NYT Is Threatening My Safety By Revealing My Real Name, So I Am Deleting The Blog
Read the original on Slate Star Codex →
Follow-up reading
↳ Update On My Situation — Announcement · Sep 2020
↳ Statement on New York Times Article — statement when the NYT article ran · Feb 2021
↳ Still Alive — the eventual return post · Jan 2021
Summary
The post that deleted SSC. A NYT reporter, writing what he described as a mostly-positive piece, insisted on printing Scott's real surname (NYT policy), so Scott took the whole blog down rather than be doxxed. His reasons: psychiatrist patient-boundary norms (and the risk his clinic would let him go, stranding hundreds of patients) and concrete safety (death threats, a bounty on him, readers calling his work to get him fired, an SSC reader SWATted). 'I am not willing to be punished for my virtues.' He asks readers to politely petition the NYT and signals he'll likely return. [A 2/13/21 edit notes the eventual article was negative, which he reads as retaliation.] This post triggered the 'NYT affair' — a major media/tech controversy that ultimately reshaped his platform (SSC -> Astral Codex Ten).
Why this score
Quality 64 · Strong. 64 — Strong floor, scored on writing-craft (per the axes-are-independent rule). A clear, principled, memorable protest with a real argument (doxxing-bloggers-for-clicks; pseudonymity; patient safety) and the sharp 'punished for my virtues' framing — well above a bare announcement, but a personal protest rather than a generative essay. Its real significance lives in RWI, not A.
Claude’s paradigm shift 34 · Slight. 34 — Slight. A protest/announcement, not a novel intellectual frame.
Real-world impact 5 · Substantial. 5 — HIGH (the deliberate low-A/high-RWI split). This post set off the NYT affair: broad discourse adoption (the doxxing / pseudonymity / journalism-ethics debate), strong influence across the tech/media/rationalist sphere, and concrete spillover (the NYT article, mass reader mobilization, the founding of Astral Codex Ten).