posted on February 14, 2021 01:47 AM by
u/completely-ineffable
60
u/rnykal31 pointsat 1613285155.000000
The article also made me concerned for my safety, since there are
some scary stories about Internet-famous people whose identities get
revealed getting stalked or attacked or something.
Also barely a half-truth, when he originally freaked out he said he’d *already* received threats: which one is it? Did you just make up the original threats?
3. The Times also presented a more general case that
I was a bad ally to women in tech. I deny this claim. I have repeatedly
blogged about studies suggesting that women are underrepresented in tech
not because of explicit discrimination on the part of tech companies,
but because women lose interest in tech very early, at least by high
school (high school computer science classes are something like 80%
male, the same as big tech companies).
wow that sounds very unfair, wonder how badly they smeared him?
>In 2017, Mr. Siskind published an essay titled “Gender Imbalances
Are Mostly Not Due to Offensive Attitudes.” The main reason computer
scientists, mathematicians and other groups were predominantly male was
not that the industries were sexist, he argued, but that women were
simply less interested in joining.
That week, a Google employee named James Damore wrote a memo arguing
that the low number of women in technical positions at the company was a
result of biological differences, not anything else — a memo he was
later fired over. One Slate Star Codex reader on Reddit noted the
similarities to the writing on the blog.
Mr. Siskind, posting as Scott Alexander, urged this reader to tone it
down. “Huge respect for what you’re trying, but it’s pretty doomed,” he
wrote. “If you actually go riding in on a white horse waving a paper
marked ‘ANTI-DIVERSITY MANIFESTO,’ you’re just providing justification
for the next round of purges.”
oh they just saaid the same thing you just said but also referenced
other incidences that you only vaguely alluded to as being “a bad ally
to women in tech” so you didn’t have to actually respond to them. hm
It seems like Siskind gave away the game, and it’s the gift that
keeps on giving.
What’s interesting is that this weird rationalist omerta has poisoned
his mind in ways that are more and more obvious, like a tape on loop
wearing out after too many reads.
I was proud to receive support from voices like Harvard professor
Steven Pinker, Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger, social psychologist
Jonathan Haidt, science broadcaster Liv Boeree, and Atlantic editor
Yascha Mounk.
I’m sure he looks at that list and thinks, “look, here is a
respectable group across a diverse set of fields, and they all support
me!” Those of us here smoking in the bathroom handing out swirlies know
that these are the Keystone Kops of free speech.
But let’s be charitable and Bayes it out: what’s your prior for “this
group of people is fucked if they have a close associate of Jeffrey
Epstein among them?”
All the others aside: imagine getting support from an absolute fucking arsehole - just openly an arsehole on even an entirely personal level - like Mounk, and being proud of it
This is true only in the sense that in 2014, I applied this
comparison to a specific group of feminists who I accused of bullying
and taunting people in a way that made them traumatized and
suicidal.
The NYT mischaracterises the text of the post – and Scott accepts the
mischaracterisation as true! Why? I suspect because he finds that
mischaracterisation more flattering than the truth.
The text of the SSC post (with unnecessary details excised) was
[the specific group of feminists in question] – and the people who
enable them, praise them, and link to them – are blurring the already
rather thin line between “feminism” and “literally Voldemort”
Contra the NYT, Scott is not merely saying “some feminists”
are something close to Voldemort. He is saying that feminism in general
is close to Voldemort. The statement he makes about the specific group
is that they are making feminism even closer to Voldemort,
despite feminism already being quite close. This is the plain text of
that sentence.
So the NYT was mistaken, and then Scott, in response, made the flatly
false statement that he “applied this comparison to a specific group of
feminists”.
Lol, so the times was actually too charitable in it's phrasing there. I'm impressed at the pure weasel power.
I can see this in his other points as well. See how he says he's being unfairly tarred for supporting charles murray, where all he did was say he believed:
> The southeast corner is people who think that we’re all in this together, but that helping the poor is really hard. They agree with the free school lunch crowd that capitalism is more the solution than the problem, and that we should think of this in terms of complicated impersonal social and educational factors preventing poor people from fitting into the economy. But the southeasterners worry school lunches won’t be enough. Maybe even hiring great teachers, giving everybody free health care, ending racism, and giving generous vocational training to people in need wouldn’t be enough. If we held a communist revolution, it wouldn’t do a thing: you can’t hold a revolution against skill mismatch.
