>I thought "maybe he doesn't want his real name to link to his blog if a patient googles it"--but, it already does that. In fact, it's a suggested search in google!
That's not true. I just searched his real name and I get results about him but none of them are SSC-related at least on the first pages. Maybe your customized results lead to that or maybe you are including Scott Alexander or SSC in the search - either way most patients googling him wouldn't see SSC at all.
If I click on the first google image result from a search for his real name in an "incognito" window, I see plenty of stuff about SSC and rationalists https://i.imgur.com/0hWxzp3.png
An image of EY is hardly something that will alert your average patient. They'll just think it's an irrelevant result like a bunch of the other stuff that shows up. I do admit, if you are already familiar with the rationalist community, you will figure it out based on that. Anyway, that takes more leaps than the top result being an article from the NYT about SSC.
On 'All' I at least get 0 rationalist results or autocompletes with his name. I do get them if I google Scott Alexander <LastName> but he doesn't feature Alexander in the professional results and I doubt patients know that's his middle name.
Patients don't know his middle name. Very few people know each others' middle names unless they are looking at official documents on someone.
If you just google Scott $LASTNAME, there is only one reference to his writings as Scott Alexander, and it is not linkable to the blog, doesn't call him Scott Alexander, and is merely praise of prediction markets being quoted by Robin Hanson. Given there are a few others out there who share his first name and last name, who come up in the search results (some graphic designer for example), this is plausibly not even him. It won't raise any eyebrows at all if a patient googles him.
One thing that's more concerning is the number of people intentionally doxxing him on Twitter today. I'm reporting comments there, and Twitter seems to not come up in Google searches, but a search for Scott's real name on Twitter right now returns results where people are saying some pretty nasty things about him.
>>I thought "maybe he doesn't want his real name to link to his blog if a patient googles it"--but, it already does that. In fact, it's a suggested search in google!
>That's not true. I just searched his real name and I get results about him but none of them are SSC-related at least on the first pages. Maybe your customized results lead to that or maybe you are including Scott Alexander or SSC in the search - either way most patients googling him wouldn't see SSC at all.
I get slatestarcodex as the fourth google autocomplete suggestion when I search "Scott RealLastName" but I don't get SSC in the first page of results. And the third autocomplete suggestion is Alexander. Incognito mode of course.
That's not true. I just searched his real name and I get results about him but none of them are SSC-related at least on the first pages. Maybe your customized results lead to that or maybe you are including Scott Alexander or SSC in the search - either way most patients googling him wouldn't see SSC at all.