the name "Lady Gaga")" and then constantly say "Germanotta" throughout the article. My general inclination is to refer to people by the name that they choose to be identified as, with maybe a mention of their legal name if that's relevant. I don't know how much this is shaped by years of exposure to the occasional trans person, for whom this is important in a different sort of way from singers and writers. But it still seems like the polite thing to do, so why not do it? (That goes for Peter Thiel too, though I assume "Theil" is just a mis-remembering of the spelling, and not an intentional alternate name.)
On the bigger point, I think I mostly agree. There was a huge overreaction by the SlateStarCodex fanbase, because there really is a strain of sympathy for neoreaction and anti-feminism there. I do think the particular insinuations Metz made are misleading (particularly the suggestion that social justice warriors are more excluded than neoreactionaries in the community, and the mischaracterization of "I Can Tolerate Anything But The Outgroup" as an attack specifically on the Blue Tribe, while linking several other posts but not that one).
Anyway, I've been glad to be following Scott Alexander, Matthew Yglesias, and you, all on Substack the past few weeks, and learning more about the important similarities and distinctions in views between these people that I've been following online for many years!
In his second post from Astral Codex Ten at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive where he first starts to discuss the fallout from the New York Times article, he does refer to himself by his real name at the end:
"So here goes. With malice towards none, with charity towards all, with firmness in the ṛta as reflective equilibrium gives us to see the ṛta, let us restart our mutual explorations, begin anew the joyful reduction of uncertainty wherever it may lead us.
My name is Scott Siskind, and I love all of you so, so much."
I see that he doesn't necessarily mind the name having been connected now. But it still seems weird to refer to him by that name, when he usually goes by "Scott Alexander".
Another earnest question for people like Wilkinson: Why is doxing journalists a bad act? You seemingly expect me to regard journalists as a special class empowered to dox civilians with impunity for profit, clout, and/or sadistic gratification, yet you want me to be disconcerted that Balaji would dox a reporter? You probably read Freddie DeBoer and probably dismissed his piece out-of-hand. You shouldn't have.
"Doxxing" anyone is a bad act, if it is truly doxxing. Publishing information that is semi-public (say, not in the 1st page of google results) with the intent of harassing someone is also a bad act. Whether publishing information that is semi-public, if it serves some other purpose for providing context in a story or debate, is good or bad is a judgement call, but is not an intrinsically bad act.
This is already coming up in other comments, so I want to add: "dox(x)" gets used to describe two distinct things:
1- Making previously private information public (revealing an anonymous person's identity, when that information is not really available publicly)
2- Drawing attention to/making salient already public information in a context that is likely to be harmful
2 is really what was going to happen in Scott's case. As everyone has said, it was super easy to figure out his last name from a simple Google search. Some friends in the Bay area tell me that everyone around there already tended to refer to him by his real name during verbal conversations about the blog.
But 2 is also what made "doxxing" a term in the first place, not 1. When the term first began to be used, it was typically describing a case where someone posted people's home address and phone number, or work address and phone number, all of which was already publicly available information. They'd do this on Reddit or Twitter and generally stoke up a bunch of people into a frenzy (or where they were already stoked up) and they'd call their place of work telling them to fire the person or call their home and harrass them.
This wasn't that. But, I think Scott makes a pretty reasonable case about the professional nuances of psychiatry, and that it wasn't unreasonable to ask the Times to respect that. And as I said in my previous comment, I don't really see what compelling reason Metz had to refuse (in the original interaction); as students of bureaucracy know, "it's in the guidelines" is more often a discretionary judgment, because the person in question simply doesn't want to go to the trouble it would take to make an exception.
Maybe you think Scott’s mea culpa was insufficient, but it’s objectively true that Scott admitted to overreacting and admonished the actions of his followers that led to harassment.
Now, Will’s speculation is that Scott’s freakout made Metz super suspicious. It’s absurd for Scott to engage in conspiratorial thinking about the Times wanting to score a hit on him, but there is no problem for Metz and his editors to engage in conspiratorial thinking about Scott’s motives. I get that this sort of skepticism is part of a journalist’s state of mind, but this asymmetric treatment feels a little unfair. Of course, we don’t know what Metz thought. This is just Will’s rationalization.
If Metz actually did feel inspired to dig deeper to see what Scott might be hiding, he did a terrible job. That’s really important to emphasize, and is something Will completely ignores. Every anecdote in Metz’s article is easily refuted, and they don’t even require a close reading. They are just bad examples. If that is the result of months of reporting, then it speaks to Metz’s incompetence, Scott’s excellence in obfuscation, or perhaps, there is no *there* there. Will spends no time at all on the actual content of Metz’s piece. I guess maybe there wasn’t space.
Will links to a tweet that has since been deleted with allegedly damning emails. No idea why it was deleted, but that is, in fairness, a piece of relevant evidence. The rest is Will’s idle speculation that Scott is a neofascist. Neofascism, in fact, is seemingly pervasive among technology leaders - at least in Will’s mind. I guess this is healthy journalistic skepticism.
