I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014)
slatestarcodex.com
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There was another post on HN recently about a summary of Rene Girard, who extended this idea ("mimetic violence" in his style) with the inevitability of scapegoating neutral parties as an alternative to war. The rationalist community that SSC has represented may be walking right into that scapegoat role because they are viewed as compromised by the extreme right, and as a gateway drug by the extreme left.
I would argue critics like figures associated with the so-called, "intellectual dark web," are being scapegoated by social media platforms for precisely the reasons Girard describes for picking scapegoats. There is no point in tracking down the worst extremists because they don't have enough political traction to represent "something being done," but popular, relatively moderate critics are sufficiently high profile figures to make an example of in the hope that it provides some defusing catharsis.
I couldn't say how much predictive power that model has. Either de-platforming "works" because it delays sectarian conflict, or it delegitimizes discourse altogether and just accelerates it. We're going to find out anyway, and it appears we indeed live in interesting times.
So the problem with rationalism is kind of obvious in the name. Rationalism, if you read philosophy, already has a meaning. It means people who believe that rationality comes prior to experience. That's not the way the 'rationalists' are using it, and what's more, the way they are using it is kinda crude, even if we ignore the fact it displays a kind of illiteracy, or at least, a disinterest in the history of thought, to re-use a really common term in a totally unrelated way.
That's also what comes across from the stuff they write. What I've read is clever, well written, well thought out, but also profoundly ignorant of the tradition of thinking about the topics they're interested in. You can't help but be crude if you just try a naive response, without first looking at how other people have addressed the problem at hand. So it comes across as the philosophical equivalent of that guy you met once who's convinced he has invented a new kind of maths without the number zero, because 'zero doesn't exist'. It might have been an interesting debate 2000 years ago, but things have moved on.
However, I agree- they should have picked another name. "Rationalism" already exists. Furthermore, it's an arrogant name to have- calling your group "rational" implies that anyone who's not in your group is not rational.
And anyways, I suspect the idea that "rationality comes prior to experience" is almost certainly true, albeit in a weak, tho profound, sense. For one, nothing can learn, i.e. form or update beliefs or theories, without a pre-existing algorithm to do so.
> ... That's not the way the 'rationalists' are using it, and what's more, the way they are using it is kinda crude, even if we ignore the fact it displays a kind of illiteracy, or at least, a disinterest in the history of thought, to re-use a really common term in a totally unrelated way.
>
> That's also what comes across from the stuff they write. What I've read is clever, well written, well thought out, but also profoundly ignorant of the tradition of thinking about the topics they're interested in. You can't help but be crude if you just try a naive response, without first looking at how other people have addressed the problem at hand. So it comes across as the philosophical equivalent of that guy you met once who's convinced he has invented a new kind of maths without the number zero, because 'zero doesn't exist'. It might have been an interesting debate 2000 years ago, but things have moved on.
The rationalist community is a loose agglomeration of people interested in a bunch of different topics, with the kind of binding focus on forming or acquiring (more) accurate beliefs and acting (more) effectively in the real world. There's an incredibility variety and diversity of interests, backgrounds, and knowledge across a huge number of philosophies, schools, academic disciplines, and intellectual pursuits.
It's interesting that you claim that they "[display] a kind of illiteracy" as it seems clear to me, from reading a lot of the work of the members of the rationalist community, that (a) a lot of those members are perfectly aware of philosophical rationalism; (b) the community doesn't ascribe to anything that anyone terms 'rationalism'; and (c) almost everyone rejects philosophical rationalism as being true or useful.
Among the various members of the community, some of whom don't identify as members too, there's a lot of frequent and deep referencing of academic philosophy, so the claim that the community as a whole is unaware of "how other people have addressed the problem at hand" is just flat wrong. But the rationalist community is more like pre-professional science in that almost everyone is an amateur, there's almost no (formal) gatekeeping. So yes, it's absolutely true that there are many people in or interacting the community that are relatively ignorant of lots of different things like your example of someone convinced that they've invented a new school of mathematics.
And besides all of that, there's a lot of utility, to lots of people, particularly the participants, in debating something that you or academic philosophers might be convinced 'everyone' else has moved on from.
I just don't feel like it would be a good start for a bunch of people who wanted to discuss maths to redefine the term 'boolean' to mean being smarter than other people. I equally don't think it's a good start to call yourself a rationalist when you're actually an empiricist. It's not an obscure term. It's the kind of thing you learn in school, if you take a philosophy class at A-level.
When you talk about 'frequent and deep referencing', I would very much hope that they would be aware of philosophical rationalism. It's literally the most influential tradition of thought in the last five centuries. I also can imagine that if you spent enough time reading, you might transition from the sort of person who would identify as a 'rationalist', to somebody who might have interesting comments on philosophical rationalism. I also feel like work is done by building on other people's work. That's as true in philosophy as it is in any field. You won't make interesting work impossible by starting from scratch, but you do make it really unlikely - sort of like trying to build a steam engine using an anvil and tongs.
Nobody who had a basic grounding in philosophy would use a word like rationalist to mean 'very rational' in the same way that nobody who had a basic understanding of physics would use the word gravity to mean 'heavy stuff'. It's literally that bad.
Realistically, if you define a group by a word that sounds good, but displays ignorance, you're going to get a lot of good sounding ignorance. And that's kinda my take on the whole rationalist thing.
Naming is hard, it's common for lots of people to make 'mistakes' similar to what you've pointed out, and it seems like a very minor criticism of what is otherwise a great group of people united by an interest in important and useful thinking.
I think Kant beat you to that particular insight.
Not sure reddit counts as reading. Citation needed, sounds like partisian bs.
Suppression doesn't work. It just reveals that the bosses who have control have you out-grouped if you're not one of their "faithful."
delegitimizes discourse altogether and just accelerates it.
One can think of Free Speech in this way: The whole purpose of Free Speech is to enshrine discourse. If there is Free Speech, then we can always fall back on discourse and talk it out. This is why, "Free Speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" is bankrupt. "Free Speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences," is just another way of saying, "Don't say that, or we will use force on you."
It's a disappointment to see nonsense like "milkshaking" and "Punch a Nazi." These are just dress rehearsals to more serious political violence. These are signs of people being radicalized to the point, where they are going to abandon discourse and resort to violent conflict.
I remember when teachers used to talk about how the democratic societies and the USA were better than places like the USSR: Instead of using force against dissidents, we had Free Speech. Now, society's conception of civics is devolving into, "There is a right way to think, and if you don't agree, we'll force you to!"
