It's wider fame that threatens Scott's current life track. This is true for all people whether that fame is positive or negative, whether the person in question is Scott Alexander, Rebecca Black, or Monica Lewinsky.
By those lights, the only thing he's a victim of is his own success. I suspect we'd be getting the same reaction from SA regardless of any so-called "doxing," the trail of breadcrumbs leafing back to his identity would still have been present. And at least the article was planned to be positive
As far a the goofle-fu needed to find that specific information, well, I think you're overestimating the difficulty of that particular feat.
As Scott himself has explained, the bigger deal isn't whether or not it's easy to find out his last name if you know the blog. It is finding the blog from his last name. In other words, if his patients, who don't know the blog exists, find it simply by googling the name of their doctor.
Seems like that would happen eventually whether or not NYT did anything, if SSC got famous enough. Though, I wouldn't dare to tell him how important the timeline of that is. It is his life, after all.
One thing that I'd be curious to test: if Scott were given a choice between a very critical article that maintained his weak pseudonymity and a very positive one that didn't, which would he go for? My expectation is that he'd go for the former, and I'd be disappointed if he went for the latter.
By those lights, the only thing he's a victim of is his own success. I suspect we'd be getting the same reaction from SA regardless of any so-called "doxing," the trail of breadcrumbs leafing back to his identity would still have been present. And at least the article was planned to be positive
As far a the goofle-fu needed to find that specific information, well, I think you're overestimating the difficulty of that particular feat.