
The Toxoplasma of Rage (2014) - apsec112
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
======
sdrinf
| Under Moloch, everyone is irresistibly incentivized to ignore the things
that unite us in favor of forever picking at the things that divide us in
exactly the way that is most likely to make them more divisive.

In social networks the leverage point in eliminating toxoplasma from your life
are the bridge people: people who are being rewarded for taking offense in
your in-group, and therefore select for the worst possible behavior of the
outgroup. These people act as stressors, specifically triggering ideations of
worst-case-scenarios. The fix here is removing these people from your
feeds/circles of influence.

I wrote more of efficient defense systems in the age of attention at
[https://sdrinf.com/age-of-attention](https://sdrinf.com/age-of-attention) .

~~~
trabant00
So the solution is to make the bubble impregnable? The medicine sounds worse
than the disease to me.

Thing is, there are bad ideas spreading out there, and you should learn of
their existence less they grow out of control with nobody knowing/caring.

Conflict is a regulating tool in human species (and not only for our species).
Wishing it away is an utopia that like all others will end up dystopian if put
into practice.

~~~
sdrinf
Your attention is a scarce resource. A basic point here, is that rage eats
your attention for breakfast, and by cost of opportunity, bubbles you into
your tribe. By cutting out rage & related weeds, you can actually expose
yourself to a significantly larger, and more diverse set of viewpoints.

Conflict as a regulation tool might have worked for our evolutionary
ancestors, where resolution can be swiftly found and incentives re-aligned;
however, if you reward conflict, the modern machine can generate an endless
supply of it, on the tap. The correct solution is to shift the incentives, and
reward with your attention the kind of stuff you want to see growing.

~~~
trabant00
I think first of all, conflict rewards itself, no? The conflict has a winner.
What you are talking about (and the original article) is about fabricated fake
conflicts. Well these ones have winners as well - the ones who fabricate them
at least. And if you are on the receiving end of these outrages you are kind
of forced to win it. And in doing so you might crush those who overextended
their rage doing society a service.

Lots more could be said, but to keep it short I believe we can't simply ignore
it.

------
l0b0
Yes. This I can wholeheartedly agree with. Which makes me sad, because it
means social and news media usually works _against_ fixing the issues which
most of us agree should be fixed. Instead they focus only on the things which
keep us all discussing, forever, how evil some tiny minority is. We've DDOSed
our ability to get things done.

On a tangential note, an important skill in this environment is simply
ignoring people who want you to be angry rather than constructive. "X did Y!
Bloody murder!" → Ignored. "How to ensure Y never happens again" → Let's hear
it.

------
chillacy
> A rape that obviously happened? Shove it in people’s face and they’ll admit
> it’s an outrage, just as they’ll admit factory farming is an outrage. But
> they’re not going to talk about it much. There are a zillion outrages every
> day, you’re going to need more than that to draw people out of their shells.

I sometimes recall how the civil rights movement got together and amplified
the story of Rosa Parks over Claudette Colvin. The optics were much better
with Parks:

> "They said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be
> controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the
> boycott," Colvin says.

That I think turned out to be a good move. In the absence of this guiding
force I think Colvin would end up debated and talked about more.

~~~
afarrell
But thats because the civil rights movement had a bunch of humans
_intentionally_ amplifying the Rosa Parks story to accomplish a particular
policy goal.

Today Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have machine learning models trained to
amplify the amount of attention spent on advertising. Any policy outcome will
be a side-effect of that.

~~~
scruple
> But thats because the civil rights movement had a bunch of humans
> intentionally amplifying the Rosa Parks story to accomplish a particular
> policy goal.

It's tangentially related to TFA but... The Civil Rights era leaders were very
strategic thinkers. MLK, Jr., especially, shortly before his death, was
describing very serious, very ruthless strategy to accomplish goals that I do
believe would've worked, had they been given the opportunity.

I think that we have ruthlessly strategic thinkers (in our politics and
political movements) today but I don't believe their goals are to drive policy
any longer.