Popper's paradox of tolerance is a thing, we can't tolerate actual nazis who would silence everybody in the name of 'openness'.
And the far-right types are still responsible for vastly more actual violence than the far left types. A couple nazis have been punched and antifa got out of hand in Berkeley once.. meanwhile, synagogues have been burned down, mosques shot up, a Sikh guy in Texas got shot because someone those he was one of "the arabs"...
The problem on the left side honestly isn't violence, it's suppression of speech. The far left in the tech industry has control of speech in a way that's pretty novel, and they need to be more careful and less righteous. It feels good to call someone a nazi and cast them out, but let's exercise some restraint and save that for actual nazis.
"Authoritarian" is what fits best here. It's what you call people who give up on convincing you and start coercing you.
Society shouldn't tolerate those who would damage our society's foundation and ultimate safety valve of Free Speech, particularly if they do it in the name of 'openness'.
The far left in the tech industry has control of speech in a way that's pretty novel, and they need to be more careful and less righteous.
The novelty is important. It's intellectually dishonest to use the time lag of laws catching up, particularly when the potential damage to discourse and society is so huge.
It transforms any situation in which someone does have authority -- even domain limited authority -- to make a call without unanimity into an authoritarian one.
If that's what authoritarianism was, every parent, teacher, property owner (and therefore business), employer, and manager would be one.
It would make law itself authoritarian.
> particularly when the potential damage to discourse and society is so huge.
Can you be more specific about an instance of damage to discourse? If it's huge, presumably it's easy to argue some high visibility cases where key valuable concepts that would be carried in discourse have become scarcely available.
And presumably, there'd be a case that these key valuable concepts aren't subject to any of the traditional philosophical limits on free speech (which as broadly respected as it is, has, like most of the law, not been absolute).
One might even expect the damaged areas of discourse to be manifestly more valuable to the point where compelled participation on the part of tech companies in sustaining them seems reasonable.
According to [1], while there are 4x as many US domestic far-right terror attacks as Islamic ones, the death tolls (excluding 9/11) are about the same. But only 1.1% of the US is Muslim.
Of course it's not really accurate to call Islamic terrorists far-left - I don't think their ideals fit with the rest of the left. But the total death toll of terrorism in the US is negligible [2], so to allow one's opinions to be directed by who does the most terrorism is the ultimate tail-wagging-the-dog.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/california/article/2017/aug/31/wh...
[2] https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die...
When we talk about the far left which controls the tech industry to the point where it can control speech, are we talking about very effective capitalists who are somehow nevertheless economic leftists (and apparently have shareholders of the same bent), or are we talking about a socially oriented far left, perhaps even largely managed by historically disadvantaged classes (and also have shareholders who support them)?
Because I can't think of any good definition of "the far left" that matches the incentives, philosophy, and power behind the tech companies out there.
The closest argument I think could be made is that there's enough vocal users who are concerned about certain kinds of content that some companies feel compelled to respond to that concern. One can argue that has its own issues, but it's pretty distinct from control.
> It feels good to call someone a nazi and cast them out, but let's exercise some restraint and save that for actual nazis.
I agree that nazi (like fascist) can be a term that's expanded to the point of dilution. But... what's an actual nazi? If we don't know the answer, will we be able to act effectively with our saved effort? If we're looking to history as a guide, do we draw the line at something comparable to 1943 nazis, or 1933 nazis, or 1923 nazis?
If you want a stereotype/archetype, I guess 'woke capitalism' is the ideology I'm talking about.
Interestingly, while we're having a raging culture war between right and left, there's almost no argument about economics anymore. We seem to have settled into a system where the proletariat of both political parties want to move economically left, and the elite of both parties distract them with culture war instead.
There's a group of far left activists, who are also included within a lower tier of non-programmer workers for companies like YouTube and Google, as well as programmers and technologists who are sympathetic to their views. The impetus comes from the 1st group, who has sway with the 2nd group.
can be a term that's expanded to the point of dilution
To the point of a Bernie voting Korean American journalist (Tim Pool) being accused of being one of them, to the point of people yelling to have him mobbed and beaten in the street.
But... what's an actual nazi?
What's key, in 2019, an era when "brands" are easy to create anew, to the point where even kids and the poor have the resources to do so and organize around them, it is not the brand, but the behavior, the semantics, which is important. Who uses violence, intimidation, and vandalism to silence opposition and for political gain? Who dresses up in the same clothes, like "gang colors," and uses anonymity to get away with doing the above?
We need to be skeptical of this authoritarianism masquerading as "justice" and "openness."
... Proud Boys? Just sayin'.
Sure. A few of them are going to jail for criminal political violence. Then, also facing legal consequences are the members of Antifa who were looking for the Proud Boys, and ended up assaulting a couple of innocent Marines going to a dance. One of them was non-white, and the Antifa members apparently were spewing the most vile racist, toxic words the whole time.
Again: We need to be skeptical of this authoritarianism masquerading as "justice" and "openness."
That's either quite a coup... or an unlikely explanation. Possibly even a motivated one designed to work the refs, so to speak.
You know what's much more likely? That any political compasses involved in low-level decisions made at most tech companies are distributed in about the way that staff is. And that you could expect that to be normally distributed unless managing staff skewed it with an emphasis on some value. Which is another way of saying the composition of the company reflects management values. And since market incentives probably still matter, and shape management values, whatever we're talking about in general terms here that's is going on at these businesses, it's probably not just a function of a minority of activists.
> to the point of people yelling to have him mobbed and beaten in the street.
Welp, free speech, you know. Guess there's nothing we can do about that. If we did, we'd simply be using force to silence those people, and it really sounds like you're categorically against that, right?
> it is not the brand, but the behavior, the semantics, which is important.
Brand is semantics. If one is important, the other is.
So... what's a nazi? For that matter, what's "far left"?
> Who uses violence, intimidation, and vandalism to silence opposition and for political gain?
In spite of some of my challenges to the GP, they had some answers to this question you don't seem to have fully processed.
> Who dresses up in the same clothes, like "gang colors," and uses anonymity to get away with doing the above?
I can think of several answers that check at least 2 boxes out of 3 there, maybe even all three to the extent that bureaucracy confers anonymity. What's yours?
> We need to be skeptical of this authoritarianism masquerading as "justice" and "openness."
We also need to be skeptical of those who offer an pretense of concern of vigilance towards authoritarianism, but oddly seem only interested in looking one way -- "this" authoritarianism. Which, since it apparently consists of the tyranny of justice and the threat of forced openness, is likely about as consistent in its conception as the threat of far left capitalists.
