Greater than 7,500 folks signed a petition urging The Times to not publish his title, together with many distinguished figures within the tech trade. “Placing his full title in The Times,” the petitioners stated, “would meaningfully injury public discourse, by discouraging personal residents from sharing their ideas in weblog kind.” On the web, many in Silicon Valley consider, everybody has the proper not solely to say what they need however to say it anonymously.
Amid all this, I spoke with Manoel Horta Ribeiro, a pc science researcher who explores social networks on the Swiss Federal Institute of Expertise in Lausanne. He was frightened that Slate Star Codex, like different communities, was permitting extremist views to trickle into the influential tech world. “A neighborhood like this offers voice to fringe teams,” he stated. “It provides a platform to individuals who maintain extra excessive views.”
However for Kelsey Piper and plenty of others, the primary situation got here all the way down to the title, and tying the person recognized professionally and legally as Scott Siskind to his influential, and controversial, writings as Scott Alexander. Ms. Piper, who’s a journalist herself, for the information website Vox, stated she didn’t agree with every thing he had written, however she additionally felt his weblog was unfairly painted as an on-ramp to radical views. She frightened his views couldn’t be decreased to a single newspaper story.
I assured her my aim was to report on the weblog, and the Rationalists, with rigor and equity. However she felt that discussing each critics and supporters could possibly be unfair. What I wanted to do, she stated, was one way or the other show statistically which facet was proper.
After I requested Mr. Altman if the dialog on websites like Slate Star Codex might push folks towards poisonous beliefs, he stated he held “some empathy” for these considerations. However, he added, “folks want a discussion board to debate concepts.”
In August, Mr. Siskind restored his previous weblog posts to the web. And two weeks in the past, he relaunched his weblog on Substack, an organization with ties to each Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator. He gave the weblog a brand new title: Astral Codex Ten. He hinted that Substack paid him $250,000 for a 12 months on the platform. And he indicated the corporate would give him all of the safety he wanted.
In his first publish, Mr. Siskind shared his full title.