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SlateStarCodex is back as Astral Codex Ten (1 Viewer)

Thanks, my work productivity was bad enough as is prior to you introducing us to this rabbit hole - now it will approach zero.

 
I haven't read any of the new content yet, but that won't stop me from giving a thumbs-up to the GLaDOS reference.  

 
Been reading through a few of the old posts. The meditations on moloch is an interesting one. The discussion of mindless optimization and competition leading to sacrifice of values thereby is fascinating and resonates with some vague ideas I already had in that area, particularly as it relates to adjustments (coordination) we need to make now/soon to our version of capitalism. I'm only up to section V. there so maybe the script changes.

Another interesting component of that writing is the brief discussion of how memes will impact discourse, including political discourse. Written in 2014, it pretty much predicts what happened a year later and continues through current day with an overwhelming number of people taking advantage of technological developments to work memes to serve their purposes, effectively drowning out truth much of the time. We now see where that leads.

 
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I didn't think the article was that bad. Look, if you have a site where those things -- things like genetics and IQ and race and sex -- are being discussed, how do you expect the New York Times to react? They're bound to use little critical analysis in dealing with those issues. They feel that those issues are verboten, reflexively wrong, and hostile in their very mention.

And Murray is not a stain. His book wasn't about racial differences in IQ, it was about IQ and class structure in society and government's role in equalizing the effects of cognitive differences. Race was one chapter in a long book. The Brookings Institute and others, upon further consideration of the main premise, decided to take Murray at his word that you could skip race and critique the thesis, so people have begun to do just that because the thesis was powerful. The thesis was that IQ is heritable, and IQ is correlated highly with earnings in American life. Therefore, they implicitly argue, we are not a meritocracy of "those who work hardest earn most" but rather, "those who are born with it earn most." It's not a really hard book to get one's head around, and that it still carries with it the stigma of old style phrenology is a shame because the thesis seems so ringingly true today.

 
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BladeRunner said:
And people still trust the NYT?   :doh:

Unbelievable.
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One bad article doesn't sink the NYT. As a news source they are among the best. Their opinion section is a disaster at the moment though.

I see all this not as a NYT issue but as a larger societal issue: nuanced and complex ideas that don't fit into left/right dynamics get distorted when pushed into the mainstream. I guess maybe it's always been like that? I don't know, it seems way worse nowadays. If you have an opinion that doesn't adequately match the pitch of the battle cry, you're painted as one of the bad guys. It's increasingly becoming a problem.

 
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Westerberg said:
On bad article doesn't sink the NYT. As a news source they are among the best. Their opinion section is a disaster at the moment though.

I see all this not as a NYT issue but as a larger societal issue: nuanced and complex ideas that don't fit into left/right dynamics get distorted when pushed into the mainstream. I guess maybe it's always been like that? I don't know, it seems way worse nowadays. If you have an opinion that doesn't adequately match the pitch of the battle cry, you're painted as one of the bad guys. It's increasingly becoming a problem.
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This has been going on since at least the early sixties. And one can say that "One bad article doesn't sink the NYT," but this is a consistent pattern from them since at least the nineties and even further beyond that. I expect nothing less than rank editorializing over issues like these from them. They're going with their agenda across all areas of the paper, integrity and objectivity be damned. They have a worldview, and you're welcome to it. They seem to constantly be saying "thank you and #### you very much" at the same time, "and if you don't like it, we're the New York Times."

 
djmich said:
Seems like your saying it was bad, which met your low expectations.
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That's precisely what I'm saying. You can't possibly expect the New York Times to review or give a fair shake to even the lowliest of blog articles if that blog article that might have discussed innate sexual or racial differences without condemning the very presence or existence of such, can you? That is well within their mission, which is no longer about facts, but about agenda, pure and simple. These ####ers think that they can put a bullet in ideas and truth by eliding obfuscation with censoriousness. Good luck to them. Never works.

 
rockaction said:
I didn't think the article was that bad. Look, if you have a site where those things -- things like genetics and IQ and race and sex -- are being discussed, how do you expect the New York Times to react? They're bound to use little critical analysis in dealing with those issues. They feel that those issues are verboten, reflexively wrong, and hostile.

