For those eager to see new Scott writing after the drought, check out that Lorien Psychiatry page! There's lots of psychiatry-related content there, most of which seems new, written in Scott's usual style (with slightly fewer amazing offhand comments than usual, but quite the page-turner compared to just about any other online medical resource).
Instant subscribe, It's great to hear from you again Scott. I wish you the best of luck with Lorien Psychology and I look forwards to seeing which direction you take with this new blog.
Will you be returning to Twitter in any capacity, either as @slatestarcodex or @astralcodexten?
I want your next couple of posts to be about nothing more than what you've been up to with nothing more stressful than stories about the various recipes you've been working on in the kitchen.
Welcome back to blogging, Scott! Best of luck with your new practice, I look forward to your conversation with Alex Tabarrok whether you succeed or fail gloriously.
Wonderful news! Great to have the blog back (for both myself and the world) but even better to hear that you’re doing well and that this will hopefully be the start of great new things!
So happy to have you back, Scott! I just signed up for an annual subscription, the first time I've paid for writing online. My bank (Boa) didn't seem to expect this of me, and initially declined the transaction as suspicious.
I have not read yet, but I wanted to say thar you are a big inspiration in my life right now, I'm a piece of shit & trying to better myself, every time I read your art I want to study like there is no tomorrow. Strange bit of text but just thanks and I hope they don't make you go away again. Respectfully
Once again, is really really good to have you back.
There's a lot in there, but one thing above confused me. Or, more to the point, confused me in a "am I bad/terrible/stupid/etc for not getting this?" level of confusion:
"She then went on to doxx the Vice reporter involved, Which Was Morally Wrong And I Do Not Condone It"
Why was it morally wrong in that circumstance? Doxing is wrong in general, but if someone promises not to dox you, then goes ahead and willfully doxes you, and you have no other reasonable recourse... why is "dox them back" actually morally wrong? Could you or anyone here spell it out for me why "doxing the doxers that dox you, who clearly are acting in a way that implies they themselves have no objection to doxing" is bad? (I feel stupid and bad for asking this, but that feeling doesn't actually provide me with a clear spelled out answer, so...)
Oh, hey -- if you're giving up on anonymity, does that mean you'll put the old LJ back up? :) There's a lot of good posts there and it's a pain to have to use the Wayback Machine to read it.
Gavin McInnes is a lot of things, but "violent neo-fascist leader?" At this point, I want to see what happens if he has a sit-down chat with Scott. I am a fan of them both.
"They managed to take a complaint about a video game review and mishandle it so badly that they literally got condemned by the UN General Assembly"
You'd think Scott would have figured this one out by now, but for whatever reason, his attitude on this topic remains one of "invincible ignorance". Irony of ironies.
Here's a topic for you to ponder: why people consistently refuse to give agency to the media when describing a conflict between media and their readers.
On August 28, 2014, a dozen very large gaming sites, with a reach of millions of people, published articles saying their core audience was irrelevant ("gamers are dead"). The _press_ managed to take a minor scandal about an indie personality and turn it into an industry-wide thing. They did this. It's right there for you to find.
They also didn't get the UN General Assembly involved, it was UN _Women_. It goes to show you how various organizations and brands are used as skin suits to lend an air of authority to what is, essentially, someone running to the principal to DARVO after their bullying tactics backfired.
I agree entirely about the online right to psudo-annoyminity. Maybe I'm a hopeless nostalgic but I still share some of that early internet dream where your race, sex, nationality was irrelevant and so your argument would stand and fall on it's own merits. You could even be a dog and nobody could tell if you made a good argument.
Also I have to say. If you manage to get an argument about a video game review all the way to the United Nations that is either the very worst, or the very best PR of the decade. There's an article by an ex editor in chief of Gawker saying that GamerGate is more responsible than anyone for Gawker's fall, so I'm leaning towards the later.
Best of luck with your attempts to fight cost disease, I'm not American so I can't say more on that.
One question: are you planning to continue releasing your posts under a CC-BY license, as you did on your old blog? Your doing so was a huge boon to free culture and to rabid fans like myself who like having things on paper :)
You had me grinning the whole way through, and very nearly tearing up at the end. We're stoked to have you back, and glad it seems to have been as thought-provoking as it was awful.
You call Gavin McInnes is "a violent neo-fascist leader"? Really? Is this someone you're actually familiar with and have followed or just skimmed the Wikipedia article?
Subscribed as soon as I got to read the email. If you will forgive me quoting Pete Townsend, "I've got a feeling twenty-one is going to be a good year, especially if you and me see it in together". Missed you.