~~~
travisoneill1
> shortly before his death, was describing very serious, very ruthless
> strategy to accomplish goals

Do you have a link for this?

~~~
scruple
His last book, "Where Do We Go From Here". [0]

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Do_We_Go_from_Here:_Chao...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Do_We_Go_from_Here:_Chaos_or_Community%3F)

------
causality0
I liked this. It serves as a useful followup to and expansion to the CGP Grey
video "This Video Will Make You Angry" which explored the phenomena of how
groups talk about events and each other. In short, people tend to self-
segregate into opposing groups that don't talk to each other. Instead, they
talk amongst themselves about how horrible the other group is.

~~~
teddyh
See also: _You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you_ by The
Oatmeal:

[https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe](https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe)

~~~
Loughla
I always get so depressed when I see things like this. I know they're true. I
also know there is a concerted effort to influence the things i see/think.

How am I going to be able to sort through the noise to find the signal? Is
there even a point? What is the purpose of even trying? Why not just step into
traffic?

~~~
causality0
The signal can even be diluted by well-meaning people. For example, Washington
did have a set of teeth that included those of slaves. However, his financial
records include the purchase of teeth from "Negros" for the purpose, which at
the very least indicates he didn't have someone hold his own slaves down and
rip teeth out of their heads. It doesn't preclude there being an element of
racism and abuse in the path those teeth took from their origin to their
purchase by Washington, but it does show there may not have been, and that
Washington wearing slave teeth is not a mark against him personally.

The whole "owning slaves" thing is of course, but that's a separate issue from
the dentures.

------
thinkingemote
>If you want to signal how strongly you believe in taking victims seriously,
you talk about it in the context of the least credible case you can find.

I think there's another angle to picking the least credible case in that it
requires more psychological investment. Those who join the group are stronger
and have expended more psychological effort. Because the cases that are chosen
to fight about are ambiguous, to fight about them requires a form of
committent and faith. Any doubts about the case and validity of the morality
or faith would cause a painful admission of the amount that was
psychologically invested in it. The strength of your belief is signalled but
the strength also deepens your involvement in it.

~~~
DenisM
Consider also that cognitive dissonance under peer pressure can produce
stronger result than peer pressure alone.

------
renewiltord
The PETA thing also showcases another couple of behaviours I particularly
enjoy watching:

* Distributed low-commit morality: tell other people to "do the right thing" without actually doing anything yourself.

* Proximity creates responsibility: the best way to avoid having to do anything for anyone is to pretend you didn't see it. The moment PETA admitted they knew what was going on, they had to redirect all their efforts to solving it or they'd get stick

It's pretty funny since it's so predictable. You can always do these things
and the reaction means that the right time to do it is to seek attention
through it.

------
drtillberg
> If there were a secret conspiracy running the liberal media, they could all
> decide they wanted to raise awareness of racist police brutality, pick the
> most clear-cut and sympathetic case, and make it non-stop news headlines for
> the next two months. Then everyone would agree it was indeed very brutal and
> racist, and something would get done.

This has to be the most hilariously and accidentally observational comment in
the history of the Internet. Times apparently have changed since 2014.

Brilliant article.

~~~
api
Someone with a phone camera just happened to record a video of the ideal case:
a police officer obviously murdering a black man. It's brutal and pointless,
with racism being the most obvious and likely explanation.

The thesis of this article has a lot of validity though. There is an
escalating "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!" arms race that has no interest whatsoever
in solving problems, only in getting attention.

~~~
makomk
As far as I can tell, someone actually happened to record a video of a
slightly different ideal case: it was obviously a police officer murdering a
black man when carefully framed and portrayed that way, the most clear, vivid,
brutal and unambigious demonstration of police racism and brutality - but only
for people who already believed this. Basically, a cross between what this
blog post describes and a maximum-strength scissor statement [1]

The most vivid demonstration of this is that one phrase: "I can't breathe". It
really is the most vivid image of racist police murder imaginable: a white
officer kneeling on a black man's neck, slowly cutting off his air as he begs
for mercy. It's appeared again and again in protests and news coverage
worldwide. There's only one slight complication: Floyd started repeating that
he "couldn't breathe" before he was down on the ground at all
[https://www.fox9.com/news/transcript-of-officers-body-
camera...](https://www.fox9.com/news/transcript-of-officers-body-camera-shows-
george-floyd-told-officers-i-cant-breathe-before-being-restrained) All of a
sudden, things get a lot more fuzzy in terms of cause and effect and what the
officers should've realized, and naturally one idelogical side has been
claiming it debunks the whole thing whilst the other is using a different
framing to claim this shows the police were even more depraved cold-hearted
murderers than previously thought: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2020/jul/08/george-floyd-police-killing-transcript-i-cant-breathe) It's
almost the perfect scissor.

Even if it had been the most clear-cut case imaginable, one of the first
things that happened was to turn it into something divisive and effective for
signalling by - for instance - demanding charges against the other officers
present that seem extremely hard to justify legally speaking, and calling for
Minneapolis to burn until that happened. There is no escape from the process
described in this blog post.

[1] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-
controversial/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/)

