Banksy and Satoshi weren’t hiding wrongdoing. They were hiding themselves. In Banksy’s case, the anonymity IS the art. The whole point is that the work speaks without the person. The art appears without permission, without attribution, without a market position or a gallery or a brand to protect. That’s not incidental to its power. It is its power. The work on the wall speaks precisely because there is no face behind it available for interview.

With Satoshi, the anonymity IS the architecture. Bitcoin was designed to be leaderless. An identifiable founder is a vulnerability. Someone governments can pressure, someone courts can compel, someone bad actors can target. The anonymity wasn’t ego protection. It was architecture.

Unmasking either one isn’t just invasive. It is destructive to what they built.

Source: banksy, satoshi & the unmasking impulse

This is resonant. I wanted to believe that the role of the journalist is to hold truth to power. Increasingly, at least in the case of NYT, it’s a bastion of a “business” that’s survived the internet - a media conglomerate that derives its own money via attention and subscription - similar to the companies it seems to want to hold accountable.

I am familiar with Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. There are times where I’ve found NYT’s reporting on computer science topics, bitcoin as well as LLMs - lazy, not well researched and trying to push a narrative. Despite their best intentions, their research has limits when you are not an expert on the topic.

So, for the past few years, I’ve treated them as “best effort” researchers. It doesn’t mean they are not wrong. However, increasingly, I’ve also found them to not update their wrong reporting though.

So, I could be wrong here. I don’t believe that Adam Back is Satoshi. Which means that I believe that NYT is wrong. Let’s see what pans out.

In a post-professional journalism career, maybe I can afford a more moralistic stance. What if I were in the shoes of the same reporters? The scoop, after all, is the currency. And I don’t like my own answer. It is not a black and white question, but it is one that bothers me a lot, more than I think it should. Despite all that, I still don’t understand why the unmasking impulse is so strong.

At least Om’s being honest struggling with a “search for the truth” while determining the role of journalism in a world of humans, empathy etc.

Overall, the fanatical reading of the world continues. Everything taken to its ULTIMATE end, is just that - the end.