This might be more convincing if Nazism and white surpemacy weren't themselves entirely predicated on violence.
This is the kind of criticism you get to make if you're not part of their outgroup. They might be peaceful now (well, except for the steadily increasing violence [1]) but what do you think they're going to do if and when they get more power?
At what point is pushing back acceptable? Is it when they start stripping legal protections from (more) people? When they start putting (more) people in camps? When I have to wear a patch identifying myself as Jewish? When they start firing up the gas chambers?
It's not that "there is a right way to think". It's that these people are trying to harm me, specifically. And it's that other people want to pretend that this whole thing is just a difference of opinion.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-zealand-shooting-highlights...
If people were generally accurate about who is and isn't a Nazi or White Supremacist, this line of thinking might have merit (i.e., the idea that some types of thinking are inherently violent and must be suppressed at the level of speech, but of course who decides that?). But, observing political discourse over the past few years, people are not generally anywhere close to accurate about who is a Nazi or a White Supremacist. So what instead happens is a lot of people who aren't Nazis or White Supremacists get punched and milkshaked as collateral damage, and perhaps they are the majority of the damage.
As a followup, a person could reasonably contend that Socialism and Communism are entirely predicated on violence. They certainly have huge body counts, and consistently. And then you have people who think that Capitalism is predicated on violence. And suddenly everyone is punching everybody and we stop talking to each other, all because you wanted to punch a Nazi.
The road to hell...
From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967092
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> Men seem very unwilling to recognise that the memo and the discussion itself is harmful.
...you realize where this goes, right?
Like -- suppose you're right; and suppose you're given the power to suppress all such harmful discussions. You apply it. No more such discussion. Great.
Now suppose this occurs but in fact you're wrong. We must then ask: How would you find out that you're wrong?
Well, in such a case, you probably wouldn't. I guess you might find out when the chickens, whatever they are, finally came home to roost. But ideally one wants to find out before then. Better hope the chickens are merely bad rather than catastrophic, seeing as you've been doing absolutely no planning for this case. And hopefully they come sooner rather than later.
(And that's assuming you're a reasonable person who would actually admit error at that point; see below.)
I mean, really... illiberalism, it always goes the same way. You think it's discussion that's harmful? Have you seen the alternative? Because, I mean, examples abound, and how it goes is pretty clear. You're talking about going down a path dominated by humanity's worst tribal instincts. I should hope that's not what you want -- but that's where that path leads. By the time the far-off disaster occurs, do you think it'll be people like you, who are capable of thinking clearly but just think certain discussions should be suppressed, who are going to be running the show? No, it'll the people who are the least reflective, the most tribal, the most doublethinky.
Liberalism, free speech, when working properly, is supposed to work as a negative feedback loop. If you're wrong, you find out. Someone contradicts you, supplies arguments, and then you can consider them and see whether they might be right. As a lot of people have noted, it... doesn't exactly always succeed at this. But suppression of speech... hoo boy, that fails so much harder. That's how you get positive feedback loops. As the professed beliefs of the group get further and further from reality, simultaneously the requirements that you agree, the punishments for disagreeing, get stricter and harsher. You sure as hell don't find the truth that way.
Truth, now... I notice that's something you didn't even mention at all. Because some of the points made in that memo, are, as best as people can currently tell, true. You haven't made any claims about to truth or falsity, only about harmfulness. But do you think the harmfulness of the claims in that memo exceed the harmfulness of shitty civilizational epistemic practices? (Nature can't be fooled, as they say!)
Like, OK, bad epistemic practices might not seem that bad, might seem like a worthwhile tradeoff, if you imagine suppression of specific facts or claims or discussions as an isolated thing. Maybe we don't need to know literally everything. But that's not how it goes. Free speech, liberalism, these are ideas that are unnatural to people, they had to be learned, and they are constantly seeking ways to slip them off or and go back to full-on tribalism (or pervert them in service of it). You may want suppression of particular claims... you will get the bad old days. The positive-feedback loop of doom.
Claims don't exist in isolation, after all; claims have relations between them. You can't just suppress one claim, because people will rederive it from other claims. And if the claim you suppress happens to be correct? Then people will definitely rederive it. So either surrounding claims have to go, or the process of inference itself has to go. Likely both. In fact definitely the latter; you can peel off surrounding claims all you want but eventually you'll have to attack inference itself. And hey, it happens already that people are constantly eager to do that anyway! They only need a little push... and then oops, there's your positive feedback loop. Once you encourage people to use bad methods, they'll use them to reach all sorts of bad conclusions... I expect many of them will surprise you!
(And what is the scope of this suppression? Shall the hidden truth be kept alive in the academy, say, with a strict cordon, so that the facts may be known by the chosen few but never applied outside where it might be necessary? Shall those who wish to learn a subject have to first learn only the public parts, and then apply to join, to learn the hidden secrets? Or shall it extend even to them? Is the pursuit of truth itself something that must simply be forbidden?)
It's a dark road you're suggesting here -- and not a new one; an old one, an ancient one, one whose failures we know very well. I'll take whatever harmfulness the truth might pose over that any day. I don't think it can really hold a candle to that."
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And yes, you could stretch the "predicated on violence" to encompass a lot of things. But that's just a slippery slope fallacy. Nazism and white supremacy literally have dominance over and/or extermination of others as their explicit goals.
Massively!
But that doesn't mean it's impossible to tell. Look at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville:
Yes, many of the attendees were National Socialist equivalents. However, what I see in recent years, is that someone advocating for Free Speech for everyone can be held falsely equivalent. That's going too far. Someone criticizing Antifa branded violence can be held as falsely equivalent. That's also going too far. Very often, I see ideologues who basically proclaim that people who don't agree with their platform are to be falsely equivalent. Example: Kirsten Gillibrand Compares Being Pro-Life to Racism | ‘The Other Side Is Not Acceptable’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN6XKChXMJ4
It's as if someone, somewhere, is trying to spread emotionally charged, outrage inducing, anti-intellectual ideas designed to short circuit discourse. As a society, what we instead need to do is to quell outrage, promote intellectual integrity and rational discourse.
Scott covered that also:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
The way people are starting to behave, that story actually doesn't seem all that hard to believe anymore.
When they talk, you let them. And then you point out, very loudly, how factually wrong, logically insane, and morally bankrupt their position is.
You do this whether or not their position is predicated on violence. You respond to speech with speech.