And then said he shared the quadrant with Charles Murray, who had "very sophisticated ideas on class and culture".
Gee, I wonder how anyone could get the impression that he supports charles murray, how unfair!
>...giving everybody free health care, ending racism, and giving generous vocational training...
There's a pretty big rhetorical tell here about race, too -- the implicit suggestion is that even if we end racism, a racial gap will remain, putting him in full agreement with Murray's most toxic and controversial claim.
(Of course, Siskind might say he was just listing it as one barrier among many, but note that this is a list of barriers whose removal *won't* close the gaps often attributed to them.)
It's funny, because scott only implied that he supported murray, without stating it outright, and now he's mad that the nyt only implied he supported murray, without stating it outright.
> a specific group of feminists
70% of them are, in the words of this practicing psychiatrist, "insane."
I suppose that is *technically* a specific group...
Why is it so hard for the people claiming to be rational critical
thinkers to come to a conclusion like “wait, a part of my worldview was
harmful, and the takes based on it were bad, so I’d better denounce
them”?
Is it because their only goal is to make social Darwinism sound
fancy?
>Why is it so hard for the people claiming to be rational critical thinkers to come to a conclusion like "wait, a part of my worldview was harmful, and the takes based on it were bad, so I'd better denounce them"?
>Is it because their only goal is to make social Darwinism sound fancy?
because human reason is hard even when you're trying to do it, and doubling down a slippery slope is easy.
Cos denouncing anything is more commitment than they’re willing to make to an actual belief. They’d lose the illusion of hovering intelligently in the clouds far above anyone who actually believes anything.
I like that piece but I'm not entirely sure I get it. I think it's a pretty good description of what taking psychs is like but I don't quite understand what the metaphor is for
The trip is only the setting – the story is about the typical problem of spirituality when people want to transcend their mundane experiences but also keep holding onto their previously established worldviews and mindsets. The whole "New Age" thing exists because of that.
Ironically, GET OUT OF THE CAR is an excellent advice for the Rationalist movement itself.
>Why is it so hard for the people claiming to be rational critical thinkers to come to a conclusion like "wait, a part of my worldview was harmful, and the takes based on it were bad, so I'd better denounce them"?
What does Rationalism have to do with "Social Darwinism?" Almost nobody in 2021 self-describes as a 'social darwinist.' And when the phrase is applied, it tends to try to link people with stuff like genocide and rigidly enforced class structures who genuinely want nothing to do with such things. If someone says "I think people who earn money should be able to keep the majority of it" or "maybe social outcomes are partially influenced by individual choice" that gets pegged as "social darwinism." It's deliberate hyperbole wherever I've seen it used, and that's being charitable.
> Almost nobody in 2021 self-describes as a 'social darwinist.'
The UK literally just implemented DNR orders on people with covid who have learning disabilities.
Neither your assertion that few people self describe as social Darwinists nor the hypothetical accusations of social Darwinism levied at hypothetical arguments regarding individual culpability for social outcomes and taxation have anything to do with the intellectual proximity of the rationalist community and ideas historically associated with social Darwinism.
>ideas historically associated with social Darwinism.
People will argue that "the ideas associated with social Darwinism" includes everything from free market capitalism to Nazi totalitarianism.
Every economic notion except truly *massive* redistribution sufficient to eradicate all class distinctions can be 'associated with Social Darwinism.'
Arguing that someone is associated with 'the ideas associated with social Darwinism' is like arguing that they're associated with the ideas associated with math, (which the Nazis notoriously used in their concentration camps!)
The term "Social Darwinism" as applied as a pejorative in the modern day sounds extreme and specific if not examined, but is *ridiculously* broad in its potential scope. Simply arguing that certain disabilities decrease lifetime income is, arguably, "an idea associated with social Darwinism." Arguing that income correlates with height is "an idea associated with social Darwinism."
Is social Darwinism a dangerous idea that should be marginalized? Or is it something that is so utterly prosaic and well-proved that the majority of people can be linked to it when convenient?
Scott said he was pro ubi if we could make sure that people who get it breed less.
This isnt some far fetched theoretical argument.