If you charge 4x less than what anyone else does supply and demand equilibrate in some other way, currently by seniority/connections. What's your plan for future allocation?
First time commenter. I've really missed your blog, and it's made me realize I want to try to be a bigger part of the community. So that's what I'll try to do. I'm very glad to say welcome back!
I had figured out your name a few years ago based on info that you gave about your brother. I purposely forgot it because I appreciated what you do. It is a great comfort to know that someone like you exists in the world at this time in history. Welcome back!
It is just a blog. Maybe I should get a life. Yet I don't think there would be a better use of my time than to read a new Slate Star Codex (or Astral Codex Ten) post at 2am. Thank you for everything Scott!
I've participated on the subreddit a bit, but never in the comment section of your blog. I'll try to change that this time around because I feel I've missed out in the past. I subscribed (as promised on reddit) immediately when I saw this.
> "IT'S JUST A BLOG, GET A LIFE"
"It's just a ____" is a pretty good example of the noncentral fallacy you yourself coined. Sure, it's a blog, and most blogs are kinda just ok. The fact that your writing takes the form of a blog doesn't detract from it.
I can meet you halfway and qualify with the word "some" here: Some of your writing is on par with the best essayists of the past century.
I was so curious what your name was, and I had resisted the urge to look it up out of respect. But finding out your name was just anti-climactic. Like it *was* Scott all along? Gimme my money back
New to Substack so I'm not sure about everything regarding how comments work here. I guess this one will appear as anonymous? Do I have to get a Substack account and/or subscribe to this blog to comment here with a handle? (I'm infrequent Wordpress user and SSC commenter Liskantope, much more frequent Tumblr user also under that handle.)
Anyway, I'll skip the gushing and say thank you for coming back, and I'm glad to see that everything seems to be going all right for you after this disturbing sharp turn in your life. (I sensed a strange layer of irony in "I had, not to mince words about it, a really weird year.")
A quick comment: I'm curious about this early-2010's blog under your real name and whether you're referring to your LiveJournal or something else I never knew about. It seems like you were a pretty busy LJer until you took that down and set up SSC, but (1) it wasn't that easy to find your real last name from your LJ as I recall (only from like one reference to it in a comment under the earliest LJ post publicly viewable in the mid-2010's?), and (2) seems to me there was plenty of controversial stuff starting from 2012 and spanning the final months of the LJ?
It took literally the first post for me to remember “Oh yeah, Scott manages to convince me and fascists that he is on our wavelength at the same time.”
It's great to see you back and I'm glad you came through this okay.
I'm a journalist myself, though one who works for an organization that respects pseudonymity as a matter of explicit policy.
*That said*
I'm glad this post is here. It's worth all of us discussing this question of what information the public has the right to know and what information it doesn't. This is such a tricky point.
I do think there's a way in which in a world with an internet machine where finding identities is uniquely easier than it has ever been forces journalists to reconsider this question.
But where the hell is the line?
I think your post raises the question but I'm not sure it does anything to clarify the line. And it's an important line. If all anyone ever did was write the stuff everyone wanted us to, well... we might as well just cancel journalism and let every company and politician and official blog their own updates.
I understand that your point is: well there's a lot of people who fall short of important enough but like... where?
(and yes I understand that you were just writing about identity but obviously it ends up being a lot more than identity, too)
"and that smiley face will haunt my dreams" made me laugh uncontrollably out loud. Subscribed for real $, my first Substack paid subscription. Glad you're back.
I don't have much to add to what innumerable others have said, but boy am I glad you're back. I wish you all the best in your endeavors, and hope that we might have the pleasure of your company for some time to come!
Congratulations on your first steps to demist the fog of war in your maps of healthcare. I wish for you courage and clarity in your journey. In the words of Glen Weyl, "All the interesting things in life happen in the space between abstract goals, and the concrete manifestation of those goals".
Also, though I'm must admit I'm neither an impartial nor an authoratitive judge of the pacing of longform prose compositions, but WOW... this essay had, IMHO, deeply emotionally and rhetorically satisfying pacing. I loved the interweaving your journey from fighting against doxxing and finding yourself driven to a "lose-lose" situation for the greater imagined good with that whacky-at-first-and-then-downright-haunting (at least IMHO) Jonathan Coulton swan song for GLaDOS in the computer game Portal. Also, I loved the emotional and rhetorical payoff of your ending: you starting your own new -- and hopefully truly innovative and trendsetting -- practice and "coming out" proudly, as it were, in merging your personal, vocational, and avocational (alternative vocational?) personae... loved it both for how well it was teased throughout the essay and for the actual fact of it. Lemons to lemonade! Good for you, Dr. Scott Alexander Siskind!! :)
I am generally sympathetic, but I also see why the Times Reporters did not find your arguments convincing.
