posted on May 23, 2018 02:37 PM by
u/DegenerateRegime
36
u/AliveJesseJames54 pointsat 1527099933.000000
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.
> Become a plumber. You’ll probably make more money and be more free to speak your mind.
"If you ate more fiber this pipe wouldn't have gotten clogged."
i feel like if you're using the red tribe/blue tribe terminology, and the associated narrative of an overwhelmingly right-leaning working class, you've already ceded too much ground to their narrative.
I've actually been meaning to make a large-ish post here about what a farce it is to have a weekly thread on "culture war" and pretend that you're not waging it. Literally the first step of waging war is declaring it exists.
The point of the weekly thread is to contain such culture war discussion, not to deny its existence or to claim to be an impartial spectator or commentator. It's banned from the rest of the subreddit (excluding the sticky) because it's a known cesspool. Maybe the containment is seen as endorsing it by giving its own dedicated, stickied thread, but I think the intention is the exact opposite (i.e. it'll happen anyway, so might as well give an isolated place for it that people can ignore if they're sick of it).
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.”
I want to know how long Scott has being waiting for a plausibly-deniable way to plug his favourite white supremacist website without having to straight-out say he thinks it's correct and good. I have never seen anyone go to such lengths to pretend not to be racist.
I think these guys watched the Sam Harris / Charles Murray controversy, which started a little over a year ago, with great interest. They've been leaking more since then, and since Harris hasn't taken much obvious damage, they'll probably keep opening up more about their real feelings.
What's weird is that he's been trying to removing such specific references from past posts to hide how much of his 'universal' observations about political discourse are shaped by, though not necessarily in agreement with, obscure online fringe ideologies.
> I have never seen anyone go to such lengths to pretend not to be racist.
Talk to any Republican for five minutes, that'll stop being rare to you real quick.
Honestly, Bay Area rationalists might as well just claim that status. Bari Weiss claims it for herself *ten years* late and is now getting all the credit. *Dave Rubin* is even cast as edgy now. I'd be jealous on some level.
Occasionally, I'll see YouTubers discover and try to reappropriate rationalist lingo for themselves. I remember when Sargon of Akkad tried to defend a pedophile advocate by "steelmanning" him completely missing the point of it.
It's cause the BARTs are marginalized for being nerdy and are therefore invisible, just like black musicians having their work culturally appropriated by Elvis Presley. That's why their experiences of being socially ostracized in school make them qualified to dismiss the existence of racism.
> BARTs
I think you mean EMFHBTNs (Elon Musk's Futuristic Hamster Ball Tunnel Network). They wouldn't use public transport because of the smelly proles.
Elvis was upfront about what he was doing and [made efforts to share the credit](https://theconversation.com/champion-or-copycat-elvis-presleys-ambiguous-relationship-with-black-america-82293).
By contrast, purple-haired college students won't even swipe right for the hardworking nerds who hard-code their precious dating apps.
*Edit: /s for Christ's sake.*
I'm glad Elvis wasn't as bad as I thought. I'll have to find someone else to be my "cultural appropriation is bad" example.
> swipe right for the hardworking nerds
yuck
I was socially ostracized in school way harder than any of these dorks and just...how did they reach that conclusion? It doesn't conform to my experiences with social ostracism at all.
I don't know, but probably starting out as racist had a lot to do with it. What sets off rationalists from racist white moderates is mostly the rationalism. I've had plenty of frustrating conversations with white 'liberals' about racism and what it looks like and whether it still exists. I'll never forget the nice, well-adjusted, well-socialized Catholic pro-lifer who was confused about why banning new immigration upset me, even though I patiently explained my parents immigrated from a country with a one-child policy. Evidently her racism outweighed her desire to protect people from forced abortions.
> Evidently her racism outweighed her desire to protect people from forced abortions.
Not to be an asshole about it, but a TradCath person's racism is gonna outweigh any sort of conscience they have left often enough for that to just be something you're gonna want to expect for the sake of expectation management.
Right-wing Christianity in general, really.
