Yale University vows to 'geolocate' most EJMR users [PART 6]

Flying solo at Stanford / a Q&A session mysteriously scrubbed from YouTube / please invite me on your podcast / what does my voice sound like?

Today is part 6 in an ongoing investigation.

I asked ChatGPT to summarize the first 5.

Yale University vows to 'geolocate' most EJMR users [PART 1]

Yale professor Florian Ederer tweeted an abstract suggesting he can identify users of econjobrumors.com (EJMR), causing controversy. Critics liken EJMR to 4chan for economists. Accusations of bias, inconsistencies in funding, and claims of academia's pettiness and scandals highlight the article's tone of disapproval of the academic elite.

Yale University vows to 'geolocate' most EJMR users [PART 2]

Yale University researchers used a multi-step procedure to recover IP addresses from EJMR users. The research leaked, revealing they "cracked the hash" of users' posts, raising cybersecurity and privacy concerns. Many react critically, questioning the study's ethics and legality, especially its potential for doxxing. Some highlight European GDPR and US data retention limits as protective measures. The controversy grows as the mainstream media prepares to cover the story.

EXCLUSIVE: Every economist on Mastodon just had their anonymity compromised by hackers from Yale University 🍿🍿🍿

The connection between Mastodon, a platform moderated by a Yale professor, and EJMR reveals that both platforms share user IP data. The intent to 'doxx' users threatens anonymity and is viewed by some as hacking, with comparisons to illegal wiretapping. Concerns arise over exposure of whistleblowers and mentally ill users on EJMR, with potential consequences including retaliation and psychological distress.

Fatal flaw found in Ederer et al. (2023)

An anonymous user compared EJMR's toxicity to Reddit, concluding that either EJMR is less toxic than popular belief, or the measuring classifier is ineffective. The discussion sparked further investigations into measuring toxicity on other platforms, like Twitter. There's rising concern about potential doxxing and misuse of the leaked data, with certain individuals explicitly expressing intentions to use this data maliciously.

Karlstack goes to Stanford

Christopher Brunet reached 5,000 Substack subscribers, experienced a viral article spike. He's now a contributing editor at The American Conservative and is relocating to Europe, seeking a permanent home and considering family prospects. Brunet's ongoing EJMR hacking investigation led to a speaking opportunity at Stanford's Classical Liberalism seminar series, amongst notable figures. Despite perceived underqualification, Brunet is confident in presenting his research, defending free speech against Yale's alleged doxxing. Launching with no subscribers in 2021, his Substack's growth signifies personal and professional evolution.

Here is today’s update.

• https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/the-stanford-seminar-with-florian-and-karl-has-been-erased

• https://twitter.com/realChrisBrunet/status/1691503222173605888

Why is Yale no longer speaking at Stanford?

You will have to ask Yale.

It's perplexing that they'd accept such a high-profile invitation and vanish 2 days later.

Where are these 3 coathors, with PhDs from MIT, MIT, and Harvard?

Nobody wants to debate me and my lil' ol’ Canadian terminal master’s degree?

Wow, it’s almost like I have irrefutable truth on my side.

So, rather than giving a 20 minute discussion, I will now be giving an entire hour long speech, followed by Q&A. I am not worried about the length — my only regret is that it is too short! I actually think the optimal way to arrive at the truth would be a knock-down, drag-out, however-many-hours-as-it-takes debate, in the same format as Horn and Destiny. This is how men debate.

Alas, I lack an interlocutor.

It'll be really funny when someone tweets "it's outrageous for Brunet to comment on the paper without pushback. Can one of the authors serve as discussant?"

— anonymous

After my speech, there will be a short Q&A on Zoom, but after Zoom, I am happy to stick around on livestream for as many hours as it takes until there are no more questions or criticisms.

I want my Q&A to be very different than Ederer’s Q&A. His Q&A was so terrible that the National Bureau of Economics Research actually scrubbed it from the internet.

If anyone finds the scrubbed video, please leave a comment, but I really think it is scrubbed.

Here is the sanitized version, uploaded a few weeks later, sans Q&A:

I will describe from memory the portions of that Q&A that have been scrubbed.

The Q&A began with a guy who didn’t have a question, but a comment.

A long, rambling, vapid comment about how EJMR was a microaggression, and he hates microaggressions.

This microaggression commenter quickly became an EJMR meme.

The second question was some lady who stood up in front of thousands of people and, giggling with glee, said this, and promptly sat back down:

I don’t have a question, I just want to say thank you.

This, too, became an EJMR meme.

After the first 2 questions of Ederer’s Q&A, not a single question had actually been spoken, yet nobody seemed to notice. The remaining few “questions” then lacked any insight, erudition, pushback, or critical thinking; Has not a single “economist” at the NBER Summer Institute studied Thomas Sowell🐐? Sowell famously says that there are three questions that destroy most of the arguments of the left:

1. Compared to what?

2. At what cost?

3. What hard evidence do you have?

According to Sowell, there are very few ideas on the left that can pass all three questions. There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

When hundreds of the most elite economists in the world gather in a room and are told, “EJMR is toxic!”, not a single one dared to ask: toxic compared to what?

