The actual issue here is pretty simple – what we have is a bunch of largely very privileged people in very “Blue Tribe” communities upset they can’t say their somewhat heterodox opinions about things within these communities. Notice the milleiu of most of the IDW – professors, researchers, tech people in Silicon Valley, etc.

But, the truth is, they know nobody actually cares about what amounts to turf wars in academia that in 1985 would’ve resulted in a bunch of snippy journal reports, etc. without the Internet and such to supercharge things. So, they make the argument, “sure, we’re OK, but normal people will be silenced,” but there’s a problem with that argument.

Normal people aren’t being silenced. Even here in relatively blue tribe Seattle, I hear plenty of “politically incorrect” things being said out in the open by various people, that if I believed “classical liberal” Twitter, would result in those people being fired and their livelihoods destroyed. Except that’s not happening at all.

The actual harsh truth, is pretty simple. If you walk into a community and start throwing bombs, red tribe, blue tribe, or something even non-political (walk into a bar during an NFL game and tell your politically incorrect opinion about concussions and see how well your free speech is welcomed) you should expect to get hit back. What it seems people are really upset by is the fact that they have to be quiet about their political opinions, because they’re outnumbered 9 to 1 at the break room at whatever tech job you happened to have.

Welcome to life – if I worked in a Red Tribe type of job where everybody talked about the type of gun they’re buying this week, I wouldn’t talk too much about my personal belief in the 2nd Amendment and how it’s bunk. Partly because I’d realize it’s pointless, but also I because I realize that it would make my life difficult. I’m not being silenced by political correctness. I’m recognizing basic human psychology.

So, here’s an idea for everybody who is upset they can’t talk about the genetic differences of races after their graduate class. Become a plumber. You’ll probably make more money and be more free to speak your mind. Or hell, take a tech job in somewhere like Wisconsin or Texas.

Scott is apparently an HBD hipster now. “Oh, the IDW is so mainstream. I was into them way before they sold out to the bogus New York Times! I’m getting into this Human Varieties thing right now, they’re totally underground and have this sweet ‘unapologetic racism’ vibe, but you’ve probably never heard of them.”

You might not be so thick-skinned that “Go to hell, you fucking Nazi scum” no longer has any effect on you.

and

I am nowhere near these people either in fame or controversialness, but I have gotten enough threats and harassment both to be pretty sure that these people are telling the truth, and to expect that the stuff that fits in one article is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

This is an interesting – and not untrue – point. Writing publicly on the internet does expose you to lots and lots of unfair harassment that you would not receive otherwise. This is true!

But do you know what is more interesting? Lots of media companies run blogs with multiple writers. And they have hoards of data about their own articles and their own writers and which kinds of articles and which writers generate the most comments, the most negative comments, and the most abusive comments. Many of these media companies were even honestly surprised by the results. It turns out that we don’t have to speculate about these things, because people have collected actual data! Weird, right?

Do you know which groups of writers are likely to face the most serious harassment from commenters? Here’s a hint: it isn’t “conservatives who say things that they believe are controversial truths.”

Often it seems that people who complain about silencing are actually complaining that anyone is listening to them or taking them seriously. See also: https://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speech-and-consequences/

But let’s suppose Scott’s reasoning here is correct. The ability to have your point heard has nothing to do with whether or not your are silenced. Silencing is something that only happens out of sight, includes all forms of self-censorship, by definition leaves your point unheard, and only happens to ordinary people.

Wouldn’t that suggest that outright communists like /u/NarcsBro are just as likely to be victims as the alleged IDW? Isn’t it plausible that it’s actually the moderate centrists who are being silenced? Sure, the NY Times has plenty of centrists on its opinion pages, but what does that tell us about the man on the street? Surely there could be thousands of people desperate to opine to us about the need for balanced budgets, but unable to do so out of fear of social pressure! You can’t judge anything from the success of those successful people. All that proves is that it is possible to have that opinion and become an elite. But there also exist people who have that opinion and aren’t elites!

I guess what I’m saying is…wasn’t the real silence inside you all along?

