Sorry, I know that this runs the risk of being an exchange of essays, making it hard to respond to each point.
In Toxoplasma of Rage, the part just prior to the reference to the war on terror goes like this:
Toxoplasma is a neat little parasite that is implicated in a couple of human diseases including schizophrenia. Its life cycle goes like this: it starts in a cat. The cat poops it out. The poop and the toxoplasma get in the water supply, where they are consumed by some other animal, often a rat. The toxoplasma morphs into a rat-compatible form and starts reproducing. Once it has strength in numbers, it hijacks the rat’s brain, convincing the rat to hang out conspicuously in areas where cats can eat it. After a cat eats the rat, the toxoplasma morphs back into its cat compatible form and reproduces some more. Finally, it gets pooped back out by the cat, completing the cycle.
[Lion King image] It’s the ciiiiiircle of life!
What would it mean for a meme to have a life cycle as complicated as toxoplasma?
Consider the war on terror.
Now, maybe Scott’s description of Toxoplasma doesn’t evoke the same visceral disgust reaction you might have if you were scooping out the litter box of a cat that you knew was infected with toxoplasma.
But it seems clear that Scott’s conscious intent here was to evoke that feeling. The point is not to use toxoplasma as intellectual scaffolding to explain the cause-and-effect model of violence-begets-violence.
Instead, it was to link the violence-begets-violence model with disgusting imagery. Read that article, and when somebody talks about the War on Terror, if your previous association was with the proud image of soldiers going off to a noble battle with a determined enemy, now it’s with cat shit.
Likewise, read enough “problem with media” articles that selectively reference the silliest media pieces—classic cherry picking on a conceptual level—then slowly but surely, when you think of “media” you think of the worst stuff out there, rather than the average or the best. Is Matt Yglesias looking for the silliest takes that Scott Alexander ever wrote and excoriating them? No, because Scott’s on his team in the blogosphere.
Now, you could certainly interpret that as Yglesias administering a status slap-down to some journalist(s), but if his goal was a status slap-down there are far more effective ways to do that. He could just write an actual hit-piece.
I disagree with this. In fact, his methods are an extremely effective way of administering a status slap-down. If he wrote an actual hit-piece, that’s what his readership would interpret it as: a hit-piece. But when he writes this article, his readership interprets it as a virtuous piece advocating good epistemic standards. It’s a Trojan Horse.
There are non-status/ethics/politics reasons to think about things which have status/ethics/politics implications.
This is true. But what I’m saying is that advocacy of epistemic accuracy as opposed to virtue signaling is in many contexts primarily motivated by status/ethics/politics implications.
And that is fine. There is nothing inherently wrong with an argument about the nature of reality also having status/ethics/politics implications. It’s even fine to pretend, for vague “this makes us think better” reasons, that for the sake of a discussion those status/ethics/politics implications are irrelevant.
But those implications are always present. They’ve just been temporarily pushed to the side for a moment. Often, they come swooping back in, right after the “epistemic discussion” is concluded. That’s the nature of a policy debate.
Sorry, I know that this runs the risk of being an exchange of essays, making it hard to respond to each point.
In Toxoplasma of Rage, the part just prior to the reference to the war on terror goes like this:
Now, maybe Scott’s description of Toxoplasma doesn’t evoke the same visceral disgust reaction you might have if you were scooping out the litter box of a cat that you knew was infected with toxoplasma.
But it seems clear that Scott’s conscious intent here was to evoke that feeling. The point is not to use toxoplasma as intellectual scaffolding to explain the cause-and-effect model of violence-begets-violence.
Instead, it was to link the violence-begets-violence model with disgusting imagery. Read that article, and when somebody talks about the War on Terror, if your previous association was with the proud image of soldiers going off to a noble battle with a determined enemy, now it’s with cat shit.
Likewise, read enough “problem with media” articles that selectively reference the silliest media pieces—classic cherry picking on a conceptual level—then slowly but surely, when you think of “media” you think of the worst stuff out there, rather than the average or the best. Is Matt Yglesias looking for the silliest takes that Scott Alexander ever wrote and excoriating them? No, because Scott’s on his team in the blogosphere.
I disagree with this. In fact, his methods are an extremely effective way of administering a status slap-down. If he wrote an actual hit-piece, that’s what his readership would interpret it as: a hit-piece. But when he writes this article, his readership interprets it as a virtuous piece advocating good epistemic standards. It’s a Trojan Horse.
This is true. But what I’m saying is that advocacy of epistemic accuracy as opposed to virtue signaling is in many contexts primarily motivated by status/ethics/politics implications.
And that is fine. There is nothing inherently wrong with an argument about the nature of reality also having status/ethics/politics implications. It’s even fine to pretend, for vague “this makes us think better” reasons, that for the sake of a discussion those status/ethics/politics implications are irrelevant.
But those implications are always present. They’ve just been temporarily pushed to the side for a moment. Often, they come swooping back in, right after the “epistemic discussion” is concluded. That’s the nature of a policy debate.