"Scott Alexander was demanding everyone else's assistance in maintaining his pseudonym and pretending the real identity behind it was unknowable."

Absolutely false. Scott admits many times that it's trivial for his real identity to be known if you search around for Scott Alexander.

Scott Alexander -> Scott Sisnick (trivial)

What Scott was concerned about what his searching his real name being resoundingly brought to Scott Alexander, a major issue for his psychiatrist-patient relationships, as he demonstrates that psychiatrists need to maintain a blank slate for their patients to project onto, so that the patients don't hide or alter the behavior knowing something about their psychiatrist. That's very mainstream psychiatry. And there were concerns about current psychiatric patients he was seeing possibly being affected by this.

Before: Scott Sisnick -> "psychiatrist, bay area, studied at X, etc."

After: Scott Sisnick -> "Scott Alexander, rationalist, providing a platform for white nationalists, racism, etc."

By way of example, a friend just told me on Twitter that it's super important that patients not be able to look up their therapists on the Internet and learn more about their personal lives. But that's definitely not a norm! I checked with several therapists I know personally.

I feel like people are scrambling to invent Internet rules that allow Alexander to coerce journalists, and I don't find that effort especially persuasive.

I mean, they don't bind like a physical law or something. Ignoring people's requests for anonymity and getting them harassed or fired is certainly physically possible, it just makes you an asshole and there are ethical considerations about the effect on speech and discourse.

It's sort of similar to not wearing a mask out, it's certainly not illegal or impossible to go out without a mask and cough on people who would prefer you didn't, but it still makes you an asshole and there are ethical considerations about you putting others' lives at risk.

But even if it was an accurate representation, the media has to ask "is it our job as a powerful outlet to literally punish this much less powerful person because they have opinions we disagree with".

If it wasn't "opinions we disagree with" but like "has killed 3 people" sure appoint yourself judge, jury, and executioner. But in other cases yes it makes you an asshole to think that you should enforce your will by punishing someone who disagrees with you.

Scott Alexander on the one hand is a practicing clinician, and on the other writes prolifically about culture war topics. This is majorly out of balance, and it's on Scott to fit these areas of his life and income together. Why would the responsibility be on the NYT to help him?

His preferences bind on the NYT in that as Scott can take actions which are adverse to the NYT in order to maintain his preferences. Such as deleting the blog and having his fans sign a petition and cancel their subscriptions. None of those actions are unreasonable: he is free to delete his blog for any reason or no reason, and anyone can make in a petition. What is the problem here?

But, as Scott has said numerous times, he simply wanted to make it hard for his patients to google his name and find his blog, so that he could continue practicing psychiatry. That's a perfectly reasonable request to ask of anyone, including journalists.

[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Technological_Singu...

These arguments about why we're all obligated to cooperate with Alexander's attempt to walk his identity back always seem to be inventing new norms, like the norm of "if a doctor slips up and writes political essays under their real name, then, for the sake of the doctor's career, every other person in the world should pretend that real name was never disclosed". It's a reasonable thing to want, but not to expect.

Not really. The NYT was perfectly willing to protect the anonymity of a different psychiatrist blogger. Yes, this person did a better job of keeping their identity a secret, but the justification was largely the same.

And let's not pretend that journalism is only about sharing information. There's a great deal that journalists don't share (or even try to actively suppress) for many different reasons. Partly because there are a lot of ethical considerations when publicizing information.

Worth noting that part of the issue is that, with psychiatry and counseling in particular, it really doesn't matter what he was writing about or what his politics are. Any such publicity compromises the blank slate that counselors are supposed to present to their clients. While this does mean that mental health professionals have an obligation to take care with their public image, it's not unreasonable to ask others (including journalists) to respect the particular cost they face with any kind of exposure.

Is there a real argument for why the NYT _should_ publish Scott's name? Other than "it doesn't care whether that hurts the subject, and it expects to get more clicks this way".