You call the possibility of them revealing your name "kicking you in the balls" and "doxxing," whereas they would probably call it "doing their job."
As you note, revealing things that people would prefer remain hidden is pretty much the definition of journalism. It is certainly not self-evident to an outsider that revealing your name is analogous to kicking you in the balls. And I think they are correct to note that your blog had gained notoriety, and that you had not exactly discouraged it. The NYT's default isn't so much "go around kicking people in the balls" as it is "publicize information."
It is indeed your circumstances that made this "kicking in the balls." So while you may have been adverse to what may seem like special pleading, I think this may have been a more apparent argument than calling what people do for a living kicking people in the balls.
I also think "doxxing" is an unnecessarily loaded term for what the NYT was going to do. "Doxxing" has its history in revealing personal information so as to encourage harassment and intimidation. It seems pretty clear to me that this was not the NYT's intent. Now, they are responsible for the impact of their actions, but I think that term unnecessarily raised the temperature of the conflict.
Now, once you made it clear what the impact is, I think it would have been best for them to agree to not publish your name. But I'm not sure I want to encourage a norm of, "journalists should default to not publishing information that might hurt somebody." But there's probably more I can learn and think about this.
So glad to have you back! Got a little teary-eyed around the end of this post. So sorry you had to go through such a turbulent year. I hope things go well and better than ever in your new place. I'm glad to support you!
"In Russia we witnessed similar things back in 1917. 100 years later the same situation is in your country :)".
I don't understand this comment. The Russian Revolution was a gargantuan positive for humanity and remains a beacon of hope and inspiration to the proletarian masses over 100 years later. Is this a pro-doxxing email? Certainly, I think intellectual justifications for doxxing can be explicated at length - I'm surprised your piece doesn't do more to investigate the issue from all sides. Remember not to confine yourself to a tribal bubble - one day you may find it has burst.
The world has fallen apart rapidly in your absence -- riots at the US Capitol, pandemic escalating out of control, etc etc -- and I'm hoping that things will start to normalize now that we have you back helping the rest of us get saner over time.
I did not cancel my subscription to the NYT... because I would never subscribe to that shit in the first place. This blog though, please take my money.
You will always be Scott Alexander to me. No, seriously, I spent 2 months in a locked down hospital last year getting my head zapped therapeutically, and and I think I may have some screen/memory burn-in in addition to the horrendous tinnitus :D
> I don't think anyone at the Times bore me ill will, at least not originally. But somehow that just made it even more infuriating.
I was in a Tijuana jail once, facing 5 years. I'm a software engineer who's never been in a fight in his life. I was shocked by how benign and nice they all seemed as they stated shocking, bald assertions of their power.
That said, the "load more" comments button needs to die a horrible death, and not be replaced by "infinite" scrolling. @substack: give me all comments in one static html file on pageload or give me death!
> who could have guessed that a webzine founded by a violent neo-fascist leader
I see Scott hasn't changed in the occasional poorly researched accusation. I watch Gavin's show every day and have for years. It's hilarious. He's not a fascist and only violent if you think self-defense is violence.
It is truly, truly good to see you back and writing again, Scott. And even better that you've made it through 2020 apparently in good shape, because...yeah, this year has been interesting. Count me as a future subscriber once I've sufficiently unfucked my finances, and I look forward to watching this space.
I think the NYT story (and meta-story) came at a point where suspicions of legacy media organizations 'having it out' for the internet were at a near-peak. Has a piece of meat quality to it from there; facts are almost always a bit more nuanced.
Excellent news! Welcome back! I had missed your blog, but I didn't realize how much until I read this post and couldn't stop laughing. I'm looking forward to more insights from a treasured voice of reason and sanity. (And I subscribed, of course).
I am excited for the libertarian community's newfound awareness that tyrannical Power can and does arise with no state involvement and no violation of the NAP.
Welcome back! We've missed you!
Ah, the smell of a fresh post
For those eager to see new Scott writing after the drought, check out that Lorien Psychiatry page! There's lots of psychiatry-related content there, most of which seems new, written in Scott's usual style (with slightly fewer amazing offhand comments than usual, but quite the page-turner compared to just about any other online medical resource).
Hey, Scott! I'm really glad to see you back. I can't wait to read what you write next.
