Because HN wants to believe that the same "throw away what's been done before and reason from first principles" approach that serves them well in engineering can be applied to social problems. (Spoiler: it can't.)
This feels almost like a false flag sort of extreme comment, knowingly violating the rules, just to make it seem like Slate Star Codex supporters are this kind of discourteous, bro-y, insulting aggressive group.
Maybe it’s not actually a false flag, but let’s be clear that it utterly doesn’t represent the kind of values most SSC readers subscribe to. While I don’t like the original comment’s criticism of why people like SSC, that in no way justifies this type of extremely inappropriate response, full stop.
He decided that they were going to do so regardless of what he did, upended his own life to minimize the damage that'd occur when his name got released, and did so, in order to ensure that his real name and his pseudonym got linked on his own terms, not theirs.
If NYT didn't decide to dox him, the entire second paragraph wouldn't have happened.
He deserved pseudonymity for the same reason you or I deserve pseudonymity.
Would you please stop perpetuating this tedious flamewar? Not perpetuating flamewars, and especially not perpetuating them by getting nastier as you go along, is more important than how right you are or feel you are.
I certainly didn't mean to insult you! It's just that this is a classic flamewar topic that has been argued to death many times, and your comments in this thread were feeding the flamewar more than anyone else's I saw, both in quantity, and in quality—specifically, pushing increasingly toward hostility.
Hostility is the opposite direction to the curious conversation we want here. Sam, YC, et. al., have nothing to do with this—it's just bog-standard HN moderation. If you don't believe me, here are 5,000 examples: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
Not really. "Doxing" [1] is from message board culture, but the NYT is not some poster on a message board. To expect them to abide by message board law in their newspaper as if they're just a poster on reddit is like expecting an American to live by Chinese law and custom in America.
[1] At least in the sense of using someone's real name.
> Why does he deserve anonymity anyway? I don't get it.
Why does he need to "deserve" anonymity? If you have something already and someone wants to take it away, don't you need to justify why you're taking that thing away?
His stated reason he wanted to remain pseudonymous is that, even though it was easy to go from his online to his real life identity, the NYT article would make it easy to go in the other direction - and that enabling his present and previous patients (he's a psychiatrist, so they're not always the most stable people) to discover his online persona would jeopardise his career.
> Why does he need to "deserve" anonymity? If you have something already and someone wants to take it away, don't you need to justify why you're taking that thing away?
That still doesn't answer my question. Sounds very abstract like you are trying to evade answering the question.
He didn't have anonymity. He already published his name. Someone that publishes their name doesn't deserve anonymity, correct?
> and that enabling his present and previous patients (he's a psychiatrist, so they're not always the most stable people) to discover his online persona would jeopardise his career.
He already admitted he was overreacting on this point.
> That still doesn't answer my question. Sounds very abstract like you are trying to evade answering the question.
I don't think your question merits answering, because framing anonymity as something one has to "deserve" makes no sense to me. Saying it needs to be "deserved" suggests it's a privilege granted to people for some merit, rather than the default on the internet until someone either surrenders it willingly, or in this case, has it stripped by another party - so it's akin to privacy in that way. Does anyone "deserve" privacy? Silly question really.
> He didn't have anonymity. He already published his name. Someone that publishes their name doesn't deserve anonymity, correct?
As far as I'm aware, he only published his full name after he knew the article was going up.
> He already admitted he was overreacting on this point.
I can still see how he would initially be worried. Shining a light on someone known for looking into controversial topics and then following it up with "by the way this is his name and he lives in such-and-such town" is vaguely threatening, and inviting people who read the article and decide he's a Nazi or something to mess with his real life.
>Someone that publishes their name doesn't deserve anonymity, correct?
Incorrect. Someone making a mistake does not give you the right to exploit that mistake. That's what Eric Harris thought but it's not how civilized society works. The fact that Scott gave some information away (indirectly) at some point (which you call "publishing") doesn't actually change the significance of the actions.
Yes — once I read the FBI profile of Harris which noted an incident where he stole from an unlocked van and argued furiously that the victim deserved it for being foolish. It stuck in my head as a canonical example of that kind of thinking.
