21 ms·

The Toxoplasma of Rage (2014)

267 points by apsec112 6y ago

peteretep 6y ago
This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles
- maxcan 6y ago
  That comment pretty much universally applies to every piece he’s written.
- duncan_bayne 6y ago
  In what way? It's not like it's that long to start with.
- sundarurfriend 6y ago
  Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles. Which is fair, your preferences are yours, but I much prefer single expansive essays like this that give the author room to develop large complex idea structures, and to reach out from the central idea to disparate but interestingly relevant related themes. This might not (or might) be the majority preference, but Scott (and the 'Wait but Why' guy, among others) has built up large enough audiences from this type of musings, and mostly good quality audience too, so it's working for him.
  - EvanAnderson 6y ago
    Your second paragraph is diplomatic and even-handed. I can get behind it. Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way. Of course the OP was expressing their opinion. They weren't making a statement of fact. What good comes from "correcting" them? It just makes you look bad.
    - sillysaurusx 6y ago
      Correction: They were making a statement of fact. :) It helps not to take the comments too seriously. It doesn't sound like they meant anything by it.
      - EvanAnderson 6y ago
        The "correction" in the prior post struck me as impolite, pedantic, and uncivil. It didn't read as "jokey" to me. Arguably, my posts don't add anything too. I guess I'm just tired of having to adopt such a "highly defensive" writing style for HN comments. It irked me to see somebody seemingly pedantically jumping on a poster who was clearly expressing an opinion but wasn't "defensive" enough in their post to clearly state their post was an opinion. That's what I took it for.
        mistermann 6y ago
        > ...who was clearly expressing an opinion but wasn't "defensive" enough in their post to clearly state their post was an opinion. You are giving OP the benefit of the doubt, which is a nice thing to do, but what if it isn't actually true? One isolated case is no big deal of course, but what if this (people accidentally mistaking opinions for facts) was actually a very common phenomenon? And when combined with the power of the internet to propagate ideas (opinions perceived as facts), brought about a scenario where people's beliefs about reality are highly divergent from actual reality...in a complex system, might this possibly result in a kind of self-reinforcing negative feedback loop? If one looked carefully, I wonder if some signs of this phenomenon could be identified within the system we find ourselves living in.
    - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
      If you want to make unambiguous statements of opinion, don't use language that implies statements of facts. See also: E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
      - EvanAnderson 6y ago
        I don't understand how this follows. The OP's comment was: > This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles I can't understand how one could read this as an implication of fact. The phrase "great article" is a qualitative assessment. So is "better". It wasn't necessary for the parent to "correct" the poster for not qualifying that their comment as opinion. It's clear the comment is opinion on its face. "Correcting" the poster for not couching their comment in some kind of explicit language that qualifies it as an opinion seems needless at best, and pedantic, rude, and patronizing at worst. I absolutely hate that I'm so fixated on this, but I can't let it go.
    - yboris 6y ago
      I think the phrase "it’d be much better as five much smaller articles" can be interpreted in two ways: 1) "I would prefer ..." 2) "It would be better ..." You can be in the habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt, that when they say "A is a better coffee than B" they are merely expressing an opinion, because you think it's too tedious to say "For my taste" before each opinion. But I hope you see how the phrase literally is "It would be better" as if there is an (obvious implicit) standard by which we can all agree to judge things, and from that standard, "it would be better if".
    - sundarurfriend 6y ago
      > Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way. For what it's worth, I was avoiding the "FTFY" format which always sounds aggressive and rubs me the wrong way, so I chose this as the milder option. I can see it being impolite by the standard that (I hope) HN comments should aspire to, so I'll use something even milder next time. Thanks.
      - dllthomas 6y ago
        Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..." In general, I think it makes sense to avoid implying that the other person is wrong when you've decided to try addressing in a strict logical way something that was uttered as conversational English.
        tomcatfish 6y ago
        peteretep: > This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles sundarurfriend: > Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles. dllthomas: > Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..." You seem to have struck a loop, you are asking that the correction "Correction: That should say it's your opinion" should be "In my opinion, you should say it's your opinion". Your issue is that they claimed objectivity when they called the poster subjective, which seems like an endless rabbithole to go down, since it is only your subjective opinion that they should do so.
        dllthomas 6y ago
        You present my comment as criticism, but you left out important context. I did not respond directly to "Correction:" but to a comment by sundarurfriend that seemed to be acknowledging that "correction" did not play the desired conversational role, even as it represented an attempt to be less confrontational than "FTFY". My comment was friendly suggestion of alternatives, along with some measure of analysis as to what went wrong. The issue I was pointing to was not subjectivity vs objectivity at all. I was pointing out that the way language is used often doesn't square up neatly to a narrow semantic analysis, and that acknowledging the intent of the communication even when you are moving to a more explicit, semantically-oriented regime might help sundarurfriend achieve more of the kind of conversational outcomes that I understand them to prefer.
causality0 6y ago
I liked this. It serves as a useful followup to and expansion to the CGP Grey video "This Video Will Make You Angry" which explored the phenomena of how groups talk about events and each other. In short, people tend to self-segregate into opposing groups that don't talk to each other. Instead, they talk amongst themselves about how horrible the other group is.
- Tenoke 6y ago
  As far as I could tell at the time "This Video Will Make You Angry" was more or less based on "The Toxoplasma of Rage" but in less detail.
- teddyh 6y ago
  See also: You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you by The Oatmeal: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
  - Loughla 6y ago
    I always get so depressed when I see things like this. I know they're true. I also know there is a concerted effort to influence the things i see/think. How am I going to be able to sort through the noise to find the signal? Is there even a point? What is the purpose of even trying? Why not just step into traffic?
    - causality0 6y ago
      The signal can even be diluted by well-meaning people. For example, Washington did have a set of teeth that included those of slaves. However, his financial records include the purchase of teeth from "Negros" for the purpose, which at the very least indicates he didn't have someone hold his own slaves down and rip teeth out of their heads. It doesn't preclude there being an element of racism and abuse in the path those teeth took from their origin to their purchase by Washington, but it does show there may not have been, and that Washington wearing slave teeth is not a mark against him personally. The whole "owning slaves" thing is of course, but that's a separate issue from the dentures.
skybrian 6y ago
A few years later he revisited this theme as fiction: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
ed25519FUUU 6y ago