With respect to the Times, it’s really weak for Will to just hand wave away all of the fuck ups associated with its culture and reporting. “Large institutions are just going to fail from time to time, but we should forgive them because they are large and unwieldy” is a bizarre standard and I am willing to bet Will does not apply this principle evenly. If Will wants to defend the Times, he should do the work and rebut the arguments levied against it.
Lastly, what is up with saying “Silicon Valley” is a bunch of white dudes? Leaders in the technology industry are pretty often male, but quite racially diverse. Will spends a lot of his time painting Balaji as a piece of shit and this is apparently lost on him.
> It’s absurd for Scott to engage in conspiratorial thinking about the Times wanting to score a hit on him, but there is no problem for Metz and his editors to engage in conspiratorial thinking about Scott’s motives.
*cough* false equivalence *cough
The Times did not need to engage in "conspiratorial thinking" to wonder why Scott did what he did. They merely had to think that this was unusual behavior that indicated something of potential interest.
Meanwhile, the problem with Scott's conspiratorial musings are not that they are conspiratorial per se, but that they are, in fact, absurd. I like Scott's writing, but when I got to the bit about the Times' commissioning a hit piece on him as payback, I wondered what his corn flakes were laced with. It's batty.
I agree that his paranoia was unjustified and wrong. I hope he changes his mind over time.
“What are you really up to by reaching out to me?” and “what are you really up to by ignoring me?” seem like two equivalent impulses to me. We give journalists wide berth for this sort of thing because we believe it helps their aims in reporting. Fair enough, but that doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the thinking. Then again, we can’t speak to Metz’s state of mind outside of conjecture and we can speak to Scott’s.
The nature of the impulse isn't what matters in this case. You're drawing an equivalency at a level that isn't interesting. It's like saying Scott and the Times are engaged in the same activity because they both involve the use of question marks or both took place over email.
What matters is whether their suppositions were plausible or justified. "Dude freaks out, shuts down his highly influential blog, and dispatches an enraged online horde to harass reporter" plausibly justifies a suspicion of, "Hm, maybe something is going on here." Whereas "world's most esteemed newsgathering organization pursues vendetta against unknown blogger" just doesn't track.
I don’t want to belabor this too much because it’s all based on an assumption that Will makes with really no evidence. I wasn’t saying the equivalence was interesting, just that he was making it.
As to plausibility - I guess they are both plausible.
Justified? That’s a subjective assessment. I’ll leave it up to you. I think a little epistemic humility on both sides would have been more appropriate.
Great article, Will. Small factual correction: "Palantir" is not a name for Sauron's all-seeing eye. (Sauron *is* his all-seeing eye.) Palantir were, basically, crystal ball walkie-talkies that allowed communication at a distance. Sauron captured one of them and used them to manipulate & corrupt the owners of other Palantir. This correction only makes the name creepier!
Well, I have to say that I had not seriously considered that the reason the final article came out as so negative (which I think it clearly is) is in part because Siskind acted wildly irrationally (I have always agreed there) and in ways reporters would deem suspicious, and that his community too acted in ways that would seem suspicious. And I largely agree that a demand for absolute pseudonymity is a kind of ridiculous and ultimately corrosive demand, even if I think at times certain groups enforce rules around acceptable discussion too heavily to be optimal.
I am not convinced Scott has bad motives or even is aware exactly of what he’s doing (which is at least possibly rationalization rather than reasoning on this matter). But then I don’t really need to be convinced it’s true, just that it’s quite possible (perhaps even likely).
And while I don’t think the NYT article addresses what is actually interesting about SSC and rationalists but rather focuses on basically irrelevant matters around Scott, Thiel, and a few bad eggs in the bunch, without ever actually describing what most people in the community finds valuable about it, you may be right that if you only have 1000 words and are writing for a general audience who doesn’t know or care about anything rationalists talk about then perhaps it’s not unreasonable to focus on these trivialities. (Ouch was that a lot of hedging and way too many clauses.) I think the effect it has is to slander a large number of people in the minds of the general public for virtually no benefit to anyone, but that’s largely because I think the rationalists have a lot of good in them and are highly valuable. Compared to the counter factual where a genuinely valuable article about SSC (in my assessment) was written, the existing article is trash. But it’s at least plausible that to those outside the community who will never learn and never would have learned anything about it ever again, perhaps it serves some vague sense of public interest for them to know certain bad people and people with power like the same blog (and are sometimes the same people).
Ultimately I’m not convinced your description of the process that gave rise to the article as it is is correct, but you have at least achieved your aim of moving at least one person in your direction.
Also, this was way way better “lots of rationalists very in their feelings today and I am here for it”. Just because it was true (myself included) didn’t mean that it’s right 🤣. As you no doubt know from your Objectivist period, reason and emotions aren’t necessarily enemies and can go along together! But as rationalists know, they absolutely can be enemies, haha. Frenemies perhaps.