It was easy to go in the other direction already. People in the rationalist community discussed his pseudonymous writing using his real name. Just searching the web for his real name would find it.
yeah but there's still a difference between having your name floating around for those who look for it, and plastering it on a billboard alongside vague implications that he's a very bad man(TM).
> He said he was concerned about patients finding the pseudonym when they searched for his real name. Regardless of the content.
I figured the extension of "and the pseudonym relates to the content" is implied, as knowing "Scott Alexander Siskind" goes by "Scott Alexander" online is not very useful information.
> The NYT article made specific claims. It's up to the reader to decide what to infer.
"I've only ever seen pseudalopex on a forum that's known to be frequented by racists" is a specific claim that is true, but it's clearly making strong inferences about your character. Journalists play this game all the time in hit pieces.
He was concerned about people finding Scott Alexander when they searched for Scott Siskind. Whether the NYT article would be positive or negative was irrelevant.
> Why does he need to "deserve" anonymity? If you have something already and someone wants to take it away, don't you need to justify why you're taking that thing away?
This seems to me like strange framing. 'Anonymity' in this case is not something that someone 'owns' and others 'take it away', it is a demand on others to avoid certain behavior (speaking about your name).
Thinking and speaking is fundamental right. Therefore if person A research public sources to find person B's name, then it is fully within rights of person A to express that. If person B has some advantages from that not being expressed (like in this case), then is up to person B to negotiate with person A for that.
> Thinking and speaking is fundamental right. Therefore if person A research public sources to find person B's name, then it is fully within rights of person A to express that. If person B has some advantages from that not being expressed (like in this case), then is up to person B to negotiate with person A for that.
Who said anything about rights? I'm not arguing that spreading someone's name far and wide against their wishes is illegal. I'm saying it is a dick move, if someone has specifically asked you not to.
again with the argument about rights? He has no right or capability to force them not to print something, obviously. But he can ask them not to, and they can choose to be amenable to his request or not. Him asking them not to publish his name because he believes it could threaten his career, then them doing it anyway, is a dick move. But you know that's the argument I'm making - at this point you're just being needlessly obtuse.
I think that fundamental rights not only specify what is legal, but also provide some default societal position on what is acceptable. Clearly, there are plenty of actions that are legal but are not socially acceptable, but it is on those who claim that the action is unacceptable to provide an argument against the default position. In this specific case, to argue why Scott Alexander 'deserves anonymity'.
The NYT just published a hit piece on him, exactly as he predicted. Whatever faith you might still have on the NYT is misplaced. They have become nothing but a band of vengeful, dishonest crooks, bent on secreting poison and fomenting hate.
Pity party? What are you talking about? Whatever you think of Scott, what was done to him was disgraceful and an abuse of power and the vengeful hit piece is utterly dishonest. For anyone who cares, it is beyond dispute that the NYT is a diseased institution that should be excised from society before it corrupts it further. Why you would choose to attack Scott rather than show indignation at the NYT is incomprehensible to me.
The NYT still has a staff consisting of some of the most excellent writers and reporters of our time. That said, they have definitely been wobbling in the editorial compartement lately. They're overcorrecting as if they've lost their balance (and they probably have).
I think the most exciting way to look at the situation is that no one is really to blame. There are some fucky emergent collective dynamics about, acting like some mythical monster with hapless individuals as its neurons. A grasshopper never chooses to become a locust; it transforms into one when there are too many grasshoppers at the same place bumping into each other. It's no longer an individual. It's part of the swarm. And with the swarm comes destruction.
There's a tendency for cults to suddenly become destructive. Like they've become Harlon Ellis' AI that has no mouth and must scream. Cursed with sudden uncontrollable sentience, it seeks revenge. The Rajneesh movement and Aum Shinrikyo both carried out biological warfare. And you can see these destructive tendencies in most cults, for some reason.
And now, literally connected in a globe-spanning network we see cult-like behavior take on a whole new dimension.
The editorial staff at NYT obviously wants to make good, honest decisions and carry out an important social mission to the benefit of us all. But what if it's not their choice anymore? What if there are collective dynamics that supersede individual agency?
(I do not mean to say that the NYT operates as a cult; it's more that we might be witnessing the sort of dynamics we traditionally see in cults play out across the social media landscape at large.)
