If there’s no blog, there’s no story. Or at least the story will have
to include some discussion of NYT’s strategy of doxxing random bloggers
for clicks.
Pretty savvy move by Scott, actually.
and realistically I’ll probably blog a bunch elsewhere under
transparently false names
> Admitting this is way less savvy.
They(*) are so bad at opsec. If he false name blogs somewhere, it will prob take 30 minutes for him to either hint at it, or somebody to figure it out. At least we will get a few laughs out it.
E: on the subject of opsec, if scott reads this, for the love of god, stop providing details about your website setup to the public. That is an easy way to reveal potential security problems to people who want to do harm. Talk to the people who maintain your site...
*: to be fair, everybody is, a good rule of opsec is, is that you need it before you need it. (Using discord for example, is bad opsec, discord isn't created for secure comms)
E2: For an example, even [themotte can't stop telling on themselves](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/he96rm/star_slate_codex_deleted_because_of_nyt_article/fvqt1wt/), post [links to this image](https://imgur.com/y3zrpYL). (also this small gem. [/pol/ was right!](https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/h99lly/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_june_15_2020/fvisdi0/). Poor Scott, his fans are agreeing with the anti-semites)
It provides a bit of plausible deniability. Also "opsec" shouldn't be a necessary thing to defend yourself against a major newspaper. They shouldn't be allowed to point at random private citizens - writing on a pseudonymous blog doesn't count as being a public person.
> They shouldn't be allowed to point at random private citizens
Yeah true, but sadly what shouldn't be allowed and what people actually do is different. See for example the neck chokeholds, a lot of places where the cops use them they already are illegal.
But yes, the NYT is at fault here. Still doesn't mean you shouldn't think about opsec a little bit better (epistemic disclaimer, I'm paranoid).
Well it would be op-sec not to talk to a major newspaper (or well, any journalist) unless absolutely necessary for damage control, but that's contradicting other goals such as getting more reach, and getting one's ego stroked
I was really, really confused when I saw some tweet liked by lefties mentioning SSC but yeah I can see how all of this is stupid and the deletion is savvy
Was said previous doxxing event when a deranged neo-nazi incel doxxed him over suspicion of shadowbanning brazenautomaton, or was it a different doxxing?
No this was much later when he got a barrage of people he said were calling him a Nazi bigot whatever I don’t fucking know, phoning his workplace and everything which is terrifying, horrifying shit that just shouldn’t happen to (not all, but the vast majority) people (Alexander firmly included)
I mean this is one reason I’m careful not to attach my online life to my phone because I know how much scarier it is to get a threatening voicemail than a threatening email or a message on facebook or reddit
The problem was the blame immediately fell - for NO FUCKING REASON - on /r/SneerClub, and a bunch of people (which appears to include Scott Aaronson and perhaps Alexander himself) just went apeshit about it like it was just obvious this was coming from here
We had a look around, continued our policy of weeding undesirables (including people with an undesirably weird negative views of Alexander et al.) and obviously there was nothing to it, it was just borderline deranged extrapolation from the fact that this is probably the most popular place to be annoyed at rationalism on reddit
And at the same time Alexander, at the bottom of the characteristically overlong explanation for why he was (understandably) getting out of it in the way I described above, full-throatedly endorsed the notorious fascist hive/pit of the Culture War Thread in its new form over at /r/TheMotte
Is there no fucking God?
I for one love the fact that his final post still recommends people go chat it up with the racists in /r/TheMotte. It's just such a commendable conviction towards supporting the racists in his community even to the bitter end
I was somewhat pressured into making a statement to twitter that he shouldn’t be doxxed (he shouldn’t) which now makes me look like I’m standing in his favour and fuck that man but hey still don’t doxx him he’s not in AtomWaffen he’s just a frightened childish racist
Visitor from themotte who came here out of morbid curiosity, I was pleasantly surprised by this policy and the general attitude in this thread. I appreciate people taking a principled stand here, thanks folks.
Don’t believe the myths you hear about this place on /r/TheMotte, it’s a load of speculative gobshite presented as undeniable fact
You shouldn’t be pleasantly “surprised” by such a policy *because it has always been policy*
Some comments slip through the cracks but we literally have two active mods here trying to herd cats
lol fair play
Listen, if you’ll permit me a rant: the biggest problem I have with the culture at /r/TheMotte - besides the recurrent justifications for things I see as misogynistic or racist or whatever - is the belief that as long as you follow or are adept at litigating the rules, you deserve a place at the table
That’s never been an acceptable view to me long before I ended up as an internet policeman
One of the things that this permits is that people get to ignore social norms like “don’t predict a second holocaust against white people on the Culture War Thread because people not of your political persuasion think temporary riots are fair game for a shot at genuine social change”, or “use a better data-set and maybe write a peer-reviewed paper if you want to argue black people are on average not as smart as white people for evolutionary reasons”, or “don’t fucking speculatively assume, you arsehole, that because there’s a subreddit out there full of people that don’t like you that they’re responsible for every cunt that tried to doxx you and ruin your life”
After a few years of this it starts to wear on me, the constant assumption that I’m here just to “bully” people with massive followings that can sic their fans on me for any old reason, including for pointing out that there’s a dodgy statistical assumption here or there. I keep at it because I find that sort of thing interesting in itself and - since I was trying to find *both* work and housing when lockdown hit - it’s ended up being something I just spend my time on, especially given that it’s relevant to my academic life. Nonetheless, as I say, it grinds you down to see people post multi-paragraph bits about how somebody is totally divorced from any personal connection to events and feels the need to spew bad statistics or worse - as was the case with TPO - outright and deliberate lies
The lies get especially personal when - in an amateurly anthropological fashion - you browse threads on /r/TheMotte and see people say things about you which are just false. To reiterate: numerous people on that subreddit outright stated - with no evidence - that the previous big doxx of Scott came from here, and it didn’t. I know people here and it just isn’t their game, but nobody even thought to ask
Anyway, I’m getting bored of myself. Stay off that subreddit, it’s a horrible place full of people sharing sometimes interesting but partial and almost always highly partisan information amongst themselves
I try to discourage people here from generating a priori theories of mind about what goes on in the so-called “out-group” - which does not happen on the /r/TheMotte really - and maintain a loose style of moderation and herding of cats: and that’s always included “don’t fucking doxx people”, no matter what people over there might baselessly claim
The polite rant is very much appreciated, and I especially agree about the "generating massively uncharitable theories of mind about people you disagree with is a bad idea" part.