Not being involved with all the supposed overreaction to the first aborted article on SSC, I was just annoyed that a good blog had disappeared for no reason I could understand. I see quotes and supposed fact attributed to people all that time where it would seem know ing their actual identities would be very relevant. What the heck is relevant about who "Scott Alexander" is? If he wants pseudo anonymity, why not let him have it? While this did not lead me (or apparently Alexander, either) into a conspiracy about why the NYT was trying to "get" Alexander, it was still just annoying as hell (in the same way as Fauci never explaining the flip flop on masks, or opposition to First Dose First.) "Just following the rules" is not a good response to the question of why the rules are what they are?
But then the article came out that was much different from what the original one was to be about, SSC as a window into why some people in the "rationalist" community were right earlier on aspects of the COVID response that the MSM/mainstream public health community. That raised a much larger question than why a journalist couldn't go along with a source's desire for anonymity? Now maybe it makes sense that the journalist rewrote his original article in response to what he saw as unjustified attacks on his newspaper (although that seems pretty thin-skinned to me), but why would an editor let that go through?
You seem to ignore one important point Siskind makes early on: that it is important for the therapeutic relationship to have the therapist remain opaque.
OK, this is the post that convinced me to become a paying subscriber. I have long regarded Will Wilkinson as a writer who a) can express things that I'm thinking far more lucidly than I ever could and b) frequently writes things that I at least partially disagree with, forcing me to interrogate the reasons for our disagreement. (This has been somewhat intellectually whiplash inducing as WW has migrated over the years from much more libertarian than me to now seemingly somewhat more liberal than me.)
Question: any recommended reading for the non-PhD in philosophy on the “naturalized” epistemology that came out of Quine, etc. I have also long been interested in how to think better, and I'm generally a fan of SSC and the like, but I agree that there is a lot missing from their approach.
Regarding SSC: the community does strike me as not being nearly skeptical enough about their own rationalism. Yes, they are self-consciously aware of their own potential biases, but it seems like a rational assessment of one's own thinking would yield a conclusion along the lines of: "Most of what I think is likely to be wholly or partly wrong, and if I apply serious effort to improving the quality of my thought...most of what I think will still be wholly or partly wrong."
Good discussion. I recommend a twitter thread from Dave Roberts at Volts about the interplay between rationalism and emotional literacy/EQ (or lack thereof). It's not even clear to me that Siskind/Alexander/whatever the hell the guy's name is made a strong enough plea for pseudonymity before blowing up the blog. But yes, it is a huge red flag to anyone who reads people for a living (including journalists, some lawyers, and so forth).
I admit I'm starting to tire of debates about rational vs. irrational. People make decisions based on values, emotions, facts, ethics, and a lot of other things, and trying to deny that messy reality leads to a lot of missteps.
That was pretty persuasive and I disagree with you (but less now). I do think the most glaring errors in Metz' piece still deserve updating, but they are the banal ones: the definition of effective altruism, the dishonest rendering of Damore's (admittedly terrible) screed, the discussion of Siskind's views on Murray's views. I'm still disappointed those errors made it through the editing process, even though the Times batting average is still really good.
You and Spiers have the same problem: You approach credibility, but completely gaslight the obvious bad faith that seeps from Metz's Murray and "Voldemort" references. It's not just that Metz deigns to "mention" these -- he injects then in a fashion so willfully and maliciously misleading that it would be borderline sanctionable in court. If you can't admit there's malice here, you're either deluded or likewise operating in bad faith, which makes it difficult to engage with the remainder of what you've written. Same goes for Spiers.
The leaked emails that Wilkinson mentions in the post (which can be seen full-size at https://imgur.com/a/gWeIK6c ) confirm that Siskind was indeed a believer in Charles Murray style views about there being a significant genetic component to racial differences in IQ, income, educational attainment etc. I had already gotten a strong impression to that effect just from reading things Siskind wrote on Slate Star Codex, and Metz contacted critics who were also close readers of the blog so it's possible Metz had seen many of the same comments. I wrote up a summary on another blog, I'll repost here:
As a regular reader of Slate Star Codex (which I've continually found interesting despite strong disagreements with his takes on a number of issues, including the one below), my memory is that Siskind has also periodically directed his readers to at least seriously consider Murray-style views on race, namely the notion that average differences in IQ between different ethnic groups have a significant hereditary component rather than being completely (or near-completely) due to average environmental differences. Looking around a bit for examples, in https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/26/the-atomic-bomb-considered-as-hungarian-high-school-science-fair-project/ he writes 'I find the solution by Cochran, Hardy, and Harpending really compelling', where their solution was to posit Ashkenazi Jews have undergone a selection process at the genetic level that has increased their average intelligence (aside from the complete lack of any genetic evidence for this idea since it was proposed, some additional critiques of this theory can be found at http://www.talkreason.org/articles/chosen.cfm ). Sections 5.4.2 and 5.4.2.1 of Siskind's anti-reactionary FAQ at https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/ also seem to treat it as reasonably plausible (or at least grant for the sake of argument) that differences in test scores between African-American and European-American populations have a significant genetic component, and suggest it's a good thing that public opinion doesn't blame worse outcomes for African-Americans primarily on discrimination.
