The conversation was set off by a series of exhausting, insidery
events from the last two weeks. Some in the Silicon Valley set turned
their sights on the Times after Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist who ran
the philosophy blog SlateStarCodex, deleted the entire blog because he
said the Times was going to “dox” him by publishing his real name in an
upcoming story. (It is worth noting that Alexander has republished
SlateStarCodex blogs in books using his full name.) This event
resurfaced an ongoing and tedious discussion among venture capitalist
types about journalism ethics, business models, and publishing
incentives.
> (It is worth noting that Alexander has republished SlateStarCodex blogs in books using his full name.)
Is this bit true? I thought he'd just used it on his LiveJournal a few times prior to making SSC.
On Twitter, there was a debate whether this was different, because despite having a reputable publisher, the journal probably reaches a much smaller audience than the NYT. However, there is no right to selective anonymity here, I believe.
He’s also done fuck all over the years to scrub his name off the internet when you could find it in five minutes on google (google!) long long before he and his fans made a big deal out of his anonymity shtick and Streisand-Effected his real name into the stratosphere
The mods at /r/SneerClub obviously maintain our stance that we sympathise with him for the harassment he’s periodically suffered when his real name has come out on social media and maintain our stance against doxxing him
But for me personally it is *incredibly fucking frustrating* that other people are expected to do the heavy-lifting on this increasingly ridiculous pseudo-anonymity, and that I have to field messages from angry Scott Alexander fans making various quite mad demands of me, and accusations/insinuations against me and others over this shit
> The mods at /r/SneerClub obviously maintain our stance that we sympathise with him for the harassment he’s periodically suffered when his real name has come out on social media
Indeed, we sympathize with anyone who faces harassment from alt-right racists
This is why I’m reluctant to call what might happen to him (still hasn’t happened!) as “doxxing” - he makes no effort to conceal his identity at all! He signs his blog posts with 2/3 of this real name! I personally think your middle name is more sensitive than your last name (and since I have two middle names, I keep one secret from most thing so it’s a way to know if it really is me).
So, unfortunate? No comment. Doxxing? No way.
It's 100% unfortunate, but this strikes me as an attempt at having his cake and eating it too. This is speculation on my part, but I suspects he wants his thoughtful, surface-level-harmless work (such as his fiction) to be associated with his real name, while not wanting to tie his real name to the smokescreen-justifications for scientific racism.
If you posted nude selfies somewhere on the web, or pictures of yourself smoking pot, and someone found these pictures and shared them with your employer - most people would only be mildly sympathetic. As a grown-up, you are expected to take this risk into account, and to act accordingly. I'm not sure why some people consider this situation fundamentally different.
If someone sent me a naked picture of someone I work with under nearly any set of circumstances short of "they posed for Playboy under their real name last week" I would think "that is a deeply fucked-up thing and I am so sorry that my coworker is dealing with someone like that in their life."
I was obviously not referring to revenge porn or something of the sort here - this is out of the question. I was talking about people who deliberately and in a planned way (not for a few hours while they were drunk!) put personal information publicly on the web, for praise, attention, likes, money or whatever.
Edit: [paragraph deleted]
Edit: The main reason I posted that was because I was wondering if the people defending Scott Alexander here would react the same way if a black guy lost his job as a janitor after posing with a joint on Twitter and leaving the tweet up for a long time (Edit 2: Personally, I would, in fact, be much more sympathetic with the janitor). Or maybe I'm wrong and people would actually have the same reaction.
I also have two middle names! The latter of which is my mother’s family name, which she wanted to keep in the family but also didn’t want to curse me with having a double-barrelled surname (a sure sign in the UK of being overtly and often odiously posh). So it’s kind of hard to avoid hiding it from more dedicated people - which is why I don’t really bother hiding my real identity, and I don’t have much to lose or gain in the first place either way.
There were posts on Overcoming Bias with his full name in the title, IIRC (if not there, in the first sentence) containing his full name until like 2 days after he deleted his web-log.
He founded a genomics company that he sold for $300 million, and then he started some crypto company which seems to have done not so well. I have no idea what he does now (other than capitalism and running his mouth like 20 hours a day on twitter).
If I sold something from $300 million, I would take my money and fuck right off into the sunset. You'd never hear from me again.
How miserable of a person do you have to be to have \*\*that much money\*\* and still argue with plebes on Twitter?
It feels like (extreme?) wealth and success can generate an attitude of "I did this, I'm smarter than you." But maybe that's my lack of wealth talking.
IMO having one and only one major public success (esp. one that isn't "all" his, since his brother cofounded Counsyl) has led to a ton of barely-concealed insecurity on his part. You can have dumb amounts of money and deep down still suspect that you just happened to luck out with the one thing that hit it big. See also all the chest-puffing he does about being one of the "builders".
Really fucking miserable.
Ironically, his first message after his major twitter purge (because he wanted to look nice when he was angling for a nomination as FDA head under Trump) was **"Don't argue on twitter. Build the future."**
>bUiLd teH fUuTurEe
Oh wait, you're not talking about [that PM@rka post](https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/)?
Now that needs its own sneerpost (and I'm obviously too lazy to see if this already exists, sue me). I lost at least 3 IQ points reading the thing. Now, I am too stupid to sneer.
I would almost pay one of you to sneer at it for me.
There was an attempt made by an outfit called [Civil](https://civil.co/) to figure that out, but their first ICO failed (was not straightforward and required a scan of a government ID to buy, which I thought ran counter to their "journalism accountable to the people" shtick), and they never got CVL off the ground after that. Shut down altogether last month.
…Look at these extremely offended dorks.
Balaji is more annoying than every tech journalist put together, and I’m no fan of tech journalists
And his twitter is pretty mild compared to what it used to be. He used to insult people left and right for simply disagreeing with him.
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Why is this in French?