Astral Codex Ten

The Times

6 min read

The Times

Article

The Times is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between January 21, 2021 and November 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “The Times (a British newspaper unrelated to NYT) hacked his email and exposed his real identity”; “The Times points out that I agreed with Murray that poverty was bad”; “The Times also presented a more general case”. It most often appears alongside Trump, Bitcoin, California.

Metadata

  • Category: Publications
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: January 21, 2021
  • Last seen: November 04, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Still Alive
January 21, 2021 · Original source
But I still had this really strong sense that my career hung on this thread of staying anonymous. Sure, my security was terrible, and a few trolls and malefactors found my real name online and used it to taunt me. But my attendings and my future employers couldn't just Google my name and find it immediately. Also, my patients couldn't Google my name and find me immediately, which I was increasingly realizing the psychiatric community considered important. Therapists are supposed to be blank slates, available for patients to project their conflicts and fantasies upon. Their distant father, their abusive boyfriend, their whatever. They must not know you as a person. One of my more dedicated professors told me about how he used to have a picture of his children on a shelf in his office. One of his patients asked him whether those were his children. He described suddenly realizing that he had let his desire to show off overcome his duty as a psychiatrist, mumbling a noncommital response lest his patient learn whether he had children or not, taking the picture home with him that night, and never displaying any personal items in his office ever again. That guy was kind of an extreme case, but this is something all psychiatrists think about, and better pychiatrist-bloggers than I have quit once their side gig reached a point where their patients might hear about it. There was even a very nice and nuanced article about the phenomenon in - of all places - The New York Times.
Inline links: all psychiatrists, better pychiatrist-bloggers than I, The New York Times
The New York Times thought so. Some people kept me abreast of their private discussions (in Soviet America, newspaper's discussions get leaked to you!) and their reporters had spirited internal debates about whether I really needed anonymity. Sure, I'd gotten some death threats, but everyone gets death threats on the Internet, and I'd provided no proof mine were credible. Sure, I might get SWATted, but realistically that's a really scary fifteen seconds before the cops apologize and go away. Sure, my job was at risk, but I was a well-off person and could probably get another. Also, hadn't I blogged under my real name before? Hadn't I published papers under my real name in ways that a clever person could use to unmask my identity? Hadn't I played fast and loose with every form of opsec other than whether the average patient or employer could Google me in five seconds?
513,000 people read my blog post complaining about the New York Times' attempt to dox me (for comparison, there are 366,000 people in Iceland). So many people cancelled their subscription that the Times' exasperated customer service agents started pre-empting callers with "Is this about that blog thing?" A friend of a friend reports her grandmother in Slovakia heard a story about me on Slovak-language radio.
Statement on New York Times Article
February 14, 2021 · Original source
3. The Times also presented a more general case that I was a bad ally to women in tech. I deny this claim. I have repeatedly blogged about studies suggesting that women are underrepresented in tech not because of explicit discrimination on the part of tech companies, but because women lose interest in tech very early, at least by high school (high school computer science classes are something like 80% male, the same as big tech companies). The post that most effectively sums up my thoughts on this topic is Contra Grant On Exaggerated Differences. I continue to believe these studies are true, I’ve spoken with some of the researchers who have performed them, and the New York Times itself has previously written about and praised these same studies. I think understanding the reasons behind gender imbalances in tech is vital towards figuring out how to address them better than we’re addressing them now. There is no evidence that women are inherently any less intelligent or any worse at math than men, and I have tried to make this very clear in all of my posts on the subject - for example in the Contra Grant post linked above, where I say, quote, “My research suggests no average gender difference in ability”.
Inline links: something like 80% male, Contra Grant On Exaggerated Differences, previously written about and praised
I don’t want to accuse the New York Times of lying about me, exactly, but if they were truthful, it was in the same way as that famous movie review which describes the Wizard of Oz as: “Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.”
Please do not contact me about the New York Times situation unless you have a very specific and important request. For the sake of my own peace of mind, I am hoping to stop thinking about it the moment I hit “publish” on this post. Your not contacting me about it will help me in this process. I appreciate your support.
Carbon Costs Quantified
August 25, 2021 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
My California Ballot 2022
November 04, 2022 · Original source
Howell does not display any particular passion or interest in insurance issues. He told The Times he decided to run for insurance commissioner because it’s an office he believes he could win after losing a few local races in the San Jose area.