This is all speculative, but I think some of this might be due to differences in how algorithms pick content to show users, the aging or death of influential figures in the New Atheist movement, and changes with respect to how religion makes its way into our lives.
Islamic terrorism and the Catholic pedophelia scandals aren’t as much of a hot topic anymore.
Evangelists may have concluded that participating in debates about religion is not an effective way to win converts (they may have genuinely been uncertain about this in the past and updated based on their experiences confronting the New Atheists).
Chris Hitchens is dead. Man that guy could debate. He was truly a singular figure. Dawkins is 84 instead of 64, and Harris is 58 instead of 38. Those who were receptive to their message have picked it up, but we may not feel the need to replicate their debates, since all the recordings and arguments are still available and haven’t changed (it’s not like new evidence has come to light bearing on the question!).
The internet was still relatively young and I think we were all operating more on the theory that the ability to expose others to our favorite argument might really prove persuasive. I think that’s one of the biggest updates on human nature that the internet has demonstrated—it is not very possible to change somebody’s mind by winning an argument against them. That’s probably something that intellectuals have known for a long time, but the internet gave everybody the chance to be an intellectual. In doing so, we all discovered that for almost everybody, it’s all about identity politics. Earnest debate can give the impression that the debaters are unaware of this, laboring under the delusion that winning the argument might change the other person’s mind.
A lot of the debates people are having now about the God question are just rehashing stuff that came before, and it’s less interesting. It’s not breaking new intellectual ground. It’s just two people working their way through ideas other people have already thought about before them.
The algorithms and advertisements that link us to arguments about topics like atheism have changed in the last 20 years. Using the internet feels qualitatively different. I know I can find just about any content I want. The question is what I want to spend my time on. There is much less of a feeling of mystery and wonder stumbling upon a debate about the existence of God. I don’t feel like I have happened upon enlightened discourse. I just feel I’ve been served a slab of Content by an unfeeling algorithm, and it’s hard to care.
The rise of the Internet broadened our intellectual horizons. We got access to a whole new world of people with totally different standards, norms, and ideologies opposed to our own. When the Internet was small and confined to an optimistic group of technophile intellectuals, this spawned Early Internet Argument Culture, where we tried to iron out our differences through Reason. We hoped that the new world the Web revealed to us could be managed in the same friendly way we managed differences with our crazy uncle or the next-door neighbor.
As friendly debate started feeling more and more inadequate, and as newer and less nerdy people started taking over the Internet, this dream receded. In its place, we were left with an intolerable truth: a lot of people seem really horrible, and refuse to stop being horrible even when we ask them nicely. They seem to believe awful things. They seem to act in awful ways. When we tell them the obviously correct reasons they should be more like us, they refuse to listen to them, and instead spout insane moon gibberish about how they are right and we are wrong.
Most or even all of the arguments you’re bringing up, DirectedEvolution, are true as far as they go. But a few of them (other than the 4th bullet point) seem to me to miss the forest for the trees because they focus narrowly on New Atheism as a topic. By contrast, I don’t believe there was anything special about the way atheism debates changed (as opposed to how other debates changed); I instead think it’s almost all just selection effects on the pool of debaters.
Put simply, the Internet used to be primarily made up of nerds that would constantly debate the minutia of the evidence both sides were bringing up. Nowadays, the Internet is primarily made up of normies who just don’t care about that too much, because the social experience is more important.
It seems to me there is plenty of lively debate on topics related to politics, economics, and technology issues in the same nerd niches that used to debate atheism. I really do think that debate about new atheism has declined far more than debate around these other topics.
Do you have examples? I do think much of the time such debates come down to name-calling & ganging up on the one person in the server/forum who has different beliefs than everyone else. This seems in contrast to (what I remember of) religious debates, where you were much less likely to just be written off as eg a heartless asshole or naive no-nothing. I think nowadays people take it more personally when you don’t immediately change your mind in light of their arguments too.
I also haven’t heard of any large argument trees (like what existed for religion) people can use to fight about eg capitalism vs communism. These seemed silly to me at the time, but in retrospect I think they were very useful for having conversations between the two sides building on top of each other, instead of constantly starting at square one.
I am vibing this, but I feel like the only guy keeping it alive at this point is unironically jordan peterson— the final postmodernist boss— who’s declining as other parts of political right ascend to power, yet he manages to go viral from time to time thanks to his idiosyncratic use of language . The other new atheist tubers have mostly receded into doing general political commentary or philosophy, maybe few of them are still doing full time anti-theism, but what do I know, I am not part of the generation which got to experience new atheism first hand.
the ability to expose others to our favorite argument might really prove persuasive. I think that’s one of the biggest updates on human nature that the internet has demonstrated—it is not very possible to change somebody’s mind by winning an argument against them.
It does seem like during/after the Atheism wars people got less religious (at least in the US), so its not obvious to me arguments have no effect is the right lesson to take away here.