You are revealing your biases and the distortion of your particular information bubble. Many of the people being name-called and deplatformed are not hateful and are not parts of hate groups. If you could transcend your particular bubble, you'd see that many people who are simply normal Republicans, libertarians, centrists, and independents are being caught up. There are huge numbers of people who are essentially being lied about -- in the most transparent fashion, supported with circular references produced by biased activists that ultimately don't go to any documented facts. What this abuse of "moderation" is actually doing, is fanning societal outrage and destroying the credibility of the Left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuX87JFzLFc
The extremists, both the Far Left and Far Right, gain in the short term from this, because it gains eyeballs and membership through this reinforcing circle of outrage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
The dying legacy media naturally joins in on this spiral of outrage and clickbait.
Nicely stated.
A lot of the activism happening right now is constructed a way as to annihilate any of the nuances against the position. So the discourse isn't happening inside the issue, which isn't terribly surprising. But just like Congressional leaders voting for bills they haven't read, certain forces of our cultural debates right now are gaining ground without the presence of much discourse.
I look at people like Mike Monteiro (screaming for Jack's head), the anti-de-platforming crowd decrying certain de-platformings, and the free speech crowd decrying all de-platformings.
Is this the discourse? I'm not sure it is.
Part and parcel to Free Speech being foundational to discourse. If one values discourse, Free Speech needs to always be there. The late 1700s equivalent would be, if the manufacturers of printing presses were only letting those with their favored political views print anything. (And if making one's own printing press were practically infeasible.)
Viral discovery in a digital medium is a big game changer, in the same league as printed text. Just because some megacorps are able to do so, doesn't mean all of it should be granted to one particular subset of one particular political persuasion. That's technically legal, supposedly, but not democratic in spirit. That's a minority using resource advantage to manipulate and coerce the public.
This is a term that's meant to include both Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. I suspect if she was alive today, it would also include Ayn Rand. If you're looking for complicated reasons why these figures are not taken seriously from an intellectual perspective, I suspect you are missing the simpler ones.
I think de-platforming works because the targeted author is actually just an entrepreneur riding the "hate" wave for profit. If there is no profit to be made, then they have something else better to do. All these guys can host their videos themselves, however without a free audience they can't make money.
Every time I click a link to some of the author's inspiration sources, or read the comments even, I'm appalled at how complicated and unattractive the writing is there. The contrast to Alexander's writing is simply so stark. I simply find myself giving up after a few paragraphs.
I recently read his enormous and lovely "Mediations on Moloch" essay, and was amazed by how hard I found it to follow the Nick Bostrom citations. I mean this is a famous bestseller philosopher. Is Bostrom's writing so bad, or is Alexander's writing simply so good?
This article is one of my favourites. I love how, like many of his articles, he doesn't actually change my mind about anything (at least not to my knowledge), but he does help me express, verbally, an itch that I had about something for a long time.
(Having been brought up in a pretty cultish religion, I'm now painfully aware of cultishness works.)
I think there are three things in play here.
First is the simple observation that different writing styles appeal differently to different readers. Some find an informal style easier to absorb while others are turned off by its lack of rigor.
But a deeper aspect is that, like everything, writing style is also a social signal. Many authors are put in the unfortunate position to choose between a writing style that identifies them as being in the right tribe (like "academic philosopher") or one that is easier to read by a greater fraction of readers. Given the incentive structure when your job is to be an academic philosopher, people rationally end up writing in a style that makes their material harder to read.
Finally, with philosophy in particular, the field has such a long history of self-reflection on everything, including questions like "what does this word mean?" and "what does it mean for words to have meaning?" that it gets really hard to talk precisely about things and move the discussion forward without falling into traps and loops. So philosophers have had to bend English in weird ways to route around past ambiguities or pin down things that we are normally comfortable with being vague.
It's the problem of jargon, but applied to the whole damn language.
You could start with The Man Who Was Thursday.
The Napoleon of Notting Hill is a fun read (he is notable for supporting distributism); his essays are very enjoyable too.
We don't make peace with our friends, we make peace with our enemies.
Back to advertising potential, imagine some 10sec no-context dashcam video of some racially ambiguous dude who allegedly did something getting run down by a cop car. Whether an ad for a Ford Explorer is appropriate in that context depends totally on the tribe viewing the video.
Such things have existed for quite awhile. The difference over time is that they are becoming more common and more frequent, while disseminating them got easier and easier. Still, we only rarely saw quite the same kinds of viral common conflagrations of outrage as we have today versus what we had in the cell-phone camera and viral emails era. The structure of the social media of today is vastly different and omnipresent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
Technologists recognized the addictive power of games, applying those dynamics to social media. We tried our hardest to increase engagement, and that drew technologists into combining gamification and viral discovery to amplify outrage on social media.
Now we're in 2019. Looking back on it all, is it really any surprise? Now we're in 2019, and it seems like society is ready to let multinational corporations who have access to tremendous amounts of information about us, to monitor, censor, and censure us for "wrongthink." What could possibly go wrong?
Consider a situation in which you are selling a gadget, or software.
Do you want your ad run up next to a guy using the fgt term to describe other people? Even in 'good spirits' or even 'in context'?
Maybe that's too abstract, given that you perhaps might not be selling stuff.
I do.
Frankly, I think it's all overblown, I think people should speak their minds and we should all be tolerant.
That said I don't want my products anywhere near your controversy. No, way. We put a lot of effort in what we do, we're trying to communicate a message, we 100% do not want that anywhere near our message.
When we get up and go to work and try to do our jobs, a lot of this stuff seems academic and ridiculous. For the same reason we don't want our ads next to porn, we don't want it near ugly language. I love stand up comedians, but much of their (live) work is too off colour for many advertisers.
So, the decision by YouTub etc to pull ads, but allow the content to remain is actually quite reasonable.
They claim that this is backed by machine learning, but I have a hard time imagining how. I've seen many machine learning systems, but never one whose entire model whip-saws around with the schizophrenic rapidity of YouTube. Watch just one single video about something like a conspiracy theory or anti-vaccination nonsense out of cursiousity and their "machine learning system" will immediately conclude that you want to watch large quantities of those kinds of videos and your recommendations will be filled with them for quite awhile. It seems obvious to me that they're not training any kind of model to predict the viewers desires. Not even very naive Bayesian models would predict that 1 data point outweighs every single other action by a user and translates into a massive shift in interests. There seems to be a strong tendency for their systems to ignore individual preferences as much as possible in favor of funneling users into broad categories that the system knows better. I wouldn't be surprised if the way things work were that it took something like a conspiracy video, groups it with other conspiracy videos, and then just sends any viewer in that direction while ignoring the users own history, subscriptions, like/dislike status, and all other individualized signals. Given the scale, maybe YouTube simply can't afford actual personalized recommendation systems?