To Twitter?

To Reddit?

To SJMR?

To PSR?

To the Wall Street Journal comments section?

Milton Friedman once said this: “I have found, over a long time, that some people are natural economists. They don’t take a course, but they understand – the principles seem obvious to them. Other people may have Ph.D.s in economics, but they’re not economists. They don’t think like an economist. Strange, but true.”

I promise you one thing about my Q&A: I will tell the truth with a great deal of humility and radical transparency. If you “pwn” me, and make a good point, I will concede it and change my mind. If I don’t know the answer to your question; I will tell you that I don’t know the answer, rather than try to BS my way through it. I am not interested in putting on effete, pompous, VHRM airs to push a partisan political agenda; and I am not interested in trying to dunk on anyone who asks me a tough question. Together we can work on a good-faith, collaborative quest towards the truth. Everything will be open-sourced. I invite every economist in the world to aggressively shred my speech, slides, data, code, and paper— seriously, tear me to shreds!!! This is how men do science.

Hanania survives to fight another day

I am not going to rehash the Hanania drama from last week… but suffice it to say that Hanania is public enemy #1 on the internet right now.

• https://www.econjobrumors.com/topic/will-hanania-be-cancelled

Hanania is relevant to today’s story because he is speaking at the same seminar series 2 weeks before I am.

• https://cli.stanford.edu/

Why I Used to Suck, and (Hopefully) No Longer Do

I notice that since his scandal, a few of Hanania’s professional affiliations have cut ties with him… UT Austin, for example:

A screen shot from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine showed him still on the Salem Center’s website Saturday, but now he’s gone. Neither University of Texas at Austin spokespeople, nor Carlos Carvalho, the Salem Center’s executive director, responded to requests for comment Tuesday or Wednesday.

Hanania tweeted Tuesday, “Of all the cancellation attempts, the best one is University of Texas, where my fellowship already ends before fall (i.e. this month) and I’ve already received my last pay check [sic]. So … good luck I guess.”

Several affiliations, sinecures, or speeches have *not* cut ties with him.

I am far from being a Hanania booster, but good for Stanford for keeping him, especially because the whole point of the seminar series is free speech.

My prediction is that Hanania will shrug off the cancellation attempt and proceed to have a long & successful career as a famous writer, regardless what you, or I, think of him. He has a very high IQ, and that makes him an interesting enough person to gain a cult following. People don’t care if he is a good person, they just want him to say interesting things. He will provide.

Please invite me on your podcast

My Stanford speech is on October 26th.

In preparation for this public speaking event, I will be spending all of September and October aggressively doing as many podcasts as I can, I already have a few lined up. The reason for this podcast blitz is not vanity, in fact, there is nothing in the world I hate more than public speaking, the reason is to get my public speaking reps in, to crush this Stanford gig.

Email me, brother.

chrisbrunet@protonmail.com

What does my voice sound like?

If you are curious what my voice sounds like, before you invite me on your podcast, I will end this article by speaking to you.

I draw my inspiration from Oliver Anthony, whose story, like Hanania’s, I will not re-hash. Oliver Anthony is the single most famous musician on the internet right now, amassing nearly 350k Twitter followers overnight. If you don’t know who he is, that is on you.

And nearly 1 million on TikTok:

Oliver Anthony, On His Way

• A Warning for Oliver Anthony

• Hillbilly Anthem: With His Viral Protest Song, Oliver Anthony Is This Year’s J.D. Vance

@oliveranthonymusicAugust 13th 1:30-2:30pm Morris Farm Market Currituck NC Meet and greet afterward Completely free to attend. Food and drinks available. Alot more to come. Keep being awesome. #oliveranthony #oliveranthonymusic

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What does Oliver do when he first steps on stage, after becoming the most famous musician in the world overnight? With every record executive in the world with their eyes greedily fixed upon him, Oliver “felt compelled” to share Psalm 37:

@t.trapper#oliveranthony #bible #music

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The wicked plot against the righteous
    and gnash their teeth at them;
 but the Lord laughs at the wicked,
    for he knows their day is coming.

The wicked draw the sword
    and bend the bow
to bring down the poor and needy,
    to slay those whose ways are upright.
 But their swords will pierce their own hearts,
    and their bows will be broken.

 Better the little that the righteous have
    than the wealth of many wicked;
for the power of the wicked will be broken,
    but the Lord upholds the righteous.

 The blameless spend their days under the Lord’s care,
    and their inheritance will endure forever.
 In times of disaster they will not wither;
    in days of famine they will enjoy plenty.

But the wicked will perish:
    Though the Lord’s enemies are like the flowers of the field,
    they will be consumed, they will go up in smoke.

Pulling my inspiration from this inspiring young man, I would like to end today’s article by reading an abridged version of Proverbs 28. This message is for Yale.

The wicked are edgy with guilt, ready to run off even when no one’s after them; Honest people are relaxed and confident, bold as lions … Justice makes no sense to the evilminded; those who seek GOD know it inside and out. It’s better to be poor and direct than rich and crooked.