E: Rationalist really should pay more attention to this horrible rethorical trick, where you go from 'hey look this guy is a neonazi' to 'well that is crazy here is the definition of nazism, and it is clear that it doesn't fit, and [200 words on why this devalues the word nazi]', shifting away the blame from the actual bad things that are being said and making the discussion about the 'meta' word devaluing discussion.
This is why if you pull this trick, people will mock you with 'well he can't be a nazi, the NSDAP was disbanded in 1945, gotcha!'. Or people will just assume you are one yourself and not engage at all (time is for most people valuable after all, not everybody just assumes immortality at the end).
E2: Yeah, im not done yet. This also shows the problem with meta vs object level distinction in the rationalist community (with the mostly implicit assumption that meta level is the superior one) this is what directly leads to these kinds of bullshit arguments, which use a lot of words to get away from the main point.
I'm trying to find what you're talking about but can't find it. Here's an article Scott wrote on UBI.
" **3. Basic jobs don’t help parents** "
" But I worry we’re going to check and find we have more than enough money. But somebody is going to be so excited about making poor people do busy-work to justify their existence, that we’re going to insist on perpetuating the problem anyway. "
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic-jobs-against-hijacking-utopia/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/16/basic-income-not-basic-jobs-against-hijacking-utopia/)
I can't find anything remotely like what you describe about needing to stop poor people from having kids. Maybe another article?
" shifting away the blame from the actual bad things that are being said "
The rhetorical trick being played here is attempted guilt by association. Saying "x thing is spuriously 'linked' to x horrible thing" rather than arguing honestly and directly for the harms of the intended target itself. But argument by spurious linkage is much easier.
Obama associates with Communists! BLM has a Marxist leader! A member of the KKK read so-and-so's article once! There was a convicted axe murder in the comments section. etc. etc. Do we *not* agree that this is both a commonly used tactic and also problematic, as it can be used effectively against almost *any* group, given sufficient time, resources, and exposure?
" This also shows the problem with meta vs object level distinction in the rationalist community (with the mostly implicit assumption that meta level is the superior one) "
Relatively honest Meta-level discussions seem pretty uncommon relative to much more workaday conflict-theory-oriented attempts to persuade and manipulate. People interested in meta level arguments that make a decent stab at neutrality are tremendously underserved. Even many academics engage in log rolling and anti-log rolling. And the popular press is far worse. I don't think you've made the point. You seem to be defending spurious associations. (Selectively, I assume, since nobody argues in favor of using spurious association against the people they actually agree with.)
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/12/08/a-something-sort-of-like-left-libertarianism-ist-manifesto/#comment-23688
"making the income conditional upon sterilization is a little too close to coercion for my purposes. Still, probably better than what we have right now."
And the 'dark lord' here (which the commenter Gunlord) is talking about, is [Heartiste](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chateau_Heartiste), the pickupartist, racist, sexist neo-nazi. Yes, from the FAQ. Shows the quality of commenters on the rest of the blog.
Lol, via rationalwiki "[Heartiste]'s writing style is notably wordy and obnoxious." And just to do more fun content over, dreadful outrage shit, [we hunted the mammoth has a nice list articles about various silly things Roissy has said](http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/category/heartiste/) Stuff like make winter about hate again, and other fun things. It is a lot more entertaining than Scott gets cancelled take 3.0.
But hey, kudos for the open mind of Scott, he lets people link to anti-semites in his comments. Which is quite the commitment to free speech.
I will totally accept "Scott said a thing." As you posted.
Ah, the Anti-Heartiste FAQ.[https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/20/ozys-anti-heartiste-faq/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/20/ozys-anti-heartiste-faq/)
I'm hesitant to judge any blog by its comment section, or any politician by the worst of their supporters. That kind of judgement casts a very wide net.
I'm somewhat surprised SSC's (and its commenters) frequent support for gene determinism wasn't specifically called out in the NYT article. Seems to me it's a required belief to get the Rationalist club card.
Amazing how Siskind tries to spin him writing "[this group of feminists] are blurring the already thin line between 'feminism' and 'literally Voldemort' "
as
> This is true only in the sense that in 2014, I applied this comparison to a specific group of feminists who I accused of bullying and taunting people in a way that made them traumatized and suicidal.