He dives into why it’s such a hard problem to fix and explains how the root cause is more financial than ideological. It’s worth a listen.
Otherwise it'd just be hypocrisy and double standards.
Also, you probably know more people of the other tribe than you think. They probably just want to deal with you as a person, rather than as a tribal identity. Granted, I don't think I know any creationists either, but I'm also slightly to highly skeptical of the 40% claim.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-int...
I know of a ton of people who are creationists from my hometown. I don't think I know any where I'm currently living (I'm sure there are a bunch, but I haven't had much opportunity to meet them).
A lot of creationists tend to be older and uneducated so working in tech in a larger city is kind of the polar opposite of where they congregate.
There are a few Amish and Jehovah's Witness and Pentecostal types arpund, but nowhere near 40%.
>(by way of illustration: a billionaire who gives $100 to charity gets as many Utility Points as an impoverished pensioner who donates the same amount, but the latter gets a lot more Virtue Points)
This is a great illustration of what I understand of Antisthenes' precept that Virtue is the only good.
In a democracy, it’s obvious that rhetoric does matter. The masses will always be too uneducated (even if only contextually) to understand or care about the logic, thus rhetoric wins out. It was true for Socrates, and it’s true today. I think it’s pretty easy to see the same divisions in worldview present themselves around the world.
I might note that in the example of; a billionaire who gives $100 to charity gets as many Utility Points as an impoverished pensioner who donates the same amount, but the latter gets a lot more Virtue Points, no rhetoric is required.
edit - regarding; The masses will always be too uneducated (even if only contextually) to understand or care about the logic, thus rhetoric wins out. It was true for Socrates, and it’s true today. In Phaedrus, Socrates makes the point that knowledge of a subject beats rhetoric, by showing that to deceive with rhetoric consistently, requires knowledge of that which you are trying to misrepresent.
Different vibe, but if you want another highly interesting take on political segregation, this is a favorite of mine:
What's interesting to me is the severe level of misunderstanding of each group to the other. I generally avoid media, don't have TV service, avoid Facebook, etc. But in some rare life instances it gets forced on me and I see what seems to be a media portrayal of what is just a characterization of the "other side", whichever side that may be. In my experience, both sides have good motives for the most part and truly care for and love other people. And in my experience, both sides think that the other side doesn't love people or have good intentions because they don't agree with X, while fully misunderstanding or dismissing the issue. It's almost like when you hear some distant relative who's overtly racist and you leave your nice peaceful sphere of influence and realize that there are people who really hate others on a regular basis. And of course, there are jerks on both sides and loving people on both sides.
All of that said, I see the polarization growing. It's to a quite scary level and my wife and I have discussed that it wouldn't be surprising to see another civil war within our lifetime. Not that we expect it...but not that we don't expect it either. The confirmation bias is strong everywhere and it's only getting worse. There seems to be no real communication going on at a national level, only talking heads who don't really represent their side well. Any conversation I do see seems to fall back into political rhetoric spouting party lines, and never seem to get to the heart of people or issues. Media complicates this, parties complicate this, and people just wanting to fit in complicates this.
I don't know a solution...but I do feel like there needs to be one soon.
Best line, right there. The full meaning requires calling back to the beginning of the essay, but the complexity of this is amazing, even on the off chance it was quick attempt at a humorous callback.
If we're careful I do think it's possible to maintain an attitude that we're basically all in this together, and we may have significant disagreements on all kinds of things, but at the end of the day we're still all humans and worthy of kindness and respect.
I think that’s a horribly misguided mindset. A better approach is to tolerate the outgroups and facilitate live and let live arrangements. Then you can focus more on appreciating your tribe and less on fighting the others.
1. Observes that groups can be more critical of groups that are similar to them than those that are starkly distant
2. Supports point 1 with the example that his liberal circle felt more comfortable reveling in the death of Margaret Thatcher than Bin Laden. And that Russel Brand claimed “Fox is worse than ISIS."
3. Observes an apparent self-criticism in liberalism as evidenced by criticism of America relative to Europe, criticism of whites (by whites), and maybe even blanket criticism of "intolerance."
4. Observes the hypocrisy of being intolerant of intolerance, and proposes that Americans criticisizing America are actually criticizing a different class of Americans, rather than being truly self-critical.
5. Notes that America seems to have 3 "tribes" that roughly align with politics "red" (loving football and such), "blue" (loving higher education and such), and "grey" (being bothered by war on drugs + NSA).
6. Concludes by acknowledging his own hypocrisy, in that his this piece targeting is alleged-in-group (Blue)'s intolerance wasn't truly self-critical. Observes he did the same form of non-self-criticism that he dislikes when Blue-tribe does.
so much for that
Funny enough, I actually first read this article when someone in a deep Reddit comment thread linked to it. So yeah, so much for that.
Hacker News is Hacker News. Reddit is the communities you subscribe to. A negative view of Reddit as a whole makes no sense. The defaults and other big subreddits only reflect society at large, so any problem you have with Reddit is really with society.
/r/slatestarcodex, /r/pics, and /r/DaystromInstitute have nothing in common other than the platform.
I tend to think of "reddit" when used generally as meaning r/all for an account that isn't signed in. You won't find many "red-tribe" beliefs here, so I don't think you can say it reflects society at large. Anecdotally, I'd say the subreddit that most consistently gets something that looks a little like red tribe beliefs to the front page is r/unpopularopinion. Reddit is definitely not an even cross section of America.
Consistent Voter Tribe people don't believe me when I tell them the most popular prime time cable news program barely has enough viewers to fill a few large stadiums. What you see on /r/all reflects the interests of people who watch TV shows with tens of millions of viewers, not the minority of people extremely tuned in to politics.
This is why I stopped watching cable news and following most political media. I realized they gave me a twisted view of how popular my opinions are.
One thing I strongly disagree with:
>When a friend of mine heard Eich got fired, she didn’t see anything wrong with it. “I can tolerate anything except intolerance,” she said.
>“Intolerance” is starting to look like another one of those words like “white” and “American”.
>“I can tolerate anything except the outgroup.” Doesn’t sound quite so noble now, does it?
If Eich had gotten fired for arguing that healthcare should be a capitalist free market system in America, or that guns ownership should have no regulation, or some other red-group position that doesn't involve the oppression of others, I'd defend him.
But, intolerance can't be tolerated. Paradox of tolerance, sure. Arguably, making me intolerant (ARGUABLY).