Frankly, when the motte split off from ssc, I decided to stop posting in the culture war thread, for similar reasons - there's a strong right wing bias, for example you can assume there is a gigantic conspiracy orchestrated by twitter left wing blue checkmarks devoted to seizing power and get mass upvoted with very little pushback, but saying "the absolute number of deaths in the west caused by radical Islamic terrorism is tiny, so it's not a major concern and certainly not worth bothering ordinary Muslims about" is considered in dire need of further support.
However, I'm a kneejerk contrarian and it is one of the very few places I've found where you can consistently push back against the group consensus and not get mass downvoted and personally insulted or straight-up banned, while still talking about events of the day that are actually interesting/politically charged.
Take for example my [one-time venture into stupidpol](https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/cetk8f/all_landlords_will_know_the_taste_of_a_wall/eu4vyok/) that got me banned.
So when I realized that a lot of interesting stuff was still posted and the level of right wing bias remained about the same as it was in the old SSC culture war thread, I decided to rejoin.
Also, even though I think your commitment to not doxxing is great, hanging out in a place that is devoted to dunking on X with no pushback is bad for mental health. I realize the irony of saying this as a poster that hangs out in a place that is mostly devoted to dunking on SJ stuff with no pushback, but in my defense I mostly try to avoid joining in on the dunking despite my strong disagreements with that ideology.
I’ll keep this tab open, but just note that from my own pretty far left dismantle the state and existing cultural institutions perspective - yeah fuck stupidpol, they think it’s a funny pun but it deserves the name
Stupidpol is just an outlet for incredibly online guys to rage about whatever culture war bullshit they want while hiding behind "but we care about the working class"
A few days ago in a related thread, I posted a comment predicting
that the allegedly forthcoming NYT article would likely include his True
Name, because of course it would because he’s not a confidential source,
and for that reason the Rationalist community would treat it as doxxing
and ban all links to the article… which would also conveniently avoid
having to confront whatever awful things they expect the article to say
about them.
But I deleted my comment shortly after posting it (so no credit for
my prediction now, I guess) precisely because I didn’t want to provoke
any discussion of whether doxxing is okay in this case, let alone
provoke anyone who didn’t already know his name to go out and look for
it. I hope we can all agree there’s no good purpose that could serve
when redditors are the ones doing it, plus it’s forbidden by the
site-wide rules. (The issue of when a journalist does it has already
been debated to death in the Violentacrez case.)
And, for what it’s worth, there’s no reason to leap to conspiracy
theories that he was betrayed by someone close to him, because his real
name was not a well-kept secret and many of his blog readers
occasionally stumbled into it. It’s just that nobody, not even his
critics, thought posting it ourselves would be okay, let alone
interesting or relevant.
It’s important to note: Scott has actually had people harassing him
at his day job over his blogging, so his caution isn’t coming from
nowhere.
last public use of Scott’s tax name I can think of is that he used
his tax name on Metamed with his picture, while talking about working at
Metamed on SSC
though his name is pretty rare, obscure and googleable, and I removed
it from his RW article myself (and emailed Scott saying to tell me if
anyone re-added it), ’cos that’s absolutely not what we’re for
As he said in the post, he was never especially scrupulous about keeping it a secret.
I recall seeing him link to an article about his father somewhere, which included his surname. And he had an older website (defunct for a few years now) where he kept some of his world-building material, that just included his name in the page title -- I think he linked that other website on SSC before.
I found his real name exact text (minus the last name) from an article about his brother. He later changed the exact text to a paraphrase. But yeah, he's not that careful.
I obviously didn't do anything with what I found, or tell anyone else, I was just vaguely curious.
They hate him for not being "on their side". Or delude themselves he actually is a "monarchist" or whatever like they are. Despite him writing a ridiculously long blogpost thoroughly debunking monarchist claims. Eh.
I didn't got the idea they hated him, I got the idea they saw ssc as a 'usefull idiot' place, where they can try to redpill people, and then have they go down the radicalization funnel. The next step being a place like /pol/, or if the person is already radical enough, just invite them to private neo-nazi forums.
People are reporting that the NYT author interested in doxing him was Cade Metz, which is a name I believe should be familiar to you...
It's a weird world when something called "sneerclub" holds itself to higher standards than writers for the New York Times.
Looking at Twitter the professional racists (Steve Sailer, Cernovich, etc.) are now Tweeting about it. There are already replies threatening the reporter/NYTimes staff. I'd hope Scott thought about the demographics of his fandom before making his post, because siccing them on anyone is a nightmare (and one reason I didn't want to post here). He probably didn't because he's in denial about his fans.
I didn't want to post here at first because I was kind of afraid my colleagues in tech who love SSC would see it, but fuck it. I talked to the NY Times reporter and he's obviously a huge fan of SSC and pretty much tried to convince me it was good and that it has a lot of diverse fans.
I've pitched articles with anon sources and know a lot of reporters. Usually if you want to write something and your sources want to remain anon, you work with your editor on that. Often the editor will push you to not use anon sources but you can push back with "sources won't talk to me unless they are anon."
I'm really having a hard time believing Scott talked to the reporter without getting an assurance he'd remain anonymous. I'm not blaming him, it just seems like something he wouldn't do. If he talked to the reporter without demanding that, now he doesn't have as much leverage. Though I feel like Cade probably would have negotiated with the editor to keep him anon since he's a fan.
The reason I mention the author specifically to David is that while working for the register some dozen years ago that author wrote a series of low-brow tabloid pieces about Wikipedia which were obnoixous enough that I recognized the name.
I know from first hand experience that when the NYT writes hit pieces on people they don't contact the target or anyone else who might contradict their story. So I guess I agree with your scepticism in spite of a cached negative impression of the author. But yeah, why bother insisting on running the name?