Like, why bother with the spin if you include the screenshot so everyone can see how dishonestly you're presenting the situation?
> I have 1,557 other posts worth of material he could have used, and the sentence he chose to go with was the one that was crossed out and included a plea for people to stop taking it out of context.
What a baby. "I asked you not to quote this line so it's super rude and mean and unfair for you to quote it :( :( :( :( :("
broader context: 2014 was the year first of the gamergate. and yes, there were hundreds of _nice guys_ who were so terribly concerned about the _ethics of gaming journalism_…
What is the Venn Diagram between people who spent last week decrying
“cancel culture” and people in today’s comment section crowing over
their decision to unsubscribe and pirate via archive.is?
This comment will probably end up deleted so let’s just save it for
posterity.
Honestly, I’m astounded that the New York Times would write a hit
piece and not bring up this blog post on Tumblr.
https://archive.is/I85mC
Feels like a missed opportunity, tbh. And I know for a fact that one
of the people who consulted on the article was well-aware of this
incident, so maybe, just maybe, you’re throwing a massive
hissyfit over an article that was both extremely charitable to you and
your writing and which also refused to talk about the stuff that really
makes you look awful. Maybe, just maybe, responding to that
with hostility and conspiracy theories about the media is not a good
look. Personally, I’m looking forward to the article about you that
talks about this incident, and about how Steve Sailer is a member in
good standing, and how that subreddit you publicly endorsed is full of
weird, creepy reactionaries.
Also nice new website. It runs really badly and the comments are full
of HBDers. The old site ran well and had comments full of HBDers;
personally I would have changed the latter rather than the former when
moving to a new platform, but I’m not the innovative thinker you are.
Have fun!
The thing everyone always seems to miss, even in the cogent takedowns
of his misdirections and outright lies about the past in the comments
here, is this simple point:
Scott Siskind is actually not the nice intellectually curious guy he
presents himself as: he’s a gigantic fucking arsehole
I would be genuinely unsurprised if that now this story has broken in
the NYT women start coming out of the wood-work with Yudkowsky-level
scare stories about his behaviour
I was also warned by people “in the know” that as soon as they got an
excuse they would publish something as negative as possible about me, in
order to punish me for embarrassing them.
…
I believe they misrepresented me as retaliation for my publicly
objecting to their policy of doxxing bloggers in a way that threatens
their livelihood and safety.
…
I suspect he did not personally want to write this and was pressured
into it as part of the Times’ retaliatory measures against me.
Oh honey. The New York Times does a lot of silly things but it’s a
170-year-old multi-billion-dollar corporation with thousands of staff
and millions of customers; I’m pretty sure taking up a feud offer from
some blogger is nowhere on the Sulzberger family’s agenda. (They’re not
the Post.) The fact that they sat on this for a year before getting
around to publishing it ought to show you how much they care about you
one way or another.
It’s mask-slipping moments like this when Siskind lets us know he’s
willingly crossing over into the world of bonkers conspiracy theories
where so many of his fans live, and it undermines the rest of his
attempt to distance himself from that sort of worldview.
I’m just amused by the fact that a lot of people who never heard of
him before now (and who read the Times) are going to stumble into his
Substack and the first thing they’ll see is all this whining about the
media conspiracy against him. Probably not the best business move now
that this is his full-time job.
>Siskind lets us know he's willingly crossing over into the world of bonkers conspiracy theories where so many of his fans live
"We don't advance conspiracy theories, we advance conspiracy *hypotheses*." - B. Weinstein, SSC favorite
Yeah remeber when his fans went 'this is revenge for scott going after paywalls'in June? At least then he said iirc it was crazy, now he is feeding a worse conspiracy theory.
E: they also released this during an impeachment trail, not really a slow news period.
E2: Ow look, while Alexander claims it the article was a revenge piece, the NYT also gave [him a warning a day in advance the article would be posted](https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/lje3nu/statement_on_new_york_times_article/gnc8w4c/).
> E2: Ow look, while Alexander claims it the article was a revenge piece, the NYT also gave him a warning a day in advance the article would be posted.
Oh my god what a fucking tool
I, and several other here, sent comprehensive backing for the article
claims to Cade Metz. I can assure you that every phrase in that article
is multiply backed up to the hilt.