> Consider the war on terror. They say that every time the United States bombs Pakistan or Afghanistan or somewhere, all we’re doing is radicalizing the young people there and making more terrorists. And it’s true. Reminds me of the onion caption for a picture of a bomb “capable of creating 1,500 new terrorists in single blast.” Going on 20 years of forever war, why is there such strong bipartisan support for keeping Americans embroiled in the Middle East? Are we going to allow Trump to co-opt the anti-war position that’s traditionally been a tent pole for the progressive left? This politicians keep us turned on each other with petty, polarizing subjects while they keep doing what they’ve always done. I’m baffled. I hate it.
- geofft 6y ago
  Trump's position is, very roughly, "We should avoid war because it's bad for the economy." This is a fairly different take than the progressive "We should avoid war because killing innocents is bad" - in particular, once it's good for the economy (which it often is when you're not in a boondoggle), you're back to agreeing with Cheney. I won't deny that there's a meaningful difference between right-populism and neoconservatism, but as long as the progressive left remains true to its "bleeding heart" nature (for lack of a better term) for reasoning, I don't think that it's a problem to temporarily agree with parts of the right wing on conclusions. Be glad for the opportunity for bipartisan agreement, and keep advocating for what you believe instead of against what they believe. (... which goes a bit to the article's point: defining your party's goals as "we disagree with them" is great for attention and voter turnout but not necessarily for doing what's important to your worldview.)
  - Natsu 6y ago
    Funny you say that because recent OCPW leaks have pointed out that the war some were once pushing in Syria over alleged gas attacks was false. It's always amazing how many wars start via a toxoplasma of rage based on false premises.
    - geofft 6y ago
      Sure. I think you'll find that the anti-war left remained anti-war. Just like Trump and Cheney represent pretty different strains of conservatism despite both being on the right, the anti-war left is a different strain of progressivism from Democratic leadership. Again - don't give in to the temptation of "the other side is bad." It's easy, it is often true because humans are bad in general, but it's not usually productive in accomplishing your goals, especially if there's a chance the other side shares those goals. If I had to pick an example of the weak but controversy-raising cases the article brings up (I don't actually find those super convincing, myself, tbh), "WikiLeaks has letters from a couple of scientists internally raising the possibility that a strike that was already fairly controversial may have been even less justified than claimed even though the opponents of the strike are happy to acknowledge that the target of the strike was morally in the wrong, so progressives are hypocrites" seems like exactly the sort of thing he's talking about.
chillacy 6y ago
> A rape that obviously happened? Shove it in people’s face and they’ll admit it’s an outrage, just as they’ll admit factory farming is an outrage. But they’re not going to talk about it much. There are a zillion outrages every day, you’re going to need more than that to draw people out of their shells. I sometimes recall how the civil rights movement got together and amplified the story of Rosa Parks over Claudette Colvin. The optics were much better with Parks: > "They said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott," Colvin says. That I think turned out to be a good move. In the absence of this guiding force I think Colvin would end up debated and talked about more.
- watwut 6y ago
  But also, Rosa Park was frustrated about that decision. She took Colvin into her youth group and forced her to repeat her story at every youth meeting. Intentionally pushing kids toward radicalism. Yes, Colvin had less of chance to withstand massive pressure Parks was in after bus stand. But she wanted them to rally around Colvin already.
- afarrell 6y ago
  But thats because the civil rights movement had a bunch of humans intentionally amplifying the Rosa Parks story to accomplish a particular policy goal. Today Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have machine learning models trained to amplify the amount of attention spent on advertising. Any policy outcome will be a side-effect of that.
  - scruple 6y ago
    > But thats because the civil rights movement had a bunch of humans intentionally amplifying the Rosa Parks story to accomplish a particular policy goal. It's tangentially related to TFA but... The Civil Rights era leaders were very strategic thinkers. MLK, Jr., especially, shortly before his death, was describing very serious, very ruthless strategy to accomplish goals that I do believe would've worked, had they been given the opportunity. I think that we have ruthlessly strategic thinkers (in our politics and political movements) today but I don't believe their goals are to drive policy any longer.
sdrinf 6y ago
| Under Moloch, everyone is irresistibly incentivized to ignore the things that unite us in favor of forever picking at the things that divide us in exactly the way that is most likely to make them more divisive. In social networks the leverage point in eliminating toxoplasma from your life are the bridge people: people who are being rewarded for taking offense in your in-group, and therefore select for the worst possible behavior of the outgroup. These people act as stressors, specifically triggering ideations of worst-case-scenarios. The fix here is removing these people from your feeds/circles of influence. I wrote more of efficient defense systems in the age of attention at https://sdrinf.com/age-of-attention https://sdrinf.com/age-of-attention .
- trabant00 6y ago
  So the solution is to make the bubble impregnable? The medicine sounds worse than the disease to me. Thing is, there are bad ideas spreading out there, and you should learn of their existence less they grow out of control with nobody knowing/caring. Conflict is a regulating tool in human species (and not only for our species). Wishing it away is an utopia that like all others will end up dystopian if put into practice.
  - FeepingCreature 6y ago
    I think the compromise for me is "uninvested bridge people." I want to learn about bad ideas, but I want to learn about them from people who don't themselves care overmuch about outcomes one way or the other. That way I'm at a lesser risk of being radicalized and can choose whether to care and to what degree.
    - DenisM 6y ago
      I think you’re looking for old-school journalism? You might be interested in the list of people who signed “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”, some notable journalists among them: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
  - 6y ago
renewiltord 6y ago
The PETA thing also showcases another couple of behaviours I particularly enjoy watching: * Distributed low-commit morality: tell other people to "do the right thing" without actually doing anything yourself. * Proximity creates responsibility: the best way to avoid having to do anything for anyone is to pretend you didn't see it. The moment PETA admitted they knew what was going on, they had to redirect all their efforts to solving it or they'd get stick It's pretty funny since it's so predictable. You can always do these things and the reaction means that the right time to do it is to seek attention through it.
drtillberg 6y ago
> If there were a secret conspiracy running the liberal media, they could all decide they wanted to raise awareness of racist police brutality, pick the most clear-cut and sympathetic case, and make it non-stop news headlines for the next two months. Then everyone would agree it was indeed very brutal and racist, and something would get done. This has to be the most hilariously and accidentally observational comment in the history of the Internet. Times apparently have changed since 2014. Brilliant article.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- gkoberger 6y ago
  > Imagine Moloch looking out over the expanse of the world, eagle-eyed for anything that can turn brother against brother and husband against wife. Finally he decides “YOU KNOW WHAT NOBODY HATES EACH OTHER ABOUT YET? BIRD-WATCHING. LET ME FIND SOME STORY THAT WILL MAKE PEOPLE HATE EACH OTHER OVER BIRD-WATCHING” Oh, 2020... https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-video-african-american-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-vid...
  - rendall 6y ago
