loading . . . No more NYT cooperation: my dog-rape red line Over the years, Iâve written two op-eds for _The New York Times_ about quantum computing, at the NYT editorsâ invitation:
* Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Supermachines (2011)
* Why Googleâs Quantum Supremacy Milestone Matters (2019)
Iâve also visited the NYT office and helped NYT reporters with numerous stories about quantum computing and beyond. In the wake of Cade Metzâs hatchet job against the rationalist community, I resolved no longer to talk to Metz, but it never even occurred to me to extend that to a broader ban against the NYT itself. After all, itâs the frigginâ NYT!
This week, however, Nicholas Kristofâa man who I praised fulsomely in a blog post 20 years ago, for his coverage of the genocide in Darfurâhas used the NYT to broadcast the oldest, crudest form of antisemitic libel, accusing the Jews of garishly preposterous crimes (poisoning wells, baking blood into matzo, or in this case, _training dogs to rape prisoners_). As countless others have since pointed out, the sole source for this ludicrous accusation was a Hamas-linked organization called âEuro-Medâ that praised the October 7 âmartyrs.â
While the debunking came fast, it wasnât fast enough: now that blood libel (dog libel?) has the Gray Ladyâs imprimatur, I expect it to ignite violence against Jews all over the world, and I expect my two kids to be less safe. So I hereby announce:
**I, Scott Aaronson, member of the National Academy of Sciences, will no longer cooperate with anyone from NYT on anythingâneither quantum computing stories nor anything elseâuntil NYT, at minimum, formally retracts its dog-rape libel and fires Kristof.**
To my friends doing good science and technology reporting for NYT: Iâm sorry, I hope you understand, and please fight for whatâs right within the organization.
I say âbare minimumâ because I hope this scandal causes a major reckoning for the NYT as an institution. I donât know if libel or other laws were broken, but if they were, I hope Kristof personally and the NYT as a whole get sued for whatever theyâre worth.
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Luckily, others have already said most of what I wouldâve wanted to. Hereâs Eli Lake, in a passage that _part_ of me wishes Iâd never read:
> Letâs start with what is known about the biology of male dogs. Their penises are small and thin. They become erect only when they smell the pheromones of a female dog in heat. Brandon McMillan, the three-time Emmy-winning host of CBSâs Lucky Dog, who has spent 25 years training animals, told me he had never heard of a dog who was trained to rape a human being and doubted this was possible.
>
> âWhen a female is in heat, the pheromones released carry it to the male canine,â McMillan said. âThatâs how they reproduce and the miracle happens. I donât see how you would train a dog to do that. The dog has to get turned on, for lack of a better word.â
On the NYTâs âvetting processâ (or lack thereof), hereâs comedian Jeff Maurer:
> Imagine that youâre a fact checker or editor at _The New York Times_. You know damn well that youâve nabbed a lifeboat while most of your field is being picked apart by hagfish at the bottom of the North Atlantic. If youâre a lowly fact-checker, you might be in your 20s and desperate to rationalize your choice to enter a field that might as well be buggy repair. Iâve had similar gigs and been in similar environments; I feel like I can get in these peoplesâ heads. And thatâs why Iâm convinced that the dog claim should have made things easier for the fact checkers.
>
> One day, Nicholas Kristof â the award winning columnist who has been with the Times since it was Farmer Sulzbergerâs New Amsterdam Seed Catalogue â comes to you, the lowly fact checker. Heâs working on a big piece, and itâs scorching hot: Itâs sexual assault plus Israel/Palestine, which is like detonating a nuclear weapon inside a volcano. You know it will be very tough to say âI donât find this source credibleâ or âwe canât run that without more substantiationâ. And thatâs true even before we consider that you probably run in a social circle in which Israel is thought of as a substantially-more-evil version of The Borg Collective from Star Trek (which is why they have those vaporizing weapons).
>
> But you do notice that Kristofâs sources are thin. In fact, he only has two named sources. The first source tells him a story that has substantially changed since he told it to _The Washington Post_ two years ago. The second source celebrated the October 7 attacks and previously made torture claims that he later recanted. Much of the testimony contains no detail that could be corroborated. The organizations and journalists that Kristof relies on are highly dubious and engaged in the mutual citation circle jerk that is typically the way that lies enter the zeitgeist. There may be some truth in there somewhere, but Kristofâs methods are â whatâs the journalistic term? â total ass. But youâre afraid that if you question things, youâll be thought of as pro-rape, or worse yet: pro-Israel.
>
> And in that context, the dog story is a godsend. It frees you from addressing the broader problems with the article, because you can pick the battle of focusing on the most-outrageous, least-believable claim. The article doesnât need the dog rape detail â itâs already full of shocking-if-true claims. Striking that one section lets you maintain a sheen of professionalism, and when the thing explodes, you also get to say âYou should have seen what he wanted to printâ.
