The Alt-Right Playbook: Never Play Defense

Could we say that biologically/culturally receptive to performed dominance and being dominant has nothing to do with rationally understand the world. I think this is the whole point of the jock/geek binary opposition in culture even though, as all oppositionnal pairs in culture, they are often porquenolosdossed : Some people can perform dominance and do master rationality quite well and some can do neither. Maybe we don't notice it either because they don't fit the cultural mental map or because they are not part of our social milieus (too high or too low status) ? ▶ this video

Alas, it seems that in practice humans are often motivated by something "short, quippy, and wrong" [0] over something with more details like demarcating areas of ambiguity. So the "better" sources have an uphill fight to be influential. [0] ▶ this video

This seems very naive to me. There are enough people yelling "OK Groomer" at me on certain platforms that I know the signal to noise ratio is bad enough that engaging is at best a waste of time and at worst throwing more soundbites than I can debunk or bystanders can dead so I lose the debate (for any bystander) by default. See "Never Play Defense" from the alt-right playbook: ▶ this video And as an aside - HN is not guilt free on this topic too. There's a general tendency for comments to go right past the topic even outside this. For instance, every remote work thread turns into a generalized remote vs onsite debate, without the specifics of the article being weighed in. Even worse, HN also has a tendency to devolve into calling authors of posts deranged (or deranged, but with nicer choice of words) more for their identity and politics rather than the words they wrote, as was the case with Alyssa Rosenzweig's article being posted a few weeks ago. It simply isn't viable to assume good faith for everyone. I often (unwiesely) get into fights with transphobes that I shouldn't, and I had maybe 2 insightful well-reflected discussions over the past 10 years. Sometimes they'll complement me on not fitting their expectation of an "SJW", but then go on to call me a slur anyway. And when I say slur, I am very positive that this is the right classification. Unambiguously.

Isn't it funny how things like this are never written by the boring types? It's always those wild, maverick, enlightened types seeking to describe themselves and, along the way, describe others, but mostly to describe themselves in flattering terms, with just a light veneer of modesty. (The self-assessed MBTI INTJs are just fantastically entertaining at this.) "All great ideas come from us," beams the self-described aggressively-independent-minded, "and if we aren't allowed to champion horrible ideas, why, the world just won't be able to get on without us." There are so many coarse assertions in this argument, without any solid foundations or evidence or even thoughtful observation. Right from the first sentence: > One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggressiveness of their conformism. "Arbitrary" ways. It's spelled "arbitrary". There are a plethora of categorical little boxes that people can try to fit other people into, and some of those have value sometimes, but they often also cause people to see other people as only their boxes. [1] > Imagine a Cartesian coordinate system... Imagine never having seen /r/PoliticalCompassMemes [2]. As gross as it is, this kind of quadrant-categorization isn't new. > There are more passive people than aggressive ones, and far more conventional-minded people than independent-minded ones. So the passively conventional-minded are the largest group, and the aggressively independent-minded the smallest. This is

> All these tools for "taking control of the narrative" will be used by your enemies. The alt-right already takes control of the narrative. ▶ this video Even if this platform ever "took off" enough to be used by bad people, the only thing that would happen is we'd have a level playing field.

I completely disagree. These people are already on openly visible platforms, such as 4chan and 8chan, where the Christchurch terrorist was radicalized. By giving their hate and propaganda exposure on mainstream (social) media, you give them a platform to spread their ideology to more people. You have to realize that these people do not care about the truth, they do not care about debates, all they care about is being heard and seen. Debating them does not work, it only gives them more exposure. link The only way to deal with people who use these sorts of tactics is to deny them the "debate", deny them a platform and deplatform them from whichever platforms they already have. Shut off their access to the people they are trying to radicalize. ▶ this video Obviously this does go somewhat against the "rules" for polite conversation and debate that we've all been taught. But there is no debate to be had with fascists, everything they say and do eventually boils down to "we will kill you". That is not an ideology you can reason with.