NYT decided to dox him.

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.

> NYT decided to dox him.

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.

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't understand why you are insulting me. I've been nothing but respectful towards others and have posted proof of my claims.

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?

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....

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.

> 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.

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.

The NYT article made specific claims. It's up to the reader to evaluate them and decide what to infer.

> 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.

You analogy doesn't reflect the article.

> 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.

Trying to suppress information that is already public is often silly and counterproductive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

> 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.

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'.

> 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?

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.

> 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.

Searching for Eric Harris just finds the murderer. Is that who you meant?

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's a superficial and incendiary analogy.

So if Sam Altman decides it was a mistake to reveal his name no publication should publish his name anymore?

Sam Altman clearly intended to be a public figure. Scott did not. This is not in question.

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.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...

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.

And then Scott's followers harassed the writers. Did Scott predict that too?

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.

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.

Scott published his name himself. So when he claims he has been wronged for something he himself has done, yes, it is a pity party.

I'm only discussing the facts.