~~~
aidenn0
\- One poll showed only 10% of Americans calling the Floyd death a "Tragic
accident." With the majority calling it murder. That's not even close to a
perfect scissor.

\- I have several cop friends, from a relatively geographically diverse range
of the US. All of them say that how Floyd was arrested was at a minimum
against procedure, and almost certainly contributory to his death.

\- One cop I spoke to pointed out that his training mandated that once a prone
subject is handcuffed, their training mandates rolling them onto their side,
as being unable to leverage oneself up can restrict breathing, even if
nobody's kneeling on you. He also pointed out that kneeling on the neck or
back in order to handcuff someone is well within procedure at his department,
but continuing after they are restrained is obviously not.

~~~
ajmurmann
"\- I have several cop friends, from a relatively geographically diverse range
of the US. All of them say that how Floyd was arrested was at a minimum
against procedure, and almost certainly contributory to his death. \- One cop
I spoke to pointed out that his training mandated that once a prone subject is
handcuffed, their training mandates rolling them onto their side, as being
unable to leverage oneself up can restrict breathing, even if nobody's
kneeling on you. He also pointed out that kneeling on the neck or back in
order to handcuff someone is well within procedure at his department, but
continuing after they are restrained is obviously not."

That's the thing I don't get and that is the most upsetting thing to me about
this situation: why aren't police officers speaking out more against each
other? The only voices I hear from the police are coming out in defense of
other officers who did something bad. This to me reinforces the impression
that it's not a small minority that's the problem, but the entire institution.
Is the media just not picking these voices up?

If there had been strong voices within the police calling for reform and
officers had kneeled with the protestors instead of attacking even peaceful
ones, the situation now would look very different.

~~~
Kalium
> That's the thing I don't get and that is the most upsetting thing to me
> about this situation: why aren't police officers speaking out more against
> each other?

There's a word for this: _solidarity_.

This is what it looks like from the outside.

~~~
heavyset_go
Other professional groups that practice solidarity often have review and
ethics boards that are, in general, quick to denounce bad actors and strip
them of their ability to continue harming others.

I can't remember the last time that a doctor or lawyer blatantly murdered
someone on tape and had their peers go up to bat for them about how they're
actually the victim and did nothing wrong. When it comes to law enforcement
and correctional officers, I can find a dozen of such instances from the last
12 months alone.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Other professional groups that practice solidarity often have review and
> ethics boards that are, in general, quick to denounce bad actors and strip
> them of their continue harming others.

While professional groups are often mistakenly analogized to labor unions,
they aren't and have very different functions. Professionals in organized
professions like law or medicine may also be in labor unions (this is unusual
in the US outside of the public sector), but the labor union and the
professional organizations aren't interchangeable.

~~~
heavyset_go
When was the last time a union carpenter, welder, electrician, or engineer was
caught on camera murdering someone, and their peers went up to bat for them
explaining how they were really the victim, and they did nothing wrong?

When an engineer's structure causes injury or loss of life, it is studied and
taken very seriously. Liability falls on both the engineer and their employer,
if there is one. Blatant negligence means the removal of licenses or the
ability to practice in the field they're licensed in, along with civil
lawsuits or even criminal charges.

When a cop causes injury or loss of life, the entire system tries to brush it
under the rug completely, and learn nothing from it. Then their peers go up to
bat for them explaining how they're being unfairly persecuted and that they
did nothing wrong. Cops are often shielded from civil and criminal liability
for abuses that other professionals would end up in prison for.