Also, when I was searching his blog for posts to confirm my vague memory that he has periodically made posts sympathetic to the online “human biodiversity” (HBD) movement, I searched specifically for posts using the term "human biodiversity" and found a 2014 links post at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/14/more-links-for-may-2014/ where he described one of his links as "A black guy writes a FAQ on the human biodiversity movement", and the author of that FAQ, JayMan, was clearly arguing for the Murray-type view that environmental explanations can't account for racial differences in IQ scores (look especially at items 9 and 10 on the FAQ).
Searching the blog for more references to JayMan, I found that JayMan was also a regular commenter on Slate Star Codex, where he was even more explicit about his position on genetic explanations for racial IQ differences (see the comment at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/20/ozys-anti-heartiste-faq/#comment-137774 and his recommendation of a paper by well-known 'scientific racism' advocates Rushton and Jensen at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/20/ozys-anti-heartiste-faq/#comment-138666 ), and he also argued that this supposed fact had right-wing political implications (see for example JayMan's comment at https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/27/book-review-albions-seed/#comment-350440 where he argues that 'The source of cultural variation, particularly across space, is genetic variation' and that therefore 'The world will never become like that of Star Trek, a progressive Utopia – that is unless NW Europeans replace the populations of the rest of the world'). And Siskind periodically made respectful comments about JayMan's expertise in these matters, like the comment at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/13/debunked-and-well-refuted/#comment-165903 where Siskind referred to him as one of 'our resident experts' on the pro-HBD side of the Charles Murray debate, or the one at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/#comment-150370 where Siskind responded to a comment criticizing his understanding of heritability by saying "JayMan comes by here every so often. If he agrees with you, I’ll investigate further".
JayMan wasn't the the only pro HBD person that Siskind directed readers to or treated as being knowledgeable guides to the subject, in a post at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/16/five-case-studies-on-politicization/ he wrote that "HBD Chick usually writes very well-thought-out articles on race and genetics", where "HBD chick" is a blogger who also takes Murray-style positions on race and IQ, see for example her post at https://web.archive.org/web/20130625075228/http://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/why-human-biodiversity-is-true-and-why-jason-richwine-is-right/ . And Steve Sailer, the blogger who coined the euphemism "human biodiversity" for claims about innate racial intelligence and personality differences, got a shout-out in the post at https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/20/links-415-link-and-youre-dead/ for his argument that a finding of location-dependent social mobility was really just a consequence of African-Americans having lower social mobility than European-Americans. In the Sailer post that Siskind links to, Sailer doesn't explicitly argue that this lower social mobility has a genetic origin, but he does heavily imply it by saying "If we want our presidential candidates to get access to better social policy discourse, we need to stop wrecking the careers of the Jason Richwines, James D. Watsons, and Larry Summers for the crime of telling the truth." (Richwine and Watson both suggested a genetic explanation for observed racial IQ differences, Summers suggested biological reasons for fewer women opting for careers in science).
Siskind did also occasionally direct readers to anti-HBD arguments, but the example of his post about an anti-racialist FAQ at https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/17/someone-writes-an-anti-racist-faq/ is telling--he talks as though this is one of the few (or only) examples of anti-HBD arguments he's come across that he actually respects, saying 'It’s astounding because it is a piece of writing about race that is so good that I actually have specific criticisms of it. I didn’t even realize how strange this was until about my tenth nitpick, when I noticed that I was nitpicking individual arguments instead of shouting at my computer “WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID?! WHY?! WHY?!”'
Given this history, which Cade Metz may have been at least partially aware of (I know that a rationalwiki editor said they had sent Metz a very detailed list of Siskind's controversial statements) I think one can reasonably infer Siskind at least finds Murray's views on the genetic component of racial IQ differences to at least be reasonably plausible, and I'd say it's fairly likely he finds them *more* plausible than the strictly environmental hypothesis even if his mind isn't entirely made up. And certainly when he's praised Murray in the past, as in the post at https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/12/clarification-to-sacred-principles-as-exhaustible-resources/ where he says "my impression of Murray is positive", he never adds any qualifications about the race and IQ stuff that are surely what Murray is most well-known for by the general public, nor does he always specify that he just has a positive opinion of Murray's views on a specific subject like UBI.
Metz definitely didn't get the story quite right on Scott Alexander's connection to "human biodiversity" and issues with feminism. But there's definitely something in the vicinity that's right. (My bigger objection with the article was that it linked these relevant posts from SlateStarCodex, but didn't link, or even name, "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup", when a chunk of the article was devoted to analyzing it: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/
I more or less agree with your characterization of the most conspiratorial claims about the NYT as almost certainly wrong. But I have personally revised my priors about how much the Times cares about factual accuracy downward after hearing how internal 1619 Project fact-checks fared and seeing that the NYT story on SSC has at least one clear factual error that lots of people have pointed out but that hasn't yet been corrected. The misleadingness of how the Murray parts are written is pretty bad too. We needn't presume untoward motives to believe that the content of the story is factually wrong in parts and unfairly misleading in others. That's my modest claim.