It's not a requirement to offer this protection, but declining when it's asked for by the subject of a story is certainly a weighty ethical decision that respectable journalists don't take lightly.

Outing someone in a vulnerable position simply because the journalist disagrees with their ideas and wants to harm them (vs. deciding it's in the public interest) would be a very clear breach of ethics.

It doesn't matter if someone could just Google it. The NYT shouldn't make it easier unless there's journalistic value in doing so. Spite doesn't count.

Would you feel the same if this was a story about a sexual assault victim instead of a blogger?

He's a blogger, not an assault victim, but his concerns are similar. Avoiding harassment and physical violence against himself and his family. Avoiding negative consequences on his career.

Why are his concerns less valid than anyone else's? "Because I disagree with him" or "because he talks about ideas I don't think should have a platform" aren't good answers. There's no allegation he hurt anyone, did anything illegal, abused his influence, or acted in bad faith. So what's the journalistic purpose of exposing him?

Should his identity have been withheld because it would hurt his career, or he might be harassed?

It's not like he was trying to hide from the NSA or anything. The goal was "I don't want my patients to see my blog on the first page of Google results when they search for my real name". The NYT completely obliterated that.

Additionally, the fact that the NYT chose to smear him means that now many potential patients may google his name, see the hit piece and nothing else, and decide "yikes, better not go there".

The article wasn't flattering. It wasn't a smear or a hit piece.

Based on his behaviour in this and other[1] situations, I have no doubt that if Metz thought he could get away with something more unsavoury, he would have tried to.

[1] https://medium.com/@garyweiss_86200/cade-metz-pulls-a-deep-c...

This would be reminiscent of the South Park planet Marklar where all people, places and things are named Marklar. It's fun for a bit but likely impractical. It's also not clear how using someone's name is 'spiteful' given the vast majority of readers would have never heard of Scott Alexander, pseudonymous or otherwise.

You seem to be under the impression that journalists are under no obligation with regard to how their reporting impacts their subjects, even when that subject is not a public figure per se. I'm pretty sure that's something that even most journalists (at least those working at relatively prestigious institutions) would disagree with.

Again, you are justifying Gawker-style journalism, which is pretty atrocious and doesn't serve to create a better informed public.

What a facile justification. By that metric there was nothing wrong with Gawker's antics. The question is always whether the things a journalist is publicizing in the public interest, and the fact that publications (especially prestigious ones) have an obligation to consider the impact of what they expose of citizens who often don't have an equal platform from which to defend themselves.

The very fact that you can find his real name from his pseudonym means that the NYT wasn't actually "exposing" anything of value. At the same time, they've made it considerably harder (if not impossible) for him to practice normal psychiatric medicine.

Also, does this article even cover what it was originally supposed to be about - i.e. a bunch of people online who saw COVID coming long before the authorities? I haven't gone all the way through, but my understanding is no. Instead there's no so subtle implication that the guy who wrote the "Anti Neoreactionary FAQ" may in fact a secret nazi or something.

Those who tried to find Scott Alexander's real name could find it.

But those who tried to find information about their doctor or colleague Scott Siskind most likely wouldn't find out that he writes a popular blog.

There existed a trivial mapping of A -> B. There did not exist a trivial mapping of B -> A. Scott was trying to prevent his patients, who had information B, from being bombarded with the link to A. It is not a hard concept to grasp.

This isn’t what he asked for. As you note there’s pages of comments and Alexander’s own account on Substack now. Maybe you’re claiming he isn’t being honest about his requests from NYT.

[1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Horton_(blogger)

I prefer to live in a world where professionals act responsibly. He could have stopped writing as Scott Alexander and started writing with a new pseudonym. He just didn't want to rebuild his audience.

>...using an identity so trivially connectable to those patients.

As others have pointed out, the connection was mapped as A to B and not B to A.

>...it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Times.

And the Times is what would've changed how his identities were mapped. How The Times' operates in this new tech-enabled media environment is absolutely relevant.

My name is not secret. It is, however, private.