    Knitting... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=knitting%20controversy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=knitting%20controversy Young Adult fiction... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=young%20adult%20literature%20controversy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=young%20adult%20literature%20contr... I wonder if there might be an internet rule: If you can think of it, there are people who hate each other over it
    - api 6y ago
      Look! ^^^ Even these obscure cases just got an iota of precious attention! Do people who don't hate each other over things get attention?
    - EamonnMR 6y ago
      Reddit's Hobby Drama community collects these. https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/enw2kd/running_dentist_who_won_west_wyoming_marathon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/enw2kd/running_... https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hj9zt5/tropical_aquariums_arowana_the_fish_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hj9zt5/tropical... https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/a03n68/tamagotchiyes_a_tamagotchi_fandom_exists_and_we/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/a03n68/tamagotc....
trabant00 6y ago
Great article, but please don't jump to solutions from the problems presented. Any such solution will only make things worse. These are the downsides of rage. But rage is an useful tool. It's sometimes misused, but which one isn't? Tribalism is the same. Philosophy like this article is great at asking questions. Answers are not inside of one man but in the conflict of many.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  One should also watch out of accepting these tools just for use within our in-group and condemning them in the out groups. "they are not like us, when we use rage we do it for a good reason"
l0b0 6y ago
Yes. This I can wholeheartedly agree with. Which makes me sad, because it means social and news media usually works against fixing the issues which most of us agree should be fixed. Instead they focus only on the things which keep us all discussing, forever, how evil some tiny minority is. We've DDOSed our ability to get things done. On a tangential note, an important skill in this environment is simply ignoring people who want you to be angry rather than constructive. "X did Y! Bloody murder!" → Ignored. "How to ensure Y never happens again" → Let's hear it.
thinkingemote 6y ago
>If you want to signal how strongly you believe in taking victims seriously, you talk about it in the context of the least credible case you can find. I think there's another angle to picking the least credible case in that it requires more psychological investment. Those who join the group are stronger and have expended more psychological effort. Because the cases that are chosen to fight about are ambiguous, to fight about them requires a form of committent and faith. Any doubts about the case and validity of the morality or faith would cause a painful admission of the amount that was psychologically invested in it. The strength of your belief is signalled but the strength also deepens your involvement in it.
- DenisM 6y ago
  Consider also that cognitive dissonance under peer pressure can produce stronger result than peer pressure alone.
api 6y ago
Someone needs to create a meme that will simultaneously offend everyone of every conceivable belief system or political persuasion. It would be the 2020 version of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI Seems tough... maybe it's a job for deep learning?
draw_down 6y ago
When you’re mad about something you’re raging. When I’m mad about something it’s righteous indignation.
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
>> Studies sometimes claim that only 2 to 8 percent of rape allegations are false. Yet the rate for allegations that go ultra-viral in the media must be an order of magnitude higher than this. Which implies that publicising a rape allegation makes it difficult to prosecute it successfully. The article suggests instead that feminist activists specifically select false allegations for publicity, which seems to assume that feminist activists possess some kind of ability to identify false allegations before they are prosecuted, or, indeed, to predict the outcome of a rape case with high accuracy. This is a very strong assumption and is the first thing that should be tested for consistency. A simpler explanation is that rape allegations are more likely to lead to a failed prosecution, than they are likely to be false. If that was the case, we should expect to also observe a higher rate of failed prosecutions in general (i.e. regardless of publicity) than the rate of false rape allegations. Though I can't find much relevant data for the United States (there is more for the UK) some sources suggest that such an effect can indeed be observed: According to FBI statistics, out of 127,258 rapes reported to police departments in 2018, 33.4 percent resulted in an arrest.[13] Based on correlating multiple data sources, RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) estimates[30] that for every 1,000 rapes, 384 are reported to police, 57 result in an arrest, 11 are referred for prosecution, 7 result in a felony conviction, and 6 result in incarceration. This compares to a higher rate at every stage for similar crimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Prosecution_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Pros... In other words, while 2-8% of rape allegations are false (according to the article), about 0.7% of rape allegations are successfully prosecuted. Such low rate of successful prosecutions would easily account for a high rate of publicised cases failing without the need of a specialised rape prosecution outcome prediction organ in feminist activists.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  It takes two sides to make a war. I think the idea in the article is that one group reacts to the other group which forms a doubling down. Dodging difficult questions is a skill most politicians seem to possess, in comparison. So in the feminist example it's not that the feminists publicize a certain ambiguous case, it's that they double down when criticized by the out group. This strengthens the in group and amplifies the message. Another issue is "what is publicity?" . What does it mean? Is getting something in the news or blogs or trending on twitter an aim in itself? How does the publicity machine work? What gets eyeballs, attention, etc? Is activism a form of marketing primarily? Is activism just a capitalist activity selling something? Is there a conflict with activist who want to change things. Is attention activism at odds with the political process, or could it be the primary way most people do politics?
d_e_solomon 6y ago
How does this article apply to SSC's fanbase working up into a lather at the NYT?
- Sebb767 6y ago
  What part of the conflict between SSC and NYT do you disagree with?
  - notadonut 6y ago
    This conflict is complicated and our understanding of it is limited. * We only have SSC's account of the conversation between him and the NYT reporter. * The NYT does not have a history of doxxing people, particularly their home addresses. Revealing that sort of personal information is traditionally what "doxxing" means. * SSC's fans revealed the NYT reporters name and home address. That is to say, the only person doxxed here has been the reporter. So the power dynamics are not as clear cut as SSC made out. * Tucker Carlson has since used his fans to doxx NYT reporters when he objected to them writing a story about him. That is, this has become a right-wing tactic. And that will be unhealthy for a free press. * It's not at all clear that Scott Alexander is anonymous, or that revealing his real last name constitutes doxxing. Scott Alexander are his first and middle names. He blogged under his full real name for many years at LessWrong. He published an SSC post in a Springer book in 2017 under his first and last names.
    - tomcatfish 6y ago
      1. I do not think this counts as a rebuttal or a reason to distrust either side 2. Scott never claimed that his home address would be published, and implying he did just to disprove it likely would be considered strawmanning 3. I think this is the real point that should be used here, and credit should be given to it. That said, the people who did this are not Scott, so I think he should not be blamed anymore than J.D. Salinger should be blamed for an assassin carrying _The Catcher in the Rye_ 4. This seems to be entirely irrelevant to SSC-vs-NYT at all, I cannot see how this weighs on them 5. He has made a clear effort, but he isn't running a darknet market, so there will be holes. As a fan, I have only ever seen his name on a website that is over a decade old and I cannot find this book for sale. That said, I'd be willing to concede that he failed N years ago if you can find that the book and link me to it.
