
Weak Men Are Superweapons - Natsu
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/12/weak-men-are-superweapons/
======
opportune
This is a great point that put into words something that I've thought about
before.

When you look at negative news coverage of some group, it almost always
focuses on some fringe caricature of what that group actually believes in. For
example, BLM's coverage in the conservative media sought to paint them as
"black racists" due to pictures/comments/videos portraying a small number of
BLM supporters in that light. Note that the Russians are aware of this tactic
because they ran several BLM-related twitter accounts that they would
occasionally use to this effect (although that's more of a false-flag).

This can be used to frightening effects. A lot of alt-right recruiting spaces
(tumblrinaction, /pol/, cringeanarchy, the_donald, KotakuInAction, breitbart,
Drudge Report) deliberately focus on a caricature of "leftists" and liberals
that is designed to make relatively-rational people feel disgusted and
alienated by what they feel the "left" or liberals represent. It's way easier
to discredit people in favor of "forced diversity", or unattractive people
with weird colored hair who identify as different animals, than it is to
discredit actual champions of equal rights or transgender(fixed!) people.

~~~
antiufo
Nitpick: 'transgender' is already an adjective, no need to add the '-ed'

------
yesenadam
(2014)

Well, that was fascinating as usual from SSC.

"Remember, not wanting to be stereotyped based solely on your sex is the most
sexist thing!" /s

Even better was the link to the The Worst Argument in the World[0] (2012) (not
Stove's Gem, though they link to that):

"If we can apply an emotionally charged word to something, we must judge it
exactly the same as a typical instance of that emotionally charged word."

\- about which they say "I propose that an outright majority of the classic
arguments in American politics, and no small number of arguments in religion,
philosophy, et cetera, are in fact unmodified examples of the Worst Argument
In The World."

e.g. Taxation is _theft_! Abortion/capital punishment/euthanasia is _murder_!
Affirmative action is a form of _racial discrimination_! Obamacare is
_socialist_!

Now _that 's_ a useful pattern to look out for.

[0]
[http://squid314.livejournal.com/323694.html](http://squid314.livejournal.com/323694.html)

------
nicolashahn
It seems like this gets to the heart of why we have a two party system (and
why it might be eventually inevitable) with all the current issues divided
more or less neatly down the middle. The system has been going for so long,
and become so "efficient," that it has settled into two roughly evenly sized
groups of people, because any significant imbalance implies a "superweapon"
developing.

If we say roughly half the country is of the Foo party and half Bar:

If half the Foo party decided they had a problem with the other half and
decided to split into their own group, there'd be roughly a quarter of the
country in each of those two split parties. But then half would still be Bar,
and would completely dominate the government. So despite whatever differences
the Foo/1 and Foo/2 party have, it's not worth splitting their identities
over, because their differences with Bar are still larger, even if only
slightly.

Kind of obvious if you think about it, but rarely articulated as well as SSC
does.

~~~
schoen
Some other theories relevant to this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law)

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realigning_election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realigning_election)
(events where party political coalitions do fracture, despite efforts to keep
them together)

------
schoen
Even though I'd previously read this article, I first expected from the title
"weak men" was going to refer to "men who are weak". Nope, it's a technical
term for a kind of bad argument.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Contemporary_work](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Contemporary_work)

~~~
opportune
I guess the "weak men" correspond to examples of the "selection form" of a
straw man argument. However, I still think the "weak men" analogy may be
useful. A lot of real-world cases where I consider "weak men" to be used
aren't in arguments per se, but rather in how media frames and covers issues -
it's what I would otherwise call "curation bias." In fact I think it's really
a combination between confirmation bias and extrapolating very anecdotal
evidence to large groups of people.