It might just be as simple as: he can and no one can really stop him from doing so and any controversy that it might generate is just free marketing for the piece. Subreddit moderators have more accountability than NYT writers.
Same thought I had re: marketing
Unmasking the great mysterio
And yeah David and I already caught up on his history, I remembered the name in a vague sort of fashion and at some point will have read at least some of the Metz Wikipedia stuff at some point in my younger years online, but I think I’m more familiar with him from Wired
The reasoning is that the editor is the one who insists on the real name, so probably the editor is the person in need of pressuring. Also, I don't automatically think in idpol when reading any text, so I didn't even parse the above highlighted implications and am happy with not having done that.
weird thing is they don't seem to HAVE a policy requiring publishing someone's real name.
Or it gets massaged for some people, and not for others:
https://splinternews.com/here-are-some-facts-and-questions-about-that-nazi-the-n-1820773785
Oh GOOOOOOOOOD
If this subreddit is a news story when I wake up from an insomnia nap I don’t know what the fuck is gonna happen but nobody is going to enjoy what I do
\*bottom of an article in Wired about the controversy*
“And yet it turns out that there’s another twist to this strange story. Scott Alexander [redacted] himself, as well as many of his fans on reddit, had also clashed with another even smaller parasitic sub-culture which picked on him for his unconventional outlook and persona, and on which much of the blame for his reclusiveness and paranoia is said to rest”
I don't. I've spoken to Russian press three times: NTV, Russia-1 and RT. NTV and Russia-1 were completely normal, RT were *bizarre* and spent about 20 minutes fishing for me to say the quote they already had in mind. Others have told me similar things about RT. This was 2012.
Fuck, I forgot what year it is.
Yeah it ain't worth mentioning they used to put up a veneer when it ain't been true for 85% of their more recent existence…
Still, the RT article is less clearly goddamn nuts than the [Washington Examiner article](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/new-york-times-threatens-to-out-science-blogger-after-protecting-identities-of-white-house-turncoats-and-chapo-trap-house-podcasters).
[National Review](https://www.nationalreview.com/news/what-a-nyt-reporters-doxxing-threat-says-about-the-papers-standards/) has a non-story puffed out as far as it can
haven't found a real paper mention it yet
If the story in the article is accurate, NYT is definitely in the wrong. Some things did seem fishy about it, and I'd like to hear the reporter who made the decision explain themself a little bit.
You're saying "the right hate journalists, therefore no journalists can do wrong""
Do you remember when the NYT published an op-ed calling for military action against protesters last month? Or their continuous cheerleading for the iraq war? The media does fucked up shit all the time.
In this case, the journalist is wrong. They publish reports based on anonymous insiders all the time, but they can't even protect the pretense of pseudonymity?
I often hate using analogies but this one isn’t particularly loose:
One time when I was working in a bar, my senior co-worker got fired for being - essentially - a useless arsehole, by management. This was because management could just say “look man, these are the rules, and you fucked up on them too many times”
Another time when I was working at a different bar, my manager (not senior co-worker: he was the guy responsible for the overall running of the bar), resigned after negotiations between himself and the owner broke down and his position was no longer tenable. Later on he came back and was even worse than before, to be fair, but he was the only guy the asshole owner could keep around because they were both awful and relied on each other.
In journalism it isn’t that different. Editors come and go, but they don’t have a strictly subordinate relationship with the owners or other senior staff. They discuss things on even if not a one-to-one level, a degree of mutuality.
Hacks meanwhile are told what to write and how, or if they’re columnists they’re employed to write according to their brief. Both hacks and columnists can be fired at will, but they also don’t tend to bear the brunt of responsibility for what they right because they’re either employees or on commission (or in the case of Tom Cotton “guest” writers).
It’s just fundamentally a different structural relationship with different ways of assigning responsibility, so that to say a senior editor got “fired” for publishing bullshit in the NYT is to miss the point that *this guy is part of the management structure of the NYT and therefore a key component of what the NYT is*.
So when he resigns from the NYT in disgrace it doesn’t just reflect on poor hiring decisions as with a normal employee it reflect on *how the NYT fundamentally works*
Resigning in disgrace, as a senior member of an organisation, is a very different thing from being fired by somebody in management
Because you haven’t just failed to live up to organisational rules, you have *demonstrated* that as somebody *responsible for those rules* you were drawing them up badly
Well maybe this is why we need good communist newspapers with honest proletarian writers who aren't just fishing for outrage clicks like their capitalist counterparts.
I do feel like Rationalists tend to be more paranoid than is typical,
and more prone to suddenly wiping every trace of themselves from the
internet (or trying to) because The Bad People are coming
Nah it is a good idea to be a little bit paranoid about these things. I'm sure dgerard and kevin have seen some scary things written about themselves. (And various people here explicitly use alts to sneer)
And if somebody I didnt know came up to me irl and said "So you are Soy I read your sc posts", I certainly wouldn't like that, unless they are just a fellow poster here of course, but it still would be weird.
Don't forget that when the other Scott offered to meet irl with sneerclubbers to talk it out, the mods here politely suggested you don't do that, because Other Scott sees us as evil incarnate. (Iirc it was the mods).
And there are people willing to throw leftwingers out of helicopters.
E: I wonder how many fans of scott are now trying to hurt sneerclub(ers) out of misplaced anger. (And it is already happening, the people at ssc are calling sneerclub out for [not being selfaware](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog_deleted_due_to_nyt_threatening_doxxing_of/fvq7oel/)(*), for something which isn't said here (or was already deleted, anyway, no link back to who actually said 'Perhaps if he was less flippant about destroying people’s lives, he would have fewer.' (looks like it was scott himself and he deleted it from the post)) Props to [this person for reading](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog_deleted_due_to_nyt_threatening_doxxing_of/fvq87xm/)). Sneerclub will forever be the Rationalist boogyman, everything bad that happens will be linked back here. Also shoutout to the ssc/themotte posters threatening to dox sneerclubbers here in this thread.