Trying to place the blame on unions is pretty far-fetched, and you're speaking
to someone who is against the idea of police unions in particular.

~~~
Kalium
It may be worth bearing in mind that one thing police union contracts can and
do win as a concession is cities taking on civil liability and paying for
legal defenses. The whole system is set up to dismiss and ignore poor behavior
because those are the grievance-handling processes designed by police and
enshrined in union contracts to serve that purpose.

Police unions have played a major role in protecting union members from
management. Or as we call it elsewhere in politics, accountability.

I'm not saying solidarity is bad. I'm saying it's a tool that police unions
have weaponized against the general public.

~~~
heavyset_go
> _I 'm not saying solidarity is bad. I'm saying it's a tool that police
> unions have weaponized against the general public._

I think that reducing the problems of policing in the US down to "solidarity"
isn't apt, as solidarity in other unions doesn't produce this level of
opaqueness, lack of honesty and responsibility, negligence, ineptitude, or
criminality.

The issue is at play is culture, one that comes from the top and is reinforced
every step of the way to the bottom.

I agree that police unions have a strong hand in enabling and enacting the
policies that shield police from accountability, but police are given powers
that are unique to any other government or otherwise union worker. Allowing
easily abused power to consolidate to the point that it has is why I'm against
police unions in particular, but not others.

~~~
Kalium
My apologies! I can see I have been unclear. Please allow me to correct this
error.

I do not think, do not believe, and do not claim that all the problems of
policing in the US reduce to weaponized solidarity. I think, believe, and
stand by my claim that solidarity has been weaponized by police unions. I also
stand by my previous claim that the particular behavior pattern other
commenters pointed to is one form of weaponized solidarity in action.

I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify. Again,
please accept my apologies for my failures in communication.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Studies sometimes claim that only 2 to 8 percent of rape allegations are
false. Yet the rate for allegations that go ultra-viral in the media must be
an order of magnitude higher than this.

Which implies that publicising a rape allegation makes it difficult to
prosecute it successfully. The article suggests instead that feminist
activists specifically select false allegations for publicity, which seems to
assume that feminist activists possess some kind of ability to identify false
allegations before they are prosecuted, or, indeed, to _predict the outcome of
a rape case_ with high accuracy. This is a very strong assumption and is the
first thing that should be tested for consistency.

A simpler explanation is that rape allegations are more likely to lead to a
failed prosecution, than they are likely to be false. If that was the case, we
should expect to also observe a higher rate of failed prosecutions in general
(i.e. regardless of publicity) than the rate of false rape allegations.

Though I can't find much relevant data for the United States (there is more
for the UK) some sources suggest that such an effect can indeed be observed:

 _According to FBI statistics, out of 127,258 rapes reported to police
departments in 2018, 33.4 percent resulted in an arrest.[13] Based on
correlating multiple data sources, RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National
Network) estimates[30] that for every 1,000 rapes, 384 are reported to police,
57 result in an arrest, 11 are referred for prosecution, 7 result in a felony
conviction, and 6 result in incarceration. This compares to a higher rate at
every stage for similar crimes._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Pros...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Prosecution_rate)

In other words, while 2-8% of rape allegations are false (according to the
article), about 0.7% of rape allegations are successfully prosecuted. Such low
rate of successful prosecutions would easily account for a high rate of
publicised cases failing without the need of a specialised rape prosecution
outcome prediction organ in feminist activists.

~~~
zajio1am
> In other words, while 2-8% of rape allegations are false (according to the
> article),

When i read articles about rate of false rape allegations, the established
percentage was really a percentage of rape allegations that were assessed
'false' by police during investigation. Most rape allegations were just
lacking evidence on both sides (not enough evidence for prosecution, not
enough evidence for rejecting as false), so they are not counted in this
statistic.

