I agree that historical examples can be helpful. I suspect these can be even more helpful if people vary the examples so they don’t wear down into tropes, and check whether the details plausibly match. My reply to Zvi here seems relevant:
It seems to me as though when people evaluate the “Jews in the attic” hypothetical, “Gestapo” isn’t being mapped onto the actual historical institution, but to a vague sense of who’s a sufficiently hated adversary that it’s widely considered legitimate to “slash their tires.” In Nazi Germany, this actually maps onto Jews, not the Gestapo. It maps onto the Gestapo for post-WWII Americans considering a weird hypothetical.
To do the work of causing this to reliably map onto the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, you have to talk about the situation in which almost everyone around you seems to agree that the Gestapo might be a little scary but the Jews are dangerous, deceptive fantasy villains and need to be rooted out. Otherwise you just get illusion of transparency.
I agree that historical examples can be helpful. I suspect these can be even more helpful if people vary the examples so they don’t wear down into tropes, and check whether the details plausibly match. My reply to Zvi here seems relevant:
It seems to me as though when people evaluate the “Jews in the attic” hypothetical, “Gestapo” isn’t being mapped onto the actual historical institution, but to a vague sense of who’s a sufficiently hated adversary that it’s widely considered legitimate to “slash their tires.” In Nazi Germany, this actually maps onto Jews, not the Gestapo. It maps onto the Gestapo for post-WWII Americans considering a weird hypothetical.
To do the work of causing this to reliably map onto the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, you have to talk about the situation in which almost everyone around you seems to agree that the Gestapo might be a little scary but the Jews are dangerous, deceptive fantasy villains and need to be rooted out. Otherwise you just get illusion of transparency.