This feels right to me. On a related note, although overall I think this essay will nudge the average SSC fan in the right direction, I have a pretty strong reaction to this line:
> " [The NYT] care[s] intensely about whether and how broadly they are trusted; they want to be trusted by everybody, both because it’s a lovely ideal and because they think they’ll make more money that way."
They definitely won't make more money that way, and I don't think many people in the Times are under the delusion that they would. Getting people to pay for their work requires creating fans, and fans require a special level of excitement and deference that goes beyond grudging admission that they probably get most facts right. So there are strong incentives to cater to people on the margins of becoming subscribers, and ignoring people who will likely never become subscribers.
And as for the lovely ideal part of it, their behavior doesn't evince it much, either. Like, if they really wanted to build bridges why wouldn't they have a public Q&A about this story? Clearly a lot of people think it's substantially wrong. Why not curate some questions and have the Metz and his editor sit down for a podcast to discuss the story and reporting process? It seems like they're uninterested in building or repairing trust. Like they assume anyone who doesn't like the story is just a "hater".
To be honest, they're incredibly lucky that you wrote this!
Yes, this part stood out too. It's like he didn't read Reeves Wiedeman, and/or has been living underground.
excellent discussion. The way people talk about the output of news outlets is pretty bonkers. The news industry is like the restaurant industry; profits are razor thin and every company walks a tightrope to cover their operating costs while preserving a reputation (not necessarily for credibility, as the Times has prioritized, but for any number of things that might attract an audience).
Attempting to understand the content of articles on the Times through the lens of malice or spitefulness is just not going to carry you very far. There’s very little time for that; writing from a place of malice or spitefulness does not actually help you produce pieces that attract readers, especially readers who might convert to subscribers in the case of the Times.
Malice is a comforting explanation because it implies you matter, that the journalist or even better their institution, cares enough about you or sees you as enough of a threat to specifically single you out for destruction.
To my mind, the real problem with journalists, which Scott touched on a bit in his inaugural post, is their *indifference.* indifference to the impact of making something salient or shining a spotlight in it. When Metz started researching the piece there really was no compelling reason Scott’s name was *needed*. It was basically a fluff piece, on the level of a trend piece, about an eccentric subcommunity. The public wouldn’t gain anything from having his real name mentioned, and Scott preferred not to have it shown, and “it’s our guideline” is a pretty weak reason. Fact is being written about in the NYT, even in positive or neutral terms, can be a pretty high impact event for people. And the only reason that journalists do it is because it’s their job to find interesting things for their audience; in cases like this, there really wasn’t any more compelling reason than that.
All that said, you’re exactly right that Scott’s behavior basically said in big neon lights “there’s a bigger story here!” I don’t think he has really wrestled with the implications of that, and I think the malice narrative is entirely delusional. But I also think the people like Spiers who have argued from the newsroom perspective have missed how the journalist’s indifference to their impact is felt by the subjects of it, and how malice narratives are often the comfort blanket of those who feel like they were kicked in the shin for no real reason.
I agree with this. I also think that the concern about his exposure's impact on his patients is a serious one, which is prima facie reasonable as a claim to anonymity. That's the case whether or not it was really Siskind's main reason for objecting and for ultimately quitting his job.
And that isn't just about non-"woke" views expressed on the blog. Siskind also often specifically writes about psychiatry, and psychiatric conditions, including, for example, whether some of them actually exist as consistent pathological categories! That's got to be sensitive stuff for some patients to be exposed to.
None of that invalidate's Will's arguments - though I do think "it’s apparently important to remain something of an enigma to your psychiatry patients" sounds a little too dismissive. And of course it doesn't mean any and all psychiatrists should have guaranteed anonymity in all circumstances. By all means, if you think they're hiding something important, dig around and see if they are. But it is the sort of area where guidelines should not just be dogmatically applied.
I guess the question I keep on coming back to is: don't his patients have a right to know? Those opinions are both material to the nature and quality of his practice and they're contributed to the public sphere. They can't be dismissed as either irrelevant (who cares what your baker thinks about zoning policy?) or privately expressed. As Will notes, many of his patients might find those opinions offensive and not want to seek treatment from someone who espouses them. So I can certainly see why Scott wouldn't want them publicized - but I can't see why that's a preference that should be given deference.
The NYT Company had 16% operation margin last year. Not gangbusters, but this is a highly profitable enterprise. I don’t think there is any reason to believe that the Times is worried about its reputation being pummeled into unprofitability. In fact, given the ideological contours of its subscriber base, articles like Metz’s are good for business. This incentive structure of course is totally overlooked by Will.
Except that only a few short years ago they almost went completely bust and the institutional memory of that runs very deep.
That’s true! But is that a big factor here? I dunno...