------
it
It is not necessarily the case that Floyd died from a knee on his neck. His
official autopsy (not the "independent" one paid for by his family) shows that
he had a potentially lethal level of fentanyl in his system (11 ng/mL) in
addition to 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine
([https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPUNU7...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPUNU7uB-1oJ:https://www.hennepin.us/-/media/hennepinus/residents/public-
safety/documents/Autopsy_2020-3700_Floyd.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)). That
combination of drugs is one variant of what's known as a "speedball". It can
cause death by respiratory failure.
[https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/](https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/).
The autopsy also says "No life-threatening injuries identified", in particular
"No injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngealstructures", so it is
unlikely that the death was caused by Derek Chauvin putting his knee on
Floyd's neck.

There is also the problem of motivation. What possible reason could Derek
Chauvin have to murder George Floyd? Surely he understood that doing such a
thing could cost him his job, risk imprisonment, and make it very hard for him
to find employment. Much more likely is that he believed the hold he used was
nonlethal, and, given what we know from the Hennepin County autopsy, that it
actually was nonlethal.

~~~
tfehring
Floyd went from walking around, talking, and apparently able to breathe with
no problems, to dead, during the first ~5 minutes that Chauvin's knee was on
his neck. Is your claim that Chauvin's actions had _nothing at all_ to do with
his death - that he simply died of an overdose by coincidence at that time,
and that it would have been equally likely that he dropped dead during the
five-minute period before Chauvin showed up? That would make for a hell of a
coincidence.

Also, 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine isn't a therapeutically active concentration
- it's not even enough to trigger a positive drug test [0]. And 11 ng/mL of
fentanyl is on the low end of the range recommended for anaesthesia [1] - that
same source states that "[b]lood concentrations of approximately 7 ng/ml or
greater have been associated with fatalities where poly-substance use was
involved," but no other substances were present at high enough concentrations
to be therapeutically active. It's possible that Chauvin's actions wouldn't
have killed him if he hadn't had fentanyl in his system, but that's not a
defense [2].

[0] [https://www.mayocliniclabs.com/test-
catalog/Clinical+and+Int...](https://www.mayocliniclabs.com/test-
catalog/Clinical+and+Interpretive/8257)

[1] [https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/drug-
profiles/fent...](https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/publications/drug-
profiles/fentanyl#pharmacology)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggshell_skull)

~~~
it
> that he simply died of an overdose by coincidence at that time, and that it
> would have been equally likely that he dropped dead during the five-minute
> period before Chauvin showed up

I'm saying that's a real possibility that is suggested by the county autopsy.

Thank you for the additional context on the drug levels. If you are right
about this, then I am not sure how to explain what happened.

The neck restraint is described as "Compressing one or both sides of person’s
neck with an arm or leg, without applying direct pressure to the trachea or
airway", consistent with the county's autopsy finding of "no injuries of
anterior muscles of neck or laryngealstructures". See page 9 of
[http://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile-
Cases...](http://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile-
Cases/27-CR-20-12951-TKL/Exhibit67807072020.pdf).

Here are some more details about what happened. Have a look starting at page
15. [http://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile-
Cases...](http://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/High-Profile-
Cases/27-CR-20-12951-TKL/Memorandum07072020.pdf)

------
shadowgovt
This is a good article. The only criticism I have is that regarding rape and
racism cases, the author misses another explanation as to why the cases that
go public never seem to be cut and dry... It's possible the author is
inverting cause and effect there. As a case goes public, investigative
journalist dig, because that is their job.

Hypothesis: most people involved in a criminal event have something in their
past that can be cast in a negative light. This is not a statement of
causality---I am not saying that they are involved in a criminal event because
of things they did in the past---merely of correlation. But if that hypothesis
is true, it could explain why the publicized cases don't tend to be cut and
dry... They were more cut and dry before investigative journalists started
tearing apart the history of all parties involved.

~~~
jmcqk6
> most people ~involved in a criminal event~ have something in their past that
> can be cast in a negative light

Fixed it for you. If you are looking to condemn someone, it's not difficult to
do.

~~~
shadowgovt
I don't actually know that's true, and I don't think we have numbers to test
that hypothesis. But I also don't know it's false.

------
commandlinefan
It's such a shame that he stopped writing about culture - he was really the
only one I've ever read who could.

