The straw man fallacy also has its inverse—the “motte-and-bailey” fallacy6—which can be used as a defensive tactic.

That’s why perhaps the most important skill of a skilled thinker is knowing when to trust.

But in the realm of low-rung politics, there’s also a third option: Change the rules of the game to a different one that you can win. If your ideas can’t win a fair fight in the boxing ring, start taking cheap shots and see if you can get away with it.

More advanced societies make progress at a faster rate than less advanced societies—because they’re more advanced.

This is how a trickle of realignment can quickly accelerate. Conservative Democrats and progressive Republicans are driven to switch parties by their party’s growing hardline ideological faction, which shrinks the area of overlap. Politicians respond in kind by catering their messages more to the hardliners, which causes more defections, and

None of this means the system isn’t working. Modern democracies weren’t built to eradicate low-rung psychology or low-rung culture. They were built to ensure that low-rung giants wouldn’t be able to do what they’ve done throughout history: conquer the country.

Free speech, remember, requires a two-piece puzzle: free speech laws and free speech culture. These stories, from the disinvitations and shutdowns to the bias response teams and speech codes, aren’t about free speech laws, as very few of them violate the First Amendment. They’re stories about an ideology that has crippled free speech culture on

People in an Idea Lab don’t usually take arguments personally because Idea Lab culture is built around the core notion that people and ideas are separate things. People are meant to be respected, ideas are meant to be batted around and picked apart. Perhaps most importantly, an Idea Lab helps its members stay high up on the Ladder. No one thinks

A golem always must be the Us in a zero-sum, Us vs. Them conflict. The thing that allows multiple golems to merge into a larger golem is a common enemy—a common Them that makes the golems feel like a united Us.