And Murray is not a stain. His book wasn't about racial differences in IQ, it was about IQ and class structure in society and government's role in equalizing the effects of cognitive differences. Race was one chapter in a long book. The Brookings Institute and others, upon further consideration of the main premise, decided to take Murray at his word that you could skip race and critique the thesis, so people have begun to do just that because the thesis was powerful. The thesis was that IQ is heritable, and IQ is correlated highly with earnings in American life. Therefore, they implicitly argue, we are not a meritocracy of "those who work hardest earn most" but rather, "those who are born with it earn most." It's not a really hard book to get one's head around, and that it still carries with it the stigma of old style phrenology is a shame because the thesis seems so ringingly true today.
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I'm familiar with Murray and studied him in grad school. What I'm saying is that the author is very aware of how radioactive Murray is and intentionally tried to link him to Siskind in a manner to make him more "problematic". It's gross.

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
The issue isn't just that the author tried to tar SSC by tying SSC to Murray. It's that he did it so inaccurately.

https://twitter.com/PMatzko/status/1360629399582826499
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Exactly.

eta: Technically I don't think there is anything actually inaccurate in the article but Siskind's link to Murray in his blog post had nothing to do with Murray's racial stuff. There was really no other reason for the author to reference Murray other than to connect Siskind with a radioactive political figure. It didn't do anything to help flesh out the story of Siskind and his blog.

 
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Maurile Tremblay said:
The issue isn't just that the author tried to tar SSC by tying SSC to Murray. It's that he did it so inaccurately.

https://twitter.com/PMatzko/status/1360629399582826499
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Jesse Walker of Reason and others on Twitter have been commenting on that -- that the hyperlinks in the article don't back up what the author is saying at all. I haven't gotten a chance to substantiate the claims yet nor had my feathers ruffled by it. I'm not surprised that they got it wrong. They don't believe in the value of the speech as it pertains to those topics, and even if the host of the blog deliberately urges caution or denies difference claims, there's no fairness nor attention to fact we can expect from major media outlets, especially those like the Times. It's just not happening. There's no way they got this wrong on accident.

I hold the opinion that I would not expect anything but a hit job from them when it comes to a space that has discussed race or sex differences in an evenhanded, non-condemnatory manner. That's just begging for the NYT to slap a fool down. And it gets more and more strident, year after year. 

 
Westerberg said:
I'm familiar with Murray and studied him in grad school. What I'm saying is that the author is very aware of how radioactive Murray is and intentionally tried to link him to Siskind in a manner to make him more "problematic". It's gross.
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Yeah, I see your point. It's a disingenuous trip, but an expected one, IMO. This is part of the reason right-wingers (or any person who is a rigorous thinker that disagrees with media shibboleths) have been hollering about legacy or mainstream media for decades now. Any discussion viewed as objectionable will either be represented unfairly, covered with an agenda, or just plain old lied about. This is what sets one down the path -- okay slight hyperbole here, but stuff like this is where it begins -- to OAN and Newsmax.

 
One other thing that was weird to me about the article: 

I've checked in on the blog for a little while now. Funnily enough it was after MT linked to it about trigger warnings. Siskind was defending them and I disagreed; I think they're at best useless and at worst harmful. Anyway, even though we disagreed, I liked how he approached topics so kept checking in. While doing so, I don't remember anything about Rationalists or Silicon Valley being mentioned. Where is all that stuff coming from? Anyone know? 

 
Westerberg said:
One other thing that was weird to me about the article: 

I've checked in on the blog for a little while now. Funnily enough it was after MT linked to it about trigger warnings. Siskind was defending them and I disagreed; I think they're at best useless and at worst harmful. Anyway, even though we disagreed, I liked how he approached topics so kept checking in. While doing so, I don't remember anything about Rationalists or Silicon Valley being mentioned. Where is all that stuff coming from? Anyone know? 
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Before launching SSC, he blogged at a rationalist forum. The NYT writer used that association as a framing device for everything he's done since then.