How can you absolve the people working there from their responsibility? They are not grasshoppers, they have, I assume, a functioning prefrontal cortex and can see the corruption as plainly as anyone else. Anyone left at the NYT is there by choice and is a willing participant in this disgrace.
I think this can become more difficult when you consider-- where else would they gain enough money to feed themselves, their dependents, and otherwise remain employed? Their industry is already dying, the NYT is one of the few still stable bets that they can remain in their specialty. Otherwise they may be risking poverty while they re-train into a new specialty and a permanent decrease of lifetime earnings during their re-training period, which will then go on to impact any children they have.
I don't mean to say that this is a good or morally correct choice by society's notion, merely that the choice may be more difficult individually.
I think you are being overly charitable. The NYT staff is far from unemployable elsewhere. They just made a calculus that their conscience, and the nation's soul, are not worth the loss of personal status that a departure from what used to be the worlds best newspaper might engender. For that choice they deserve nothing but disdain.
He was a practicing psychiatrist and felt that having his identity public could interfere with his practice. He has since quit practicing (edit: nope, he quit for a short while and has started his own practice), but at the time I felt it was a legitimate reason.
With that said, I don’t think the NYT did anything legally wrong, but it’s kind of a bad look for a newspaper that loves to claim their moral righteousness. It can’t be illegal to say a person’s real name and say what they do as a side gig/hobby. But if someone asks you not to do it, then it’s not cool to do it. It’s not like he’s a movie celebrity constantly putting himself in the public eye. He made a pretty solid effort too keep his internet persona separate from his day job, and most of us feel like that should be respected.
But he did overreact, as he admitted. If he had just kept his mouth shut the NYT article probably wouldn’t have had too many readers and his nuclear option probably attracted more attention.
NYT was going to reveal something that everyone already knew because Scott published his identity himself? The guy overreacted. I'm guessing he has some difficulty processing emotions based on his actions and later statements.
No, I think you’re confused on the order of events. His identity was absolutely not easily revealed. The NYT reporter managed to find his identity and then told him they would dox him as part of the story. This is when he took down slatestar and we first heard about this (many months back).
In reaction, some pleasant netizens took it upon themselves to dox him as much as possible. He then ended up having to quit his job as a psychiatrist and returned to writing full time.
Scott published his own identity. That was his choice. Do you disagree with that? Is there some unwritten rule on the internet that you are anonymous as long as it's kinda a little bit difficult to figure it out?
He quit his job and started another business by using his notoriety. If his life truly was in danger he would have retired. Instead he's trying to make money from his followers with a new business!
> Scott published his own identity. That was his choice. Do you disagree with that?
No, he quite clearly was trying to keep the association between the psychiatry real identity and Scott Alexander. There would be no fucking discussion here if Scott intentionally meant to reveal his identity.
>Is there some unwritten rule on the internet that you are anonymous as long as it's kinda a little bit difficult to figure it out?
Yes, there is a reason it’s gotten its own term. And this is why many sites (like Reddit) have very explicit anti-doxxing rules.
> No, he quite clearly was trying to keep the association between the psychiatry real identity and Scott Alexander. There would be no fucking discussion here if Scott intentionally meant to reveal his identity.
Then why did he publish his own recognizable blog post with his full name here[1]?
Isn't there a difference between having your name in a book that likely doesn't get much circulation and therefore probably wouldn't damage your career from attention, and the literal New York Times outing your name?
Shouldn't we at least suggest these are significantly distinct events with very different ramifications for the author?
I think it is fair to say that the author under the pseudonym of Scott Alexander didn't mean to provide an avenue for which his identity could be in a major, nationwide, widely-read source of news, when he republished an article under his real name in a relatively niche audience book that would unlikely have the same amount of circulation as the New York Times.
You’re right, he’s probably working for NYTimes and this is a geurrilla marketing campaign. He didn’t want to stay anonymous and was using the name Scott Alexander for a decade for the build-up to this climax of made up events.
People in the rationalist community discussed his pseudonymous writing using his real name. Just searching the web for his real name would reveal his pseudonym even before all this.
He quit his old psychiatrist job and started a new one in addition to writing.