Fucking hell, this is like watching my gran come down with Alzheimer’s. He never used to be this bad, did he?

I think most of the obvious stuff has been sneered at already, but nobody’s yet pointed out how insane this is:

So, after hundreds of engineers and activists and entrepreneurs work for decades to create a new near-impossible-to-censor system, and some people who would never have gotten heard on any other channel are able to use it to get heard – well, it’s pretty weird to turn around and say “Aha, you got popular, that proves nobody is trying to silence you!”

Peterson & Co are getting constant fawning writeups in the mainstream press. They’re appearing on Bill Maher and writing NY Times columns and being handed book deals left and right. I live in a very liberal college town; the bookstore 3 doors down from me has a giant display for “12 Rules for Life” in the window. The idea that these people are only famous because the internet gives them freedom from the brutal left-wing censorship they’d experience in the real world is so fucking insane I don’t know how to deal with it.

And Scott knows this, because Nathan Robinson points it out in “Pretty Loud For Being So Silenced”. It’s almost as though he’s avoiding that point because it’s devastating to his argument.

Also, is Scott slipping pro-HBD praise (sorry; “Human Variety” - I guess they had to re-brand scientific racism yet again) into every article he writes? Is this just gonna be a thing he does now?

Look you don’t understand the lived experience of the intellectual dark webber. Let me drop some learns on you. When I transitioned to the IDW, I couldn’t find any healthcare providers that would cover it. I had to save for almost a decade and borrow money from relatives. I’m glad to have fully transitioned to IDW now, even though my necessary supplements (Edgelord Palmetto and Omega 3 Galaxy Brain Acid) are still expensive. Now that I am full time, I live in fear of being murdered on the street for saying something politically incorrect. Many people mock me for living as my true free-thinking self. I am glad people like Crustacean Lobsterman, Rave Dubin, and Ben Stiller are gaining wide exposure and helping our image in the public minds, but it doesn’t mean lowly webbers like me aren’t oppressed anymore.

Oh my, this is garbage. Scott would certainly benefit from doing more honest reading than dumb writing on this subject: “Contrary to their framing, [the defenders of IDW] are fundamentally illiberal, in the small ‘l’ sense of liberalism, intended to justify existing power relations against people who would reasonably challenge them.” Of course, Alexander et al are in familiar company.

EDIT: I normally don’t like reading any of this guy’s writing. (And I’m not enjoying it now.) But I am curious what precisely is his point in section 6 about the “Human Varieties” racists? In fact, I find it kinda dissonant that he’s even calling them (and Murray?) racists, seeing as his operating definition of racism is so often that it is necessarily irrational. But I think he’s just conceding that everyone does recognize this as racism, and he’s just going with it. The part I really don’t get is everything after the “but nobody wants to be them, for two reasons….” In no small part it’s unintelligible to me because of the ramble of rationalist jargon. But my reading is that he’s saying boring scientific racism is made sexy (or “edgy”) by engaging in anti-SJW rhetoric. Does anyone else get this?

Cuz if that is what this nerd is saying, that’s a hella admission of how shallow their contrarian reflex is.

Quality sneer in the comments from jonmarcus:

The IDW is being treated like trans people! Well…not really like trans people, calm down everybody. The IDW is being treated like MLK and Malcom X! Well…except for the whole “being assassinated” part. The IDW is being treated like those under the Hollywood blacklist! Well…except instead of Joe McCarthy opposing it, it has Rand Paul supporting it.

And finally, because of course you had to go full Godwin: The IDW is being treated like those who oppose Stalin/Hitler!

If every analogy you reach for goes way too far…then maybe that should tell you something about your underlying point.

Continuing of the trend of “censorship” meaning “people in certain social circles criticise me for saying dumb shit”.

For me this article is representative of much of the experience of reading Scott Alexander articles. I begin by wanting to be impressed, because of his reputation and because he often addresses interesting topics and asks interesting, controversial questions. But then the article itself is such an obvious pile of rhetorical garbage. Time and again I am struck by how frequently Scott relies on poor analogies, specious reasonings, failings of conclusions to match the premises, failures to hold the definition of the subject constant, failures to even remember what he had said before, ‘lampshading’ of obvious counterarguments by acknowledging them but not actually including their implications, and so forth. And so I end up thinking that whatever he was arguing against is more true than I did before I read his piece. I honestly sincerely do not understand where his reputation as a brilliant Thinkman comes from. This stuff is really shoddy, and if I were grading Comp & Rhetoric, I’d give it a solid B-.