Interestingly, The Boston Globe seems to have a new project called the Fresh Start initiative that seems to grapple a bit with recognizing that maybe they've been callous when considering the impact of their stories on the subjects of said stories. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/22/metro/globes-fresh-start-initiative-frequently-asked-questions/
"Globe journalism was never meant to be a permanent obstacle to someone’s success, with the worst decisions and moments in regular people’s lives accessible by a few keystrokes for the rest of time. This initiative aims to empower all people who want to have a fresh start. We will consider updating past coverage with new information and changing how accessible stories are in search engines."
Ironically*, it's part of an attempt to reconsider their behavior regarding racial justice issues so I half-suspect that it might get derided by SSC adherents for being an SJW initiative, though I could be wrong.
I agree with you though that I think Will and others are giving a reasonable explanation of why Metz and journalists generally would be unsympathetic to Scott Alexander's concerns, but that doesn't mean that they are striking the right balance. But, as Will points out, outlets like the NYT produce so much journalism that they're going to be making errors of judgment pretty much all the time.
* is this really ironic? I don't know.
Why do you constantly refer to him as "Siskind" in this article rather than as "Scott Alexander"? It would seem weird to me for a music reviewer to talk about "Stefani Germanotta (who publishes under the name "Lady Gaga")" and then constantly say "Germanotta" throughout the article. My general inclination is to refer to people by the name that they choose to be identified as, with maybe a mention of their legal name if that's relevant. I don't know how much this is shaped by years of exposure to the occasional trans person, for whom this is important in a different sort of way from singers and writers. But it still seems like the polite thing to do, so why not do it? (That goes for Peter Thiel too, though I assume "Theil" is just a mis-remembering of the spelling, and not an intentional alternate name.)
On the bigger point, I think I mostly agree. There was a huge overreaction by the SlateStarCodex fanbase, because there really is a strain of sympathy for neoreaction and anti-feminism there. I do think the particular insinuations Metz made are misleading (particularly the suggestion that social justice warriors are more excluded than neoreactionaries in the community, and the mischaracterization of "I Can Tolerate Anything But The Outgroup" as an attack specifically on the Blue Tribe, while linking several other posts but not that one).
Anyway, I've been glad to be following Scott Alexander, Matthew Yglesias, and you, all on Substack the past few weeks, and learning more about the important similarities and distinctions in views between these people that I've been following online for many years!
In his second post from Astral Codex Ten at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive where he first starts to discuss the fallout from the New York Times article, he does refer to himself by his real name at the end:
"So here goes. With malice towards none, with charity towards all, with firmness in the ṛta as reflective equilibrium gives us to see the ṛta, let us restart our mutual explorations, begin anew the joyful reduction of uncertainty wherever it may lead us.
My name is Scott Siskind, and I love all of you so, so much."
I see that he doesn't necessarily mind the name having been connected now. But it still seems weird to refer to him by that name, when he usually goes by "Scott Alexander".
Another earnest question for people like Wilkinson: Why is doxing journalists a bad act? You seemingly expect me to regard journalists as a special class empowered to dox civilians with impunity for profit, clout, and/or sadistic gratification, yet you want me to be disconcerted that Balaji would dox a reporter? You probably read Freddie DeBoer and probably dismissed his piece out-of-hand. You shouldn't have.
"Doxxing" anyone is a bad act, if it is truly doxxing. Publishing information that is semi-public (say, not in the 1st page of google results) with the intent of harassing someone is also a bad act. Whether publishing information that is semi-public, if it serves some other purpose for providing context in a story or debate, is good or bad is a judgement call, but is not an intrinsically bad act.
This is already coming up in other comments, so I want to add: "dox(x)" gets used to describe two distinct things:
1- Making previously private information public (revealing an anonymous person's identity, when that information is not really available publicly)
2- Drawing attention to/making salient already public information in a context that is likely to be harmful
2 is really what was going to happen in Scott's case. As everyone has said, it was super easy to figure out his last name from a simple Google search. Some friends in the Bay area tell me that everyone around there already tended to refer to him by his real name during verbal conversations about the blog.
But 2 is also what made "doxxing" a term in the first place, not 1. When the term first began to be used, it was typically describing a case where someone posted people's home address and phone number, or work address and phone number, all of which was already publicly available information. They'd do this on Reddit or Twitter and generally stoke up a bunch of people into a frenzy (or where they were already stoked up) and they'd call their place of work telling them to fire the person or call their home and harrass them.
This wasn't that. But, I think Scott makes a pretty reasonable case about the professional nuances of psychiatry, and that it wasn't unreasonable to ask the Times to respect that. And as I said in my previous comment, I don't really see what compelling reason Metz had to refuse (in the original interaction); as students of bureaucracy know, "it's in the guidelines" is more often a discretionary judgment, because the person in question simply doesn't want to go to the trouble it would take to make an exception.
Maybe you think Scott’s mea culpa was insufficient, but it’s objectively true that Scott admitted to overreacting and admonished the actions of his followers that led to harassment.
Now, Will’s speculation is that Scott’s freakout made Metz super suspicious. It’s absurd for Scott to engage in conspiratorial thinking about the Times wanting to score a hit on him, but there is no problem for Metz and his editors to engage in conspiratorial thinking about Scott’s motives. I get that this sort of skepticism is part of a journalist’s state of mind, but this asymmetric treatment feels a little unfair. Of course, we don’t know what Metz thought. This is just Will’s rationalization.