You keep saying that in this thread, but no he didn't. He made a few mistakes in regard to pseudo-anonymity, but he never released his full name on purpose.
Could you please post a source if you're going to insist he intentionally revealed his identity prior to NYT getting involved?
So it's all one big accident? You know how absurd this all sounds. First, he has a right to anonymity. Second, if he publishes his name he has the right to anonymity.
No, I'm saying he never published his name intentionally. There were clues in the past (he published the same thing twice, and his pen name is close to his real name), but he never published it.
Could you provide a source if you're going to keep saying the same incorrect information?
Typing in his first and middle name suggested his last name. However, the search he was concerned about was his first and last name leading to his first and middle. That was not in auto suggest.
Put another way, online readers knowing his IRL name, fine. But people he worked with IRL, he preferred not to point to the online persona.
I am saddened to see how much effort you went to in order to copy / paste this example everywhere in this thread. It isn’t relevant and has no connection to Scott’s efforts to stay anonymous nor the NYT’s malicious behavior by not respecting his request.
You’ve pasted this everywhere for nothing. It doesn’t contribute to the discussion or count as evidence for anything. It’s just a completely disconnected and irrelevant piece of trivia that you are trying to astroturf onto the discussion as though it had any credible reason to be considered relevant (it does not).
Because he's a very gifted writer and an insightful social critic whose modes of reasoning and analysis happen to align closely with those most familiar and natural to the average HN reader.
(i.e. he does humanities, but for people who use phrases like 'Nash Equilibrium' and 'prior distribution' in the pub)
because he's Oprah for nerds and there was a whole thing with him complaining about having his name publicly displayed in an article and people in tech whining about the mainstream press is the new hot thing.
Nice summary. I've read most of those. Whether or not Alexander could use an editor would be an interesting piece unto itself. Much of his charm is in the nested parentheses and asides that would get cut, but a distilled version with higher production value could be a useful way to create examples of thoughtfulness and charitableness in public discourse. When I don't agree with him, I still like the sort of enemies he makes.
Scott is also the author of the web fiction novel Unsong which is at the same time funny and intellectually intriguing. Here's an excerpt that always makes me laugh.
'According to Wilson, ritual magic is to Reality as the placebo effect is to humans. Tell a human that a sugar pill will cure their toothache, and the pill will make the toothache disappear. Tell Reality that a ritual will make rain fall, and the ritual will cause a downpour.
In Wilson’s system, ambience wasn’t just the most important thing; it was the only thing. Doctors have long known how every aspect of the medical experience enhances placebo effect: the white coat, the stethoscope, the diplomas hung and framed on the wall – all subconscious reassurances that this is a real doctor prescribing good effective medicine. Likewise, the job of a ritual magician – or in Wilson’s terminology, placebomancer – was to perform a convincing wizard act. The grey robes, the flickering candles, incantations said on the proper day and hour, even shrines and holy places. They all added an extra element of convincingness, until finally Reality was well and truly bamboozled.
...
For to get one’s magician’s license revoked was a terrible thing. Who would trust a placebo given by a doctor stripped of his medical diploma, dressed in street clothes, working out of his garage? A magician who lost his license would lose the ability to convince Reality of anything. The American Board of Ritual Magic, originally a perfectly ordinary example of regulatory capture, had taken on ontological significance.
So nobody had been too worried when young apprentice magician Dylan Alvarez had pissed off one too many people, gotten expelled from the Board, and vowed revenge. He was just an apprentice, after all, and anyway he’d lost his license. Good luck convincing the universe of anything now.
But Alvarez had realized that there are people without medical degrees who hand out convincing placebos. They just don’t do it by pathetically begging people to believe they’re doctors. They do it by saying they’re better than doctors, that they’ve discovered hidden secrets, that the medical establishment is in cahoots against them, but they’ll show the fools, oh yes, they’ll show them all. A good naturopath armed with a couple of crystals and a bubbling blue solution can convince thousands, millions, even in the face of mountains of contradictory evidence. Ambience, they realize, is really a subset of a stronger power. The power of narrative. The literary tropes declaring that, given A, B is sure to follow.
...