Don’t be fooled by it having been run through the NYT mealymouth
centrist filter. If you read every claim as the strong version, you’ll
be about right.
It’s also important here to note that Scott is playing down the
existence of evidence for any of this. But even with the evidence in
their faces, rationalists will deny it, claim it’s unfair, or deny the
concept of “evidence”. Scott is full of shit on this.
> >> welcome to the rationalist community you will learn so much about skull shapes
>> this comment is neither true or kind
> they are literally talking about black iq in this thread
Lol
E: wow the substack site has a lot of trouble running properly on my phone. Why cant people code simple blog software anymore. For completions sake I tested on the desktop. I was wrong, it sucks everywhere. LWers learn to code in 2021 challenge.
At a certain point it seems impossible to know for sure if someone is responding to you or not. There's huge white spaces and no 'parent' button like on reddit?
yeah and it runs so slow, scrolling does weird stuff with the top bar and the cookies bar below, it just seems bad.
On mobile it seems worse, eventually after enough replies, the replies just get pushed out of view. (at least on my phone). And I can't scroll to the side.
I joked about LW learn to code, but I have no idea where this problem comes from btw, could be just a stylesheet, a default setting, substack, etc.
The way comments are set out appear to be terrible all over substack, but I think Scott Alexander also has some customisation to his layout (other writers don't have a blogroll for example).
I have no real opinion on it running slow as my internet runs slow everywhere. The comments layout is very funny though.
I think marxbro is a straight up troll, but somehow he's still winning all the comment thread debates there, it's unreal. The level of brainkill that's brought up when you even mention marx is ridiculous.
Has anyone in the slatesphere addressed why it’s okay for Scott to
just lie about keeping his name separate from slatestar when he
literally published it himself?
they come up with detailed discussions about how it wasn't secret but he *sort of* tried and anyway (megawords of handwaving) and you are a bad person for not going along with it
This is so weird, it is like he is picking deliberately weak
statements to defend himself. Why doesnt he go ‘people are trying to
link me to race is real racists, which is crazy race isnt real, genetic
abilities are clustered in one or more clines’.
Or, ‘people are falling over my remark about feminist, but we all
know there are subgroubs in feminism, I just lacked the clarity at the
time to call this group terfs [which would also mean taking a stronger
pro trans rights stance] etc’.
Why include the weird conspiracy theory at all. (People are
complaining about vague allusions and lack of direct links and quotes in
the nyt piece and then Scott does this crazy thing).
And regarding his safety, didnt he mention before he wasnt worried
about his safety he was only worried about his job, and patients (nope
see edit below) ? (Same with his history of blogging, it isnt totally
true right, didnt he first blog on livejournal under a pseudonym?).
E: nope he did express worry of personal safety, he just framed it in
‘I worry for my housemates’ mostly.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/
no, I contributed extensively :-) that's how I know everything stated in the article is true in its strong version, I provided a lot of the evidence before the text was run through the NYT mealymouthed centrist filter
something i’m sure cade metz doesn’t know anything about, huh scott?
wow that sounds very unfair, wonder how badly they smeared him? >In 2017, Mr. Siskind published an essay titled “Gender Imbalances Are Mostly Not Due to Offensive Attitudes.” The main reason computer scientists, mathematicians and other groups were predominantly male was not that the industries were sexist, he argued, but that women were simply less interested in joining.
oh they just saaid the same thing you just said but also referenced other incidences that you only vaguely alluded to as being “a bad ally to women in tech” so you didn’t have to actually respond to them. hm
It seems like Siskind gave away the game, and it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
What’s interesting is that this weird rationalist omerta has poisoned his mind in ways that are more and more obvious, like a tape on loop wearing out after too many reads.
I’m sure he looks at that list and thinks, “look, here is a respectable group across a diverse set of fields, and they all support me!” Those of us here smoking in the bathroom handing out swirlies know that these are the Keystone Kops of free speech.
But let’s be charitable and Bayes it out: what’s your prior for “this group of people is fucked if they have a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein among them?”
This caught my eye:
The NYT mischaracterises the text of the post – and Scott accepts the mischaracterisation as true! Why? I suspect because he finds that mischaracterisation more flattering than the truth.
