New York Times forces Scott Alexander, the writer of Slate Star Codex, to delete his blog.

The New York Times building. National Review/Reuters.

Slate Star Codex, a popular psychiatry blog, has been deleted after the New York Times said they would dox the write of the blog, Scott Alexander. National Review. Scott Alexander has written the blog for several years and it has had several influential and viral posts on topics as wide ranging as psychiatry, politics, and even fiction. He has remained anonymous with his last name being withheld to protect his job, where he works as a psychiatrist. However, the New York Times is going to write an article that will reveal his last name, despite the fact that Alexander has gotten death threats because of his blogging. The Times says that they have a policy to not protect people's identities, even though they have done so in the past for other people. 

The only post left on the blog is a post from Scott Alexander explaining the situation.

My Comment:

This situation is very sad as Slate Star Codex was one of my favorite blogs. It's one of the few I actually link to on my sidebar on this blog and I mostly haven't regretted it. Even though Scott's on the left, I find him to be a very good writer and have learned a lot of concepts from him. 

Slate Star Codex was all over the map in terms of topics but it's mostly a psychiatry blog. It's also part of the rationalist internet community, which focuses on making good arguments and is generally tolerant of other voices. It's spawned two Reddit communities, Slate Star Codex and The Motte, which are rare in that they allow people of any political stripe to comment as long as they follow the fairly strict rules for discussion. 

Supposedly this article was supposed to be positive on Scott and Slate Star Codex. He was one of the first people to correctly predict that the Coronavirus outbreak was going to be a serious threat and reportedly that's what the article was going to be about. 

But if the article was going to be so positive why revel his last name? The New York Times has no problem in keeping some people's name secret. How many Trump officials have they quoted anonymously? They have also kept Banksy, an artist, anonymous during the many reports they have done on him. They clearly could keep Scott Alexander's name out of the story if they wanted too. 

The reporters at the New York Times know that exposing Scott Alexander's last name will probably ruin his career. As Scott describes, he has patients across the political spectrum, many of which might drop him if they find out that he has a popular blog that's political in nature. His employers might just dump him as well to avoid the controversy. 

Why would the New York Times want to do this? In short, Scott is an ideological enemy. He's written a lot of stuff that the far left has a problem with and he tolerates people of other political beliefs. Indeed, he wrote one of the best articles explaining neoreaction, even though he also attacked the ideology in a follow up post. And he allows people from across the political spectrum to comment on his blog, including people from the far right. 

He also has been one of the few people on the left that is willing to examine leftists ideas and, if the data supports it, debunks them. He's had posts examining if there is racial bias in the criminal justice system, defending "nice guys" and cancel culture and his posts were highly critical of the modern leftist dogma. He even wrote a serious post examining if President Trump was racist and found that he wasn't, even though he didn't think anyone should vote for him. 

That's something that the New York Times won't tolerate. They don't want any people able to debunk their articles and counter their narratives. Scott Alexander is someone that can do that, even though he hasn't written too much that was political so if they can get rid of him they will. And Scott is a threat to them, as he is way more influential on both the right and left than they are likely to admit. 

This does make me worry a bit about my own chances of being canceled. My blog is nowhere near as influential and popular as Slate Star Codex, but I am active on social media. If I ever went viral with my semi-anonymous blog I am guessing the Times wouldn't have any trouble doxing me. Still, one of the reasons I started this blog is to cover stories that the mainstream media wouldn't cover, and this is one of them. They have become way too powerful and people need to speak out about what they are doing.