The benefits are transparency about who is influencing society
In this particular case, I don’t really see any transparency benefits. If it was the case that there was important public information attached to Scott’s full name, then this argument would make sense to me.
(E.g. if Scott Alexander was actually Mark Zuckerberg or some other public figure with information attacked to their real full name then this argument would go through.)
Fair enough if NYT needs to have a extremely coarse grained policy where they always dox influential people consistently and can’t do any cost benefit on particular cases.
If it was the case that there was important public information attached to Scott’s full name, then this argument would make sense to me.
In general having someone’s actual name public makes it much easier to find out other public information attached to them. E.g. imagine if Scott were involved in shady business dealings under his real name. This is the sort of thing that the NYT wouldn’t necessarily discover just by writing the profile of him, but other people could subsequently discover after he was doxxed.
To be clear, btw, I’m not arguing that this doxxing policy is correct, all things considered. Personally I think the benefits of pseudonymity for a healthy ecosystem outweigh the public value of transparency about real names. I’m just arguing that there are policies consistent with the NYT’s actions which are fairly reasonable.
Many comments pointed out that NYT does not in fact have a consistent policy of always revealing people’s true names. There’s even a news editorial about this which I point out in case you trust the fact-checking of NY Post more.
I think that leaves 3 possible explanations of what happened:
NYT has a general policy of revealing people’s true names, which it doesn’t consistently apply but ended up applying in this case for no particular reason.
There’s an inconsistently applied policy, and Cade Metz’s (and/or his editors’) dislike of Scott contributed (consciously or subconsciously) to insistence on applying the policy in this particular case.
There is no policy and it was a purely personal decision.
In my view, most rationalists seem to be operating under a reasonable probability distribution over these hypotheses, informed by evidence such as Metz’s mention of Charles Murray, lack of a public written policy about revealing real names, and lack of evidence that a private written policy exists.
In this particular case, I don’t really see any transparency benefits. If it was the case that there was important public information attached to Scott’s full name, then this argument would make sense to me.
(E.g. if Scott Alexander was actually Mark Zuckerberg or some other public figure with information attacked to their real full name then this argument would go through.)
Fair enough if NYT needs to have a extremely coarse grained policy where they always dox influential people consistently and can’t do any cost benefit on particular cases.
In general having someone’s actual name public makes it much easier to find out other public information attached to them. E.g. imagine if Scott were involved in shady business dealings under his real name. This is the sort of thing that the NYT wouldn’t necessarily discover just by writing the profile of him, but other people could subsequently discover after he was doxxed.
To be clear, btw, I’m not arguing that this doxxing policy is correct, all things considered. Personally I think the benefits of pseudonymity for a healthy ecosystem outweigh the public value of transparency about real names. I’m just arguing that there are policies consistent with the NYT’s actions which are fairly reasonable.
Many comments pointed out that NYT does not in fact have a consistent policy of always revealing people’s true names. There’s even a news editorial about this which I point out in case you trust the fact-checking of NY Post more.
I think that leaves 3 possible explanations of what happened:
NYT has a general policy of revealing people’s true names, which it doesn’t consistently apply but ended up applying in this case for no particular reason.
There’s an inconsistently applied policy, and Cade Metz’s (and/or his editors’) dislike of Scott contributed (consciously or subconsciously) to insistence on applying the policy in this particular case.
There is no policy and it was a purely personal decision.
In my view, most rationalists seem to be operating under a reasonable probability distribution over these hypotheses, informed by evidence such as Metz’s mention of Charles Murray, lack of a public written policy about revealing real names, and lack of evidence that a private written policy exists.