This SSC piece has influenced a lot of my thinking. Christopher Hitchens wrote about "the narcissism of small differences," concept as well.
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.
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.