How to join the Intellectual Dark Web – a user’s guide

I'm not a big fan of any of the people mentioned in the article (though I have occasionally had exposure to good pieces from Quillete), but it's been several years since I've been exposed to what this article calls the "Intellectual Dark Web" and adjacent fora. I honestly just thought it was called "people who aren't stupid", or less acidly, "liberalism" (in the classic sense). Seriously, look at this list of bullet points:

> A willingness to engage in conversations with people who have different beliefs and political viewpoints

> Rejection of identity politics (and a recognition that it has become the dominant ideology in mainstream media discourse)

> Ideas worth listening to

>Honoring of freedom of speech

With the exception of the identity politics bullet pt, which requires a value judgment about the current state of mainstream discourse, none of these seem remotely controversial to me. Pearl-clutching, censorship, and labeling thoughts as wrongthink have their uses for the purposes of social cohesion, but are of questionable usefulness in any context where you're trying to improve your understanding of pretty much _anything_. I've read some pretty out-there stuff in these communities, and been happy to consider it and be able to articulate _why_ I find it vile. I've also read things that would've pattern-matched to something horrible, but upon consideration realized that they were actually saying something pretty reasonable that didn't have any of the negative implications that the normal approach would lead one to expect.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not exactly criticizing this article. What I'm talking about _should_ be a trivial part of most fora, but the article isn't wrong that it's pretty rare and pretty fragile among communities on the Web.

This used to be the greater purpose of University. Not even total freedom from bias, but at least being willing to listen.