stevespang 6y ago
The title is clickbait.
tenuousemphasis 6y ago
Interestingly, outrage has two definitions: 1. injury or insult, 2. the anger and resentment aroused by injury or insult.
commandlinefan 6y ago
It's such a shame that he stopped writing about culture - he was really the only one I've ever read who could.
shadowgovt 6y ago
This is a good article. The only criticism I have is that regarding rape and racism cases, the author misses another explanation as to why the cases that go public never seem to be cut and dry... It's possible the author is inverting cause and effect there. As a case goes public, investigative journalist dig, because that is their job. Hypothesis: most people involved in a criminal event have something in their past that can be cast in a negative light. This is not a statement of causality---I am not saying that they are involved in a criminal event because of things they did in the past---merely of correlation. But if that hypothesis is true, it could explain why the publicized cases don't tend to be cut and dry... They were more cut and dry before investigative journalists started tearing apart the history of all parties involved.
- jmcqk6 6y ago
  > most people ~involved in a criminal event~ have something in their past that can be cast in a negative light Fixed it for you. If you are looking to condemn someone, it's not difficult to do.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    I don't actually know that's true, and I don't think we have numbers to test that hypothesis. But I also don't know it's false.
im3w1l 6y ago
I kinda disagree with him. Bringing up borderline cases is not just about signalling. It's also how important precedents are set.
guhcampos 6y ago
Damn, thanks for this. Absolutely genious.
stjo 6y ago
I feel like I don't understand the essay fully. Take for example George Floyd's case - I'm under the impression that it falls under the category of a "clear cut" case, doesn't it? I'm not American, so maybe my assumption is simply incorrect. But if it is indeed "clear cut", then why did it get so much traction? Following the author's reasoning, it should've sizzled out quickly, without much discussion. Is my recollection of the events wrong, or is there an error in the essay?
- skybrian 6y ago
  The essay was written six years ago, and yeah, it doesn't work for explaining why the George Floyd case resulted in widespread protests.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  The George Floyd case is the straw that broke the camel's back. The thing everybody was talking about was not the fact he was murdered – it was the rioting, the looters. The controversy. The conclusion of this comment was intended to be “so the article's not wrong, it just isn't covering every case” – but this actually turned out not to be the counterexample I thought it was. I heard about his murder before the riots, yes. But it was just “oh, look, another guy murdered by the police in the US, now what's going on with that x86 operating system?”. It wasn't on the news until there were protests, and wasn't really international news (except BBC and the like) until there was rioting.
- war1025 6y ago
  The thing that was controversial about George Floyd's death wasn't how he died. It was whether people should be out protesting during a pandemic. When the government had forbidden every other form of public gathering for months, and suddenly seemed to make an exception for these protests, that was the wedge issue.
- zeveb 6y ago
  The Floyd case happened after months of people being locked in their homes, unable to lead active and healthy social lives. While not as bad as solitary confinement, 2020 has been a psychologically grueling year. Floyd's death was the spark that set off a powder keg. Remember, too, that the immediate aftermath was truly widespread horror. Everyone agreed that it was terrible. My recollection is that is the protests against police in general grew harsher, other folks started to accentuate the fact that Floyd was not a perfect man. And then everyone lost control of their collective sanity.
nayuki 6y ago
The part about memes and the self-reinforcing cycle of anger reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc "CGP Grey: This Video Will Make You Angry"
it 6y ago
It is not necessarily the case that Floyd died from a knee on his neck. His official autopsy (not the "independent" one paid for by his family) shows that he had a potentially lethal level of fentanyl in his system (11 ng/mL) in addition to 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine (https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPUNU7uB-1oJ:https://www.hennepin.us/-/media/hennepinus/residents/public-safety/documents/Autopsy_2020-3700_Floyd.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPUNU7...). That combination of drugs is one variant of what's known as a "speedball". It can cause death by respiratory failure. https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/ https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/. The autopsy also says "No life-threatening injuries identified", in particular "No injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngealstructures", so it is unlikely that the death was caused by Derek Chauvin putting his knee on Floyd's neck. There is also the problem of motivation. What possible reason could Derek Chauvin have to murder George Floyd? Surely he understood that doing such a thing could cost him his job, risk imprisonment, and make it very hard for him to find employment. Much more likely is that he believed the hold he used was nonlethal, and, given what we know from the Hennepin County autopsy, that it actually was nonlethal.
- a_t48 6y ago
  Even if this were the case - is it appropriate for the officer to not administer medical care for someone dying underneath his knee?
  - it 6y ago
    Fair question. I think Chauvin knew he wasn't restraining airflow with his knee, and probably assumed Floyd was lying to get out of it.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  > Surely he understood that doing such a thing could cost him his job, risk imprisonment, and make it very hard for him to find employment. Citation needed. Most similar cases show that this is not true. Indeed, that's the whole point of Black Lives Matter. When this happens the police officer responsible is rarely held accountable. Edit: This is especially the case for Derek Chauvin, because he had experienced numerous complaints against him in the past and the consequences amounted to nothing at all. https://nypost.com/2020/05/28/cop-in-george-floyds-death-was-the-subject-of-10-complaints/ https://nypost.com/2020/05/28/cop-in-george-floyds-death-was...
dllthomas 6y ago
> From the memetic point of view, they’re as complementary as caterpillars and butterflies. Instead of judging, we just note that somehow we accidentally created a replicator, and replicators are going to replicate until something makes them stop. Caterpillar DNA is butterfly DNA. Toxoplasma DNA in the cat is toxoplasma DNA in the rat. While there's poetry to saying the hatred is a single life form regardless of where it lives, I think it's a more accurate model to say there are two symbiotic replicators, whose impact on the environment (mostly) makes it more hospitable for the other. Bombs, however directed, contain only a tiny portion of the information content making up the meme.
skrebbel 6y ago
This must also be why antivaxxers are so widespread. Does it mean nothing can be done about it?
trhway 6y ago
>there aren’t any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists to be found. so not true. ALEC with their AETA and other related laws immediately comes to mind - and they are just a spearhead of the pro-factory-farming forces.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  But they are the opposite of “grassroots”.
natch 6y ago
TL; did read, and it was worth it, but for those who find it too long the takeaway was captured by this quote: "It’s in activists’ interests to destroy their own causes by focusing on the most controversial cases and principles, the ones that muddy the waters and make people oppose them out of spite. And it’s in the media’s interest to help them and egg them on."