There's a difference between conservative political views and intolerant political views. The fact that a shitload of red group values coincide with intolerance (or that a lot of intolerant people are red group) is sure unfortunate for red groupers that are tolerant, but that's life. (and no, blue group "intolerance of the intolerant" does not equate to "bad people on both sides" for me)
Restricting the ability of a class of people to marry based on their sexual orientation re: consenting adults is not tolerant.
There is no "legitimate" way to restrict these human rights - gay people were not an "intolerant" class in this scenario, they were a persecuted minority. Therefore, Eich engaged in a form of intolerance that justified the blowback.
You can say this about anything the government does. Any law at all is going to infringe on some people's preexisting natural rights and deprive them of some "ability" they used to have! So, unless you're some sort of extreme anarchist or libertarian, this is still not a good defense of "you donated to the wrong political cause, you're fired!"
I see it as a sort of logic system. Tolerance of good things is good, tolerance of bad things is bad. Intolerance is bad. Intolerance of bad things is good.
Thus
Tolerance OF intolerance = bad
Intolerance OF tolerance = bad
Tolerance OF good = good
Tolerance OF bad = bad
Intolerance OF good = bad
Intolerance OF bad = good.
Tolerance OF intolerance OF bad = good
Tolerance OF tolerance OF bad = bad
Intolerance OF intolerance OF bad = bad
Intolerance OF tolerance OF bad = good
I am confident that I take a measured approach to good vs bad. I recognize moral relativity but I have still settled for myself on a set of values (that you'd probably call blue group for the majority). We could I guess argue around what is bad or good but that sounds... tiring.
"they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols."
In contrast, your definition seems to be something like: If the speech is advocating something that would hurt someone who is already a victim, it's intolerance.
I think Popper's definition is better. The way you use it is sort of nonsensical. E.g. If someone advocated bombing Tokyo in 1944, is that 'intolerance'? No, it's advocating a policy of killing. Same with advocating the death penalty, or war against Iran, or increased sentences for small crimes, or more drone strikes in Pakistan. If these are not 'intolerant', how can you say that advocating a ban on gay marriage is 'intolerant'? It may be wrong but it's not intolerant because it doesn't denounce rational argument.
Intolerant doesn't mean 'wrong opinion'. It doesn't even mean 'super wrong opinion with really bad outcomes'. Intolerance is being unwilling to have a conversation. It's not about what you're arguing for. It's whether you're willing to argue at all.
I like your framing of Popper's definition of intolerance, and yes I don't feel that bombing Japan in 1944 was a form of intolerance (it was a form of intolerance of intolerance, which for me is Good). The Japanese were not to be argued with - they were enslaving, experimenting on, and raping the Chinese and Filipinos at a terrifying rate. The ideology can only be not tolerated until it poses existential risk, at which point it has to go the way of the Nazis (and have the entire world fight against it).
For me intolerance doesn't just mean "not open to rational discussion," well, maybe it does? Anybody that believes some humans should have different rights than others is to me intolerant, unless the humans they're intolerating are ones who themselves are seeking to oppress other humans. In my ethic system, it is irrational to view any human as different than another... Unless that human is engaged in oppression. I see the risk for circular logic but I don't feel I've fallen prey to it, I'm just bad at explaining it.
Basically, I don't believe it's ok to have a government step in and say "you aren't allowed to believe these things" to a Nazi. I do believe it's ok for everyone to say "fuck off with your Nazi ideals, you may not present them at this venue / you may not work here while you espouse them." I do believe it's ok for a government to say "your beliefs have in the past empowered violence against humans, you don't get to sit in the park with a megaphone and espouse them. Invite people to your home to talk about it if you want to" i.e. how Germany deals with Nazis in 2019.
At the very least we can see the zeitgeist shifting - KKK demonstrators are hilariously outnumbered in 2019, so things are going in the direction of tolerance by my definition of the word.
Obvious example: "your beliefs have in the past empowered violence against humans, you don't get to sit in the park with a megaphone and espouse them". Communist speech has "empowered violence against humans". If this was a guiding principle, you'd need to be a supporter of McCarthyist anti-Communist speech restrictions. But you're not; you're fine with May Day parades and communists in Hollywood. Which demonstrates that this isn't a guiding principle; it's a rationalization to harm your outgroup.
---
The way your beliefs go wrong is when words get expanded or shifted to apply to new things that they didn't before. E.g. you set up a rule where it's okay to commit aggressive/censorious acts against "Nazis". That's fine in 1944. But pretty soon, people who want to commit these acts anyway will just start using the word "Nazi" more and more broadly. This continues until 2019, when anyone supporting Bill Clinton's 1999 immigration policy is now considered a "Nazi", and thus fair game for all sorts of violence and censorship.
Same story with "oppression", "racism", "Islamophobia", "transphobia", and a whole vocabulary of other words specifically designed to terminate thought and justify aggression.
This pattern has happened over and over in history; it's at the root of countless tragedies, and I hope you'll reconsider how you're approaching these issues because otherwise there's a good chance you'll end up contributing, if only in a supporting/encouraging/justifying way, to some terrible historical crimes.
Nothing about Communism inherently says "some people are less people than others," and THAT is what I think can be intolerated. So "let's make Germany great again via centralizing power into a fuhrer" is tolerable (in that I'll argue against it but also argue for a supporter's right to espouse this belief), but "let's make Germany great again by killing the Jews, who are subhuman" is intolerable, in that anyone that says something like that shouldn't be given a platform.
So my "your speech in the past has empowered violence against humans" example specifically targets the subhumanizing language of Nazism, nothing more. Now, Nazism is indistinguishable from antisemitism. If someone wants to take economic or political policy points from the national socialist party of 1930s Germany, they'd have to separate it entirely and call it something different.
I think I understand where you're coming from though. "why not just call everything I disagree with Nazism?" That's a very fair point. You're right, I think I need to be very careful with my value definition of what falls under "intolerable" belief systems. I think I've got it down with "anything that dehumanizes in any way." Anything that argues ANYBODY deserves less rights for some aspect of themselves... Unless that aspect is them intolerating other humans (dehumanizing other people).
I will try some examples to challenge my idea but I am grateful for you as well also challenging me. It helps me grow.
So Communism -> fine, unless it is applied to argue "kill the aristocrats for being rich."
Nationalism -> fine, unless "our country is awesome and we should love it" turns into "other countries are Other and we should hurt them to benefit ourselves."
Islamophobia: often people get accused of this for saying something like "Islam is being used as a tool of radicalization in the middle East," which is what I think the article we are commenting on was discussing instances of. That's not cool - it is being used as a tool of radicalization. Atheism has too, though. I have a problem with it (it becomes intolerable to me) when someone says something like "Islam is inherently prone to radicalization." This is nonsensical and bad - ALL human belief systems are prone to radicalization, someone picking Islam specifically means they want to view Muslims as subhuman. Intolerable.