Nah, you're not being an asshole about it. I knew in theory right-wing Christianity was mostly an organizing principle for white supremacy, but it was really shocking to experience it personally, from someone who I knew and liked who treated me well, who simply could not extend that same grace to hypothetical Hispanic or Chinese immigrants. This year and a half since the election has been a time of immense recalibration.
I've been an open atheist since way before puberty and I was anti-Bush much earlier than it was socially permitted. For those among other reasons, I got a strong enough dose of open hostility from right-wing Christians despite bein' very white early enough that the Trump era stuff is just them being more direct about how I already model them rather than being some kind of surprise of rudeness.
Youch. Where'd you grow up? I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area, which has many, many problems, but at least right-wing Christianity is not one of them.
It's more that not being trapped in a school full of kids who recycle the social ostracism you got when you were six years old uncritically for ~12 years is just a lot better for you psychologically.
Plus my stepdad used to beat me up a lot, that wasn't much fun.
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?
>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."
After thinking about it a while, this is what annoys me the most about Scott's article.
Women who make the mistake of taking a vaguely SJ-like stance on a topic a lot of men are fans of get *crazy* amounts of harrassment online. Just limiting myself to prominent women in the video games industry; Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu, Jennifer Hepler and Zoe Quinn have faced more severe harassment than anything Scott talks about the IDW dealing with. Google any of those names and you'll find stories about doxxing, death and rape threats, stalking, etc.
Scott's argument is basically "the IDW are totally silenced! it's just that the silencing comes in the form of harrassment from random people, not organizations!" and it doesn't even occur to him to do literally any research or ask any questions about whether the level of harassment they get is unusual. Sheer intellectual laziness.
Hey, PMMeYourJerkyRecipes, just a quick heads-up:
**harrassment** is actually spelled **harassment**. You can remember it by **one r, two s’s**.
Have a nice day!
^^^^The ^^^^parent ^^^^commenter ^^^^can ^^^^reply ^^^^with ^^^^'delete' ^^^^to ^^^^delete ^^^^this ^^^^comment.
All his points apply equal well to David Icke and his reptilian conspiracy theorists. They're both being "silenced" in the same way: people think their ideas are dumb and shitty, and express this opinion.
III absolutely applies to Sam Harris, who is transparently obsessed with his brand and various drama involving himself. He doesn't give a shit about whether some center-right accountant at AECom loses his job because of SJWs. He's equivalent to Caitlyn Jenner if her entire worldview was based on beefing with Perez Hilton or Steve Harvey or whomever. He's well aware that he's not being "silenced," but upset and confused that he's not universally respected.
I laughed at that bit where Scott is like "Sam Harris actually means the many millions who are really silenced!!". No, Sam Harris cares about one thing only, and that is Sam Harris.
>Wouldn't that suggest that outright communists like /u/NarcsBro are just as likely to be victims as the alleged IDW?
I think Scott et al. would be happy to countenance the possibility that tankies are being silenced. Same for Flat Earthers.
I think, too, that Scott dramatically overestimates how well he would do if he were constantly surrounded by sincere Flat Earthers who repeatedly exposed him to the most carefully curated pro Flat Earth arguments. Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.
Obviously some groups should be silenced. Scott is just discussing whether one particular group is being silenced; whether that silencing (if real) is a good thing is another question.
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?
> 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?
The slow process of watching Scott come to grips with his own beliefs has been the epitome of funny-sad. He's clearly wanted to just come out and broadly endorse HBD nonsense for at least a year, but can't bring himself to do it openly without first slowly priming his readers to think of this as a normal position.
We are seeing in real-time what it looks like to transition from being a *cowardly racist* to just a plain *racist*.
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.
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.
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.
DAE dork web incellectuals are literally suffering from McCarthyism, although not one of them is actually losing their jobs, and also actual McCarthyism against communists is still good.
if ur gonna misrepresent someones argument with a totally derailing and unproductive comment, the guy could have at least kept it to like a sentence or 2. no need for a full meltdown
it's not a dissenting opinion. the article just says it's possible for taboos to have some elite support and generate distinct celebrities. this guy is responding to an argument that doesn't exist.
lol no he's not. the article doesnt liken jordan peterson to mlk or whatever u think it does. it uses a few examples to illustrate general dynamics around taboo, elites, and laypeople. this is literally the argument in the article. maybe u just suck at reading or something idk
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-.