------
dllthomas
> From the memetic point of view, they’re as complementary as caterpillars and
> butterflies. Instead of judging, we just note that somehow we accidentally
> created a replicator, and replicators are going to replicate until something
> makes them stop.

Caterpillar DNA is butterfly DNA. Toxoplasma DNA in the cat is toxoplasma DNA
in the rat.

While there's poetry to saying the hatred is a single life form regardless of
where it lives, I think it's a more accurate model to say there are two
symbiotic replicators, whose impact on the environment (mostly) makes it more
hospitable for the other. Bombs, however directed, contain only a tiny portion
of the information content making up the meme.

------
im3w1l
I kinda disagree with him. Bringing up borderline cases is not just about
signalling. It's also how important precedents are set.

------
stjo
I feel like I don't understand the essay fully. Take for example George
Floyd's case - I'm under the impression that it falls under the category of a
"clear cut" case, doesn't it? I'm not American, so maybe my assumption is
simply incorrect. But if it is indeed "clear cut", then why did it get so much
traction? Following the author's reasoning, it should've sizzled out quickly,
without much discussion.

Is my recollection of the events wrong, or is there an error in the essay?

~~~
wizzwizz4
The George Floyd case is the straw that broke the camel's back. The thing
everybody was talking about was not the fact he was murdered – it was the
rioting, the looters. The controversy. The conclusion of this comment was
_intended_ to be “so the article's not _wrong_ , it just isn't covering every
case” – but this actually turned out not to be the counterexample I thought it
was.

I heard about his murder before the riots, yes. But it was just “oh, look,
another guy murdered by the police in the US, now what's going on with that
x86 operating system?”. It wasn't on the _news_ until there were protests, and
wasn't really international news (except BBC and the like) until there was
rioting.

------
skybrian
A few years later he revisited this theme as fiction:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-
controversial/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/)

------
trabant00
Great article, but please don't jump to solutions from the problems presented.
Any such solution will only make things worse.

These are the downsides of rage. But rage is an useful tool. It's sometimes
misused, but which one isn't? Tribalism is the same.

Philosophy like this article is great at asking questions. Answers are not
inside of one man but in the conflict of many.

~~~
thinkingemote
One should also watch out of accepting these tools just for use within our in-
group and condemning them in the out groups. "they are not like us, when we
use rage we do it for a good reason"

------
nayuki
The part about memes and the self-reinforcing cycle of anger reminds me of:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)
"CGP Grey: This Video Will Make You Angry"

------
ed25519FUUU
> _Consider the war on terror. They say that every time the United States
> bombs Pakistan or Afghanistan or somewhere, all we’re doing is radicalizing
> the young people there and making more terrorists._

And it’s true. Reminds me of the onion caption for a picture of a bomb
“capable of creating 1,500 new terrorists in single blast.”

Going on 20 years of forever war, why is there such strong bipartisan support
for keeping Americans embroiled in the Middle East? Are we going to allow
Trump to co-opt the anti-war position that’s traditionally been a tent pole
for the progressive left?

This politicians keep us turned on each other with petty, polarizing subjects
while they keep doing what they’ve always done. I’m baffled. I hate it.

~~~
philwelch
> Are we going to allow Trump to co-opt the anti-war position that’s
> traditionally been a tent pole for the progressive left?

Okay I’m gonna quibble with this. If I had to compare Trump to any previous
political figure, it would be Pat Buchanan, who was and is a
paleoconservative. Paleoconservatives are anti-war in the old isolationist
sense. Ron Paul popularized a more libertarian spin on paleoconservatism but
Trump is steeped in it—to whatever degree he’s steeped in anything beyond his
own narcissism—and the American right has a rich legacy of anti-war
paleoconservatives who once thought maybe FDR was doing too much to provoke
Germany and Japan. That just got set aside for about a half century after
Pearl Harbor, but they’ve been there this whole time and after the
controversies of GWB and his “neocon” advisors, paleocon ideas had a
resurgence.

~~~
notahacker
It's also the case that the anti-war right has had much more consistent anti-
war positions than Trump, who might have used isolationist arguments to
justify reducing US presence in the Middle East overall, but has also defended
the notion of keeping troops there to secure oil, escalated with Iran and
mooted military intervention in Latin America. The anti-war right wouldn't
have appointed the likes of John Bolton to advise them on security.

~~~
philwelch
This is true.

------
peteretep
This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles

~~~
sundarurfriend
Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles.