 
Sea Duck said:
Before launching SSC, he blogged at a rationalist forum. The NYT writer used that association as a framing device for everything he's done since then.
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Thanks. The fact that I had to ask that further supports just how bad that article was.

 
The more I read, the more the article really was suspect. It reminded me of the early aughts when if you were linked to a neoconservative, that itself said it all about you and your politics. The Times did what they did here then, too, just needing to imply that somebody had had those connections or had even deigned to address a neoconservative thinker as an intellectual being worthy of discussion to give their readers a heads-up as to the profilee's "real" motives and modus operandi. The Times is, despite the overwrought and seemingly inclusive liberalism that's woven into all aspects of the paper, actually very in-groupy/out-groupy about its purported enemies, especially in its op-eds and profiles, and the Times expects the readership to be in the know and with knives out at a mere mention or implication of what they feel is intellectual malfeasance.

 
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rockaction said:
The more I read, the more the article really was suspect. It reminded me of the early aughts when if you were linked to a neoconservative, that itself said it all about you and your politics. The Times did what they did here then, too, just needing to imply that somebody had had those connections or had even deigned to address a neoconservative thinker as an intellectual being worthy of discussion to give their readers a heads-up as to the profilee's "real" motives and modus operandi. The Times is, despite the overwrought and seemingly inclusive liberalism that's woven into all aspects of the paper, actually very in-groupy/out-groupy about its purported enemies, especially in its op-eds and profiles, and the Times expects the readership to be in the know and with knives out at a mere mention or implication of what they feel is intellectual malfeasance.
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There's a pronounced tendency in certain very loud corners of the progressive internet to assume that everyone to the left of Hillary Clinton is a Literal Nazi, and if they deny being a Literal Nazi that just means that they're a Secret Nazi.  To be clear, I've never once seen a single person on this forum ever do that in the decades (sigh) that I've been posting here, so if anybody is reading this and thinks that it's some of a veiled shot at any in our little community, it's definitely not.  But I see it all the time -- literally multiple times per day -- elsewhere on the internet.  Thanks to social media (thanks, Twitter!) I know that some indeterminate but significant proportion of media figures belong to this particular sect.  So when I see someone write a hit piece that relies on vague, hand-wavy guilt-by-association tactics, I'm going to assume tentatively that this is what we're dealing with.  To me, it seems more charitable to assume that the author is an intelligent person who set off on a witch hunt than to assume that the author is profoundly stupid.  

Of course you're right that this isn't a new phenomenon.  People who opposed burning witches were probably witches themselves.  People who opposed blacklists were probably just communists or least communist-adjacent.  People who like to apply reason and logic to things are mostly Nazis.  Twenty years from now we'll look back on this moment in time as being a little dumb and paranoid and we'll probably be applying the same heuristic to some other group.    

 
I remember reading an essay by a man who had been a leftist and talked about the implications of Marxism and false consciousness. He held that Marxism and leftist movements held that you are a product and unwitting vessel of forces beyond your control, and while you may think you're not oppressing somebody by your actions and words, chances are that you are. The only solution to this, of course, is to raise awareness, which is why the postmodern left tends to congregate in institutions where communication is key. It's something along the lines of your Literal/Secret Nazi designation, and just something to think about. Every time we hear "we need to make the public aware..." you can be sure that the person uttering those words believes that "but for" one's own false consciousness, one would not be an oppressor. Indeed, could not be.

So it is with gesticulations over towards the out-group that is not preferred by the communications class. They believe they can tell your true political or social motive merely by your associations with others, or worse, that you are giving that unwashed and unwanted voice an outlet to the mainstream, which proves that you are indeed not sufficiently aware of your own culpability in false consciousness writ large, and indeed, you are part of the oppressive system's apparatus.

 
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Matt Yglesias has a very good article about this flare-up, and he has a slightly different take on the "secret Nazi" thing. 

But a quirk of American life is that even though most Americans say they believe in God as described in the Bible, nobody thinks it’s interesting to argue about this. By contrast, lots of people like to argue about race and gender issues. But in progressive circles, it is normal to observe a norm that because the struggle against racism and misogyny is important it is impolite to dissent from an anti-racist claim or argument unless you have some overwhelmingly important reason for doing so.