His brilliant rep is because his audience is primarily programmers who do not read. I was going to say, "do not read books," but in general, these are people with an anti-humanities bias who have a very hard time believing that other people can be analytical, too.
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?
Note that Scott has taken to heavily editing his posts *after* they've been posted, so everyone might want to check out the archive link: http://archive.fo/HnzcG. For example, the disclaimer to twitter about what he means appears nowhere in the original article.
Over in the [subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8lhdsr/can_things_be_both_popular_and_silenced/) thread user zontargs has a comment with [some of the edits](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/8lhdsr/can_things_be_both_popular_and_silenced/dzfqfh9/). Feel free to compare the archive link I've provided with the link at the top as it (no doubt) continues to evolve.
One of the paragraphs removed is:
>“The IDW is just a bunch of intellectually unserious demagogues whining about snowflakes.” Somewhat true. But also, you only heard about the intellectually unserious demagogues whining about snowflakes, because you only consume the sort of news that would tell you about intellectually unserious demagogues whining about snowflakes, because you’re the sort of person who is only interested in intellectually unserious demagogues whining about snowflakes. If you were the sort of person who wanted something else, you’d have been reading Human Varieties (or its opposite-side equivalents) instead of reloading journalists’ Twitter feeds looking for the latest scoop about Campus Madness.
Which comes sooooo close to self-awareness.
ETA:
Also, compares the IDW "movement" to movements whose proponents were *literally murdered* for their beliefs:
>If you say “We know a movement isn’t being silenced because it’s got lots of supporters, is widely discussed, and has popular leaders” – then you’re mixing up the numerator and the denominator.
>Gandhi’s Indian independence movement had lots of supporters, was widely discussed, and had popular leaders. So did a half dozen Irish revolts against British rule. And the early US labor movement. And Eastern Bloc countries’ resistance to Soviet domination. And Aung San Suu Kyi. And every medieval peasants’ revolt ever. And…well, every other movement that’s been suppressed. Really, what sort of moron wastes their time suppressing a leaderless movement that nobody believes in or cares about?
> But also, you only heard about the intellectually unserious demagogues whining about snowflakes, because you only consume the sort of news that would tell you about intellectually unserious demagogues whining about snowflakes, because you’re the sort of person who is only interested in intellectually unserious demagogues whining about snowflakes.
WTF? We're talking about an article in the New York Fucking Times. Though to be fair, Bari Weiss is intellectually unserious.
>Which comes sooooo close to self-awareness.
I'm probably going to be banned for this comment (or banned for saying "I'm probably going to be banned"; justly, to be honest), but Scott is likely more self-aware than you think. Many of his sociopolitical posts like this are pretty Devil's advocatey and intentionally masking his personal views on some of the specific inflammatory examples he discusses.
It's extremely unlikely that he thinks a truly oppressed group like transgender people face the same oppression as an IDW person like Sam Harris. Not that it's proof of his current or former opinions, but this is the guy who has dated trans and non-binary people, has had trans activists write guest posts on SSC, has made several impassioned defenses of transgenderism and gender transition (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/, http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/18/typical-mind-and-gender-identity/ are just 2 examples), and has very positively cited blogs written by trans people.
But that's beside the point he was trying to make.
He probably removed that paragraph because even though he may have a lot of issues with IDW "celebrities", that's not the point of this post. It's about censorship and freedom of speech in the abstract, and getting readers to think about the issue more broadly and not instantly jump to wolf-crying or victimhood complex assumptions when someone on the other side of their respective political aisle talks about being silenced or censored, even if that may turn out to be a reasonable conclusion in some cases.
>I'm probably going to be banned for this comment (or banned for saying "I'm probably going to be banned"; justly, to be honest), but Scott is likely more self-aware than you think. Many of his sociopolitical posts like this are pretty Devil's advocatey and intentionally masking his personal views on some of the specific inflammatory examples he discusses.
