> But Times tech correspondent Cade Metz seemed to have found a way around this — not only by threatening to print Alexander’s name but also by writing a story about “the overlap between SSC and the Y Combinator/Andreessen-Horowitz crowd,” a reference to two prominent venture-capital firms. But wait: Neither Y Combinator (YC) nor Andreessen-Horowitz (a16z) funds or otherwise supports Slate Star Codex. Alexander says that while YC founder Paul Graham reads his blog, he “cannot remember ever meeting or conversing with anyone” affiliated with YC. And outside of self-help clickbait (“Nine Books Warren Buffett Thinks You Should Read This Year”), the reading habits of businesspeople rarely make headlines.
I don't follow. Isn't there pretty clearly an overlap between the YC crowd and the SSC crowd? Former YC partners were among the first people to light my Twitter TL up about SSC. SSC have long been routinely featured on HN. Among the first signatures on the "DontDoxScottAlexander" petition are Paul Graham and Sam Altman.
I'm also not clear on what's problematic about the claim. Affiliation with YC legitimizes SSC (though: that might not be commutative); it doesn't threaten SSC.
There is no substantiation provided in the article for this assertion. You are simply repeating an unsupported claim.
What was the name of the book?
What was the name of the blog post?
I think you’re trying to express skepticism about this claim, but the way that it’s phrased, if the claim were true, directly answering your questions would be to doxx the author of Slate Star Codex here in this thread.
By taking down the blog and writing the open letter, Alexander has made it extremely clear what his current anonymity preferences are.
It must feel incredibly horrible to be asking for privacy, citing safety reasons, only to have people dig up deanonymizing opsec failures from the past and suggesting they somehow indicated you did not really intend or deserve to have privacy today.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 33.8 ms ] thread> But Times tech correspondent Cade Metz seemed to have found a way around this — not only by threatening to print Alexander’s name but also by writing a story about “the overlap between SSC and the Y Combinator/Andreessen-Horowitz crowd,” a reference to two prominent venture-capital firms. But wait: Neither Y Combinator (YC) nor Andreessen-Horowitz (a16z) funds or otherwise supports Slate Star Codex. Alexander says that while YC founder Paul Graham reads his blog, he “cannot remember ever meeting or conversing with anyone” affiliated with YC. And outside of self-help clickbait (“Nine Books Warren Buffett Thinks You Should Read This Year”), the reading habits of businesspeople rarely make headlines.
I'm also not clear on what's problematic about the claim. Affiliation with YC legitimizes SSC (though: that might not be commutative); it doesn't threaten SSC.
It is worth noting that Alexander has republished SlateStarCodex blogs in books using his full name.
Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7w3zw/silicon-valley-eli...
If you could also get proof of SSC’s claim as well that’d be ideal.
It must feel incredibly horrible to be asking for privacy, citing safety reasons, only to have people dig up deanonymizing opsec failures from the past and suggesting they somehow indicated you did not really intend or deserve to have privacy today.