Really, though, I empathize with anti-anti-fa and the like points. Tires to ground, I'm anti violence in all forms. I'm pro peaceful protest and I believe love and friendship (no, really) are the best solutions to gay hatred or racism or rampant capitalism. If I was in a communist march and someone punched a guy in a Trump hat in the face, I'd stand witness against them. It's not a very effective means of converting what could be a fellow anti capitalist.
But if the black panthers rose again and started war with the US government, I'd totally get it. I'd oppose the use of violence just as I oppose the use of police violence against blacks. Maybe my anti violence value is because I have the privilege to not experience violence at the hands of gay haters or racists? Who knows. Maybe I'd take up arms if the Red group came for us liberal Californians. I sure hope I wouldn't.
Like I said, you're more organized of thought than I am, so I guess I just hope my combination of anti-violent value system alongside my willingness to always challenge intolerance (the belief that any given person is worth less, or that any belief system is worth less, unless that belief system is in any way down the line arguing that some people are worth less) should keep me safe from supporting historical crimes.
Right now it seems the greatest danger is sometimes engineers get fired from tech jobs for opposing gay marriage or arguing that there's something inherently different about women that makes them unsuitable for hard science. Doesn't seem too concerning yet. As far as I know it hasn't led to like, violence against white anti illectuals, just to people having their back turned to those white anti intellectuals (by not giving them a platform). A few maga hats have been snatched? Deplorable but I have no control over that. I can only continue to argue for anti violence and condem violence.
Can you see how a pro-life person might apply your principle, and thus justify violence against people performing abortions/"mass-murdering unborn children"? He'd use the same sentiment you are. "I'll tolerate them, but if they devalue others' life I will not speak and only use force."
Can you see how a white nationalist who actually did think Jews were using social manipulation to slowly erase his entire lineage would justify violence against Jews? He'd use the same sentiment you are. They call it self-defense. They call Holocaust victims, "deaths in the war between the Jews and Germans" because they believe that the Jews were the aggressors.
A difference in factual beliefs, not moral principles.
What if you read the Quran and studied the history, and came to the positive conclusion that Islam is a violent expansionist ideology which dehumanizes non-Muslims and encourages followers to abuse and sometimes murder them, in a way other religions do not? You would then become anti-Islam in a forceful way, not even willing to talk to Muslims but only willing to use force against them.
Your moral beliefs are't really different from pro-life terrorists, white nationalist anti-semites, or anti-Islam murderers. What's different about you is simply your factual beliefs.
This is how you can support historical crimes - the same way they do. By getting some facts wrong.
I think Popper's tolerance framework is robust against these kinds of situations, becuase it doesn't make you a historical criminal even if you get some facts wrong.
I know I won't participate in historical crimes because even if I do think one group are really really bad, I don't think that justifies committing crimes against them. Two wrongs don't make a right. Human rights are universal, and even wrong/bad people have them. This includes speech rights.
Thanks for digging down into the weeds with me. It's always good to bounce ideas off people, especially those more organized of thought than me.
Anyway, hope you have a good father's day weekend.
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
You think that Brendan Eich and people like him would meet you with fists and pistols if you didn’t suppress him by force? Or are you merely, contrary to what Popper recommends, suppressing all intolerant philosophies?
But, to your point:
> You think that Brendan Eich and people like him would meet you with fists and pistols if you didn’t suppress him by force?
Eich? No. Persecutors of homosexuals? Yes. Homosexuals have been thrown in prison, tarred and feathered, and subjected to physical and psychological torture masked as "medicine" in the past. I would not be surprised to learn of a weaponized gay uprising somewhere like Utah, particularly in the last century or two. It was literally war for survival for them. Still is, in parts of the world and even parts of America. The stories I could pass on to you, and you can easily find on your own, stretch straight into 2019.
Eich was a member of this persecution class, even if he would be one saying "guys guys, we shouldn't HURT them for their gayness, even though their gayness is bad! Now here's another 1000$, feel free to spend it on tar."
> Or are you merely, contrary to what Popper recommends, suppressing all intolerant philosophies?
There's ambiguity here, around what "suppress" means, "suppress the utterance," "keep them in check," etc. Anyway, Popper's word isn't law, and he himself contributes to this ambiguity:
> We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
To me, Mozilla is perfectly justified saying "we do not tolerate the intolerant, please leave our organization." Nobody at Mozilla (that I remember) was saying "put a ball gag on that man, he should not even be allowed to speak." The argument was "Mozilla doesn't tolerate this. By having him at the organization, we appear to tolerate it. We implicitly tolerate it. We pay him a salary and some of that money he spends on oppressing gays. He must go."
Ironically, one of the interesting observations about Prop 8 was that it revealed a division in the so-called “Obama coalition” because many Californians who voted “yes” were culturally conservative people of color—people who vote Democrat on the federal level because of the Southern Strategy and other Republican appeals to white nationalism, but don’t share the values of white progressives. If support for Prop 8 was truly and consistently treated as a firing offense, the net effect would be very similar to outright racial discrimination.
But fine, if that’s not enough for you, in 2009 there was a boycott of Whole Foods because their libertarian CEO wrote an op-ed in opposition to Obamacare. The motivation for these things isn’t some refined Popper-inspired theory of tolerance, it’s just old-fashioned intolerance of the most conservative 50% of the population.
But the ballot Eich voted for passed, and the homosexuals weren't met with fists in pistols in California afterwards (at least not any more than everyone else). Thus, in the Karl Popper's original view of the paradox of tolerance, he'd argue that we shouldn't suppress the intolerant ideology of the people who voted for that ballot, especially as we could successfully counter their intolerant ideology with rational arguments, right?
Look, for me, your ideology of suppressing all ideologies you deem intolerant, regardless of the actual actions of the followers, is very much intolerant, in the original sense of Popper: "it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols". We're already at the "fists or pistols" stage, with mainstream media praising the milkshaking and excusing the Berkeley rioters. Please, ask yourself, are you completely sure you're not one of the baddies?
No. It is not possible to convince someone that doesn't want homosexuals to have the same rights have other humans, that they should have the same rights, with "rational argument." First-hand experience. Sometimes introducing them to confident gays who are proud of their personhood works, though that could just result in an attempt to "save" the homosexual from their sinful actions. Another way is peer pressure via zeitgeist, which is happening now.