Which is fair, your preferences are yours, but I much prefer single expansive
essays like this that give the author room to develop large complex idea
structures, and to reach out from the central idea to disparate but
interestingly relevant related themes. This might not (or might) be the
majority preference, but Scott (and the 'Wait but Why' guy, among others) has
built up large enough audiences from this type of musings, and mostly good
quality audience too, so it's working for him.

~~~
EvanAnderson
Your second paragraph is diplomatic and even-handed. I can get behind it.

Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way. Of course the OP was expressing their
opinion. They weren't making a statement of fact. What good comes from
"correcting" them? It just makes you look bad.

~~~
sundarurfriend
> Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way.

For what it's worth, I was avoiding the "FTFY" format which always sounds
aggressive and rubs me the wrong way, so I chose this as the milder option. I
can see it being impolite by the standard that (I hope) HN comments should
aspire to, so I'll use something even milder next time. Thanks.

~~~
dllthomas
Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..."

In general, I think it makes sense to avoid implying that the other person is
_wrong_ when you've decided to try addressing in a strict logical way
something that was uttered as conversational English.

~~~
tomcatfish
peteretep: > This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much
smaller articles

sundarurfriend: > Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much
smaller articles.

dllthomas: > Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..."

You seem to have struck a loop, you are asking that the correction
"Correction: That should say it's your opinion" should be "In my opinion, you
should say it's your opinion".

Your issue is that they claimed objectivity when they called the poster
subjective, which seems like an endless rabbithole to go down, since it is
only your subjective opinion that they should do so.

~~~
dllthomas
You present my comment as criticism, but you left out important context. I did
not respond directly to "Correction:" but to a comment by sundarurfriend that
seemed to be acknowledging that "correction" did not play the desired
conversational role, even as it represented an attempt to be less
confrontational than "FTFY". My comment was friendly suggestion of
alternatives, along with some measure of analysis as to what went wrong.

The issue I was pointing to was not subjectivity vs objectivity at all. I was
pointing out that the way language is used often doesn't square up neatly to a
narrow semantic analysis, and that acknowledging the intent of the
communication _even when you are moving to a more explicit, semantically-
oriented regime_ might help sundarurfriend achieve more of the kind of
conversational outcomes that I understand them to prefer.

------
natch
TL; did read, and it was worth it, but for those who find it too long the
takeaway was captured by this quote:

"It’s in activists’ interests to destroy their own causes by focusing on the
most controversial cases and principles, the ones that muddy the waters and
make people oppose them out of spite. And it’s in the media’s interest to help
them and egg them on."

------
tenuousemphasis
Interestingly, outrage has two definitions: 1. injury or insult, 2. the anger
and resentment aroused by injury or insult.

------
trhway
>there aren’t any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists to be
found.

so not true. ALEC with their AETA and other related laws immediately comes to
mind - and they are just a spearhead of the pro-factory-farming forces.

~~~
dragonwriter
But they are the opposite of “grassroots”.

------
guhcampos
Damn, thanks for this. Absolutely genious.

------
d_e_solomon
How does this article apply to SSC's fanbase working up into a lather at the
NYT?

~~~
Sebb767
What part of the conflict between SSC and NYT do you disagree with?

~~~
notadonut
This conflict is complicated and our understanding of it is limited.

* We only have SSC's account of the conversation between him and the NYT reporter.

* The NYT does not have a history of doxxing people, particularly their home addresses. Revealing that sort of personal information is traditionally what "doxxing" means.

* SSC's fans revealed the NYT reporters name and home address. That is to say, the only person doxxed here has been the reporter. So the power dynamics are not as clear cut as SSC made out.

* Tucker Carlson has since used his fans to doxx NYT reporters when he objected to them writing a story about him. That is, this has become a right-wing tactic. And that will be unhealthy for a free press.