267 points by apsec112 6y ago

peteretep 6y ago

This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles

maxcan 6y ago
That comment pretty much universally applies to every piece he’s written.
duncan_bayne 6y ago
In what way? It's not like it's that long to start with.
sundarurfriend 6y ago
Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles. Which is fair, your preferences are yours, but I much prefer single expansive essays like this that give the author room to develop large complex idea structures, and to reach out from the central idea to disparate but interestingly relevant related themes. This might not (or might) be the majority preference, but Scott (and the 'Wait but Why' guy, among others) has built up large enough audiences from this type of musings, and mostly good quality audience too, so it's working for him.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  Your second paragraph is diplomatic and even-handed. I can get behind it. Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way. Of course the OP was expressing their opinion. They weren't making a statement of fact. What good comes from "correcting" them? It just makes you look bad.
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    Correction: They were making a statement of fact. :) It helps not to take the comments too seriously. It doesn't sound like they meant anything by it.
    - EvanAnderson 6y ago
      The "correction" in the prior post struck me as impolite, pedantic, and uncivil. It didn't read as "jokey" to me. Arguably, my posts don't add anything too. I guess I'm just tired of having to adopt such a "highly defensive" writing style for HN comments. It irked me to see somebody seemingly pedantically jumping on a poster who was clearly expressing an opinion but wasn't "defensive" enough in their post to clearly state their post was an opinion. That's what I took it for.
      - mistermann 6y ago
        > ...who was clearly expressing an opinion but wasn't "defensive" enough in their post to clearly state their post was an opinion. You are giving OP the benefit of the doubt, which is a nice thing to do, but what if it isn't actually true? One isolated case is no big deal of course, but what if this (people accidentally mistaking opinions for facts) was actually a very common phenomenon? And when combined with the power of the internet to propagate ideas (opinions perceived as facts), brought about a scenario where people's beliefs about reality are highly divergent from actual reality...in a complex system, might this possibly result in a kind of self-reinforcing negative feedback loop? If one looked carefully, I wonder if some signs of this phenomenon could be identified within the system we find ourselves living in.
  - tenuousemphasis 6y ago
    If you want to make unambiguous statements of opinion, don't use language that implies statements of facts. See also: E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
    - EvanAnderson 6y ago
      I don't understand how this follows. The OP's comment was: > This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles I can't understand how one could read this as an implication of fact. The phrase "great article" is a qualitative assessment. So is "better". It wasn't necessary for the parent to "correct" the poster for not qualifying that their comment as opinion. It's clear the comment is opinion on its face. "Correcting" the poster for not couching their comment in some kind of explicit language that qualifies it as an opinion seems needless at best, and pedantic, rude, and patronizing at worst. I absolutely hate that I'm so fixated on this, but I can't let it go.
  - yboris 6y ago
    I think the phrase "it’d be much better as five much smaller articles" can be interpreted in two ways: 1) "I would prefer ..." 2) "It would be better ..." You can be in the habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt, that when they say "A is a better coffee than B" they are merely expressing an opinion, because you think it's too tedious to say "For my taste" before each opinion. But I hope you see how the phrase literally is "It would be better" as if there is an (obvious implicit) standard by which we can all agree to judge things, and from that standard, "it would be better if".
  - sundarurfriend 6y ago
    > Your "Correction" rubs me the wrong way. For what it's worth, I was avoiding the "FTFY" format which always sounds aggressive and rubs me the wrong way, so I chose this as the milder option. I can see it being impolite by the standard that (I hope) HN comments should aspire to, so I'll use something even milder next time. Thanks.
    - dllthomas 6y ago
      Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..." In general, I think it makes sense to avoid implying that the other person is wrong when you've decided to try addressing in a strict logical way something that was uttered as conversational English.
      - tomcatfish 6y ago
        peteretep: > This is a great article, but it’d be much better as five much smaller articles sundarurfriend: > Correction: you would prefer it much more as five much smaller articles. dllthomas: > Maybe "I'd rather phrase that..." or "More precisely..." You seem to have struck a loop, you are asking that the correction "Correction: That should say it's your opinion" should be "In my opinion, you should say it's your opinion". Your issue is that they claimed objectivity when they called the poster subjective, which seems like an endless rabbithole to go down, since it is only your subjective opinion that they should do so.
        dllthomas 6y ago
        You present my comment as criticism, but you left out important context. I did not respond directly to "Correction:" but to a comment by sundarurfriend that seemed to be acknowledging that "correction" did not play the desired conversational role, even as it represented an attempt to be less confrontational than "FTFY". My comment was friendly suggestion of alternatives, along with some measure of analysis as to what went wrong. The issue I was pointing to was not subjectivity vs objectivity at all. I was pointing out that the way language is used often doesn't square up neatly to a narrow semantic analysis, and that acknowledging the intent of the communication even when you are moving to a more explicit, semantically-oriented regime might help sundarurfriend achieve more of the kind of conversational outcomes that I understand them to prefer.

causality0 6y ago

I liked this. It serves as a useful followup to and expansion to the CGP Grey video "This Video Will Make You Angry" which explored the phenomena of how groups talk about events and each other. In short, people tend to self-segregate into opposing groups that don't talk to each other. Instead, they talk amongst themselves about how horrible the other group is.

Tenoke 6y ago
As far as I could tell at the time "This Video Will Make You Angry" was more or less based on "The Toxoplasma of Rage" but in less detail.
teddyh 6y ago
See also: You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you by The Oatmeal: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
- Loughla 6y ago
  I always get so depressed when I see things like this. I know they're true. I also know there is a concerted effort to influence the things i see/think. How am I going to be able to sort through the noise to find the signal? Is there even a point? What is the purpose of even trying? Why not just step into traffic?
  - causality0 6y ago
    The signal can even be diluted by well-meaning people. For example, Washington did have a set of teeth that included those of slaves. However, his financial records include the purchase of teeth from "Negros" for the purpose, which at the very least indicates he didn't have someone hold his own slaves down and rip teeth out of their heads. It doesn't preclude there being an element of racism and abuse in the path those teeth took from their origin to their purchase by Washington, but it does show there may not have been, and that Washington wearing slave teeth is not a mark against him personally. The whole "owning slaves" thing is of course, but that's a separate issue from the dentures.

skybrian 6y ago

A few years later he revisited this theme as fiction: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

> Consider the war on terror. They say that every time the United States bombs Pakistan or Afghanistan or somewhere, all we’re doing is radicalizing the young people there and making more terrorists. And it’s true. Reminds me of the onion caption for a picture of a bomb “capable of creating 1,500 new terrorists in single blast.” Going on 20 years of forever war, why is there such strong bipartisan support for keeping Americans embroiled in the Middle East? Are we going to allow Trump to co-opt the anti-war position that’s traditionally been a tent pole for the progressive left? This politicians keep us turned on each other with petty, polarizing subjects while they keep doing what they’ve always done. I’m baffled. I hate it.