> But the ballot Eich voted for passed, and the homosexuals weren't met with fists in pistols in California afterwards (at least not any more than everyone else)
Systemic implementation of dehumanizing laws results in a cultural approval of acts of violence. If tomorrow the state of California said to you "your race (whatever it may be) can no longer marry," how would that feel? It'd feel like fists and pistols time to me. Sometimes that happens, and we get black panthers. What else is someone to do when they are treated as sub humans? Kowtow? "Please, oppressors, hear my rational pleas. I don't mean to be intolerant of your viewpoint, but I argue that I am human."
>We're already at the "fists or pistols" stage, with mainstream media praising the milkshaking and excusing the Berkeley rioters.
I don't speak for the mainstream media. I blame them for the rampant gun violence and uptick in suicide in this country, for what it's worth. At the same time, there are good investigative outlets exposing the hypocrisy and crimes of oppressive government officials. Like all human institution, it's imperfect.
> Please, ask yourself, are you completely sure you're not one of the baddies?
I ask myself this nearly every day. So far the answer is still "no." Pretty easy to say so: I don't do things that support intolerance (insofar as intolerance of intolerance doesn't count as intolerance in my value system, which is the direct representation of my view on this discussion).
Depending on what you mean by "rational argument", this is extremely wrong. All known expansions of our moral circle to encompass other humans and even other sorts of sentient beings, going as far back as Stoic philosophy in antiquity, have occurred precisely via (more or less overtly stated) moral/ethical arguments of this sort. Even OP's blogpost is itself such an argument!
There are people that your basic contention applies to - people you can't convince via such a 'rational' appeal to morals; consider the Christchurch killer, whom I just discussed in another comment in this HN-thread. And if hate content turns out to systematically, with relatively-high probability, offer up pretexts that such individuals can trivially use to justify, publicize, glorify etc. their murderous acts, that's definitely something which should be of grave concern to us; and a meaningful, perhaps even a decisive challenge to the usual arguments for maximalist free speech. But that's a very different argument indeed to the one you are actually making here!
"Hacker" "News" nods along, agreeing with Scott's view that the world is basically fine as it is and there's no point in doing anything to change it[1]. This of course has nothing to do with the fact that they are mostly highly-payed white guys getting a great deal out of the current system.
Scott includes an epilogue in which he realizes that his argument is self-refuting. Unfortunately, he misses the part where this generalizes to his entire political philosophy.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/28/ssc-endorses-clinton-j...
If you're going to believe in something awesome that you don't fully understand then believing in the one that gives you vaccines, self-driving cars and Xboxes seems like a good choice.
Similarly, if you're going to irrationally hate another group then irrationally hating the people who irrationally hate other people seems like a much better choice than the alternative (possibly even a rational one), since those people are almost certainly causing you direct personal harm by voting for psychopaths and generally holding back progress across a million different areas, even if they don't specifically hate you irrationally, just most of your friends and possibly your children (but probably you as well if you don't join in with the irrational hate).
When I follow the news recently I wonder about the pure-blooded Aryan Germans in the Nazi era who weren't complete idiots or psychopaths and how they felt as their country was flushed down the toilet of history by the others in their own "in group". They weren't directly targetted for who they were but I'm sure that was little comfort as they bled to death in Frozen Russia or had firebombs dropped on them by the British.
(Edit: I also recently discovered the author thinks recycling is a conspiracy, which I guess moved him out of my in group as I now am far less charitable in how I read some of his stuff)
Specifically section 5. I wouldn't characterize the author's view as "recycling is a conspiracy", though. More like "we're not going to be up to our necks in garbage anytime soon, like we thought we were in the 80's" which the author mentions has affected the priority society has given to recycling as a whole. If indeed this is what they were referring to.
The first line of the first article says "recycling could be America's most wasteful activity." Remember this is the source he's using to bust a myth and poke fun at people who believed it as being ridiculous.
The other is introduced with this spectacularly factually incorrect summary by SlateStarCodex:
"Recycling remained inefficient and of dubious benefit, and never really caught on".
I don't always agree with what he says but I've always thought he'd done some research before coming to a conclusion. This revealed a blind spot where he was so sure of something that he could mention this in the middle of an article about crazy things people believe about the environment and not even notice the dissonance.
It doesn't help that the articles themselves are almost the antithesis of what I like about slate star codec ("smug, rich people like doing it" and "what we teach preschoolers about this isn't totally correct" are not what I consider a solid economic argument against something).
This totally shattered the SlateStarCodex brand for me, just as if he'd casually linked to a flat earth believer or climate change denier as if everyone knew what they were saying was true.(He had actually linked to climate change deniers in the same piece but I had assumed at that point he was being ironic).
edit: just in case anyone is wandering in from whatever "gray tribe" bubble SlateStarCodex picked up this nonsense from, here's an overview of the recycling conspiracy's talking points. I know it looks like a through review of the academic literature analysing the topic but that's just what they want you to think:
http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Environmental_benefi...
"This report reinforces the key conclusion of the first report that recycling of paper/cardboard, plastics and biopolymers for most indicators assessed provides more environmental benefits than other waste management options. For wood and textiles, more studies are needed to be able to make firmer conclusions regarding the environmental benefits of recycling for these materials.
It is disappointing to note that there are very few LCAs which include an assessment of more innovative technologies such as gasification, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion. This probably reflects the requirement for a lot of process data to model a particular option, which can be sparse in the case of the newer technologies. However, the results of the few selected studies that included anaerobic digestion and pyrolysis are very encouraging.
There needs to be a stronger evidence base on certain materials (textiles, biopolymers and wood) and the more innovative EfW technologies. LCA studies need to focus on a larger set of indicators rather than only on climate change potential or energy demand. There are also LCA methodological issues that need clarification, such as the treatment of biogenic carbon and the time period considered for landfill impacts; greater clarity on these matters will help in the comparison of waste management options."
Wait, are you saying this paper you linked and the part you quoted is made by proponents of the idea that recycling is a conspiracy? It looks rather pro-recycling to me... The first sentence you quoted states outright: "recycling of paper/cardboard, plastics and biopolymers for most indicators assessed provides more environmental benefits than other waste management options". I didn't read the whole thing though.
The link is to a very long and boring PDF that summarises the various pros and cons of different waste management approaches based on hundreds of Life Cycle Analyses. Overall recycling is often the best choice and landfill invariably the worst.
It doesn't really mesh with the worldview presented by the linked article(s) where it would appear to be claimed that the only ones to ever take a calm, logical view of the matter were professionally contrarian journalists, who concluded it was all worse than doing nothing 20 years ago and still believe that today.