* It's not at all clear that Scott Alexander is anonymous, or that revealing his real last name constitutes doxxing. Scott Alexander are his first and middle names. He blogged under his full real name for many years at LessWrong. He published an SSC post in a Springer book in 2017 under his first and last names.

~~~
tomcatfish
1\. I do not think this counts as a rebuttal or a reason to distrust either
side 2\. Scott never claimed that his home address would be published, and
implying he did just to disprove it likely would be considered strawmanning
3\. I think this is the real point that should be used here, and credit should
be given to it. That said, the people who did this are not Scott, so I think
he should not be blamed anymore than J.D. Salinger should be blamed for an
assassin carrying _The Catcher in the Rye_ 4\. This seems to be entirely
irrelevant to SSC-vs-NYT at all, I cannot see how this weighs on them 5\. He
has made a clear effort, but he isn't running a darknet market, so there will
be holes. As a fan, I have only ever seen his name on a website that is over a
decade old and I cannot find this book for sale. That said, I'd be willing to
concede that he failed N years ago if you can find that the book and link me
to it.

~~~
notadonut
5\. Here is the book and one instance of Scott's full name in the book.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=wtQkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR9&lpg=PR...](https://books.google.com/books?id=wtQkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR9&lpg=PR9&dq=scott+siskind+springer&source=bl&ots=lNUaoNyW-_&sig=ACfU3U1etM2mMzafQ1ZY04734yjLbV_3jA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjLhMPEhsPqAhXYqp4KHfiBAf8Q6AEwAXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=scott%20siskind%20springer&f=false)

Voluntarily publishing something like that makes me believe that Scott did not
make a clear effort. It's not about holes or opsec. It's about Scott putting
his full name out there and then regretting it. He doxxed himself, and he
can't be undoxxed.

2\. Scott never claimed that the reporter was going to reveal his home
address, but he said the reporter threatened to doxx him for clicks. I have a
very hard time believing that, and I define doxxing very differently than
"publishing a name that the subject of the article has already voluntarily
revealed."

3\. Scott is an old hand at Internet flame wars. I consider it highly likely
that he knew that, by claiming that the reporter threatened to doxx him, that
the reporter would be doxxed. The rest is protesting too much.

1\. What it means is simply we do not know the whole story. We definitely do
not know that the reporter, in fact, threatened to doxx Scott. In any case, I
think Scott has a very different definition of that word than most people do.

4\. If we believe that Scott encouraged his fans to turn up the heat on the
reporter, then he is participating in a trend, which I highlighted, that bodes
ill for American and the free flow of information. Every time an independent
press tries to write a story, do its reporters get doxxed? I guarantee you
will read fewer interesting stories when that is widespread.

~~~
tomcatfish
Sorry to reply late, I do not check comments frequently.

5\. That isn't what was claimed, that's a book that included him, not a book
he published (as far as I am able to tell). It seems to be _very_ different
given that he did not make the effort to publish and the book even fails to
call him "Scott Alexander", making it hard to link them together.

2\. As point above says, the argument has become incongruent now that it
becomes clear he did not publish the book. And, again, there is much value to
not publishing a piece on how you are tied to fringe groups online even if
your full name was once connected to them in a print book.

3\. This isn't a very fair assumption. You, and others, are calling what he
did bad because he knew what would happen, but aren't showing he knew ahead of
time. It is very easy to say you would have realized WWII would have started,
but even something that large would be outside the reach of most people's
predictors in the moment.

1\. I think _you_ are the one with a different definition, and I would also
note that the lack of the other side being published should speak to some
extent too. He showed his side, but you are taking the lack of evidence
against him as proof he did something wrong, which is not very sound.

4\. This attempt at universalization doesn't hold very well given that this
was not a reporter trying to cover the story with full honesty; his name was a
largely irrelevant detail. They could have named him "Big Bird" and the story
would have been the same but with no chance of controversy, since his identity
in his private life is not important to the story.

Thanks for the well-organized points, it makes replying a lot more sane.

------
skrebbel
This must also be why antivaxxers are so widespread. Does it mean nothing can
be done about it?

------
api
Someone needs to create a meme that will simultaneously offend everyone of
every conceivable belief system or political persuasion.

It would be the 2020 version of this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI)

Seems tough... maybe it's a job for deep learning?