*: This is esp stupid as we had nothing to do with this, in fact, if you follow the rationalist rules of not measuring with 2 different methods, blaming sneerclub for Scotts dox, means our arguments for Scott causing transphobia (which we never said of course) are true. Which is obviously bs, but it just shows the failure of the rationalist ideas.
Sorry for all the typos before, I shouldn't be posting from the shitter.
I started my internet career cocking a snook at the Church of Scientology, who proceeded to send me multiple legal threats and distribute a defamatory leaflet about me
anything less of a threat, I find hard to get very worked up about
but I do try to keep in mind that I am not in any way the normal case
Ah you are in good company then. First time I heard about how bad Scientology was was when they were going after [Karin Spaink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karin_Spaink)
I mean the *worst* I've seen is just blatant antisemitism but the stuff runs the gambit from taking old misplaced attempts to confront scientific racists out of context to creating an entire fictional background of how my heart defect contributes to my views on eugenics and biological determinism. Usually they can't muster much more than saying I'm a communist
> Fuck david and Kevin
That is between you three, if you all consent go for it
*badumtish*
I mentioned David and Kevin because those are the people I know who are easy to link back to their real name. I'm sure they are not the only ones.
Oh yeah, plus they both have a much higher profile than I do
I’m just a sickly layabout without either of their talent for writing down and promoting their ideas coherently
Most of what I’ve produced in document form since Dominic’s Basilisk Part 1 has been obtuse anti-poetry listing proper nouns and the things I dislike about them
> E: I wonder how many fans of scott are now trying to hurt sneerclub(ers) out of misplaced anger. (And it is already happening, the people at ssc are calling sneerclub out for not being selfaware(*), for something which isn't said here (or was already deleted, anyway, no link back to who actually said 'Perhaps if he was less flippant about destroying people’s lives, he would have fewer.' (looks like it was scott himself and he deleted it from the post)) Props to this person for reading). Sneerclub will forever be the Rationalist boogyman, everything bad that happens will be linked back here. Also shoutout to the ssc/themotte posters threatening to dox sneerclubbers here in this thread.
My perspective is that you're not really a coherent group which can be accused of much. If you visibly coordinated attacks against people (like spamming their real names, or trying to smear their name) that'd be a different thing; as far as I'm aware you're not quite that.
I... still don't understand why some of you think this place is in any way good through. You're self-aware enough to call yourself a sneer club.
I also don't really understand why you're suddenly so sympathetic. It's nice you have some boundaries, I guess.
> Sneerclub will forever be the Rationalist boogyman, everything bad that happens will be linked back here.
Well... as I said, you're not a coherent group. Everyone who, for any reason, hates the community but can't stop thinking about it, will likely end up here. Most of you probably think it's *hilarious* to sneer and don't want to *actually harm people*. Just sneer at them. Some people through probably are serious.
My main feeling about this community is *incredulity* that you, well, exist. To be brutally honest, I think this community is pathetic, not evil.
> as far as I'm aware you're not quite that.
Well, I always tell people to not harass people being sneered at. And well, I think some of the people we sneer at should resist reading this place as for some reason they can't drill down to what is actually being said and just see 'vile evil'. Not everybody agrees with me sadly.
> I... still don't understand why some of you think this place is in any way good through.
We think the same about themotte. (But nah, I get why people think it is good, sadly imho they are wrong). E: a more valid complaint about themotte would be 'they think they are not participating in the culture war, and I don't get why'.
> You're self-aware enough to call yourself a sneer club.
This is a self referential joke, it is explained in the sidebar. You are reading a bit too much into that. Just replace r/sneerclub with r/badlesswrong if that makes you feel better.
> I also don't really understand why you're suddenly so sympathetic. It's nice you have some boundaries, I guess.
We (or I, I guess) aren't as evil as people think. I expressed sympathy to the Scotts/Yud often enough I think. But that is just me. I always had boundaries, in fact, I broke some of those today, and posted in ssc again.
> Well... as I said, you're not a coherent group.
True, but tell that to the Scotts and Yud, and several people who strawman this place and then go call this place 'the evil who knows itself for evil' or (my fave) 'the place where they go for what is good, not for what is true' (which is a bit of a nice selfown, and an epistemic failure). It would be nice if they at least once mentioned this fact, just as it would be nice if they once acknowledged that there are a lot of racists in themotte (which of course, also isn't a coherent group, but we don't (often) sneer at darwin2500). Failing all that, if they just would stop calling sneerclub 'jocks' that would show at least they actually picked up on some of the commentary coming from this place.
> My main feeling about this community is incredulity that you, well, exist.
I used to think the same way. Then Scott kept pushing my object level issues (and other things happend which made me take a long hard look at my various anti-racism stances), and I actually started reading the complaints here, a short while later the themotte was created.
> To be brutally honest, I think this community is pathetic, not evil.
Oww yess, step on me. ;) But yes, the other Scott agrees with this, so you are in good company I guess.
E: and if you think we are pathetic, then [I have such sights to show you](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKfupO4ZzPs), did you know r/sneersneerclub exists?
I don't think anyone is claiming that there are no racists on /r/themotte. Nor that culture war isn't happening there; the rules say "no culture war outside the megathread". But the purpose of the place is to, to the degree to which is possible, actually discuss with people. Someone is a nationalist? I can respond. I can't respond if they're all gathered on off-site t_d which explicitly disallows disagreeing (and despite that has a "free speech" tag, lol).
Before internet, US media split into right-wing and left-wing (or neoliberals, I guess). So people started living in completely separate echo-chambers.
Now the same is happening here. The way it's going, anyone vaguely on the right will move somewhere else. And there won't be racists here: great, but they will be somewhere else - perhaps talking with mildly-conservative people. Since their beliefs are closer, they'll have more of a chance to radicalize them.
But themotte is already radicalizing people, as was the culture war thread before the split. And from my (obv totally biased) position it seems to be getting worse (*). There is a reason far right extremists said about the culture war thread that it is a good place to redpill people, and well, there also was the neo-nazi homesteading recruitment thing (a prolific poster of themotte was invited to join a private blood and soil homesteading reddit publicly, the post has since been deleted btw).
