Taking things from obscurity to publicity is literally part of the premise of journalism. Alexander cannot demand that journalists pretend that his identity is secret when it's not, not remotely, not even plausibly.

> Taking things from obscurity to publicity is literally part of the premise of journalism

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.

Respectfully, I doubt a lot that any of us know what this article was "supposed to be about".

Well, that was the justification Cade Maetz provided when he was asking around about Scott initially. Are you saying we shouldn't take the author at his word?

That's plainly false.

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.

He published under his real name early on.

Which he regretted, so he removed his original blog and started blogging under a pen name.

Yes, you could only obtain Scott Alexander's real name if you were a little bit interested in knowing what it was.

The energy spent trying to miss the point here is kind of breathtaking.

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.

Yes, we have all heard this before, many, many times. The connection not being made here is why it is that a newspaper is obliged to care about this.

I cannot understand the point of you switching back and forth between "he was already doxxed" and "well ok but actually the NYT should doxx him" in 25 separate threads on the topic.

I don't know what this word "doxxing" even means in this context. Does it mean calling unwanted attention to public information?

And you have yet to explain why there was a public interest in giving his real name that level of exposure.

But if you did a google search for his real name, his blog was not on the first page of results. Which was the main objective.

Links to his blog were. People in the rationalist community used his real name when talking about his pseudonymous writing.

That seems like it's more between Alexander and Google than between Alexander and the New York Times.

Scott is perfectly justified being upset when the NYT tries to parade his name around in a hit piece knowing (probably even hoping) their cancel-happy readers will run with it.

> Alexander cannot demand that journalists pretend that his identity is secret when it's not, not remotely, not even plausibly.

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.

What is your take on what Alexander asked for?

That Alexander started the substack under his real name only after leaving his job is a pretty big hint that it wasn’t about “demand[ing] that journalists pretend that his identity is secret”.

I don't want to guess at how this connects to the question I asked, so can you be more specific about what you think it was Alexander was asking of the New York Times? I think he was asking them not to disclose his identity. Do you think he was asking for something else?

You're moving the goal posts here, pretty significantly. He didn't want them to disclose his identity, because he didn't want his patients to see his name blasted out in major media as that could potentially impact their care. This seems entirely reasonable, and well within the range of requests that NYT grants to many subjects of their articles. You can think it's unreasonable, because if you are trying to connect SSC to an IRL name you could find it, and that's fine. I don't, because I think Alexander should've been given the exact same deference NYT offers others.

I think we're going around in circles. Because Alexander's identity was not in fact private, I don't care why Alexander wanted the NYT to keep it out of the story, nor do I think there is any real-world norm obligating them to do so.

Sure, you're free to ignore that one (of several) motivations was protecting his patients (which there absolutely is a real-world norm around). "My Doctor is the guy who writes SSC?" isn't a question he wanted asked. You're also free to ignore that NYT journalists do, quite often and as a norm, protect the identities of their sources and subjects of stories, and in this specific instance choose not to do so.

The whole idea that the NYT is somehow obliged to protect Alexander's patients is deeply weird. If protecting Alexander's patients was so important, Alexander shouldn't have been running this hugely popular blog using an identity so trivially connectable to those patients. Either way: it has nothing whatsoever to do with the Times.

Why do you prefer to live in a world where professionals are afraid to blog? Scott himself shared [1] an example of a police officer facing disciplinary action and being forced to shut down his blog under similar circumstances (worse, his identity was uncovered through hacking by the reporter) [2]. I think the entire society loses, except for the newspaper that gets a few clicks. Good for them I guess.

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

The other case is completely different. The police officer hid his identity more carefully and the journalist broke the law.

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.

I didn't claim they were obligated like it's a law to do this, but I do think it's a little strange you wouldn't expect a powerful media org like NYT to care about the second order effects of their reporting at all. To reduce this to it's simplest form: I am claiming that the NYT shouldn't have been an asshole about it. What is so puzzling to me is that you are a) intentionally not getting this, or saying "meh don't care" and b) are giving enormous deference to a very powerful organization that can negatively (or positively!) impact someone's livelihood.

>...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.

The connection was trivial to find both ways. People in the rationalist community used his real name when talking about his pseudonymous writing.

Sure, and there's an argument to be made that Alexander was taking some professional risk in that it was always possible one of his patients would wide up in the SSC subreddit and see his real surname.

Just searching the web for his real name would find those discussions. Someone can argue the NYT shouldn't make the connection more prominent. But it was mapped both ways already.