Sam Harris in podcast ep 207 talks about how people are terrified to talk about current events and this is bad because if discussion breaks down completely, the only path forward is violence

brother, the violence is the *goal*; the norms against discussion are the means

humans are shifty-eyed fuckers. in a group of 100 unrelated humans, if you give 90 of them—any random 90—an opportunity to k*ll the remaining 10 and take their stuff with *no* consequences for the subsequent social order, they'll fucking do it

the problem is "no consequences for social order"

this scenario almost never plays out because (1) unless there's a massive schelling fence, this would set of a slippery slope of perpetual violence, aka very bad consequences for social order…

…and (2) there are norms/laws against inciting violence; you don't wanna be the first person to try organize a violent mob

so to pull this off, you need

(1) a schelling fence, ie. some plausible reason why this will happen exactly once and never again
(2) silent coordination

for example, consider the holocaust

the schelling fence is clear: there is a clearly distinct ethnicity, we have a very specific (hard to vary) story why *that* ethnicity is bad

ie. don't worry that after we're done with them, we'll find another group to k*ll, eg. you

what about coordination?

you don't go "let's do a holocaust, boys" before you're firmly in power. without coordination, every individual, even if they agree, must denounce that proposal, lest they be denounced by others who must denounce them lest *they* be denounced, etc

aside: this meta-norm (punish everyone who refuses to punish a breach of object-level norms OR this meta-norm) is a powerful thing

in conjunction with a norm against attempts to coordinate, it can maintain *any* system, even against the will of the vast majority (or everyone)

important point:

when a person rejects your proposal to extort a minority because it's against the norm (even though it'd be beneficial for their genetic fitness, if they could find a way to evade the norm), they'll *internally experience this as moral outrage* at your proposal

so if you're confused about how easy it is for people to go along with a holocaust: remember that morality is merely a game theoretic equilibrium, not something inherent to us

we are still animals, and we will k*ll and take others' stuff when it's game-theoretically feasible

so back to How to Coordinate a Majority to Commit a Genocide:

you don't try to coordinate in the open before you have power

you dogwhistle, make jokes, probe others' feelings, keep plausible deniability. "look, I'm just saying, the crime statistics…"

a lot like flirting

after you have power, you can fire up the ovens, but you have to maintain that schelling fence:

look, they're not people, *ofc* we would never do such a thing to people!

or: look, they've oppresed us for centuries, this is merely a restoration of justice, we'd never *extort*

more on coordination:

under normal circumstances it's really hard, everyone is doing their own thing, most people are just grillin'

but sometimes circumstances take away people's grills and force them to pay attention, that's an opportunity to coordinate

when people are angry

so let's say you started WW1 and took a massive L and now you're economically wasted

here's an opportunity: hey, it's actually about race! look, the jews, etc

doesn't matter how weak the link is, it doesn't have to be reasonable. it just has to be successful coordination

and it doesn't have to be about killing, either

this is about any form of extortion, any transfer of power or resources

eg. slavery: it was morally ok *because* it was a game-theoretic equilibrium, there was a schelling fence: they look different, they lost a war to us, etc

and again: these things *feel* morally abhorrent to us today *because* we are in a particular normative equilibrium

norms are not hardcoded in our genes

the capacity to do these things (if beneficial to us) is latent in us, waiting for the opportunity of successful coordination

interesting thing:

the coordination to extort doesn't have to start with an egregious lie: "it's the jews' fault", etc

eg. the bolshevik revolution's theoretical justification had a big grain of truth in it: the level of economic injustice at the time was just staggering

so back to today, and to concerns about the breakdown in conversation and about violence

the movement/egregore that has the strongest potential for coordination to extort today, at least in the US, is idpol

just like bolsheviks, idpol starts with legitimate grievances: it is the case that there is systemic oppression, and that the beneficiaries of this system (eg. white, male) will do anything to evade the issue (the instinct to extort if you can get away with it works for everyone)

I don't know that much about the idpol philosophical underpinnings, but there seems to be the notion that everything is about power, and things like logic, reason, language, are just tools we use to lord it over one another

in which case, taking power by force is completely okay

as for schelling fences: interestingly, idpol doesn't seem to have any

in black slavery, there was a clear one, race: if you're white, you have nothing to worry about in supporting the system

similar for any genocide

even the bolsheviks seem to have *started* with a binary of "good" and "bad", it's just that the definition of "bad" got somewhat inflatable over time

in idpol, you already start without a clear good/bad binary. instead, intersectionality: shades of oppression

both the bolsheviks and idpol seem to converge on the same outcome, though:

once there is real power at stake, the sharks smell blood, the categories go out the window, and suddenly a forefather of the revolution Trotsky gets assassinated

here's how that happens:

let's say it's not 100 % clear who the enemies of the revolution are, ie. we've successfully coordinated to extort some clearly delineated groups, but there's possibility we might add more targets and extort more stuff that way

and let's say that you are a person who's status is ambiguous; the egregore might turn its eyes on you in the future

so here's how you save yourself:

you *preemptively* turn the eye of sauron elsewhere; "look, that guy there! he's an enemy because [plausible reason]! get him!"

the [plausible reason] doesn't have to be anything real

it only has to be good enough reason to coordinate the attack, ie. good enough that Alice believes Bob will attack, and she believes that Bob believes that Alice believes that Bob will attack, etc ad infinitum

(holy shit, I ran into the limit of how many tweets you can compose at once

will take this as a sign to take a gym break and finish the thread in the afternoon