[The culture war thread was the last best hope at common understanding (I don't actually believe this), it failed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPP8lm2chvg)
And well im Dutch, we have so many different echo-chambers, [it would make your head spin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation) ;).
E: also most people on the left already left themotte, in fact rationalist not realizing how far they have drifted right is an common undertone here. (hell, when I still was more into ssc I certainly had drifted a bit more right than I had realized).
e2: also, the reaction of themotte on BLM was: Starting to justify Timothy McVeighs terrorism. Like holy shit man, this is going to end with a themotte inspired terrorist attack, this is nuts.
*: Longer time sneerclubbers prob disagree with me, they will say it always was bad.
> And from my (obv totally biased) position it seems to be getting worse (*).
Maybe my memory is bad, but the impression I got is that /r/themotte gets tamer over time.
> But themotte is already radicalizing people,
I don't know why do you think that. Are you sure opposite is not the case? If someone posts something, well, Nazi - plenty of people argue *against* him.
> There is a reason far right extremists said about the culture war thread that it is a good place to redpill people,
I know that they claim that; that doesn't mean they are right. They're wrong about most of the stuff. They can't really defend their beliefs - at best, they might claim they just inherently value their race. That isn't convincing. *These* people are radicalizing people?
You can think of the community whatever you want, but... the stereotype is that people write walls of text and "big words"(supposedly to seem smart - I think that's crap because I'm not a native English speaker yet I have no issues reading this). It's not like /r/themotte is composed of kids or particularly uneducated people. Most of people interested in lurking/posting there will be people who already have some preexisting beliefs about politics.
And it's only about 10k people.
> And well im Dutch, we have so many different echo-chambers, it would make your head spin
Am from Poland, our Reddit clone is heavily dominated by the right. US "Cancellations" only make right's narrative stronger here. So from my perspective, these purges *radicalize my country to the
right*. That's just a bonus damage through, adding to what I already said.
> also most people on the left already left themotte
Most people explicitly left left (heh). But there are plenty of moderates. And I think it's bad that they left. Where did they go to? To places where everyone agrees with them? What's the point in writing comments there?
> also, the reaction of themotte on BLM was: Starting to justify Timothy McVeighs terrorism. Like holy shit man, this is going to end with a themotte inspired terrorist attack, this is nuts.
IDK, I reacted first being pissed off and saying I agree with riots. Several other people said roughly the same. Others disagreed. Now barely anyone speaks in any way positively of rioters, yes. But at the same time Police is heavily criticized.
EDIT: just letting people reading this thread know that I got permabanned so no further responses. Apparently for being racist.
> That isn't convincing.
Themotte doesn't believe in HBD, sure. (I'm going to be rich after I invent a device which makes you able to transmit eyerolls over the internet).
> These people are radicalizing people?
> Purges (you use that word a lot)
> So from my perspective, these purges radicalize my country to the right.
The CW thread constantly talks about these so called purges as coming from the left, you even yourself admitted here that you are surprised at the sneerclub reactions. I don't think you realize how radical you already are. And sure people in Poland are more radical, but holy shit that place is turning into an anti LGBTQ+ hellhole, I know people from there who are afraid for their lives. Don't you see that you (if you aren't a radicalized right winger) are a [useful idiot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot)?
I mean lets take [this post of you as an example](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/hea7kd/would_it_be_ethical_to_try_to_get_the_nytimes/fvr1avq/?context=3), you are pretty radical here (I get that this is a moment of anger). But you are participating in a harassment mob against journalists in a different country, you even send them hatemail which you wish you could have made worse. The badguy is you here, is this where you thought you would be a few years ago? 'where do you think you would be 5 years in the future?' Sending hatemail I wish I could have written even more hateful in retrospect to US journalists.
> preexisting beliefs about politics.
Sure, but, themotte is constantly pushing the overton window to the right, and people hardly seem to notice. Sure open nazism is banned. But it took themotte forever to ban tpo, somebody sneerclub was sneering about for ages. He wrote the 'cucks should get capital punishment' quality contribution for fucks sake. (that of course wasn't the reason it got a quality contribution 'tag' but it is telling not many people raised an eyebrow at that).
And for all the tracking, betting and 'science' people in the rationalist community, etc do. Tracking your own political drift over time doesnt' seem to be one. (I could be wrong of course).
> left left (lols), where did they go
I think people just go somewhere else, or do something else. Iirc that is what some higher profile (not explicitly left wing iirc) interesting person did. In fact they one came here to complain about the fallen standards of ssc, but I might be misremembering.
> riots
You people are justifying Timothy McVeighs terrorism, you react by talking about the riots, don't you see the issue here? If I were to post 'well, the islamophobia makes me understand 9/11, I would do the same' I would be on a watch list minimum.
Of course, we do only look at the worst from themotte, and others will be more inclined to only look at the best and ignore the worst, that is our bias.
E: ow forgot this:
> Maybe my memory is bad, but the impression I got is that /r/themotte gets tamer over time.
Either it has become tamer, or you have become more radical. I myself certainly have become a lot less accepting of any kind of far right signalling/talking points than I was in the past, so I can't tell properly. You should wonder the same, participating in a harassment campaign should make you think.
E2: Btw, I get why you are trying to defend Scott, it is super easy to get stuck into a [parasocial relationship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction) online with somebody you look up to (A lot of us have been there in various ways). But it isn't healthy. And if you never heard about the words parasocial relationship before, you should wonder why.
E3: nowhere else to put this, but I got a weird brainfart on the stance of SC on this whole situation which might give people a chuckle (Do not take it as the literal stance please): Sneerclub: "I disapprove of your right to say certain things, but I will defend to the death your right to not be doxxed while saying it"
> Now the same is happening here. The way it's going, anyone vaguely on the right will move somewhere else.
I think you got it completely backwards with regards to sequence of events in time and what places people leave to go to what places.
Place A is radicalizing people to the right. It kept having people leave due to not liking the radicalization - people who don't like misogyny or don't like Trump and his actions etc enough to have a problem with shit like "You are still crying wolf", they leave the rationalist circles, and they come here. Precisely the effect you are talking about except in the opposite direction.
