The thing is we have lots of perfectly good examples of people associating with conservative people with a few noxious views. John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, for example, were well known as family friends of Kanye West but they managed to go years asserting they were personal friends and disagreed with his political views and hoped he would come around. Eventually Kanye went a little overboard and they started distancing themselves further, but pointedly that was Kanye’s fault and not the Teigan-Legend family’s.
It really is not that hard to adopt a “love the sinner, hate the sin” position. But when people adopt this position of hemming-and-hawing any time someone asks “do you really hate the sin though?” it understandably raises some questions. People have blogs where they engage with bad ideas all the time. There’s a style in how they present and engage with the ideas that doesn’t leave much room for doubt.
I also don’t think advocates for “places to debate” these things really understand the purpose of debate. These arguments for scientific racism are well known and understood and mostly debunked by actual well-regarded experts in the associated fields. There is no value in debating bad ideas ad nauseum with randos online. You’re not learning anything from that, you’re just engaged in a sort of rhetorical sparring match. Is society well served by you trading bad faith arguments with strangers? Maybe. At the expense of exposing impressionable spectators to arguments with poor empirical grounding that are nonetheless seductive for taking advantage of common misconception and flattering peoples egos? Not so sure about that.
Not everyone is a rich socialite looking to be viewed well at the finest private dinner parties. In fact, I dare say that anonymous and pseudonymous bloggers are the opposite of that.
Maybe you should go try judging someone with actual responsibility and a real role in public life. You know the Senate will vote to acquit Trump today, right?
These social morays have applied to everyone, everywhere, forever. One does not need to be rich to have social capital.
> You know the Senate will vote to acquit Trump today, right?
This just in: two things can be bad at the same time. Perhaps more than two! Details at 11.
Sexism has also been applied forever, doesn't make it right.
Any claim that any particular social more is eternal or universal is ahistorical. This is the clearest finding of the fields of anthropology and history. Everything about human life varies throughout time and space.
Probably because you aren't in a position of social influence, and/or your friends aren't propagating dangerous ideas? That's all the more reason to skewer those that do and are, precisely because of the platforming effects they have.
“Listen to your culture’s leaders and tastemakers, vigorously punish any heretics” is a terrible algorithm for that. It’s exactly why so many bad ideas have such power for so long.
Part of the idea of presenting bad ideas in such a sympathetic light is to then whack the reader with, “Do you realize what you were just nodding at?” To show that you too are capable of believing terrible things under the right circumstances, to encourage humility and skepticism.
I mean, they tried that approach with Roko's Basilisk... Let's just say it didn't work very well.
Roko's Basilisk is just Pascal's Wager restated for AI.
It falls to the same counterarguments, e.g. what if a superintelligent AI already exists somewhere in the universe and currently doesn't care about you but deigns to punish you for any attempt to create a competitor?
I find that idea pretty gross, to be honest with you.
Also, who says what ideas are dangerous? This is a ridiculously pro status-quo stance to take.
The idea that the "Gray Tribe" is anything but a well-written propaganda effort targeting midwits to keep them supporting the Blue Tribe (and most importantly, to keep the Blue Tribe in power) as the problems mount and the failures become harder and harder to excuse.
I will never understand the pearl clutching that goes on when things like this happen.
As a person you are judged constantly by others, as a public figure this increases exponentially. You are judged on everything: the clothing you wear, the way you speak, and yes, the company you keep. In the age of social media influencing, each of us has a platform built upon the platform we choose. Each of us via that platform can spread influence, be it marketing, ideas, or (dis)information.
If you utilize your platform upon a platform (or just your platform) to spread bad ideas, purported by bad people, it is a perfectly rational reaction by your audience to reclaim the social capital they have given you. This is not wrong. This is not censorship. This is how social networks have worked since long before any of us had a smart phone, or indeed, when the social network was a fire in a cave, we have operated this way.
And reading this summation, yeah that sounds about right. It sounds as if he is embroiled in a social space that is spreading bad ideas. He has denounced one person who was in that social space, but he is still in contact with two others spreading similar ideas. This calls into question the sincerity of his denouncement.
I.e. if you say you're done drinking, and resolve to quit, and refuse to spend time with your alcoholic friend, but still spend time around two others who drink regularly, people would be right to question your sincerity in that resolve.
> If you link to someone who supports X, then you're actually supporting every other person who has ever supported X? Link to a pro-vegan website, you must support every terrible ideology that has had at least one vegetarian supporter?
This impulse to boil this activity into a set of always absurd sounding "rules" is probably comforting to those who would call themselves Rationalist, the sorts who fetishize facts and logic, while usually having a dearth of both in the things they say. But ultimately this isn't hard to understand: If you associate with people known to believe and spread bad things, you will in turn be viewed as possibly endorsing those things.
And all of this comes up against the simple and obvious truth that all someone in this position has to do is speak what so many would like to hear; that they didn't understand what this person was doing, that it isn't what they believe, and to create distance. But they won't. I wonder why?