That last sentence is heartwarming. Welcome back, my man. We've missed you.
So utterly delighted you are back!
The Glados interlude throughout really makes it.
I'm really glad everything turned out ok for you and you're back to blogging. Best luck with your new practice!
Thanks.
Fantastic.
Wheeee!
I'm sufficiently pleased about this that I'll overlook making it a Portal reference but don't push your luck bub
Instant subscribe, It's great to hear from you again Scott. I wish you the best of luck with Lorien Psychology and I look forwards to seeing which direction you take with this new blog.
Will you be returning to Twitter in any capacity, either as @slatestarcodex or @astralcodexten?
He lives!
Oh my gosh. I have missed you so much.
I want your next couple of posts to be about nothing more than what you've been up to with nothing more stressful than stories about the various recipes you've been working on in the kitchen.
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/11/09/direct-primary-care/
Hey Scott, how's tricks
It feels so good to see you back Scott :)
Welcome back to blogging, Scott! Best of luck with your new practice, I look forward to your conversation with Alex Tabarrok whether you succeed or fail gloriously.
Great to have you back, dood!
Wonderful news! Great to have the blog back (for both myself and the world) but even better to hear that you’re doing well and that this will hopefully be the start of great new things!
Congratulations, good luck with the practice, I look forward to hearing the hilarious and horrifying story of how bureaucracy killed it
Bentornati Scott! Good to see you back and very best of luck with your new practice.
So happy to have you back, Scott! I just signed up for an annual subscription, the first time I've paid for writing online. My bank (Boa) didn't seem to expect this of me, and initially declined the transaction as suspicious.
Welcome back Scott!
It's wonderful to meet you, Dr. Siskind.
So, what happened to the deadly neurotoxin?
Welcome back! I'm baking cake in celebration.
Your blog is one of the bright spots in my life, so glad to hear from you again!
Welcome back, hero.
Welcome back, Scott
Welcome back. You SWATted our hearts.
ACT, eh? That's an acronym I can get used to. Welcome back Scott, long live The Blog!
Welcome back!!!
This is so wonderful. Congratulations.
Literally brought a tear to my eye. Great to see you pull strength out of adversity. Looking forward to reading you again.
I'm so glad you're back! I really missed your blog especially during the past few months.
Hey, your "all psychiatrists" link points to a Google cache rather than directly to the page being linked. It should point here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/why-psychiatrists-don-t-share-personal-information-with-patients/
Thank you!
Oh my god, this post cured my cancer. Thanks Scott - we've all missed you greatly and warmly welcome you back.
I'm very psyched. I am subscribing as soon as I get home.
So good to have you back Scott. Best of luck with these new ventures, I can't wait to see how it all turns out.
Instantly subscribed for the year. Thanks for all of your incredible writing in the past. I wait excitedly for all of your writing in the future.
Let's hope that Substack improves the comment interface. I miss the original site's density, page size and comment threading.
Fantastic to have you back Scott, 2021 just got a whole lot better.
Fantastic to have you back Scott. 2021 just got a whole lot better.
I have not read yet, but I wanted to say thar you are a big inspiration in my life right now, I'm a piece of shit & trying to better myself, every time I read your art I want to study like there is no tomorrow. Strange bit of text but just thanks and I hope they don't make you go away again. Respectfully
Welcome back, Scott! <3
A wonderful way to kick off 2021
Good to see you back
Once again, is really really good to have you back.
There's a lot in there, but one thing above confused me. Or, more to the point, confused me in a "am I bad/terrible/stupid/etc for not getting this?" level of confusion:
"She then went on to doxx the Vice reporter involved, Which Was Morally Wrong And I Do Not Condone It"
Why was it morally wrong in that circumstance? Doxing is wrong in general, but if someone promises not to dox you, then goes ahead and willfully doxes you, and you have no other reasonable recourse... why is "dox them back" actually morally wrong? Could you or anyone here spell it out for me why "doxing the doxers that dox you, who clearly are acting in a way that implies they themselves have no objection to doxing" is bad? (I feel stupid and bad for asking this, but that feeling doesn't actually provide me with a clear spelled out answer, so...)
The modern day Nietzsche returns with some verse as well!
I'm so relieved and happy you're back. I hope the changes you've made work out for you and make your life more awesome! :)
Cool-cool (in the voice of Abed on Community).
Oh, hey -- if you're giving up on anonymity, does that mean you'll put the old LJ back up? :) There's a lot of good posts there and it's a pain to have to use the Wayback Machine to read it.
