What's off limits for all of us
Or the civilisational squabble between nerds and hacks
For as long as I’ve been online, ‘blogger’ has seemed like an insult. While ‘journalist’ can imply falsehoods, deceit and even phone-hacking, people accept they are paid for what they do. Murderers might work for free, but assassins are professionals.
So why would the New York Times, America’s most self-regarding newspaper, write about a Silicon Valley blogger? According to reporter Cade Metz, it’s because Slate Star Codex was “a window into the Silicon Valley psyche”, with the region’s technology sector making decisions that will affect millions.
Like a meta documentary, the article partly describes its unusual creation. Metz was drawn to the blog last year as the centre of the so-called ‘rationalist’ community in Silicon Valley. Rationalists like to discuss issues in science, ethics, politics and whatever else in an extremely systemic way, without worrying about social niceties. Metz’s interest was prompted by their unusual hawkishness early in the Covid-19 pandemic, when many mainstream pundits downplayed the risks of the disease.
The hack approached the blog’s creator, then writing under the pseudonym Scott Alexander. The pair fell out over the Times’ policy of attributing remarks to people’s real names. Although the blogger’s real name, Scott Siskind, was discoverable with a bit of searching, he wanted to retain his pseudonym to keep the blog separate from his work as a psychiatrist. At minimum he wanted patients to be unable to discover him with a few minutes of googling.
Hoping to head off the Times story, Siskind deleted his blog. In a way this worked, and until this month Metz didn’t write about him. But many other outlets did. One piece by the New Yorker provides a decent overview of his writings, which investigate subjects as esoteric as why posh kids emulate poor kids or as controversial as why women are under-represented in American technology companies.
As you might expect, it was Siskind’s discussion of topics like sex and race that troubled the Times. In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, the self-styled ‘paper of record’ has taken a radical progressive turn, forcing out non-conforming journalists and trying to rewrite American history around the slave trade.
Among this movement’s bogeymen are the Silicon Valley barons, especially those accused of allowing disinformation to spread across social media. As Metz’s puts it in his piece, interrogating Slate Star Codex was important because “Silicon Valley, a community of iconoclasts, is struggling to decide what’s off limits for all of us.”
One of the reasons that old media is annoyed with the new is that it has stopped them from vetting what is published. Where once a citizen disgusted of Tumbridge Wells would have to at least convince a letters editor before being published, now anybody can post anything. And they frequently do.
The global pandemic has raised fears about people spreading medical falsehoods, but this is an old tune with new lyrics. Back in 2016 one popular explanation for the elections for Trump and Brexit is that campaigns used social media to spread false claims. Another related theory is that it was the perfidious Russians wot won it.
As Metz writes, social media chiefs were reluctant to remove words “even when those words were untrue or could lead to violence” (note the vagueness of the latter allegation). In the case of rationalist discussions, he quotes the, um, “scholar” Elizabeth Sandifer, who warns, “The contrarian nature of these ideas makes them appealing to people who maybe don’t think enough about the consequences.”
“Words have consequences” has been a rallying cry for those who want more controls over what people can say – in other words, censorship. Silicon Valley and its rationalists, by contrast, have a predisposition towards open information and discussion. Not so long ago many of the sector’s leaders were arguing that privacy is dead, and some still believe that “information wants to be free”.
Ironically, many techies spent last summer lobbying the Times to grant Siskind pseudo-anonymity in their reporting. In the wake of the General Data Protection Regulation being implemented across Europe, it is also fair to say that many tech companies have revised their opinions on privacy’s demise, at least publicly. When confronted with political, commercial or ethical obstacles, many (if not all) technologists recognise the need to balance competing priorities.
I suspect that Metz did not intend to write a hit piece on Alexander. But his framing of the subject is profoundly political and reflective of the Times’ ideological biases. I’ve strong sympathy with the rationalists’ desire to question anything and leave no topic undebated (see the name of this Substack account), but clearly this isn’t shared across my trade.
I’ll end by quoting computer scientist Scott Aaronson, a long-time observer of the rationalists and champion of open debate. “Once you teach people that they can think for themselves about issues of consequence, some of them might think bad things,” he said. “It’s just that many of us judge the benefit worth the risk!”
Apolitical politics. Earlier this month I spoke to Farah London, the conveniently named mayoral candidate for the capital. In keeping with the times, she is pitching herself as an apolitical candidate who can overcome local government gridlock. I can only wish her luck.
Overcommissioned. The impending crisis over Scottish independence has forced Labour to at least publicly worry about the British constitution. However, a party commission into the matter has been disrupted by the release of a socialist plan for reform, commissioned by former leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Play nice. It has long been said that nice guys finish last, especially in dating. Louise Perry writes for UnHerd that the same is true for women, citing your nan’s famous advice concerning the availability of dairy products. As a happily cohabiting man I’m sure I can’t comment.
Once again I have been struck down by a case of full-time employment. I’ll be keeping the newsletter going, but there will be more space in the further reading section. Send any ideas to jimmy@rightdishonourable.com.
Jimmy