geofft 6y ago
Trump's position is, very roughly, "We should avoid war because it's bad for the economy." This is a fairly different take than the progressive "We should avoid war because killing innocents is bad" - in particular, once it's good for the economy (which it often is when you're not in a boondoggle), you're back to agreeing with Cheney. I won't deny that there's a meaningful difference between right-populism and neoconservatism, but as long as the progressive left remains true to its "bleeding heart" nature (for lack of a better term) for reasoning, I don't think that it's a problem to temporarily agree with parts of the right wing on conclusions. Be glad for the opportunity for bipartisan agreement, and keep advocating for what you believe instead of against what they believe. (... which goes a bit to the article's point: defining your party's goals as "we disagree with them" is great for attention and voter turnout but not necessarily for doing what's important to your worldview.)
- Natsu 6y ago
  Funny you say that because recent OCPW leaks have pointed out that the war some were once pushing in Syria over alleged gas attacks was false. It's always amazing how many wars start via a toxoplasma of rage based on false premises.
  - geofft 6y ago
    Sure. I think you'll find that the anti-war left remained anti-war. Just like Trump and Cheney represent pretty different strains of conservatism despite both being on the right, the anti-war left is a different strain of progressivism from Democratic leadership. Again - don't give in to the temptation of "the other side is bad." It's easy, it is often true because humans are bad in general, but it's not usually productive in accomplishing your goals, especially if there's a chance the other side shares those goals. If I had to pick an example of the weak but controversy-raising cases the article brings up (I don't actually find those super convincing, myself, tbh), "WikiLeaks has letters from a couple of scientists internally raising the possibility that a strike that was already fairly controversial may have been even less justified than claimed even though the opponents of the strike are happy to acknowledge that the target of the strike was morally in the wrong, so progressives are hypocrites" seems like exactly the sort of thing he's talking about.

chillacy 6y ago

> A rape that obviously happened? Shove it in people’s face and they’ll admit it’s an outrage, just as they’ll admit factory farming is an outrage. But they’re not going to talk about it much. There are a zillion outrages every day, you’re going to need more than that to draw people out of their shells. I sometimes recall how the civil rights movement got together and amplified the story of Rosa Parks over Claudette Colvin. The optics were much better with Parks: > "They said they didn't want to use a pregnant teenager because it would be controversial and the people would talk about the pregnancy more than the boycott," Colvin says. That I think turned out to be a good move. In the absence of this guiding force I think Colvin would end up debated and talked about more.

watwut 6y ago
But also, Rosa Park was frustrated about that decision. She took Colvin into her youth group and forced her to repeat her story at every youth meeting. Intentionally pushing kids toward radicalism. Yes, Colvin had less of chance to withstand massive pressure Parks was in after bus stand. But she wanted them to rally around Colvin already.
afarrell 6y ago
But thats because the civil rights movement had a bunch of humans intentionally amplifying the Rosa Parks story to accomplish a particular policy goal. Today Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have machine learning models trained to amplify the amount of attention spent on advertising. Any policy outcome will be a side-effect of that.
- scruple 6y ago
  > But thats because the civil rights movement had a bunch of humans intentionally amplifying the Rosa Parks story to accomplish a particular policy goal. It's tangentially related to TFA but... The Civil Rights era leaders were very strategic thinkers. MLK, Jr., especially, shortly before his death, was describing very serious, very ruthless strategy to accomplish goals that I do believe would've worked, had they been given the opportunity. I think that we have ruthlessly strategic thinkers (in our politics and political movements) today but I don't believe their goals are to drive policy any longer.

sdrinf 6y ago

| Under Moloch, everyone is irresistibly incentivized to ignore the things that unite us in favor of forever picking at the things that divide us in exactly the way that is most likely to make them more divisive. In social networks the leverage point in eliminating toxoplasma from your life are the bridge people: people who are being rewarded for taking offense in your in-group, and therefore select for the worst possible behavior of the outgroup. These people act as stressors, specifically triggering ideations of worst-case-scenarios. The fix here is removing these people from your feeds/circles of influence. I wrote more of efficient defense systems in the age of attention at https://sdrinf.com/age-of-attention https://sdrinf.com/age-of-attention .

trabant00 6y ago
So the solution is to make the bubble impregnable? The medicine sounds worse than the disease to me. Thing is, there are bad ideas spreading out there, and you should learn of their existence less they grow out of control with nobody knowing/caring. Conflict is a regulating tool in human species (and not only for our species). Wishing it away is an utopia that like all others will end up dystopian if put into practice.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  I think the compromise for me is "uninvested bridge people." I want to learn about bad ideas, but I want to learn about them from people who don't themselves care overmuch about outcomes one way or the other. That way I'm at a lesser risk of being radicalized and can choose whether to care and to what degree.
  - DenisM 6y ago
    I think you’re looking for old-school journalism? You might be interested in the list of people who signed “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”, some notable journalists among them: https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/
- 6y ago

renewiltord 6y ago

The PETA thing also showcases another couple of behaviours I particularly enjoy watching: * Distributed low-commit morality: tell other people to "do the right thing" without actually doing anything yourself. * Proximity creates responsibility: the best way to avoid having to do anything for anyone is to pretend you didn't see it. The moment PETA admitted they knew what was going on, they had to redirect all their efforts to solving it or they'd get stick It's pretty funny since it's so predictable. You can always do these things and the reaction means that the right time to do it is to seek attention through it.

drtillberg 6y ago

> If there were a secret conspiracy running the liberal media, they could all decide they wanted to raise awareness of racist police brutality, pick the most clear-cut and sympathetic case, and make it non-stop news headlines for the next two months. Then everyone would agree it was indeed very brutal and racist, and something would get done. This has to be the most hilariously and accidentally observational comment in the history of the Internet. Times apparently have changed since 2014. Brilliant article.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gkoberger 6y ago
> Imagine Moloch looking out over the expanse of the world, eagle-eyed for anything that can turn brother against brother and husband against wife. Finally he decides “YOU KNOW WHAT NOBODY HATES EACH OTHER ABOUT YET? BIRD-WATCHING. LET ME FIND SOME STORY THAT WILL MAKE PEOPLE HATE EACH OTHER OVER BIRD-WATCHING” Oh, 2020... https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-video-african-american-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/us/central-park-video-dog-vid...
- rendall 6y ago
  Knitting... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=knitting%20controversy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=knitting%20controversy Young Adult fiction... https://duckduckgo.com/?q=young%20adult%20literature%20controversy https://duckduckgo.com/?q=young%20adult%20literature%20contr... I wonder if there might be an internet rule: If you can think of it, there are people who hate each other over it
  - api 6y ago
    Look! ^^^ Even these obscure cases just got an iota of precious attention! Do people who don't hate each other over things get attention?
  - EamonnMR 6y ago
    Reddit's Hobby Drama community collects these. https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/enw2kd/running_dentist_who_won_west_wyoming_marathon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/enw2kd/running_... https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hj9zt5/tropical_aquariums_arowana_the_fish_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/hj9zt5/tropical... https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/a03n68/tamagotchiyes_a_tamagotchi_fandom_exists_and_we/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/a03n68/tamagotc....