Welcome back king. I knew you'd come up from the ashes
It is really good to have you back.
Gavin McInnes is a lot of things, but "violent neo-fascist leader?" At this point, I want to see what happens if he has a sit-down chat with Scott. I am a fan of them both.
What a wonderful piece of news. Welcome back, Scott!
"They managed to take a complaint about a video game review and mishandle it so badly that they literally got condemned by the UN General Assembly"
You'd think Scott would have figured this one out by now, but for whatever reason, his attitude on this topic remains one of "invincible ignorance". Irony of ironies.
Here's a topic for you to ponder: why people consistently refuse to give agency to the media when describing a conflict between media and their readers.
On August 28, 2014, a dozen very large gaming sites, with a reach of millions of people, published articles saying their core audience was irrelevant ("gamers are dead"). The _press_ managed to take a minor scandal about an indie personality and turn it into an industry-wide thing. They did this. It's right there for you to find.
They also didn't get the UN General Assembly involved, it was UN _Women_. It goes to show you how various organizations and brands are used as skin suits to lend an air of authority to what is, essentially, someone running to the principal to DARVO after their bullying tactics backfired.
The NYT may think "You want your freedom? Take it! Now I only want you gone." But we wanted you back. Welcome to Dr. Scott Siskind, blogger.
Yes yes yes yes! This is the best thing one can possibly find out at midnight :)
Very important comment: it's not "glad I've got you", it's "glad I'm not you", unlike my feelings for this blog.
This is exciting and great, welcome back! it's been such a weird time in the past year, and I'm excited to read your perspectives on it!
I'm so excited to see you are back. This is a good start of the year :) Welcome back, Scott!
I've missed your insight dearly during this crazy time. You are a bright light in this dark world.
And so close to my birthday too! Welcome!
We're glad you're back. I loved the post, its style, its length, and its emotion.
Very glad you and this entire community exists, and we love you back!
I cried a lot when reading this
Subscribed
Amazing to have you back.
I agree entirely about the online right to psudo-annoyminity. Maybe I'm a hopeless nostalgic but I still share some of that early internet dream where your race, sex, nationality was irrelevant and so your argument would stand and fall on it's own merits. You could even be a dog and nobody could tell if you made a good argument.
Also I have to say. If you manage to get an argument about a video game review all the way to the United Nations that is either the very worst, or the very best PR of the decade. There's an article by an ex editor in chief of Gawker saying that GamerGate is more responsible than anyone for Gawker's fall, so I'm leaning towards the later.
Best of luck with your attempts to fight cost disease, I'm not American so I can't say more on that.
We missed you so much Scott, its good to have you back. Take my money.
Instant subscription. As one of the embarrassing fanboys, I'm glad you're back :D
Also, shameless plug of my last article whose title style I obviously stole from you: https://federicorcassarino.substack.com/p/ar-glasses-much-more-than-you-wanted
Good to have you back! Happy to see you revealing your name willingly - it's a complete arc! With character growth!
So overjoyed to be able to read your posts again! This one is a great example of your humour, humility and insightfulness.
Looking forward to reading the latest on the birth order issue, as well as all your thoughts on the crazy events of the past year.
Good to see you back!
The long 2020 is over.
So excited to get this blog back. It's simply the best blog on the internet for me, and I look forward to learning more from Scott and you all.
One question: are you planning to continue releasing your posts under a CC-BY license, as you did on your old blog? Your doing so was a huge boon to free culture and to rabid fans like myself who like having things on paper :)
Joy to the world! The king is back!
You had me grinning the whole way through, and very nearly tearing up at the end. We're stoked to have you back, and glad it seems to have been as thought-provoking as it was awful.
Welcome back, Scott!
The "Scott is Kind" full name reveal is the perfect climax to this arc.
Wait, why isn't the logo for Lorien Psychiatry a hair dryer?
Knowing Scott's full name feels *weird*. Like stumbling on your parents sex tapes.
You didn't put a hairdryer on your practice's site. Kind of disappointed.
"Who could have guessed that a webzine founded by a violent neo-fascist leader and named after the abstract concept of evil would stoop so low?"
The violent neo-fascist group he leads is also named after the most serious sin.
Welcome back Scott! Can definitely see 2021 being a better year now
Welcome back and uh I checked your psych website. The menu where the black fonts on dark blue background is not a great idea. Not enough contrast
I forgot just how damn good your writing was. Glad to have you back.
"When I look out there it makes me glad I've got you"
I noticed the change, and the feeling is mutual.
This makes me glad!