If Metz actually did feel inspired to dig deeper to see what Scott might be hiding, he did a terrible job. That’s really important to emphasize, and is something Will completely ignores. Every anecdote in Metz’s article is easily refuted, and they don’t even require a close reading. They are just bad examples. If that is the result of months of reporting, then it speaks to Metz’s incompetence, Scott’s excellence in obfuscation, or perhaps, there is no *there* there. Will spends no time at all on the actual content of Metz’s piece. I guess maybe there wasn’t space.
Will links to a tweet that has since been deleted with allegedly damning emails. No idea why it was deleted, but that is, in fairness, a piece of relevant evidence. The rest is Will’s idle speculation that Scott is a neofascist. Neofascism, in fact, is seemingly pervasive among technology leaders - at least in Will’s mind. I guess this is healthy journalistic skepticism.
With respect to the Times, it’s really weak for Will to just hand wave away all of the fuck ups associated with its culture and reporting. “Large institutions are just going to fail from time to time, but we should forgive them because they are large and unwieldy” is a bizarre standard and I am willing to bet Will does not apply this principle evenly. If Will wants to defend the Times, he should do the work and rebut the arguments levied against it.
Lastly, what is up with saying “Silicon Valley” is a bunch of white dudes? Leaders in the technology industry are pretty often male, but quite racially diverse. Will spends a lot of his time painting Balaji as a piece of shit and this is apparently lost on him.
> It’s absurd for Scott to engage in conspiratorial thinking about the Times wanting to score a hit on him, but there is no problem for Metz and his editors to engage in conspiratorial thinking about Scott’s motives.
*cough* false equivalence *cough
The Times did not need to engage in "conspiratorial thinking" to wonder why Scott did what he did. They merely had to think that this was unusual behavior that indicated something of potential interest.
Meanwhile, the problem with Scott's conspiratorial musings are not that they are conspiratorial per se, but that they are, in fact, absurd. I like Scott's writing, but when I got to the bit about the Times' commissioning a hit piece on him as payback, I wondered what his corn flakes were laced with. It's batty.
I agree that his paranoia was unjustified and wrong. I hope he changes his mind over time.
“What are you really up to by reaching out to me?” and “what are you really up to by ignoring me?” seem like two equivalent impulses to me. We give journalists wide berth for this sort of thing because we believe it helps their aims in reporting. Fair enough, but that doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the thinking. Then again, we can’t speak to Metz’s state of mind outside of conjecture and we can speak to Scott’s.
The nature of the impulse isn't what matters in this case. You're drawing an equivalency at a level that isn't interesting. It's like saying Scott and the Times are engaged in the same activity because they both involve the use of question marks or both took place over email.
What matters is whether their suppositions were plausible or justified. "Dude freaks out, shuts down his highly influential blog, and dispatches an enraged online horde to harass reporter" plausibly justifies a suspicion of, "Hm, maybe something is going on here." Whereas "world's most esteemed newsgathering organization pursues vendetta against unknown blogger" just doesn't track.
I don’t want to belabor this too much because it’s all based on an assumption that Will makes with really no evidence. I wasn’t saying the equivalence was interesting, just that he was making it.
As to plausibility - I guess they are both plausible.
Justified? That’s a subjective assessment. I’ll leave it up to you. I think a little epistemic humility on both sides would have been more appropriate.
Great article, Will. Small factual correction: "Palantir" is not a name for Sauron's all-seeing eye. (Sauron *is* his all-seeing eye.) Palantir were, basically, crystal ball walkie-talkies that allowed communication at a distance. Sauron captured one of them and used them to manipulate & corrupt the owners of other Palantir. This correction only makes the name creepier!
Well, I have to say that I had not seriously considered that the reason the final article came out as so negative (which I think it clearly is) is in part because Siskind acted wildly irrationally (I have always agreed there) and in ways reporters would deem suspicious, and that his community too acted in ways that would seem suspicious. And I largely agree that a demand for absolute pseudonymity is a kind of ridiculous and ultimately corrosive demand, even if I think at times certain groups enforce rules around acceptable discussion too heavily to be optimal.
I am not convinced Scott has bad motives or even is aware exactly of what he’s doing (which is at least possibly rationalization rather than reasoning on this matter). But then I don’t really need to be convinced it’s true, just that it’s quite possible (perhaps even likely).
And while I don’t think the NYT article addresses what is actually interesting about SSC and rationalists but rather focuses on basically irrelevant matters around Scott, Thiel, and a few bad eggs in the bunch, without ever actually describing what most people in the community finds valuable about it, you may be right that if you only have 1000 words and are writing for a general audience who doesn’t know or care about anything rationalists talk about then perhaps it’s not unreasonable to focus on these trivialities. (Ouch was that a lot of hedging and way too many clauses.) I think the effect it has is to slander a large number of people in the minds of the general public for virtually no benefit to anyone, but that’s largely because I think the rationalists have a lot of good in them and are highly valuable. Compared to the counter factual where a genuinely valuable article about SSC (in my assessment) was written, the existing article is trash. But it’s at least plausible that to those outside the community who will never learn and never would have learned anything about it ever again, perhaps it serves some vague sense of public interest for them to know certain bad people and people with power like the same blog (and are sometimes the same people).