I just stumbled over this old SSC article while browsing Scott’s website, where he posits:
I think once Christianity stopped seeming threatening, Christians went from being an outgroup to being a fargroup, and were exoticized has having the same sort of vague inoffensive wisdom as Buddhists.
Also, Internet demographics have changed a ton, so there’s less of a critical mass of discussion-happy people in any one place. And forums have mostly disappeared from search engines and the public internet, so one is less likely to stumble onto such discussions while searching for something else.
This is all speculative, but I think some of this might be due to differences in how algorithms pick content to show users, the aging or death of influential figures in the New Atheist movement, and changes with respect to how religion makes its way into our lives.
Islamic terrorism and the Catholic pedophelia scandals aren’t as much of a hot topic anymore.
Evangelists may have concluded that participating in debates about religion is not an effective way to win converts (they may have genuinely been uncertain about this in the past and updated based on their experiences confronting the New Atheists).
Chris Hitchens is dead. Man that guy could debate. He was truly a singular figure. Dawkins is 84 instead of 64, and Harris is 58 instead of 38. Those who were receptive to their message have picked it up, but we may not feel the need to replicate their debates, since all the recordings and arguments are still available and haven’t changed (it’s not like new evidence has come to light bearing on the question!).
The internet was still relatively young and I think we were all operating more on the theory that the ability to expose others to our favorite argument might really prove persuasive. I think that’s one of the biggest updates on human nature that the internet has demonstrated—it is not very possible to change somebody’s mind by winning an argument against them. That’s probably something that intellectuals have known for a long time, but the internet gave everybody the chance to be an intellectual. In doing so, we all discovered that for almost everybody, it’s all about identity politics. Earnest debate can give the impression that the debaters are unaware of this, laboring under the delusion that winning the argument might change the other person’s mind.
A lot of the debates people are having now about the God question are just rehashing stuff that came before, and it’s less interesting. It’s not breaking new intellectual ground. It’s just two people working their way through ideas other people have already thought about before them.
The algorithms and advertisements that link us to arguments about topics like atheism have changed in the last 20 years. Using the internet feels qualitatively different. I know I can find just about any content I want. The question is what I want to spend my time on. There is much less of a feeling of mystery and wonder stumbling upon a debate about the existence of God. I don’t feel like I have happened upon enlightened discourse. I just feel I’ve been served a slab of Content by an unfeeling algorithm, and it’s hard to care.
See also: New Atheism: The Godlessness that Failed. Relevant quote:
Most or even all of the arguments you’re bringing up, DirectedEvolution, are true as far as they go. But a few of them (other than the 4th bullet point) seem to me to miss the forest for the trees because they focus narrowly on New Atheism as a topic. By contrast, I don’t believe there was anything special about the way atheism debates changed (as opposed to how other debates changed); I instead think it’s almost all just selection effects on the pool of debaters.
Put simply, the Internet used to be primarily made up of nerds that would constantly debate the minutia of the evidence both sides were bringing up. Nowadays, the Internet is primarily made up of normies who just don’t care about that too much, because the social experience is more important.
It seems to me there is plenty of lively debate on topics related to politics, economics, and technology issues in the same nerd niches that used to debate atheism. I really do think that debate about new atheism has declined far more than debate around these other topics.
Do you have examples? I do think much of the time such debates come down to name-calling & ganging up on the one person in the server/forum who has different beliefs than everyone else. This seems in contrast to (what I remember of) religious debates, where you were much less likely to just be written off as eg a heartless asshole or naive no-nothing. I think nowadays people take it more personally when you don’t immediately change your mind in light of their arguments too.
I also haven’t heard of any large argument trees (like what existed for religion) people can use to fight about eg capitalism vs communism. These seemed silly to me at the time, but in retrospect I think they were very useful for having conversations between the two sides building on top of each other, instead of constantly starting at square one.
I am vibing this, but I feel like the only guy keeping it alive at this point is unironically jordan peterson— the final postmodernist boss— who’s declining as other parts of political right ascend to power, yet he manages to go viral from time to time thanks to his idiosyncratic use of language . The other new atheist tubers have mostly receded into doing general political commentary or philosophy, maybe few of them are still doing full time anti-theism, but what do I know, I am not part of the generation which got to experience new atheism first hand.
It does seem like during/after the Atheism wars people got less religious (at least in the US), so its not obvious to me arguments have no effect is the right lesson to take away here.
I just stumbled over this old SSC article while browsing Scott’s website, where he posits:
Fair point. It would be interesting to talk to people who lost their religion around that time and ask them what influenced them.
I lost my religion about that time, when I was 12 and listened to the Bill Nye and Ken Ham debate!
Interesting! I was born into a more or less agnostic family and considered myself an atheist by the time I was in middle school.
Also, Internet demographics have changed a ton, so there’s less of a critical mass of discussion-happy people in any one place. And forums have mostly disappeared from search engines and the public internet, so one is less likely to stumble onto such discussions while searching for something else.