trabant00 6y ago

Great article, but please don't jump to solutions from the problems presented. Any such solution will only make things worse. These are the downsides of rage. But rage is an useful tool. It's sometimes misused, but which one isn't? Tribalism is the same. Philosophy like this article is great at asking questions. Answers are not inside of one man but in the conflict of many.

thinkingemote 6y ago
One should also watch out of accepting these tools just for use within our in-group and condemning them in the out groups. "they are not like us, when we use rage we do it for a good reason"

l0b0 6y ago

Yes. This I can wholeheartedly agree with. Which makes me sad, because it means social and news media usually works against fixing the issues which most of us agree should be fixed. Instead they focus only on the things which keep us all discussing, forever, how evil some tiny minority is. We've DDOSed our ability to get things done. On a tangential note, an important skill in this environment is simply ignoring people who want you to be angry rather than constructive. "X did Y! Bloody murder!" → Ignored. "How to ensure Y never happens again" → Let's hear it.

thinkingemote 6y ago

>If you want to signal how strongly you believe in taking victims seriously, you talk about it in the context of the least credible case you can find. I think there's another angle to picking the least credible case in that it requires more psychological investment. Those who join the group are stronger and have expended more psychological effort. Because the cases that are chosen to fight about are ambiguous, to fight about them requires a form of committent and faith. Any doubts about the case and validity of the morality or faith would cause a painful admission of the amount that was psychologically invested in it. The strength of your belief is signalled but the strength also deepens your involvement in it.

DenisM 6y ago
Consider also that cognitive dissonance under peer pressure can produce stronger result than peer pressure alone.

api 6y ago

Someone needs to create a meme that will simultaneously offend everyone of every conceivable belief system or political persuasion. It would be the 2020 version of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBWr1KtnRcI Seems tough... maybe it's a job for deep learning?

draw_down 6y ago

When you’re mad about something you’re raging. When I’m mad about something it’s righteous indignation.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

>> Studies sometimes claim that only 2 to 8 percent of rape allegations are false. Yet the rate for allegations that go ultra-viral in the media must be an order of magnitude higher than this. Which implies that publicising a rape allegation makes it difficult to prosecute it successfully. The article suggests instead that feminist activists specifically select false allegations for publicity, which seems to assume that feminist activists possess some kind of ability to identify false allegations before they are prosecuted, or, indeed, to predict the outcome of a rape case with high accuracy. This is a very strong assumption and is the first thing that should be tested for consistency. A simpler explanation is that rape allegations are more likely to lead to a failed prosecution, than they are likely to be false. If that was the case, we should expect to also observe a higher rate of failed prosecutions in general (i.e. regardless of publicity) than the rate of false rape allegations. Though I can't find much relevant data for the United States (there is more for the UK) some sources suggest that such an effect can indeed be observed: According to FBI statistics, out of 127,258 rapes reported to police departments in 2018, 33.4 percent resulted in an arrest.[13] Based on correlating multiple data sources, RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network) estimates[30] that for every 1,000 rapes, 384 are reported to police, 57 result in an arrest, 11 are referred for prosecution, 7 result in a felony conviction, and 6 result in incarceration. This compares to a higher rate at every stage for similar crimes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Prosecution_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States#Pros... In other words, while 2-8% of rape allegations are false (according to the article), about 0.7% of rape allegations are successfully prosecuted. Such low rate of successful prosecutions would easily account for a high rate of publicised cases failing without the need of a specialised rape prosecution outcome prediction organ in feminist activists.

thinkingemote 6y ago
It takes two sides to make a war. I think the idea in the article is that one group reacts to the other group which forms a doubling down. Dodging difficult questions is a skill most politicians seem to possess, in comparison. So in the feminist example it's not that the feminists publicize a certain ambiguous case, it's that they double down when criticized by the out group. This strengthens the in group and amplifies the message. Another issue is "what is publicity?" . What does it mean? Is getting something in the news or blogs or trending on twitter an aim in itself? How does the publicity machine work? What gets eyeballs, attention, etc? Is activism a form of marketing primarily? Is activism just a capitalist activity selling something? Is there a conflict with activist who want to change things. Is attention activism at odds with the political process, or could it be the primary way most people do politics?

d_e_solomon 6y ago

How does this article apply to SSC's fanbase working up into a lather at the NYT?

Sebb767 6y ago
What part of the conflict between SSC and NYT do you disagree with?
- notadonut 6y ago
  This conflict is complicated and our understanding of it is limited. * We only have SSC's account of the conversation between him and the NYT reporter. * The NYT does not have a history of doxxing people, particularly their home addresses. Revealing that sort of personal information is traditionally what "doxxing" means. * SSC's fans revealed the NYT reporters name and home address. That is to say, the only person doxxed here has been the reporter. So the power dynamics are not as clear cut as SSC made out. * Tucker Carlson has since used his fans to doxx NYT reporters when he objected to them writing a story about him. That is, this has become a right-wing tactic. And that will be unhealthy for a free press. * It's not at all clear that Scott Alexander is anonymous, or that revealing his real last name constitutes doxxing. Scott Alexander are his first and middle names. He blogged under his full real name for many years at LessWrong. He published an SSC post in a Springer book in 2017 under his first and last names.
  - tomcatfish 6y ago
    1. I do not think this counts as a rebuttal or a reason to distrust either side 2. Scott never claimed that his home address would be published, and implying he did just to disprove it likely would be considered strawmanning 3. I think this is the real point that should be used here, and credit should be given to it. That said, the people who did this are not Scott, so I think he should not be blamed anymore than J.D. Salinger should be blamed for an assassin carrying _The Catcher in the Rye_ 4. This seems to be entirely irrelevant to SSC-vs-NYT at all, I cannot see how this weighs on them 5. He has made a clear effort, but he isn't running a darknet market, so there will be holes. As a fan, I have only ever seen his name on a website that is over a decade old and I cannot find this book for sale. That said, I'd be willing to concede that he failed N years ago if you can find that the book and link me to it.