Ultimately I’m not convinced your description of the process that gave rise to the article as it is is correct, but you have at least achieved your aim of moving at least one person in your direction.
Also, this was way way better “lots of rationalists very in their feelings today and I am here for it”. Just because it was true (myself included) didn’t mean that it’s right 🤣. As you no doubt know from your Objectivist period, reason and emotions aren’t necessarily enemies and can go along together! But as rationalists know, they absolutely can be enemies, haha. Frenemies perhaps.
Thank you for the thoughtful post!
Not being involved with all the supposed overreaction to the first aborted article on SSC, I was just annoyed that a good blog had disappeared for no reason I could understand. I see quotes and supposed fact attributed to people all that time where it would seem know ing their actual identities would be very relevant. What the heck is relevant about who "Scott Alexander" is? If he wants pseudo anonymity, why not let him have it? While this did not lead me (or apparently Alexander, either) into a conspiracy about why the NYT was trying to "get" Alexander, it was still just annoying as hell (in the same way as Fauci never explaining the flip flop on masks, or opposition to First Dose First.) "Just following the rules" is not a good response to the question of why the rules are what they are?
But then the article came out that was much different from what the original one was to be about, SSC as a window into why some people in the "rationalist" community were right earlier on aspects of the COVID response that the MSM/mainstream public health community. That raised a much larger question than why a journalist couldn't go along with a source's desire for anonymity? Now maybe it makes sense that the journalist rewrote his original article in response to what he saw as unjustified attacks on his newspaper (although that seems pretty thin-skinned to me), but why would an editor let that go through?
You seem to ignore one important point Siskind makes early on: that it is important for the therapeutic relationship to have the therapist remain opaque.
OK, this is the post that convinced me to become a paying subscriber. I have long regarded Will Wilkinson as a writer who a) can express things that I'm thinking far more lucidly than I ever could and b) frequently writes things that I at least partially disagree with, forcing me to interrogate the reasons for our disagreement. (This has been somewhat intellectually whiplash inducing as WW has migrated over the years from much more libertarian than me to now seemingly somewhat more liberal than me.)
Question: any recommended reading for the non-PhD in philosophy on the “naturalized” epistemology that came out of Quine, etc. I have also long been interested in how to think better, and I'm generally a fan of SSC and the like, but I agree that there is a lot missing from their approach.
Regarding SSC: the community does strike me as not being nearly skeptical enough about their own rationalism. Yes, they are self-consciously aware of their own potential biases, but it seems like a rational assessment of one's own thinking would yield a conclusion along the lines of: "Most of what I think is likely to be wholly or partly wrong, and if I apply serious effort to improving the quality of my thought...most of what I think will still be wholly or partly wrong."
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great resource. Maybe start with their article on Naturalism in Epistemology? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-naturalized/
I'm not a PhD but I was a philosophy major so it's fair to say that I have pretty much forgotten everything I briefly knew about Quine :P
Thanks!
Good discussion. I recommend a twitter thread from Dave Roberts at Volts about the interplay between rationalism and emotional literacy/EQ (or lack thereof). It's not even clear to me that Siskind/Alexander/whatever the hell the guy's name is made a strong enough plea for pseudonymity before blowing up the blog. But yes, it is a huge red flag to anyone who reads people for a living (including journalists, some lawyers, and so forth).
I admit I'm starting to tire of debates about rational vs. irrational. People make decisions based on values, emotions, facts, ethics, and a lot of other things, and trying to deny that messy reality leads to a lot of missteps.
Aaarghhh. The writing is great but do something about the typos. Couldn’t figure out what some of the sentences in the first paragraphs meant:
“ Slate Star Codex (SSC), which Siskind sunk [to?] the the bottom of the sea this summer because Metz was working [on an?] article”
“ Yet I know that a bunch of folks, including some friend[s],”
“ So, I’m sorry for the prolix digressiveness nature [digressive nature?]”
“ I am not of member of the out-group, exactly” [not a member of the out-group?]
“ more than [a?] little tribal”
Honestly the writing is fascinating but why do you hate definite and indefinite articles so much?
Otherwise keep up the good work!
Also Peter Thiel (not Theil).
I want to read a stand-alone post about Quineian epistemology: what it is, and how it has shaped your other views.
That was pretty persuasive and I disagree with you (but less now). I do think the most glaring errors in Metz' piece still deserve updating, but they are the banal ones: the definition of effective altruism, the dishonest rendering of Damore's (admittedly terrible) screed, the discussion of Siskind's views on Murray's views. I'm still disappointed those errors made it through the editing process, even though the Times batting average is still really good.