(snip)

In the (liberal, coastal, urban, very political) circles that I travel in everyone (especially parents) knows and acknowledges that men and women are, on average, different in ways that end up mattering for the distribution of outcomes. But everyone also believes that sexism and misogyny are significant problems in the world, and that the people struggling against those problems are worthy of admiration and praise. So to leap into a conversation about sexism and misogyny yelling “WELL ACTUALLY GIOLLA AND KAJONIUS FIND THAT SEX DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITY ARE LARGER IN COUNTRIES WITH MORE GENDER EQUALITY” would be considered a rude and undermine-y thing to do. Which is just to say that most people are not rationalists — they believe that statements can be evaluated on grounds beyond truth and falsity. There is suspicion of the guy who is “just asking questions.”
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https://www.slowboring.com/p/slate-star-codex

The whole article is good, but I was reading just now having posted minutes ago about this exact topic so I felt kind of obliged to add it.

 
I think those that lean left are more likely to see folks as products of their environment, while those on the right see themselves (and others) as authors of their own story. I think that naturally produces a fear in those on the left about an idea's ability to influence people's behavior in a negative way. Ideas that could increase oppression or harm to vulnerable groups are especially radioactive. So there is always a question in the back of their minds: Am I using my platform for good? Am I bringing more compassion into the world or more harm? When it's all said and done a good liberal wants to be on their death bed thinking that they've fought the good fight and brought more good into the world than bad. Nothing wrong with that.

On the other hand someone like Charles Murray (whatever you might think about the veracity of his research), has brought more harm into the world than good. He's used his platform for promoting ideas that can be used by racists and that's bad. That seems true to me. I mean you can study anything in the universe from black holes to bipolar disorder to music theory and you choose race and genetics? I think that says something about you. I don't want to be that guy.

At the same time, I'm extremely uncomfortable treating ideas like poisonous gasses that we release into the world that can infect other people's minds and turn them into racist zombies. At some point we have to let people be grown ups and accept responsibility for their own thoughts. We've got to have free exchange of ideas. 

I'm not exactly sure how to reconcile these two points, but I'm not compelled to give up on either of them. I don't think that I have to. And I think Scott is both fighting the good fight and promoting the free exchange of ideas. We need more of that.

 
Westerberg said:
 I mean you can study anything in the universe from black holes to bipolar disorder to music theory and you choose race and genetics?
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I think he would argue that race wasn't central to his IQ argument and has stuck to only comparing whites to other whites in subsequent research.

That said, I think his theories about class structure and intelligence brought a lot of understanding to the world, and history will vindicate his theories.

 
rockaction said:
I think he would argue that race wasn't central to his IQ argument and has stuck to only comparing whites to other whites in subsequent research.

That said, I think his theories about class structure and intelligence brought a lot of understanding to the world, and history will vindicate his theories.
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He can argue that. I'm not saying that Murray is wrong about everything. I do know that if I was Murray I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. If I knew that my work was responsible for such damage in the world I'd make it my life's mission to undo that damage and fight racism with every fiber in my being. His lack of action on this front is a moral failure in my opinion.

On that note, you may be aware of Jon Haidt and his moral foundations theory. It's spurred a ton of great research on how liberals ground their moral judgements on two factors: reducing harm and increasing fairness. Conservatives are more complex. While they value reducing harm and increasing fairness, they also include loyalty, respect for authority, and purity into their moral judgements. Anyway, I'm fairly liberal and I think Haidt helps explain why I'd go crazy if I were Murray.

Furthermore, I think it helps explain why we see so many liberals becoming like Tipper Gore in the 80s. If you combine Haidt's understanding of liberals as being concerned with reducing harm and increasing fairness, and then combine that with our earlier discussion about liberals being more inclined to see people as products of their environment, you get this nasty cocktail. I tried 3 or 4 times to articulate how those two things intersect exactly but gave up and just hit reply. 

 
Westerberg said:
I do know that if I was Murray I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. If I knew that my work was responsible for such damage in the world I'd make it my life's mission to undo that damage and fight racism with every fiber in my being.
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I think this gives Murray both too much and too little credit.