You call Gavin McInnes is "a violent neo-fascist leader"? Really? Is this someone you're actually familiar with and have followed or just skimmed the Wikipedia article?
Welcome back! Here's hoping that your readers never make you post "Want You Gone".
Geez this could have been a less rambling post!
This does seem like the week when the difficulty level goes down a notch. Wonderful to have you back! Also, a big fan of that song (so much so I once translated it to Hebrew: https://web.archive.org/web/20131021030413/http://laaz.co.il/עדיין-בחיים)
Geez could have been a less rambling post! Time is short. Nature only gives us about 80 years.
Really glad to have you back Scott!
Oh wow, oh wow. I'm so glad to have you back. That last line drew shivers around my back and instantly filled my eyes with tears.
Big Mazel! Welcome back. So grateful you've returned.
I'm over the moon with joy, welcome back!
Subscribed as soon as I got to read the email. If you will forgive me quoting Pete Townsend, "I've got a feeling twenty-one is going to be a good year, especially if you and me see it in together". Missed you.
If you charge 4x less than what anyone else does supply and demand equilibrate in some other way, currently by seniority/connections. What's your plan for future allocation?
!
First time commenter. I've really missed your blog, and it's made me realize I want to try to be a bigger part of the community. So that's what I'll try to do. I'm very glad to say welcome back!
ronpaulitshappening.gif
I’ve missed you so, so much
I had figured out your name a few years ago based on info that you gave about your brother. I purposely forgot it because I appreciated what you do. It is a great comfort to know that someone like you exists in the world at this time in history. Welcome back!
It is just a blog. Maybe I should get a life. Yet I don't think there would be a better use of my time than to read a new Slate Star Codex (or Astral Codex Ten) post at 2am. Thank you for everything Scott!
We can try to understand
The New York Times' effect on man
Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother
You're stayin' alive, stayin' alive
Welcome back! I wish you good fortune in your new endeavor after the hell you've been through!
I've participated on the subreddit a bit, but never in the comment section of your blog. I'll try to change that this time around because I feel I've missed out in the past. I subscribed (as promised on reddit) immediately when I saw this.
> "IT'S JUST A BLOG, GET A LIFE"
"It's just a ____" is a pretty good example of the noncentral fallacy you yourself coined. Sure, it's a blog, and most blogs are kinda just ok. The fact that your writing takes the form of a blog doesn't detract from it.
I can meet you halfway and qualify with the word "some" here: Some of your writing is on par with the best essayists of the past century.
I was so curious what your name was, and I had resisted the urge to look it up out of respect. But finding out your name was just anti-climactic. Like it *was* Scott all along? Gimme my money back
absolutely psyched you're back
Bravo!
Welcome back! You truly are a national treasure.
Delightful… With your help we can save reality and bring peace to (parts of) the planet! There is hope!
I am moved to tears.
I have missed your writing so much! I'm so happy you have figured out a way to make this work, and I can't wait to read more :)
Glad you're back, Scott!
New to Substack so I'm not sure about everything regarding how comments work here. I guess this one will appear as anonymous? Do I have to get a Substack account and/or subscribe to this blog to comment here with a handle? (I'm infrequent Wordpress user and SSC commenter Liskantope, much more frequent Tumblr user also under that handle.)
Anyway, I'll skip the gushing and say thank you for coming back, and I'm glad to see that everything seems to be going all right for you after this disturbing sharp turn in your life. (I sensed a strange layer of irony in "I had, not to mince words about it, a really weird year.")
A quick comment: I'm curious about this early-2010's blog under your real name and whether you're referring to your LiveJournal or something else I never knew about. It seems like you were a pretty busy LJer until you took that down and set up SSC, but (1) it wasn't that easy to find your real last name from your LJ as I recall (only from like one reference to it in a comment under the earliest LJ post publicly viewable in the mid-2010's?), and (2) seems to me there was plenty of controversial stuff starting from 2012 and spanning the final months of the LJ?
Yay! Scott is Back!
You have an odd power to make impersonal well-wishes transmitted through writing seem just a bit like geniuen and kind words.
I join everyone in saying I'm glad the blog is back :)
Glad to see you back!
All the best Scott, I'm so glad to see you back!
Scott is writing again. Nature is healing; the misery of 2020 is undone in one respect. w00t!
:)
Long time reader but never commented. Wonderful to have you back :)
10/10 victim post. Would cry again!
It took literally the first post for me to remember “Oh yeah, Scott manages to convince me and fascists that he is on our wavelength at the same time.”
