Metz persistently fails to state why it was necessary to publish Scott Alexander’s real name in order to critique his ideas.
It’s not obvious that that should be the standard. I can imagine Metz asking “Why shouldn’t I publish his name?”, the implied “no one gets to know your real name if you don’t want them to” norm is pretty novel.
One obvious answer to the above question is “Because Scott doesn’t want you to, he thinks it’ll mess with his psychiatry practice”, to which I imagine Metz asking, bemused “Why should I care what Scott wants?” A journalist’s job is to inform people, not be nice to them! Now Metz doesn’t seem to be great at informing people anyway, but at least he’s not sacrificing what little information value he has upon the altar of niceness.
It’s not obvious that that should be the standard. I can imagine Metz asking “Why shouldn’t I publish his name?”, the implied “no one gets to know your real name if you don’t want them to” norm is pretty novel.
One obvious answer to the above question is “Because Scott doesn’t want you to, he thinks it’ll mess with his psychiatry practice”, to which I imagine Metz asking, bemused “Why should I care what Scott wants?” A journalist’s job is to inform people, not be nice to them! Now Metz doesn’t seem to be great at informing people anyway, but at least he’s not sacrificing what little information value he has upon the altar of niceness.