Too much because I don't think he did any real work on race and IQ. As far as I know, he contributed no original research to that field; he simply summarized and popularized the research of other scientists.

Too little because, as I understanding things, the summarizing he did was accurate.

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
I think this gives Murray both too much and too little credit.

Too much because I don't think he did any real work on race and IQ. As far as I know, he contributed no original research to that field; he simply summarized and popularized the research of other scientists.

Too little because, as I understanding things, the summarizing he did was accurate.
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This is pretty much spot-on. It garnered very little controversy among psychometricians, who are the experts in the field. It was an utter political hot potato, though. He committed the sin of talking about inherent racial differences while combining those differences with the thought that they were hereditary rather than environmental. I was always surprised at his documented, surprised reaction to the reaction. I have less faith in accepted research being treated fairly, though, so there's that. I had learned in academia what he found out in publishing.

But I think I've spoken too much about this and not enough about the Times. People are really upset with the author of the NYT piece both on Twitter and in life. Apparently this blog meant a lot to people and the Times guy has really dropped the ball -- or committed malfeasance, depending on how much one can divine motive from the end product and the process undertaken.

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
I think this gives Murray both too much and too little credit.

Too much because I don't think he did any real work on race and IQ. As far as I know, he contributed no original research to that field; he simply summarized and popularized the research of other scientists.

Too little because, as I understanding things, the summarizing he did was accurate.
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I'm confused as to how this applies to anything that I wrote. Maybe what you're saying is that Murray didn't intend to cause harm in the world? I think that that is very likely true. I do think that intentions matter. They're super important. However, if I were Murray and I became aware of how much harm my work had done, even if I didn't intend that result, I would do whatever I could to rectify it. 

It's also possible that you believe that Murray's work has not caused any harm. If that is the case I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 
Westerberg said:
He can argue that. I'm not saying that Murray is wrong about everything. I do know that if I was Murray I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. If I knew that my work was responsible for such damage in the world I'd make it my life's mission to undo that damage and fight racism with every fiber in my being. 
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I know nothing about Murray but what have people done in his name or based on his writings...that they would have not otherwise done or believed.

 
djmich said:
I know nothing about Murray but what have people done in his name or based on his writings...that they would have not otherwise done or believed.
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I'm don't see how I can say for sure. Maybe what I'm getting at can be summarized thusly:

Imagine your legacy was that you popularized the idea the black people are intellectually inferior to white people. That would not sit well with me to say the least. Based on his subsequent work and interviews, he doesn't have much urgency in changing that legacy. That says something to me. Make sense?

 
Westerberg said:
I'm confused as to how this applies to anything that I wrote. Maybe what you're saying is that Murray didn't intend to cause harm in the world? I think that that is very likely true. I do think that intentions matter. They're super important. However, if I were Murray and I became aware of how much harm my work had done, even if I didn't intend that result, I would do whatever I could to rectify it. 

It's also possible that you believe that Murray's work has not caused any harm. If that is the case I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
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I don't have an opinion on Charles Murray. I read The Bell Curve in college, but I don't remember much about it and I'm extremely reluctant to wade into discussions of his work because practically everybody seems to me more familiar with it than I am.  So the response that I'm about to make isn't really about Murray specifically but more of a general point.

Except in really weird, extreme circumstances -- like an actual Roko's Basilisk -- I don't think there's such as empirical facts that are "harmful."  There are things that are true and things that are false, but when it comes to stuff that (in principle) are verifiable, there are no good or bad facts.  As a broadly applicable rule of thumb, when somebody starts talking about ideas causing harm, it signals to me that the speaker isn't really interested in knowledge but is instead advancing some sort of ideology.  I have ideological preferences too, but I don't want to bend my understanding of surface-level reality to those.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
I don't have an opinion on Charles Murray. I read The Bell Curve in college, but I don't remember much about it and I'm extremely reluctant to wade into discussions of his work because practically everybody seems to me more familiar with it than I am.  So the response that I'm about to make isn't really about Murray specifically but more of a general point.