Heeessss baaaack!
We've missed you, Scott!
Hey, good to meet you!
It's great to see you back and I'm glad you came through this okay.
I'm a journalist myself, though one who works for an organization that respects pseudonymity as a matter of explicit policy.
*That said*
I'm glad this post is here. It's worth all of us discussing this question of what information the public has the right to know and what information it doesn't. This is such a tricky point.
I do think there's a way in which in a world with an internet machine where finding identities is uniquely easier than it has ever been forces journalists to reconsider this question.
But where the hell is the line?
I think your post raises the question but I'm not sure it does anything to clarify the line. And it's an important line. If all anyone ever did was write the stuff everyone wanted us to, well... we might as well just cancel journalism and let every company and politician and official blog their own updates.
I understand that your point is: well there's a lot of people who fall short of important enough but like... where?
(and yes I understand that you were just writing about identity but obviously it ends up being a lot more than identity, too)
(which, btw, is the world Balaji wants)
*offers hugs*
What a blessing to have you back, I'm so pleased!
A weight has been lifted from my chest. To say I missed you is to say I missed the Sun after an impact in the Yucatan.
I'm so glad to see you back again. Missed you so much. :)
So great to have you back, Scott! Now I hate to be this guy but is that really what the word "humbled" means? Or is humbled now its own antonym?
"and that smiley face will haunt my dreams" made me laugh uncontrollably out loud. Subscribed for real $, my first Substack paid subscription. Glad you're back.
Best. Comeback announcement. Ever.
Prediction market on whether Scott will make more money from the substack or Lorien when?
I don't have much to add to what innumerable others have said, but boy am I glad you're back. I wish you all the best in your endeavors, and hope that we might have the pleasure of your company for some time to come!
I wasn't a frequent commenter in the SSC days, but now with ACT (?) I'll start.
Great to have you back, Scott. You're an inspiration to us all!
I am so glad that you are back, and that you are still alive and being your fantastic self, and that I am still alive to read your new posts.
looking forward to the new predictive processing stuff
We love you too.
Fuck yeah!
So glad you're back. I didn't realize how much I would miss you until you were gone.
Glad to have you back.
This is good stuff, man. Been hard without you. This'll keep the shakes away for the weekend, man.
Congratulations on your first steps to demist the fog of war in your maps of healthcare. I wish for you courage and clarity in your journey. In the words of Glen Weyl, "All the interesting things in life happen in the space between abstract goals, and the concrete manifestation of those goals".
It's good to have you back on the internet.
I am truly happy to have you back.
Also, though I'm must admit I'm neither an impartial nor an authoratitive judge of the pacing of longform prose compositions, but WOW... this essay had, IMHO, deeply emotionally and rhetorically satisfying pacing. I loved the interweaving your journey from fighting against doxxing and finding yourself driven to a "lose-lose" situation for the greater imagined good with that whacky-at-first-and-then-downright-haunting (at least IMHO) Jonathan Coulton swan song for GLaDOS in the computer game Portal. Also, I loved the emotional and rhetorical payoff of your ending: you starting your own new -- and hopefully truly innovative and trendsetting -- practice and "coming out" proudly, as it were, in merging your personal, vocational, and avocational (alternative vocational?) personae... loved it both for how well it was teased throughout the essay and for the actual fact of it. Lemons to lemonade! Good for you, Dr. Scott Alexander Siskind!! :)
I am generally sympathetic, but I also see why the Times Reporters did not find your arguments convincing.
You call the possibility of them revealing your name "kicking you in the balls" and "doxxing," whereas they would probably call it "doing their job."
As you note, revealing things that people would prefer remain hidden is pretty much the definition of journalism. It is certainly not self-evident to an outsider that revealing your name is analogous to kicking you in the balls. And I think they are correct to note that your blog had gained notoriety, and that you had not exactly discouraged it. The NYT's default isn't so much "go around kicking people in the balls" as it is "publicize information."
It is indeed your circumstances that made this "kicking in the balls." So while you may have been adverse to what may seem like special pleading, I think this may have been a more apparent argument than calling what people do for a living kicking people in the balls.
I also think "doxxing" is an unnecessarily loaded term for what the NYT was going to do. "Doxxing" has its history in revealing personal information so as to encourage harassment and intimidation. It seems pretty clear to me that this was not the NYT's intent. Now, they are responsible for the impact of their actions, but I think that term unnecessarily raised the temperature of the conflict.
Now, once you made it clear what the impact is, I think it would have been best for them to agree to not publish your name. But I'm not sure I want to encourage a norm of, "journalists should default to not publishing information that might hurt somebody." But there's probably more I can learn and think about this.