Said people formed a, predictably, pretty leftist (and considerably smaller) place B to talk shit about the A. The wider left has much bigger fish to fry, they're like "A, who?".
It's interesting how the political right, since they won the presidency, became completely immune to the reality that it is really pissing people off and really gaining unpopularity. So after an electoral college win but popular loss they keep going on and on in leftist places how leftist places are having people leave to join alt right. You wish. This is particularly ridiculous here, though.
> I don't think anyone is claiming that there are no racists on /r/themotte.
Well, you post there, and you're racist.
But in the interests of keeping racists out of sneerclub I'm gonna have to ask you to leave.
there is nothing rationalists hate more than people showing their receipts
which is a thing that becomes necessary because rationalists argue like creationists, with a similar grasp of object permanence concerning what they said the day before
so burning the evidence then denying they ever said that how dare you is de rigeur
But, somehow, they never seem to figure out that if the prospect of public attention being draw to their ideas is the most horrible thing they can imagine, those ideas might be bad. I'd like to think if I felt like people would never forgive me if they knew the things I posted on the internet, I'd try to reexamine the things I post on the internet.
Seems pretty consistent if you consider the average people to be a mob ruled by their emotions which they cannot rise over due to their low IQ.
It is weird if you consider the average people to be a mob ruled by their emotions which they could rise over if they finally learned to be proper Rationalists.
> But, somehow, they never seem to figure out that if the prospect of public attention being draw to their ideas is the most horrible thing they can imagine, those ideas might be bad.
Look. Most of the "bad" ideas you're talking about are probably on /r/themotte. People are attacking Scott over them because his *bad* idea is that people should be allowed to discuss freely. He even caved in and asked for moving these discussions somewhere else. He *obviously* still believes the same, so you still sneer at him for that.
/r/themotte isn't composed of "rationalists". There are some people who believe in these values, and the whole place's point is trying to be open. So it has **theists**, for example - and no one really tries to change their mind. Because that's not the point of the place.
As for Scott's actual political views, it's left-libertarianism. Sneerclub is always trying to imply he's some sort of altright monarchist or something. Despite him writing blogposts strongly arguing against these.
Do you really think that holding that opinion should ruin someone's life?
Also, consider your advice in context of someone being atheist where it's punishable by death. Historically or in some theocracy today.
Do you really want to live in a world where your opinion can't stray from consensus *even a tiny bit* for fear of personal Consequences?
This is the SJW apocalypse they've all been whining about for the last 7 years. By that I mean it's all projection and rationalists would be afraid of their own shadows if they had green hair or Tumblr accounts.
I want to point out that his posts from 2013-2014 all proudly have
his name on it, and to this day if you Google “slatestarcodex” with
“[HIS NAME]” you’ll get plenty of results. Heck, one of which is that AI
textbook he helped write.
If he was trying to cover his tracks, he did a really shoddy job of
it.
Hes the only one who is so bad he had to make a pseudonym. edit: also his crowd are the only ones screaming "they will take him out of context!" while hes rushing to delete said context, because the context only makes everything worse.
imagine being in a deranged cabal of AI concernathinkers with
astonishing influence over both the most powerful industry on earth and
followers in the top echelons of major world superpowers and then
thinking for half a second that the New York Times would ever publish a
story about you with your AOL screen name or whatever the fuck. richard
epstein bayesed it out like he learned to do on SSC and said there’d be
500 covid deaths in the US. dominic cummings convinced the UK to do
nothing based on the BIG BRAIN RATIONALS methods from SSC and LessWrong,
then panicked and fled when he tested positive, then just broke every
rule he set up for the SMALL SKULLs because his big brain would protect
him from the rona. the new york fucking times isn’t going to say
“according to CuddlePolyGropePile666, he’s just a regular guy in a
regular group home, run, he says, on the principles of the dragon army.
no black people are allowed.”
>richard epstein bayesed it out like he learned to do on SSC and said there'd be 500 covid deaths in the US. dominic cummings convinced the UK to do nothing based on the BIG BRAIN RATIONALS methods from SSC and LessWrong,
lol wut
rats were panicking buying up all the masks and putting copper tape on shit in February.
The UK didn't start recommending masks until late May. If Dominic Cummings was a mouth piece for rats he sure did a shitty job.
> rats were panicking buying up all the masks and putting copper tape on shit in February.
Bay Area rats. I think Kelsey theunitofcaring might be the one who's mainly responsible for that.
Yeah I'm aware Cummings has a hardon for ssc, point still stands - the rat community was all out shitting itself re:covid, so if Cummings was really directly shilling for them in government, he didn't affect shit.
Show me where the rat community was saying "don't do anything about covid." Please. Some idiots were self-isolating in January.
SAGE chose to mitigate rather than suppress because the model published by Imperial College showed that suppression followed by lifting of restrictions would lead to a second peak in winter resulting in even more deaths. They didn't believe they could keep lockdown in effect longer than the 3 months in the model BECAUSE THE ECONOMY or maybe because they figured people would stop complying with lockdown for that amount of time, so they started lockdown fairly late, nailed the hospital capacity pretty much exactly, didn't even have to use Nightingale very much, levels are now lower than they were before lockdown, and they unnecessarily killed a fuck ton of old people in care homes.
Given how many people in the US have said "fuck it" to lockdown rules, the UK would have been right if their populace had been Americans, but British people seem to have mostly complied with the rules, so they probably just killed a bunch of people for nothing.
I'll take your word for it. I have him blocked so I have no idea what crap he espouses these days :).
Edit: I talked to my source privvy to the super secret shadowy world of SAGE and Cummings actually facilitated lockdown happening faster for political reasons. Sorry guise.
Rationalist methods are not constitutive of rationalist conclusions from within the rationalist community, nor is that community completely cohesive
Cummings’ approach was in line with the top comment’s point about BIG BRAIN RATIONALS methods
Meanwhile, the general feeling on /r/TheMotte (which comment for comment constitutes a decent proportion of at least one of its online wings) that I observed was generally sceptical and in line with the Cummings view, including favourable direct references to Cummings
> Rationalist methods are not constitutive of rationalist conclusions from within the rationalist community, nor is that community completely cohesive
Show me how Rationalist methods, when applied to this problem, lead to a solution of "herd immunity", given what was known about the virus when they decided to do it.