I'm about 70–80 % done)

idk that much about the theoretical origins of idpol, about critical theory and related concepts, about the history of how it spread through and out of academia

what I'm most interested is
- the mechanism of how it spreads and radicalizes today
- extrapolating into the future

re: radicalization, cancel culture

above, I described how you save yourself from the wrath of the Eye by preemptively shifting the Eye's attention on someone else. this leads to a race to the bottom, a death spiral of radicalization

I guess it started at some point when some smart cookie wanted to signal their smarts by applying critical analysis to *someone else in the movement*

this is where building an entire field on the question "in what ways is [thing]/[person] racist/sexist/etc.?" backfires horribly

people recognized the sound of the shuffling of power, of an attempted status grab—familiar to all social primates—and took sides

apes, by the way, are amazing at predicting who's about to lose a power struggle and jumping on the winning side

no, that's not precise…

the answer to "which side of the power struggle within the tribe is going to win" is determined mostly by how many people, and with how much status, are on each side

so it's not that people are great at predicting who will win—they're great at *coordinating on* who will win

and so from critical culture you get to cancel culture, and you get a self-perpetuating machine of power struggles: when a preemptive strike grants you an advantage in the coordination process that determines winners and losers, you must preemptively strike or else be striked

why would anyone play this game in the first place?

idk, why would anyone become a nazi? you're young, you're impressionable, your life is not going great. there's a group of people that offers belonging and a path to status

once inside, you get status points for making the group ever more central part of your life; for radicalizing

the more "in" you are, the more radicalized, the better it feels. the more haunted a kid, the stronger the urge to radicalize

soon you lose most other sources of belonging. now it would be *terrible* to lose status in the group

alas,,, you're part of a culture of power struggles and status assassinations

so you're constantly on your toes, constantly full of dread

to anyone who feels animosity towards idpol people, I'd like you to stop and feel compassion; to recognize how absolutely miserable that existence is

you don't know the day nor hour when you'll say something wrong and get shuffled down to hell

now, after a status assassination, you can save your belonging in the group by taking the status hit, by prostrating and groveling

this is akin to an alpha chimp bowing out without a fight when a group of betas challenges him for the alpha position; thus avoiding death

the one thing that can protect you from attacks is being more oppressed than the attacker

more oppressed = higher status in the dominance hierarchy of critical theory/idpol—this again seems to arise from the very philosophical foundations of critical theory

2 corollaries

1) Sam Harris—naive, once again: "the fact that you are offended is not an argument. it doesn't mean that something is wrong." (paraphrasing)

friend, *being offended is a power move*

(most often subconscious! consciously it just feels like the thing is offensive)

being offended is the bugle call for attack

if my offense is plausible (again, doesn't have to be reasonable, just reasonable enough to coordinate: remember the Alice/Bob tweet above), the attack will play out and status territory will be captured

2) oppression olympics

this is probably trivial, but to make it explicit:

the reason why people put as many sexual orientations, gender and racial identities, and mental and physical disabilities in their twitter/tumblr bios is that they shield you from status assassinations

now for the fun part, the stalinist death spiral

(taking a short break again)

oh, wait, before the stalinist death spiral I have to talk about how the anti-discussion norms of idpol arise as a valid response to fascist rhetorical tactics

(oh no things are not simple and one-sided dot jpg)

autistic centrists think that words are just words, harmless little things, why don't you guys want words?

but of course words are not just words, words are a coordination mechanism

(tbh a lot of things are a coordination mechanism) https://twitter.com/mechanicalmonk1/status/1189689945633566720?s=20

when people like Dave Rubin or Sam Harris mention crime statistics, we know that they're not racists; we understand they have other reasons to quote them

and frankly there must be a way to talk about things that have been coopted as a meme by fascists, and I don't know how

but as these meme are propagated, they absolutely have the effect of bolstering and radicalizing latent racists

there is a conveyor belt of content creators that talk about certain things in certain ways and move people to the far right, often oblivious of their role in the belt

I've seen it, I've been there, first person

and so the death spiral:

first, you cancel the actual racists. easy

but you cannot rest on your laurels; the self-perpetuating mechanism of internal status struggles keeps running; people poised to align in a single direction and attack, waiting for a coordination signal

and the fun starts

the moment any proposition is made, where one side of the issue is more in the direction of what the group recognizes as virtue, and the other less so, people will coordinate behind the more "virtuous" side

so let's say Bob proposes that we should listen to the racist and see if he's actually a racist or if it was just a big misunderstanding

you propose that Bob be cancelled, because he wants to give platform to a racist, ergo he must be a racist too

someone else might say: but we don't know that the person *is* a racist, that's the point

again: cancel, racist

whenever this cancellation suceeds, it increases the probability of successful coordination in the future, because coordination is a self-fulfilling prediction

this trust in the success of attacks builds gradually over time

first you only carry out cancellations that will definitely succeed: cancel the person who wants to invite an actual racist for a debate

then you can deploy the attacks against more and more improbable targets

soon, Contrapoints (trans) is getting cancelled because she didn't renounce Buck Angel (also trans) who was cancelled for saying something transphobic

first person to lead the attack gets the group coordinated behind them and gets the status; and so, all out war

what's more terrifying about this than the stalinist purges is that there's no stalin, it's completely self-organizing; there's noone with the power to stop or modulate the system

it's a facet of moloch

what's *less* terrifying about this than the stalinist purges is that these are not actual, physical purges, simply because idpol doesn't hold political power

next up after a short break: how idpol will get political power

(no, actually, I need to go to bed and will continue tomorrow evening. this tweet is a placeholder and will be deleted)

(if I get cancelled for this overnight, I swear to god)

(no, actually, this thread is nice and self-contained as it is, I'm gonna do some other thread about memetic epidemiology and dying on hills some other time)