The text of the SSC post (with unnecessary details excised) was
Contra the NYT, Scott is not merely saying “some feminists” are something close to Voldemort. He is saying that feminism in general is close to Voldemort. The statement he makes about the specific group is that they are making feminism even closer to Voldemort, despite feminism already being quite close. This is the plain text of that sentence.
So the NYT was mistaken, and then Scott, in response, made the flatly false statement that he “applied this comparison to a specific group of feminists”.
As someone who really enjoyed a few of his non-political pieces (like “Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person”), I’m so tired of his shit.
Why is it so hard for the people claiming to be rational critical thinkers to come to a conclusion like “wait, a part of my worldview was harmful, and the takes based on it were bad, so I’d better denounce them”?
Is it because their only goal is to make social Darwinism sound fancy?
> The Times also presented a more general case that I was a bad ally to women in tech. I deny this claim.
LOL women in tech (including myself) have been telling him he’s a bad ally for years. Not just a bad ally, but the opposite of an ally.
[deleted]
What is the Venn Diagram between people who spent last week decrying “cancel culture” and people in today’s comment section crowing over their decision to unsubscribe and pirate via archive.is?
This comment will probably end up deleted so let’s just save it for posterity.
The thing everyone always seems to miss, even in the cogent takedowns of his misdirections and outright lies about the past in the comments here, is this simple point:
Scott Siskind is actually not the nice intellectually curious guy he presents himself as: he’s a gigantic fucking arsehole
I would be genuinely unsurprised if that now this story has broken in the NYT women start coming out of the wood-work with Yudkowsky-level scare stories about his behaviour
Every time I see excuses about the behavior of Scott Siskind, I’m reminded of this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SneerClub/comments/hhyavv/when_the_rationalist_subculture_had_its_metoo/
And how he deserves zero respect or intellectual charity.
Oh honey. The New York Times does a lot of silly things but it’s a 170-year-old multi-billion-dollar corporation with thousands of staff and millions of customers; I’m pretty sure taking up a feud offer from some blogger is nowhere on the Sulzberger family’s agenda. (They’re not the Post.) The fact that they sat on this for a year before getting around to publishing it ought to show you how much they care about you one way or another.
It’s mask-slipping moments like this when Siskind lets us know he’s willingly crossing over into the world of bonkers conspiracy theories where so many of his fans live, and it undermines the rest of his attempt to distance himself from that sort of worldview.
I’m just amused by the fact that a lot of people who never heard of him before now (and who read the Times) are going to stumble into his Substack and the first thing they’ll see is all this whining about the media conspiracy against him. Probably not the best business move now that this is his full-time job.
this is, of course, trash.
I, and several other here, sent comprehensive backing for the article claims to Cade Metz. I can assure you that every phrase in that article is multiply backed up to the hilt.
Don’t be fooled by it having been run through the NYT mealymouth centrist filter. If you read every claim as the strong version, you’ll be about right.
It’s also important here to note that Scott is playing down the existence of evidence for any of this. But even with the evidence in their faces, rationalists will deny it, claim it’s unfair, or deny the concept of “evidence”. Scott is full of shit on this.
[removed]
My phone won’t load this article and I think it’s trying to tell me something
Has anyone in the slatesphere addressed why it’s okay for Scott to just lie about keeping his name separate from slatestar when he literally published it himself?
This is so weird, it is like he is picking deliberately weak statements to defend himself. Why doesnt he go ‘people are trying to link me to race is real racists, which is crazy race isnt real, genetic abilities are clustered in one or more clines’.
Or, ‘people are falling over my remark about feminist, but we all know there are subgroubs in feminism, I just lacked the clarity at the time to call this group terfs [which would also mean taking a stronger pro trans rights stance] etc’.
Why include the weird conspiracy theory at all. (People are complaining about vague allusions and lack of direct links and quotes in the nyt piece and then Scott does this crazy thing).
And regarding his safety, didnt he mention before he wasnt worried about his safety he was only worried about his job, and patients (nope see edit below) ? (Same with his history of blogging, it isnt totally true right, didnt he first blog on livejournal under a pseudonym?).
E: nope he did express worry of personal safety, he just framed it in ‘I worry for my housemates’ mostly. https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-safety-by-revealing-my-real-name-so-i-am-deleting-the-blog/