Except in really weird, extreme circumstances -- like an actual Roko's Basilisk -- I don't think there's such as empirical facts that are "harmful."  There are things that are true and things that are false, but when it comes to stuff that (in principle) are verifiable, there are no good or bad facts.  As a broadly applicable rule of thumb, when somebody starts talking about ideas causing harm, it signals to me that the speaker isn't really interested in knowledge but is instead advancing some sort of ideology.  I have ideological preferences too, but I don't want to bend my understanding of surface-level reality to those.
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I have the same sentiment. As I said before, I think that the free exchange of ideas is extremely important. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with the fact that I'd be kidding myself if I said that being Charles Murray wouldn't bother me. Does that resonate with you? Am I way off base here? Is it just some faulty liberal moral quirk getting in the way? It seems more significant than that. 

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
Noah Smith:

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/silicon-valley-isnt-full-of-fascists
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I think Smith overlooks a deeper narrative. It's not that the NYT article paints Silicon Valley as being simply "full of right-wingers" -- it's that the article paints Silicon Valley as being full of secretive right-wingers who are paranoid about artificial intelligence and dabble in misogyny, eugenics and race theory. And Scott is their guru.

The article feels like a variation on the anti-elitist messaging that often comes from the right. But this time it's cloaked in a seemingly benign profile piece. It's almost as if the NYT author is trying to portray SSC as "Qanon for tech executives".

 
Westerberg said:
I have the same sentiment. As I said before, I think that the free exchange of ideas is extremely important. I'm not sure how to reconcile that with the fact that I'd be kidding myself if I said that being Charles Murray wouldn't bother me. Does that resonate with you? Am I way off base here? Is it just some faulty liberal moral quirk getting in the way? It seems more significant than that. 
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My personal view is that you are reconciling it in a way that is not good.

Being Donald Trump would bother me.  Being Joe Biden would bother me.  I could go on and on and its not limited to politicians.  They all promote things that I think are bad.  Even worse they all promote things that I often don't think are grounded in good science or always fact based.  It is particularly frustrating when dimwits run around without thought and support the crap Donald Trump or Joe Biden support which harm people.  But I don't go around saying "being Joe Biden would bother me"...I would talk about the things he promotes and why I think they are wrong.  

As I said earlier I know nothing about Charles Murray other than none of the content in this thread has been about refuting the validity of his writings.  To specifically not want to be him and that he specifically should be spending the rest of his life atoning for publishing content that even potentially has factual merit...seems not good and hard for me to reconcile vs any other person I disagree with.

The fact that his work may be used by morons for bad purposes seems to me a crappy bar by which to judge people or the actual content of what they create.  You wrote something insightful but dummies might use it or it might be used in ways that I disagree....so you are a bad person.

I was reading one of Ivan's links above about rationalism and I thought this paragraph hit on this point.

The key to Metz’s point is that part of the practice of rationalism is that to do it effectively, you have to be willing to be impolite. Not necessarily 24 hours a day or anything. But when you’re in Rationalism Mode you can’t also “read the room.” A rationalist would say that human psychology is over-optimized for reading the room and that to get at the truth you need to be willing to deliberately turn off the room-reading portion of your brain and just throw your idea out.

Note:  Don't take this as some defense of Charles Murray or anything he has said.

 
I appreciate the response. It really helps me flesh out my thoughts. I realize that the "could you be ok being this person" thing is clumsy but I was using it just to get to the moral aspect this whole thing. I like the quote you picked out; I think it gets at the moral aspect much more effectively. 

I think you're right that it's Murray's failure to read the room that I just can't get past. "Not reading the room" makes it sound trivial, but what it really amounts to is denying certain features of human nature. It's saying, "people shouldn't be a certain way, so I'm going to act like they aren't that way." That to me is a denial of facts, a denial about human nature that opens you up to cause harm in the world. 

That said, I'm adamant about not endorsing some type of rule that says that you can never say certain things because it might upset someone. I think it's more about being real about human nature, coming to grips with a hundred years of clinical and evolutionary psychology and accepting that people are the way that they are and when we deliver difficult facts or messages, we need to take that into account and do in a way that limits harm as much as possible.  Reading the room means we don't have to cancel ourselves or censor ourselves or whatever, it just means that we need to accept people are a certain way and factor that into how we deliver our message. 