Explain to me why most of the people in "rationalist community" ended up concluding otherwise (with huge uncertainty through, mostly - I'm not sure why are you implying the community thinks it's always right when the community makes a virtue out of saying "I don't know / I was mistaken").
Thanks that works for now, how does this website work? Does it delete things of little use or value (i.e. Rationalist blogs) semi-often? Do I have a time limit before my useful contributions are forever deleted?
Interesting, thanks. I'll see. Luckily David Friedman's misquotes are forever recorded in physical copies of his books so I might just start there if I ever decide to write a longer piece about it.
Yeah it’s a pretty snappy example of dishonesty you could churn a few hundred words out of without having to do much in the way of archival research. Especially because he keeps his book all in one place for free online
They changed their policy on robots.txt a few years ago. It's not clear to me exactly what it is at the moment, but the previous policy went beyond merely respecting robots.txt; they would take previously archived pages out of the archive if robots.txt excluded those pages.
archive.today does obey robots.txt. Because archivals on that website are manually requested by users, the website doesn't do anything intended to be covered by robots.txt. robots.txt tells automatic web crawlers not to look at certain parts of the website, and archive.today does not send crawlers to those parts of the website because it doesn't have crawlers.
So this has probably been asked a million times, but what is the
purpose or backstory to this sub? I’ve only really ever seen it referred
to on SSC and the culture war threads. Is it more of like, “we kinda
actually like find this guy endearing but like to poke fun at the things
we think are stupid” or is it more that y’all just don’t like him?
Scott seems like a nice guy and I’ve never seen him write anything I
find too objectionable (but I haven’t gone through the blog obsessively
or anything either), is it the comments sections and the culture war
threads? I’m not a big fan of the rightward drift of either and I wish
there were more left wing voices to push back on some of the
more…pernicious tropes but I’m not sure how to just outright ban all of
that without over correcting to a different kind of circle
jerk.
Congratulations /r/sneerclub. You’ve finally succeeded in your
mission. Scott is closing the blog due to fears of becoming unemployable
and having his and his friends’ and familys’ lives threatened by your
movement. Great job, everyone!
Mission? Movement? Brother I just want to dunk on people who try to use reason to justify policies that are actually motivated by fear and hate. Scott's own fear of being identified with his own thoughts is what did this to him, poor schmuck.
>Scott's own fear of being identified with his own thoughts is what did this to him
You say this like it's a criticism against him, but the same exact thing can be said about someone living in the closet in a homophobic environment.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Fuck you being LGBTQ never got me a job, could you be any more fucking self-centred?
AHAHAHAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
How I read this is:
First, I said one thing, making a comparison between gay people and people shamed for being accused of racism
Second, I’m saying something not obviously connected to that, and I haven’t attempted to show how the two things are connected. Also I’m going to accuse you of being dishonest just for fun on a sub you moderate
So let’s get things straight: I am a man with several mental health and disability issues, who also happens to fuck men now and again. I have the same stakes you self-regarding prick acting like you’re the only queer in town
You are banned
I didn't want Scott to close his blog. I wanted him to *stop having terrible takes*. And to stop providing cover for racists. This does not accomplish that, and likely only feeds his narrative of being an intellectually persecuted genius.
This indeed. Hell, I like some of the things scott wrote and apply some of thse things myself, I just wish he would listen to himself more and not drop the rationalism over time. The whole 'stop witch hunting thing' was good. But never apploed to themotte. I like the sixth meditation on superweapons because it nicely explained that jokes are not just jokes, but well then scott kept joking about people he disagreed with (and getting in trouble over that and then getting mad he got in trouble).
The whole epistemic disclaimer was also nice, but they (as in the rationalists) almost all dropped the usage of that.
Ow another thing I would want the rationalists to do, recognize that they have hurt people via sexual abuse, apologize and do better. And not go 'well the rumors went around she was crazy so...'.
> The whole epistemic disclaimer was also nice, but they (as in the rationalists) almost all dropped the usage of that.
Either that or weaponised it to disguise nasty and dangerous shit behind false-modesty, Alexander himself included
>Scott is closing the blog due to fears of becoming unemployable
Capitalism adversely effects a lot of people. Scott Alexander should join a union or a communist party if he's really so scared about capitalists firing or otherwise hurting him.
I want Scott to close his blog because his ideas are stupid and he's a moron, this situation sucks I don't think anybody here disagrees.
(For future reference, "friends'" is correct, but you only have one family, so it would be "family's," or "families'" if you've got some very specific intent.)
I support freedom of speech so that we can understand better the world. Note that I tried to do this in the comments of Scott Alexander's blog and he banned me. He's either nepotistic or has political bias.
What's so funny about this is that all I've done is question your OPSEC (in hopes of eliciting emapthy) in a thread that is a literal celebration of promised doxxing by a multi-billion dollar organization, to its multi-million reader platform, in a time of left-wing riots, of a marginally right-wing, pseudonymous blogger.
If I am a frothing psychopath for suggesting that this could happen to you, what does that make the people actually doing it, and the people actually celebrating it?
I’ve never said anything that contradicts the antifa Lizard Conspiracy that controls employment conditions and the Planet Earth (formerly Zog) so I think I’m good
It couldn't happen to me because all my posts about Marxism are right. If the NYTimes were to "doxx" me they would just be publishing helpful Marxist info for the masses. Like I said, if Scott Alexander fears unemployment he should join a union or a communist party. Otherwise he's just crying wolf.
>what does that make the people actually doing it, and the people actually celebrating it?
Free speech advocates?
Independent, free-thinking workers everywhere join the ranks of communist parties in order to express their interests. Marx's Das Kapital is correct now, just as it was when he wrote it.
Scott Alexander excluded me from his blog comments based on my low cultural capital. He's a jock and I'm a nerd.