>
> The fact that that didnât happen tells me that the level of scrutiny for claims about Israel at the Times is absolute zero. Even if some Israeli somewhere did manage to turn his dog into a sex criminal, there is not nearly enough evidence for that claim to run in the Times. Itâs an unsubstantiated rumor, and a vile one. I think that a person who believes that without compelling evidence is showing evidence of a damaged mind. And I think that a newspaper that publishes that without compelling evidence is showing evidence of a damaged vetting process, or perhaps a vetting process that â when it comes to claims about Israel â doesnât exist at all.
Last but not least, hereâs Haviv Rettig Gur, with righteous anger entirely appropriate to the situation, yet also a determination to expose and fight prisoner abuse, which is a genuine problem in Israel as it is in pretty much every other country on earth:
> No, dogs arenât being trained to systematically rape prisoners, you nattering halfwits. And no, Hamas propaganda operatives are not reliable sources on the question of Israeli crimes. The vast, vast majority of soldiers are honorable men who walked into fire so our families may live. The whole world may turn on them; I will stand with them, grateful for their sacrifice. And Kristof, a willing purveyor of propaganda happily feigning that he canât see the water and thrilling to a moral crusade engineered by would-be genocidaires he pretends not to understand â is no messenger of moral reckoning.
>
> But friends, so fucking what. Let the narcissistic guttersnipes strut their moral emotions before the world, let the UN publish endless reports that donât hold up to basic scrutiny, let the NGOs dream their rabid, sick dreams that no journalist ever fact-checks â yes, theyâre lying. But so fucking what.
>
> We still, for ourselves â because fuck them â must see that it isnât all fake. The problem [of abuse in Israeli prisons] is real. Itâs far smaller than they claim, but real nonetheless. And when discipline and morality break down, it can only get worse. We either crack down now or we watch it fester and grow.
>
> And our own Ben Gvirs are stubbornly refusing to fix what is actually broken, the real thing in the real world.
>
> And so we are caught in a strange sort of vise, the same vise we find ourselves in with the genocide lie: A vast propaganda machine that seeks to destroy us â countless activists too high on their own self-regard to see the irony of raging against a âgenocideâ while calling for the erasure of a people â all while our own incompetent, venal, self-absorbed political class insist in their mindless chatter on confirming every claim of our enemies for sheer, bald egomania.
>
> Iâm sick of it all. I know youâre all sick of it too.
>
> And that, in a nutshell, is what I think about this.
>
> Just because theyâre lying, just because a vast perfidious campaign has overwhelmed global elites in a bid to clear the way for our removal, just because theyâre still, after two millennia, building their visions of redemption on The Evil Jew â doesnât mean there isnât also, separately, a problem on the ground.
>
> So what do we do now? Simple. We see it, we acknowledge itâs happening, we bring our rage to our inept leaders until they bend to our will and act to stop the breakdownâŠ
>
> And we soldier on.
>
> We soldier on because the enemy really is coming to murder us. Because Hamas must still go if Gaza is ever to rise to a new day. Because Hezbollah will yet destroy Lebanon on the altar of destroying us. Because the ayatollahs built their whole damn religion on the extermination of our children.
>
> We fix the broken things within us as if the pogromists and their simpering Kristofs donât exist. We owe no answers to the propagandists who seek to clear a path to our deaths. But we do owe answers to ourselves.
>
> Let the screaming mob rage and churn like so much sea-foam. Despite that raging mob, despite the enemy who still seeks our destruction, and yes, despite feckless incompetents like Ben Gvir, our minister of prisons, who claim to lead us â we remain the strongest, freest Jews who ever lived, more capable and committed than our self-destructive enemies ever imagined. And the task is still before us, yet to be completed, the sacred duty given to our generation to ensure our children donât have to face the genocidaires who now surround us. We do not waver, we do not stumble. We soldier on.
>
> Because fuck them all.
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Inspired by Havivâs energy, Iâm leaving the comments on this post turned off. Why? Because _outside_ the dog-rape libel, I was having a pretty good week! On Monday I visited Quantinuum in Colorado and got a personal tour of Helios 1, considered the all-around most powerful quantum computer on earth at the moment. Now Iâm visiting Stony Brook University, where Iâll give two talks and meet lots of interesting people. Then Iâm headed to NYC for the annual meeting of _Quanta_ magazineâs advisory board.
Right now, then, I have neither the time nor the inclination to battle the infinite army of brain-eaten zombies who arrive for every single post touching on Israel. My life will be better this way.
By Scott https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9758
