The New York Times "outs" the operator of the Slate Star Codex blog

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ericbarbour
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The New York Times "outs" the operator of the Slate Star Codex blog

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:28 pm

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/tech ... lists.html

A few items here need to be commented on.
  • Funny isn't it, that "modern rationalism" and "transhumanism" always ends up mentioning the same assholes: Curtis Yarvin, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Charles Murray, Sam Altman, and a list of prominent Valley venture capitalists. Nearly all white males, some very wealthy. And they have this interesting tendency to not be especially "rational" about anything.
  • Even funnier is the sheer verbosity of Slate Star Codex. You can try to read some archives---it is VERY slow going. Many of the posts are "typing practice" that I regard as being barely coherent. Even more so for the lengthy comments under each post.
  • Funniest of all: the followers of Slate Star Codex often deplored the methods of the "social justice warriors", using the internet to publicly destroy people who disagree with them. Yet when the New York Times writes an article about their favorite blather-blog and mentions the real name of its operator, they go on a rampage and try to use the internet to destroy the Times writer. Publishing his home phone number and address and burying him in hate mail. HYPOCRITES.
  • All of this relates heavily to Wikipedia history. The author of this article is none other than Cade Metz, who spent much of the 2005-2010 period writing screeds mocking Wikipedia for The Register. I've already had some choice words about the "transhumanist" crowd and their princely treatment on Wikipedia--often thanks to David Gerard. There's an early thread on this very forum: https://wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=38

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Re: The New York Times "outs" the operator of the Slate Star Codex blog

Post by ericbarbour » Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:53 pm

and btw, there was media coverage about this last summer. The Times apparently decided to delay publication for six months.

https://reason.com/2020/06/24/slate-sta ... ork-times/
Comments on reason.com are always "hilarious"

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annal ... -the-media
The temperature of the reaction only seemed to climb as rumors spread that Metz’s interest in Slate Star Codex might not be limited to Alexander’s early warnings about the coronavirus. Messages from Metz, published on Twitter and Reddit, revealed that his overtures to S.S.C. figures had referred to the blog’s readership with such adjectives as “powerful” and “interesting,” and noted that S.S.C. was a “hugely influential voice, not only with the tight-knit community in the comments, but with some very influential figures in Silicon Valley and beyond.” These neutral, noncommittal words were ominously interpreted, taken as a clue that the reporter might be working on something other than a light, flattering story. On July 1st, a Bay Area attorney whose Twitter bio reads “Into Stoicism, engineering, blockchains, Governance Econ, InfoSec, 2A,” tweeted, “Some inside sources tell me @CadeMetz is running around asking if @slatestarcodex meetups were ‘all white men’ and whether ‘commenters were trying to recruit people into white supremacy.’ Words cannot express how much I want to see @nytimes burn for this.”
YES, THIS NOW-DEAD BLOG HAS A LONG WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE. Which says very little about the blog and a helluva lot about Alexander pulling it down because "omg the NYT is doxxing me"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Star_Codex

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