I don’t think anybody here is claiming to be “the exploited proletariat” unless they’ve actually been “the exploited proletariat” (precarious workers and so on)
Certainly not me, I’ve done manual labour to make money but I’ve also sat on my ass and never made a secret of the fact that I’m a university educated scion of a rich financier
But, incredible as it may seem, people from non-proletarian backgrounds can believe that *other* people deserve some kind of liberatory solidarity: ain’t that neat?
Fun part is: I know a ton of people who really are firmly in what you seem to take to be “the exploited proletariat” who *have* read their critical theory, and a ton who haven’t. This goes right well alongside a ton of people who come from easy-going bourgeois childhoods and all that guff who never read their critical theory, and a ton of the ones who did. You’re not saying anything original, you’re just repeating the guff about the rugged manual worker who doesn’t need no book-reading (which is shitty in itself) and the equally dull guff about effete academicians who have never seen real work (I have met enough PhD lefties who spent years doing manual labour to see through that one, thanks)
Scott Alexander, furthermore, is not, in any traditional sense of the word, at the precarious end of things. To begin with, *he has a professional career* and the certifications to go with it, which is not the same as working as a waiter on a zero-hours contract to pay the bills. Not to mention the spare time to write his blog
MarxBro, for all his eccentricities, is not actually attempting to back up the NYT - in the same way as I am not trying to back up Scott Alexander when I say “do the base minimum and don’t fucking doxx or approve of doxxing him. What he’s saying is that he thinks somebody like Alexander should be held to account for his (perceivedly) dodgy associations, and if it has to be by the NYT? So be it. I disagree with that, at least insofar as this putative article is concerned, but it has little or nothing to do with comparing one professional (blogging in his spare time) to another (a hack trying to make a deadline)
If you can point me to somebody on the left saying “I think the NYT is great and SlateStarCodex deserves to get rinsed by them” then mea culpa
But that isn’t going to happen
lol, you do realise the doxx threat was from a new york times writer doing a puff piece right? I don't want to doxx anyone, I want to criticise the terrible takes coming out of slate star codex and it's community. Are you trying to silence my right to do that?
Pretty savvy move by Scott, actually.
Admitting this is way less savvy.
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A few days ago in a related thread, I posted a comment predicting that the allegedly forthcoming NYT article would likely include his True Name, because of course it would because he’s not a confidential source, and for that reason the Rationalist community would treat it as doxxing and ban all links to the article… which would also conveniently avoid having to confront whatever awful things they expect the article to say about them.
But I deleted my comment shortly after posting it (so no credit for my prediction now, I guess) precisely because I didn’t want to provoke any discussion of whether doxxing is okay in this case, let alone provoke anyone who didn’t already know his name to go out and look for it. I hope we can all agree there’s no good purpose that could serve when redditors are the ones doing it, plus it’s forbidden by the site-wide rules. (The issue of when a journalist does it has already been debated to death in the Violentacrez case.)
And, for what it’s worth, there’s no reason to leap to conspiracy theories that he was betrayed by someone close to him, because his real name was not a well-kept secret and many of his blog readers occasionally stumbled into it. It’s just that nobody, not even his critics, thought posting it ourselves would be okay, let alone interesting or relevant.
It’s important to note: Scott has actually had people harassing him at his day job over his blogging, so his caution isn’t coming from nowhere.
last public use of Scott’s tax name I can think of is that he used his tax name on Metamed with his picture, while talking about working at Metamed on SSC
though his name is pretty rare, obscure and googleable, and I removed it from his RW article myself (and emailed Scott saying to tell me if anyone re-added it), ’cos that’s absolutely not what we’re for
What a strange policy to have to publish someone’s actual name.
Even though they use anonymous sources all the time, and otherwise don’t name people.
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I’m expecting SSC to be back up in a week or two tbh.
I do feel like Rationalists tend to be more paranoid than is typical, and more prone to suddenly wiping every trace of themselves from the internet (or trying to) because The Bad People are coming
I want to point out that his posts from 2013-2014 all proudly have his name on it, and to this day if you Google “slatestarcodex” with “[HIS NAME]” you’ll get plenty of results. Heck, one of which is that AI textbook he helped write.
If he was trying to cover his tracks, he did a really shoddy job of it.
I’m no SSC fanatic, but doxxing is fucked up and Scott, despite his questionable views, is on the respectable side of the rationalist spectrum.
imagine being in a deranged cabal of AI concernathinkers with astonishing influence over both the most powerful industry on earth and followers in the top echelons of major world superpowers and then thinking for half a second that the New York Times would ever publish a story about you with your AOL screen name or whatever the fuck. richard epstein bayesed it out like he learned to do on SSC and said there’d be 500 covid deaths in the US. dominic cummings convinced the UK to do nothing based on the BIG BRAIN RATIONALS methods from SSC and LessWrong, then panicked and fled when he tested positive, then just broke every rule he set up for the SMALL SKULLs because his big brain would protect him from the rona. the new york fucking times isn’t going to say “according to CuddlePolyGropePile666, he’s just a regular guy in a regular group home, run, he says, on the principles of the dragon army. no black people are allowed.”
Holy shit that sucks for Scott.
E: not being sarcastic btw.
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maybe he’ll focus on doing his actual job now
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So this has probably been asked a million times, but what is the purpose or backstory to this sub? I’ve only really ever seen it referred to on SSC and the culture war threads. Is it more of like, “we kinda actually like find this guy endearing but like to poke fun at the things we think are stupid” or is it more that y’all just don’t like him?
Scott seems like a nice guy and I’ve never seen him write anything I find too objectionable (but I haven’t gone through the blog obsessively or anything either), is it the comments sections and the culture war threads? I’m not a big fan of the rightward drift of either and I wish there were more left wing voices to push back on some of the more…pernicious tropes but I’m not sure how to just outright ban all of that without over correcting to a different kind of circle jerk.
Congratulations /r/sneerclub. You’ve finally succeeded in your mission. Scott is closing the blog due to fears of becoming unemployable and having his and his friends’ and familys’ lives threatened by your movement. Great job, everyone!