Can you imagine a story where a man lies in wait to assassinate the five masters of the American Board of Ritual Magic even as they are plotting to kill him, confounds their ritual, bursts out of the trap-door to their wine cellar at the most theatrical possible moment, raises his staff made of a rare and exotic wood that grows only his far-off homeland – and then dies ignominiously, shot by a security guard before he even can even get a word in edgewise? No? You can’t imagine the story ending that way? Neither can Reality. That was Dylan Alvarez’s secret. He always tried to be the protagonist of whatever story he was in, and the protagonist never dies.'
I've been absolutely bingeing on his blog since discovering the podcast[1] during the 2020 Christmas break. The measured pace seems to make it much easier for me to absorb it without cognitive overload, at least the less extremely technical pieces. The podcasters make a great job of summarizing visuals, and mentioning ahead of time if a post is particularly visual.
Scott is one of those rare bloggers who tries their damnedest to present a rational rather than emotional case, and the vast majority of the content is a breath of fresh air:
- He's willing to change his mind when presented with sufficiently powerful evidence, rather than always doubling down.
- He absolutely fries people faking scientific legitimacy, but only in particularly egregious cases.
- He uses cautious language when presenting interesting but inconclusive data, rather than trying to blow things up as much as possible.
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[ 356 ms ] story [ 2519 ms ] threadMaybe it’s not actually a false flag, but let’s be clear that it utterly doesn’t represent the kind of values most SSC readers subscribe to. While I don’t like the original comment’s criticism of why people like SSC, that in no way justifies this type of extremely inappropriate response, full stop.
Why does he deserve anonymity anyway? I don't get it.
Edit: Nice to see I'm downvoted for pointing out the facts. I guess I'm a "badthinker" too.
He decided that they were going to do so regardless of what he did, upended his own life to minimize the damage that'd occur when his name got released, and did so, in order to ensure that his real name and his pseudonym got linked on his own terms, not theirs.
If NYT didn't decide to dox him, the entire second paragraph wouldn't have happened.
He deserved pseudonymity for the same reason you or I deserve pseudonymity.
Scott published his identity long ago. Scott doxed himself I guess?
> He deserved pseudonymity for the same reason you or I deserve pseudonymity.
Why? Because you say so?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The people being nasty are the others responding to my comments. Am I responsible for them?
Obviously this is a touchy subject for some on here because Sam Altman and many other YC alums love this man.
Does that mean I can't post a critical comment?
Hostility is the opposite direction to the curious conversation we want here. Sam, YC, et. al., have nothing to do with this—it's just bog-standard HN moderation. If you don't believe me, here are 5,000 examples: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
Not really. "Doxing" [1] is from message board culture, but the NYT is not some poster on a message board. To expect them to abide by message board law in their newspaper as if they're just a poster on reddit is like expecting an American to live by Chinese law and custom in America.
[1] At least in the sense of using someone's real name.
Why does he need to "deserve" anonymity? If you have something already and someone wants to take it away, don't you need to justify why you're taking that thing away?
His stated reason he wanted to remain pseudonymous is that, even though it was easy to go from his online to his real life identity, the NYT article would make it easy to go in the other direction - and that enabling his present and previous patients (he's a psychiatrist, so they're not always the most stable people) to discover his online persona would jeopardise his career.
That still doesn't answer my question. Sounds very abstract like you are trying to evade answering the question.
He didn't have anonymity. He already published his name. Someone that publishes their name doesn't deserve anonymity, correct?
> and that enabling his present and previous patients (he's a psychiatrist, so they're not always the most stable people) to discover his online persona would jeopardise his career.
He already admitted he was overreacting on this point.
I don't think your question merits answering, because framing anonymity as something one has to "deserve" makes no sense to me. Saying it needs to be "deserved" suggests it's a privilege granted to people for some merit, rather than the default on the internet until someone either surrenders it willingly, or in this case, has it stripped by another party - so it's akin to privacy in that way. Does anyone "deserve" privacy? Silly question really.
> He didn't have anonymity. He already published his name. Someone that publishes their name doesn't deserve anonymity, correct?
As far as I'm aware, he only published his full name after he knew the article was going up.
> He already admitted he was overreacting on this point.