As usual, Scott is approximately 0 charitable to the ess jay dubyas. For instance:

No, Twitter, I’m not making the claim “Sam Harris is exactly as marginalized as transgender people”. I’m saying that even groups whom we all agree are more marginalized than the IDW can have very successful and famous spokespeople.

No Scott, that’s not what we mean when we say “object-level differences between transgender closeting and racist bigot closeting negate your analogy.” What we mean is that you can’t just magically stop being trans; and also that using the toilet might be slightly more important than talking about skull shapes.

So if your line of reasoning is “well, Sam Harris seems to do pretty well for himself, so I guess you can’t get in trouble for being controversial”, I don’t know what to tell you.

No Scottywott, it’s that none of the people complaining about how the evil leftist hegemony have done the actual work of showing that Being Fired For Being Conservative is a serious problem. They point to stand-out cases and let the chinese robber effect do the rest. Then they use the distorted reality they paint to pitch a victimhood narrative to white men.

Do other groups face similar pressures? Absolutely. Would people who wrote similar articles using those groups’ complaints to make fun of them also be antisocial? Absolutely.

Would? Scooterkins, honey, I think you must be lost. In the wrong universe. We live in your counterfactual. Half the operating procedure of your prophets is to say “buh-buh-buh we’re not bigots, we’re just opposed to affirmative-action-type-policies and gay cakes because they mean we can’t exercise our liberty to deny people particular opportunities.” The cake example is perhaps the most overused culture war penant in your sphere of influence and is a perfect case of doing exactly what you here suggest you WOULD condemn, and yet there you are, not condemning it. Fuck you.

So, after hundreds of engineers and activists and entrepreneurs work for decades to create a new near-impossible-to-censor system, and some people who would never have gotten heard on any other channel are able to use it to get heard – well, it’s pretty weird to turn around and say “Aha, you got popular, that proves nobody is trying to silence you!”

… No it isn’t? It means the system is working as intended and it’s time to stop complaining about the problem the system solves? How much Chesterton do you even have to read before this is how you start thinking?

I like how the right wing is totally powerless except for, you know, the billionaires, the military, and all three branches of government. But besides that totally powerless! Poor, oppressed right wingers!

Gay marriage and a muslim black president means the Left has won?

It makes sense if you interpret modern leftism through the I See Trad People lens; that modern leftism is basically hardcore civil rights movement LARP.

They can’t admit they’ve won, that would fuck everything up! For one, the whole reason they can justify being subversive auto-defecting jerks is that what they’re doing is necessary and they have no power, and if they admit that they have in fact accomplished the genuinely necessary social reforms they were pushing and have the power to do so, they’d no longer be able to justify their methods. If you’re the party in power, siccing two men in uniform with five weapons each on a guy for not baking a cake makes you the asshole; if the world is owned by an army of invisible gay-hating Klansmen then suddenly you’re the hash-tag #resistance.

For another, admitting you have power would be breaking character; the leftists from the Good Ol’ Days weren’t the party in power, and they’re the Ultimate Good Guys, so doing something that makes you look so much less like them is unconscionable.

I’m too tired and drunk to work out what the fuck he’s verbaciously dog-whistling about somebody explain

He’s read Manufacturing Consent but he uses some blog posts about game theory to explain how the consent sausage is made. Interesting move, rationalist. (My impression from afar of game theory is that it starts off with a one-dimensional abstraction of human behavior and then builds up to “prove” things pertaining to psychology, social psychology, and society that should be common sense to people who weren’t already indoctrinated into the rational self-interest human caricature (example). (I’ll cite Adam Curtis for this explanation.) Using game theory to explain human affairs looks like job security for wonks.)

TL;DR: Smear Club can’t read.