<story><title>I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014)</title><url>https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>motohagiography</author><text>This SSC piece has influenced a lot of my thinking. Christopher Hitchens wrote about &amp;quot;the narcissism of small differences,&amp;quot; concept as well.&lt;p&gt;There was another post on HN recently about a summary of Rene Girard, who extended this idea (&amp;quot;mimetic violence&amp;quot; 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.&lt;p&gt;I would argue critics like figures associated with the so-called, &amp;quot;intellectual dark web,&amp;quot; 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&amp;#x27;t have enough political traction to represent &amp;quot;something being done,&amp;quot; but popular, relatively moderate critics are sufficiently high profile figures to make an example of in the hope that it provides some defusing catharsis.&lt;p&gt;I couldn&amp;#x27;t say how much predictive power that model has. Either de-platforming &amp;quot;works&amp;quot; because it delays sectarian  conflict, or it delegitimizes discourse altogether and just accelerates it. We&amp;#x27;re going to find out anyway, and it appears we indeed live in interesting times.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup (2014)</title><url>https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>skrebbel</author><text>Star Slate Codex is the only &amp;quot;armchair philosophy&amp;quot; site I read. I really love it.&lt;p&gt;Every time I click a link to some of the author&amp;#x27;s inspiration sources, or read the comments even, I&amp;#x27;m appalled at how complicated and unattractive the writing is there. The contrast to Alexander&amp;#x27;s writing is simply so stark. I simply find myself giving up after a few paragraphs.&lt;p&gt;I recently read his enormous and lovely &amp;quot;Mediations on Moloch&amp;quot; essay, and was amazed by how hard I found it to follow the Nick Bostrom citations. I mean this is a famous bestseller philosopher. Is Bostrom&amp;#x27;s writing so bad, or is Alexander&amp;#x27;s writing simply so good?&lt;p&gt;This article is one of my favourites. I love how, like many of his articles, he doesn&amp;#x27;t actually change my mind about anything (at least not to my knowledge), but he does help me express, verbally, an itch that I had about something for a long time.</text></comment>