I can still see how he would initially be worried. Shining a light on someone known for looking into controversial topics and then following it up with "by the way this is his name and he lives in such-and-such town" is vaguely threatening, and inviting people who read the article and decide he's a Nazi or something to mess with his real life.
Incorrect. Someone making a mistake does not give you the right to exploit that mistake. That's what Eric Harris thought but it's not how civilized society works. The fact that Scott gave some information away (indirectly) at some point (which you call "publishing") doesn't actually change the significance of the actions.
The NYT article made specific claims. It's up to the reader to evaluate them and decide what to infer.
I figured the extension of "and the pseudonym relates to the content" is implied, as knowing "Scott Alexander Siskind" goes by "Scott Alexander" online is not very useful information.
> The NYT article made specific claims. It's up to the reader to decide what to infer.
"I've only ever seen pseudalopex on a forum that's known to be frequented by racists" is a specific claim that is true, but it's clearly making strong inferences about your character. Journalists play this game all the time in hit pieces.
You analogy doesn't reflect the article.
This seems to me like strange framing. 'Anonymity' in this case is not something that someone 'owns' and others 'take it away', it is a demand on others to avoid certain behavior (speaking about your name).
Thinking and speaking is fundamental right. Therefore if person A research public sources to find person B's name, then it is fully within rights of person A to express that. If person B has some advantages from that not being expressed (like in this case), then is up to person B to negotiate with person A for that.
Trying to suppress information that is already public is often silly and counterproductive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Who said anything about rights? I'm not arguing that spreading someone's name far and wide against their wishes is illegal. I'm saying it is a dick move, if someone has specifically asked you not to.
Is this guy a king? What gives him the right to tell the press what to print or not to print?
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
I never claimed to have any faith in the NYT. I just think the pity party is overdone. Scott threw a tantrum and then backtracked.
I'm only discussing the facts.
I think the most exciting way to look at the situation is that no one is really to blame. There are some fucky emergent collective dynamics about, acting like some mythical monster with hapless individuals as its neurons. A grasshopper never chooses to become a locust; it transforms into one when there are too many grasshoppers at the same place bumping into each other. It's no longer an individual. It's part of the swarm. And with the swarm comes destruction.
There's a tendency for cults to suddenly become destructive. Like they've become Harlon Ellis' AI that has no mouth and must scream. Cursed with sudden uncontrollable sentience, it seeks revenge. The Rajneesh movement and Aum Shinrikyo both carried out biological warfare. And you can see these destructive tendencies in most cults, for some reason.
And now, literally connected in a globe-spanning network we see cult-like behavior take on a whole new dimension.
The editorial staff at NYT obviously wants to make good, honest decisions and carry out an important social mission to the benefit of us all. But what if it's not their choice anymore? What if there are collective dynamics that supersede individual agency?
(I do not mean to say that the NYT operates as a cult; it's more that we might be witnessing the sort of dynamics we traditionally see in cults play out across the social media landscape at large.)
I don't mean to say that this is a good or morally correct choice by society's notion, merely that the choice may be more difficult individually.
With that said, I don’t think the NYT did anything legally wrong, but it’s kind of a bad look for a newspaper that loves to claim their moral righteousness. It can’t be illegal to say a person’s real name and say what they do as a side gig/hobby. But if someone asks you not to do it, then it’s not cool to do it. It’s not like he’s a movie celebrity constantly putting himself in the public eye. He made a pretty solid effort too keep his internet persona separate from his day job, and most of us feel like that should be respected.
But he did overreact, as he admitted. If he had just kept his mouth shut the NYT article probably wouldn’t have had too many readers and his nuclear option probably attracted more attention.
His identity was only relevant because NYT was going to reveal it, so he had to quit his job and temporarily shut down his blog.
In reaction, some pleasant netizens took it upon themselves to dox him as much as possible. He then ended up having to quit his job as a psychiatrist and returned to writing full time.
He quit his job and started another business by using his notoriety. If his life truly was in danger he would have retired. Instead he's trying to make money from his followers with a new business!
No, he quite clearly was trying to keep the association between the psychiatry real identity and Scott Alexander. There would be no fucking discussion here if Scott intentionally meant to reveal his identity.