stevespang 6y ago

The title is clickbait.

tenuousemphasis 6y ago

Interestingly, outrage has two definitions: 1. injury or insult, 2. the anger and resentment aroused by injury or insult.

commandlinefan 6y ago

It's such a shame that he stopped writing about culture - he was really the only one I've ever read who could.

shadowgovt 6y ago

This is a good article. The only criticism I have is that regarding rape and racism cases, the author misses another explanation as to why the cases that go public never seem to be cut and dry... It's possible the author is inverting cause and effect there. As a case goes public, investigative journalist dig, because that is their job. Hypothesis: most people involved in a criminal event have something in their past that can be cast in a negative light. This is not a statement of causality---I am not saying that they are involved in a criminal event because of things they did in the past---merely of correlation. But if that hypothesis is true, it could explain why the publicized cases don't tend to be cut and dry... They were more cut and dry before investigative journalists started tearing apart the history of all parties involved.

jmcqk6 6y ago
> most people ~involved in a criminal event~ have something in their past that can be cast in a negative light Fixed it for you. If you are looking to condemn someone, it's not difficult to do.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  I don't actually know that's true, and I don't think we have numbers to test that hypothesis. But I also don't know it's false.

im3w1l 6y ago

I kinda disagree with him. Bringing up borderline cases is not just about signalling. It's also how important precedents are set.

guhcampos 6y ago

Damn, thanks for this. Absolutely genious.

stjo 6y ago

I feel like I don't understand the essay fully. Take for example George Floyd's case - I'm under the impression that it falls under the category of a "clear cut" case, doesn't it? I'm not American, so maybe my assumption is simply incorrect. But if it is indeed "clear cut", then why did it get so much traction? Following the author's reasoning, it should've sizzled out quickly, without much discussion. Is my recollection of the events wrong, or is there an error in the essay?

skybrian 6y ago
The essay was written six years ago, and yeah, it doesn't work for explaining why the George Floyd case resulted in widespread protests.
wizzwizz4 6y ago
The George Floyd case is the straw that broke the camel's back. The thing everybody was talking about was not the fact he was murdered – it was the rioting, the looters. The controversy. The conclusion of this comment was intended to be “so the article's not wrong, it just isn't covering every case” – but this actually turned out not to be the counterexample I thought it was. I heard about his murder before the riots, yes. But it was just “oh, look, another guy murdered by the police in the US, now what's going on with that x86 operating system?”. It wasn't on the news until there were protests, and wasn't really international news (except BBC and the like) until there was rioting.
war1025 6y ago
The thing that was controversial about George Floyd's death wasn't how he died. It was whether people should be out protesting during a pandemic. When the government had forbidden every other form of public gathering for months, and suddenly seemed to make an exception for these protests, that was the wedge issue.
zeveb 6y ago
The Floyd case happened after months of people being locked in their homes, unable to lead active and healthy social lives. While not as bad as solitary confinement, 2020 has been a psychologically grueling year. Floyd's death was the spark that set off a powder keg. Remember, too, that the immediate aftermath was truly widespread horror. Everyone agreed that it was terrible. My recollection is that is the protests against police in general grew harsher, other folks started to accentuate the fact that Floyd was not a perfect man. And then everyone lost control of their collective sanity.

nayuki 6y ago

The part about memes and the self-reinforcing cycle of anger reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc "CGP Grey: This Video Will Make You Angry"

it 6y ago

It is not necessarily the case that Floyd died from a knee on his neck. His official autopsy (not the "independent" one paid for by his family) shows that he had a potentially lethal level of fentanyl in his system (11 ng/mL) in addition to 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine (https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPUNU7uB-1oJ:https://www.hennepin.us/-/media/hennepinus/residents/public-safety/documents/Autopsy_2020-3700_Floyd.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bPUNU7...). That combination of drugs is one variant of what's known as a "speedball". It can cause death by respiratory failure. https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/ https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/heroin/speedball/. The autopsy also says "No life-threatening injuries identified", in particular "No injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngealstructures", so it is unlikely that the death was caused by Derek Chauvin putting his knee on Floyd's neck. There is also the problem of motivation. What possible reason could Derek Chauvin have to murder George Floyd? Surely he understood that doing such a thing could cost him his job, risk imprisonment, and make it very hard for him to find employment. Much more likely is that he believed the hold he used was nonlethal, and, given what we know from the Hennepin County autopsy, that it actually was nonlethal.

a_t48 6y ago
Even if this were the case - is it appropriate for the officer to not administer medical care for someone dying underneath his knee?
- it 6y ago
  Fair question. I think Chauvin knew he wasn't restraining airflow with his knee, and probably assumed Floyd was lying to get out of it.
AlexandrB 6y ago
> Surely he understood that doing such a thing could cost him his job, risk imprisonment, and make it very hard for him to find employment. Citation needed. Most similar cases show that this is not true. Indeed, that's the whole point of Black Lives Matter. When this happens the police officer responsible is rarely held accountable. Edit: This is especially the case for Derek Chauvin, because he had experienced numerous complaints against him in the past and the consequences amounted to nothing at all. https://nypost.com/2020/05/28/cop-in-george-floyds-death-was-the-subject-of-10-complaints/ https://nypost.com/2020/05/28/cop-in-george-floyds-death-was...

dllthomas 6y ago

> From the memetic point of view, they’re as complementary as caterpillars and butterflies. Instead of judging, we just note that somehow we accidentally created a replicator, and replicators are going to replicate until something makes them stop. Caterpillar DNA is butterfly DNA. Toxoplasma DNA in the cat is toxoplasma DNA in the rat. While there's poetry to saying the hatred is a single life form regardless of where it lives, I think it's a more accurate model to say there are two symbiotic replicators, whose impact on the environment (mostly) makes it more hospitable for the other. Bombs, however directed, contain only a tiny portion of the information content making up the meme.

skrebbel 6y ago

This must also be why antivaxxers are so widespread. Does it mean nothing can be done about it?

trhway 6y ago

>there aren’t any radical grassroots pro-factory-farming activists to be found. so not true. ALEC with their AETA and other related laws immediately comes to mind - and they are just a spearhead of the pro-factory-farming forces.

dragonwriter 6y ago
But they are the opposite of “grassroots”.

natch 6y ago

TL; did read, and it was worth it, but for those who find it too long the takeaway was captured by this quote: "It’s in activists’ interests to destroy their own causes by focusing on the most controversial cases and principles, the ones that muddy the waters and make people oppose them out of spite. And it’s in the media’s interest to help them and egg them on."