[HN Gopher] Pseudonymity as a Trivial Concession to Genius
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Pseudonymity as a Trivial Concession to Genius
Author : MindGods
Score : 60 points
Date : 2020-06-23 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scottaaronson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scottaaronson.com)
| Y_Y wrote:
| Maybe this is what MacArthur should give to geniuses instead of
| cash.
| krallja wrote:
| VERY highly voted and discussed topic earlier today:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610416
| etrabroline wrote:
| I wonder why it isn't anywhere to be found on the home page
| then.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| It's on page two, I'm guessing because HN prioritizes newer
| articles with higher upvote/comment ratios.
| throwaway4666 wrote:
| >In a year of historic ironies, here's another one: that it was
| the decent, reasonable, and well-meaning Cade Metz, rather than
| any of the SneerClubbers
|
| Okay so what's with the obsession with a niche subreddit whose
| sole purpose is to dunk on rationalists/SSCers who talk too often
| about the IQ of black people. I mean it's not like Aaronson is
| himself an HBD blogger. I kind of like Aaronson but his online
| anxiety is really getting the better of his judgement.
| waterhouse wrote:
| To treat this in good faith, I point to here:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200313231227/https://slatestar...
|
| "A subreddit devoted to insulting and mocking me personally and
| Culture War thread participants in general got started; it now
| has over 2,000 readers." That is SneerClub.
|
| "Some people found my real name and started posting it on
| Twitter. Some people made entire accounts devoted to doxxing me
| in Twitter discussions whenever an opportunity came up. A few
| people just messaged me letting me know they knew my real name
| and reminding me that they could do this if they wanted to.
|
| Some people started messaging my real-life friends, telling
| them to stop being friends with me because I supported racists
| and sexists and Nazis. Somebody posted a monetary reward for
| information that could be used to discredit me.
|
| One person called the clinic where I worked, pretended to be a
| patient, and tried to get me fired.
|
| ... I had a nervous breakdown. It wasn't even that bad a
| nervous breakdown. I was able to keep working through it. I
| just sort of broke off all human contact for a couple of weeks
| and stayed in my room freaking out instead.
|
| ... The first few [subreddit mods] I approached were positive;
| some had similar experiences to mine; one admitted that even
| though he personally was not involved with the CW thread and
| only dealt with other parts of the subreddit, he taught at a
| college and felt like his job would not be safe so long as the
| subreddit and CW thread were affiliated. Apparently the problem
| was bigger than just me, and other people had been dealing with
| it in silence."
| ve55 wrote:
| Scott Aaronson has a great reply to a question that directly
| answers what you're asking, I will quote it below in full and
| link to it: >Would you say that you,
| personally, have ever experienced true free will? And if so in
| what situation(s)?
|
| I would say that I exerted the "maximum amount of free will"
| (at least, the maximum that I've experienced) in those rare
| cases when I did something not because the people around me
| wanted or expected me to do it, or because it was the natural
| thing to do for someone in my situation, but simply because I
| wanted to and damn what people around me thought.
|
| Here are some examples:
|
| - In 1994, when I pushed my parents and the administrators at
| Hong Kong International School to let me start skipping grades.
|
| - In 1996, when I left home at age 15, to attend a program at
| Clarkson University that I'd literally learned about from a
| mass-mailed brochure.
|
| - In 2000, when I set up a website called "In Defense of
| NaderTrading" to try to prevent the election of George W. Bush.
| (Had I exerted my free will some more, and gotten more
| attention for the site, maybe we would've gotten just 539 more
| vote-swaps in Florida...)
|
| - In 2001, when I dropped everything else I was doing to work
| on a ridiculously ambitious problem, one that even Andris
| Ambainis hadn't solved: namely, lower-bounding the quantum
| query complexity of distinguishing 1-to-1 from 2-to-1 functions
|
| - In 2002, when I decided to waste a month building a huge zoo
| of complexity classes, and another month reading and reviewing
| Stephen Wolfram's book (despite being a totally unknown grad
| student)
|
| - In 2005, when I started a blog called (of all things)
| "Shtetl-Optimized"
|
| - In 2006, when I asked my boss, Ray Laflamme at the Institute
| for Quantum Computing in Waterloo, if I could teach a crazy
| course called "Quantum Computing Since Democritus"
|
| - In 2009, when I spent a whole weekend in a difficult,
| contentious, incredibly personal email exchange with some
| postdoc in Princeton who I barely knew, then accepted her
| invitation to take the train there to continue arguing in
| person. (Over the next 3 years, that postdoc would become my
| girlfriend, fiancee, wife, then mother of my first child.)
|
| With these examples in mind, I can finally explain something
| that seems to have perplexed many people: namely, why I reacted
| to SneerClub and its fellow travelers, not merely as some
| annoying nobodies shitposting on social media, but as an
| existential threat, a coronavirus of the mind. And this despite
| the fact that, at least 3/4 of the time, I'm politically closer
| to the sneerers than to those they attack.
|
| The reason is that, with laser precision, the sneerers target
| the urge to "exercise one's free will." Like, they spend hours
| perfecting and refining mental kryptonite against the impulses
| of nerds like me to say what they're thinking or do what they
| want, and damn the disapproval or the quizzical looks of those
| around them. The sneerers' worldview, even when one happens to
| agree with them, is poisonous to the little hothouse flower of
| nerdian freedom that led to almost everything that was good in
| my life.
|
| Source:
| https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4684#comment-1833463
| mellosouls wrote:
| _Even though the article was going to be positive_
|
| No. That's what the NYT _said_ it was going to be.
|
| Despite Professor Aaronson's assurances of the writer's good
| character and pure intentions in this case, Scott Alexander -
| apart from his duty of care to his clients - is wise to not take
| that for granted considering his open-minded approach to various
| subjects which is liable by certain elements of the Ctrl-Left to
| warrant a cancel-attack.
| pvg wrote:
| _That 's what the NYT said it was going to be._
|
| That's what Scott Alexander said the NYT writer said.
| Everything we know about this story is entirely his portrayal
| and version of it. You can give it as much credence as you like
| but it is, so far, one party's representation.
| tgb wrote:
| Well it's also what Scott Aaron's on says about the story, as
| he explains in this post, he knew the writer and knew the
| story he was working on.
| mjfl wrote:
| I would go so far as to say that one would have to be a
| complete fool to believe that the article would have been
| anything except a smear, painting him as alt-right or
| something.
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(page generated 2020-06-23 23:00 UTC)