So glad to have you back! Got a little teary-eyed around the end of this post. So sorry you had to go through such a turbulent year. I hope things go well and better than ever in your new place. I'm glad to support you!
That was more of a fast paced read than what I'm used to haha, I'm here for the movement!
Scott, are still crying wolf after Jan 6? I think an update should be made.
That was fast paced and full of energy. I'm excited to see where this goes!
Oh joyous day! Scott has returned to us!!
Wow. Just wow.
I am so, so glad you’re back.
Funny, now that I know your name I wonder why anyone would care.
"a violent neo-fascist leader" ... this shows you really are just brainwashed by the left.
Good to see you writing again!
"In Russia we witnessed similar things back in 1917. 100 years later the same situation is in your country :)".
I don't understand this comment. The Russian Revolution was a gargantuan positive for humanity and remains a beacon of hope and inspiration to the proletarian masses over 100 years later. Is this a pro-doxxing email? Certainly, I think intellectual justifications for doxxing can be explicated at length - I'm surprised your piece doesn't do more to investigate the issue from all sides. Remember not to confine yourself to a tribal bubble - one day you may find it has burst.
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction
The world has fallen apart rapidly in your absence -- riots at the US Capitol, pandemic escalating out of control, etc etc -- and I'm hoping that things will start to normalize now that we have you back helping the rest of us get saner over time.
It's awfully good to have you blogging again.
Welcome back to the land of the living!
Very sweet, glad to have you back
I did not cancel my subscription to the NYT... because I would never subscribe to that shit in the first place. This blog though, please take my money.
Oh goodness, it's a breath of fresh air to see you writing again. What an introductory post, too! Welcome back, you've been sorely missed.
The resources at Lorien Psychiatry will be immensely helpful to me and my patients! So glad you're back.
Best thing to have have happened in 2021.
I know I'll be lost in the torrent of replies, but like everybody here I'm glad you're back and excited to see what comes next.
You will always be Scott Alexander to me. No, seriously, I spent 2 months in a locked down hospital last year getting my head zapped therapeutically, and and I think I may have some screen/memory burn-in in addition to the horrendous tinnitus :D
> I don't think anyone at the Times bore me ill will, at least not originally. But somehow that just made it even more infuriating.
I was in a Tijuana jail once, facing 5 years. I'm a software engineer who's never been in a fight in his life. I was shocked by how benign and nice they all seemed as they stated shocking, bald assertions of their power.
😭😭😭
That said, the "load more" comments button needs to die a horrible death, and not be replaced by "infinite" scrolling. @substack: give me all comments in one static html file on pageload or give me death!
> who could have guessed that a webzine founded by a violent neo-fascist leader
I see Scott hasn't changed in the occasional poorly researched accusation. I watch Gavin's show every day and have for years. It's hilarious. He's not a fascist and only violent if you think self-defense is violence.
Welcome back
You've been greatly missed.
Great to have you back!
I like this substack interface too - I've never seen another substack with an old-school blogroll included. Very nice.
the portal robot ? seriously Scott ? can you get any duller ?
Welcome back, Siskind-sama!
2020 ate you. Now you will eat 2021!
It is truly, truly good to see you back and writing again, Scott. And even better that you've made it through 2020 apparently in good shape, because...yeah, this year has been interesting. Count me as a future subscriber once I've sufficiently unfucked my finances, and I look forward to watching this space.
Great to have you back, you were missed!
Thank the Maker, this oil bath is going to feel soooo good
Talent like Scott is why Substack is a place to watch as we morph into new ways of delivering and consuming entertainment, content and the like.
I'm thrilled to see you back around. Looking forward to all ACX has to offer.
Great to see you back
I think the NYT story (and meta-story) came at a point where suspicions of legacy media organizations 'having it out' for the internet were at a near-peak. Has a piece of meat quality to it from there; facts are almost always a bit more nuanced.
That's a secondary thought though - welcome back!
Excellent news! Welcome back! I had missed your blog, but I didn't realize how much until I read this post and couldn't stop laughing. I'm looking forward to more insights from a treasured voice of reason and sanity. (And I subscribed, of course).
<3
I am excited for the libertarian community's newfound awareness that tyrannical Power can and does arise with no state involvement and no violation of the NAP.
Welcome back, you've been missed.
<3
The Great Unbloggedening is finally at an end. So glad your transition seems to be going well, and glad to have you back bud.
Home is behind. The world is ahead.