Thread by @ESYudkowsky

Cade Metz's byline is on the NYT hit piece to absorb blame, but the blameworthy one is more likely to be Metz's editor. The higher aristocrat is usually closer to being "the" source of the problem. Who was Metz's boss on this piece? Who'd they report to? Who ordered the hit?

Seeing a nice big name of an non-management employee, that was put out by the BigCo to take the blame, and then heaping blame on that first name you saw - trying to make *that* name infamous - seems like mental laxness to the point of being the NYTrash's willing tool, ya know?

You think Pui-Wing Tam (NYT tech editor) or Mark Thompson (CEO) give two shits if you ruin Metz's life? Tam and Thompson have a thousand eager guys with journalism degrees desperate to take Metz's place, per job opening. Metz is a very replaceable cog to them.

And you know what? Let's face it here. Doing some mildly awful deed with zero murders, when your job is on the line and your boss told you to do it, is very far from the worst of humanity. The piece was bad, but it would have been worse if better-written, and **if** Metz...

...were to quietly tell me afterwards, "Eliezer, I calculated this would be much worse if I begged to quit the job and the NYT had somebody else write the hit piece instead, so I did it myself and did it poorly on purpose" I would reply "Thank you, Mr. Metz, I believe you."

Metz himself has been remarkably quiet in all of this, making no effort to defend himself AFAIK. Why? Because he knows his acts were indefensible? Don't be ridiculous. *Some* things said against him could be shot down. His managers ordered him to keep silent. Guaranteed.

Right now, what we have are the peasants banding together to stone the tax collector instead of the Duke, so of course the Duke orders the tax collector to stay quiet and say nothing to defend himself. This state of affairs is fine with the Duke.

I agree that these eight tweets, which I did not previously know about, rule out Metz being a reluctant evildoer rather than a meh or enthusiastic one.

https://twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1366184991932125184?s=20

I continue to advocate going after the manager rather than the subordinate and the CEO rather than the worker, even if the worker willingly went along with the illdoing and profited from it.

That said, I won't bother defending Metz hereafter. I *was* rather worried about whether we were going after somebody with a gun to his head, who tried to do less damage than he could, who'd been forbidden to defend himself by the real culprits - but if not, then not.

I still guarantee that Metz is silent at least in part because he knows, and perhaps was outright told, not to speak. That's from some small experience with knowing how these outfits work. Little people, complicit or not, aren't authorized to say things with PR implications.

And I still think it's a decent rule of thumb that if you're hitting against people who haven't been authorized to say anything back - even if they're genuinely complicit - you're usually aiming too low in the power structure.