I don't see how any of this relates to anything I said. I called the paragraph there close to self-awareness because his argument in it is basically "leftists hear so much about intellectually unserious demagogues because they occupy a media bubble that selects for intellectually unserious demagogues." This is close to self-awareness because it's *exactly the state the rationalsphere occupies relative to SJW's*. The rationalsphere is a media bubble designed to select for intellectually unserious SJW's. Charitably, maybe Scott removed the paragraph because he realized the symmetry here.
>It's extremely unlikely that he thinks a truly oppressed group like transgender people face the same oppression as an IDW person like Sam Harris. Not that it's proof of his current or former opinions, but this is the guy who has dated trans and non-binary people, has had trans activists write guest posts on SSC, has made several impassioned defenses of transgenderism and gender transition (http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/, http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/18/typical-mind-and-gender-identity/ are just 2 examples), and has very positively cited blogs written by trans people.
I'm pretty sure Scott isn't bigoted against trans individuals, but if he thinks the oppression suffered by trans individuals isn't comparable to the oppression faced by IDW people, maybe he shouldn't have made the comparison? It's not like this criticism is coming out of nowhere, *he's the one who made the comparison*. Of course, he also compares the oppression of the IDW to the Indian independence movement under Ghandi, the labor movement, and eastern bloc countries resisting the soviets, so I'm a little unclear on exactly what degree of oppression he thinks IDW believers face.
>He probably removed that paragraph because even though he may have a lot of issues with IDW "celebrities", that's not the point of this post. It's about censorship and freedom of speech in the abstract, and getting readers to think about the issue more broadly and not instantly jump to wolf-crying or victimhood complex assumptions when someone on the other side of their respective political aisle talks about being silenced or censored, even if that may turn out to be a reasonable conclusion in some cases.
I'm pretty sure the point of the post was to establish that the existence of popular celebrities advocating for an ideological movement is not very good evidence that a movement is being silenced. In section two he goes even farther and argues that the existence of celebrities advocating for an ideology is evidence *it is* being silenced.
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.
>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
Gee, I sure do wish someone on the left would talk about [scaling back the paramilitarization of our law enforcement services](https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/).
Yeah, this just shows me the SSC audience is basically, "moderate conservatives stuck in San Francisco or where ever." Considering the actual things happening out there in America to racial and other minorities.
Which I have some sympathy before, because like I said below, I'd probably write some dumb arguments on the Internet if I had to work, live, and date in an area where my opinions had an approval rating of 10%.
But, I wouldn't think it was the end of free speech.
Folks on the subreddit have started describing the culture war as an "[iterated] prisoners dilemma", where "cooperating" maps to bloodless rationalist-style debate and anything more aggressive or disagreeable is "defecting".
This makes absolutely no sense, of course, either as game theory or as political science. But that's never stopped a pseudo-academic framing device from becoming conventional wisdom before, so why start now?
Basically, people with right-wing beliefs like "traditional gender roles are good" and "transgenderism is stupid" and "racism doesn't exist" feel like they're getting censored and SSC is nobly leaping to their defense. Our hero Nathan J. Robinson points out that these right-wingers are getting bestselling books and multiple hits in the NYT, and nothing worse is happening than public figures getting their feelings hurt, but SSC views this as like equivalent to ICE ethnically cleansing the US of Hispanics.
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.)
Game Theory is good! It's just way more restrained than people like that wish it were. It gives some fairly interesting insights into behaviours you mightn't expect, and gives you a chance to challenge your assumptions about what people believe when experience doesn't line up with reality.
Unfortunately, the use of numbers attracts the kind of person who believes that changing words into numbers makes the subjective objective. So you end up with people completely abusing it to "prove" people are selfish and should be, when really it's about examining what people are selfish would do and what you could do in response.
DAE remember when Sam Kriss randomly brought up John Nash's schizophrenia to attack Garland's dumb tweetstorm that didn't even involve real game theory?
God, I'm glad Sam Kriss is dead
I think Game Theory is good at predicting human interactions that are structured as games. For example, it is useful when you are literally playing board games.
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.”
and
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:
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:
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 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.
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.
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.
… 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
muslimblack president means the Left has won?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.