>Is there some unwritten rule on the internet that you are anonymous as long as it's kinda a little bit difficult to figure it out?
Yes, there is a reason it’s gotten its own term. And this is why many sites (like Reddit) have very explicit anti-doxxing rules.
Then why did he publish his own recognizable blog post with his full name here[1]?
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Technological_Singu...
Shouldn't we at least suggest these are significantly distinct events with very different ramifications for the author?
He quit his old psychiatrist job and started a new one in addition to writing.
Could you please post a source if you're going to insist he intentionally revealed his identity prior to NYT getting involved?
Could you provide a source if you're going to keep saying the same incorrect information?
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Technological_Singu...
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Technological_Singu...
Put another way, online readers knowing his IRL name, fine. But people he worked with IRL, he preferred not to point to the online persona.
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Technological_Singu...
You’ve pasted this everywhere for nothing. It doesn’t contribute to the discussion or count as evidence for anything. It’s just a completely disconnected and irrelevant piece of trivia that you are trying to astroturf onto the discussion as though it had any credible reason to be considered relevant (it does not).
(i.e. he does humanities, but for people who use phrases like 'Nash Equilibrium' and 'prior distribution' in the pub)
'According to Wilson, ritual magic is to Reality as the placebo effect is to humans. Tell a human that a sugar pill will cure their toothache, and the pill will make the toothache disappear. Tell Reality that a ritual will make rain fall, and the ritual will cause a downpour.
In Wilson’s system, ambience wasn’t just the most important thing; it was the only thing. Doctors have long known how every aspect of the medical experience enhances placebo effect: the white coat, the stethoscope, the diplomas hung and framed on the wall – all subconscious reassurances that this is a real doctor prescribing good effective medicine. Likewise, the job of a ritual magician – or in Wilson’s terminology, placebomancer – was to perform a convincing wizard act. The grey robes, the flickering candles, incantations said on the proper day and hour, even shrines and holy places. They all added an extra element of convincingness, until finally Reality was well and truly bamboozled.
...
For to get one’s magician’s license revoked was a terrible thing. Who would trust a placebo given by a doctor stripped of his medical diploma, dressed in street clothes, working out of his garage? A magician who lost his license would lose the ability to convince Reality of anything. The American Board of Ritual Magic, originally a perfectly ordinary example of regulatory capture, had taken on ontological significance.
So nobody had been too worried when young apprentice magician Dylan Alvarez had pissed off one too many people, gotten expelled from the Board, and vowed revenge. He was just an apprentice, after all, and anyway he’d lost his license. Good luck convincing the universe of anything now.
But Alvarez had realized that there are people without medical degrees who hand out convincing placebos. They just don’t do it by pathetically begging people to believe they’re doctors. They do it by saying they’re better than doctors, that they’ve discovered hidden secrets, that the medical establishment is in cahoots against them, but they’ll show the fools, oh yes, they’ll show them all. A good naturopath armed with a couple of crystals and a bubbling blue solution can convince thousands, millions, even in the face of mountains of contradictory evidence. Ambience, they realize, is really a subset of a stronger power. The power of narrative. The literary tropes declaring that, given A, B is sure to follow.
...
Can you imagine a story where a man lies in wait to assassinate the five masters of the American Board of Ritual Magic even as they are plotting to kill him, confounds their ritual, bursts out of the trap-door to their wine cellar at the most theatrical possible moment, raises his staff made of a rare and exotic wood that grows only his far-off homeland – and then dies ignominiously, shot by a security guard before he even can even get a word in edgewise? No? You can’t imagine the story ending that way? Neither can Reality. That was Dylan Alvarez’s secret. He always tried to be the protagonist of whatever story he was in, and the protagonist never dies.'
Scott is one of those rare bloggers who tries their damnedest to present a rational rather than emotional case, and the vast majority of the content is a breath of fresh air:
- He's willing to change his mind when presented with sufficiently powerful evidence, rather than always doubling down.
- He absolutely fries people faking scientific legitimacy, but only in particularly egregious cases.
- He uses cautious language when presenting interesting but inconclusive data, rather than trying to blow things up as much as possible.
[1] https://sscpodcast.libsyn.com/