The problem is that this can go too far. What I've typed out here could be a support of PC culture but I hate that ####. At the same time I don't think that you can completely abandon the idea that speech can cause harm. This is what makes Scott's blog great, he balances that so well.

 
Eventually, I'd like to start discussing Astral Codex Ten posts here instead of the NYT article, but I don't know where else to put this. I think it makes some good points about how the NYT has become problematic.

Has the NYTimes become an on-ramp to dangerous reactionary ideas for too many people? The evidence really speaks for itself:

• Their own articles reveal that over the last few years their reporters have, on multiple occasions, interviewed people with problematic views, and then quoted them verbatim in the pages of the NYT. In 2016 for instance they reviewed Peter Thiel's book 'Zero to One', and then in 2017 followed up with an extensive, and seemingly sincerely curious, feature article detailing his political views. As recently as 2019 they turned over their op-ed section to Thiel himself to publish in, offering him a huge platform he otherwise wouldn't have had.

Why are NYT staff so closely associating with these folks? Is it possible they privately agree with their views? Could reporting on their political activity — or even writing articles that superficially condemn it — just be a cover to recruit for their cause? As you'll see below, that seems all too possible.

• Numerous people with highly problematic views, such as the notorious Charles Murray, are known to subscribe to the NYT and frequently agree with or share opinion pieces they publish.

Murray has recently gone further and even waxed lyrical about the paper and the direction it's going, saying, and I quote: "The NYT op-ed page isn't just improved. It has become a model, the best page anywhere..."

• The NYT is in the media industry — the same media industry with a culture so toxic as to recently throw up new and offensive right-wing publications such as Breitbart and The Daily Wire. The New York Times is also based in Manhattan, the same metro area in which you'll find the offices of the Trump-supporting New York Post and National Review, the former of which was so toxic as to recently be blocked by Twitter.

Could NYT journalists have friends in common with Trump supporting authors, or even have hung out with them and wealthy Trump donors at elite Manhattan parties? It seems entirely possible, and worth someone looking into.

• I'm also able to reveal that at least three of their staff used to work at Fox News. All three of them overlapped with reporter and Trump hagiographer Lou Dobbs while working there. Who knows what toxic ideas those three have been able to advocate on the NYT Slack (the full records of which, it should be noted, they are unwilling to share publicly, despite being asked).

• If you read over the 'subscriber comments' on their articles, you'll find literally hundreds of conservatives and even Trump supporters being allowed to advocate their views to impressionable readers — on the NYT's very own website!

And if you look at the comments on NYT articles when posted on some subreddits, such as /r/news... well the evidence is even more damning.

I actually investigated and found records of dozens of NYT articles being posted and enthusiastically discussed on reactionary subreddits such as /r/The_Donald/ which are populated by people with attitudes that could politely be described as 'racially charged'. These dark corners of the internet were ultimately shut down for, among other things, publicly identifying and harassing private citizens — a serious breach of basic decency.

• Just this week a NYT journalist wrote a lengthy and surprisingly vague profile piece that prominently featured regressive neoreactionary views. While it used a negative tone, the end result, as usual, is sure to be more attention, and more people recruited to, such dangerous ideas.

New York Times columnists have on multiple occasions linked directly to the website this piece, on its surface, purports to be wary of — so one has to wonder whether this have might be the intended effect from the outset.

And far from being an isolated event, this is actually a pattern of behaviour for this writer — they had previously hung out with and helped to enrich notorious conspiracist, convicted libelist and Trump donor Patrick Byrne, through reporting so sloppy it's hard to believe it was accidental.

• Finally, it seems like every few days the NYT has to fire yet another staff member, for what they themselves concede is inappropriate racist behaviour. When someone tells you who they are, believe them!

It's time to put these various concerning associations together and admit that the New York Times and the media industry have a serious problem.

Given their enormous cultural power, I just hope they can accept and grapple with it before it's too late.
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