The Discourse is a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack
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The Discourse is a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack
Find some topic you care about. Just one. Resist the temptation to have takes on everything else. Let the discourse rage without you while you spend weeks or months actually understanding something. Read books about it, not takes. Talk to experts, not pundits. Follow the evidence where it leads, even when it's uncomfortable. Change your mind when... See more
The Discourse is a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack
The people who are most capable of nuanced understanding are the same people who are most likely to be paralyzed by it. They see all the complications and worry about unintended consequences. And while they're doing all that, the confident idiots have already won the argument by sheer force of certainty. The discourse selects for confidence, not
... See moreThe Discourse is a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack
Understanding involves sitting with difficulty and ambiguity, while the discourse rewards confidence and clarity. Understanding involves admitting what you don't know, while the discourse punishes uncertainty as weakness. Understanding involves engaging with the best version of opposing views, while the discourse treats opposition as either
... See moreThe Discourse is a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack
The discourse doesn't help us think about things. It helps us perform thinking about things, which is a different activity entirely.