Having read the full article, I had basically the same objection and think your response is more or less nonsense. The point is that choosing enemies without understanding them as actors is bound to fail. A new political movement needs both friends and enemies if it is to succeed. It will need to offer its friends a new perspective in accordance with their values in order to endear itself to them. It will need to offer its enemies a coherent response to their disagreements to avoid being consumed by them. Identifying enemies based on policies and actions but not arguments is the canonical losing move in politics.
More directly: it is useful for political movements to have convenient enemies, but you should always wonder whether you or your enemy is the convenient one. A bunch of wealthy libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley nerds who routinely dismiss the concern that wealthy countries could exploit poor countries, to the point that they’re offended when they’re asked to even address that concern in their manifestos against Greenpeace, are more or less Greenpeace’s ideal enemy. Maybe you aren’t such an enemy! But you sure are doing an excellent job blending in with them.
I think I was pretty clear in saying that this characterization may be invalid, was I not? You read the characterization as an accusation, for which I apologize, but I worry that this might speak to your state of mind in this discussion, which makes me worry that further discussion may be unproductive.
I notice that when you’re concerned about your views being characterized correctly, you address arguments and not just positions. Perhaps when you’re writing about the importance of choosing one’s enemies in politics, in the part where you explicitly choose an enemy and explain how your views differ from theirs, you could do that without needing to be provoked.
To be clear, I suspect we agree about enough issues of policy that in a reasonable political landscape, we should be allies. I’m certainly not a libertarian, I’m not projecting here, I’m trying to explain how I expect your political project to be categorized and defeated if you continue to approach politics the way you do in this essay. I’m frustrated with you because I would like my potential political allies to not make easily-avoidable mistakes and you are making one. Greenpeace is a bloated, inefficient, anti-progress organization, and yet it persists and amasses power because its political situation is convenient. Greenpeace has picked the right enemies, has (often correctly) accused them of acting in myopic and self-serving ways, and so has endured. If you make Greenpeace your enemy, you should try to understand what their favored enemy looks like and try to be visibly something other than that, not just in the abstract across your body of work, but specifically when you talk about Greenpeace. As I said earlier, and as I’m willing to explain if needed, this is the canonical losing move in politics.
As I said earlier, and as I’m willing to explain if needed, this is the canonical losing move in politics.
This seems very fake, idiosyncratic, a much smaller problem (if any) than failing to organise against one’s enemies.
Nevertheless, if you have a write-up about it of −10 pages, I’m interested in checking it out (I often routinely get proven wrong, and I have found it good to extend this amount of interest to ~anyone who engages with me on a topic that I started).
I don’t currently have a write-up of that length or with the right lens, I have a draft that I’ve been working on for a while. Next time I’m working on it, I’ll see if I can consolidate this claim from it and ping you? Incidentally, I appreciate your willingness to engage and retract my previous worries about this conversation being too charged to be productive.
It has in fact been a while since the last time I have had written conversations with strangers, I’m sorry that my tone came up as too abrasive for productive conversation.
> Next time I’m working on it, I’ll see if I can consolidate this claim from it and ping you?
Having read the full article, I had basically the same objection and think your response is more or less nonsense. The point is that choosing enemies without understanding them as actors is bound to fail. A new political movement needs both friends and enemies if it is to succeed. It will need to offer its friends a new perspective in accordance with their values in order to endear itself to them. It will need to offer its enemies a coherent response to their disagreements to avoid being consumed by them. Identifying enemies based on policies and actions but not arguments is the canonical losing move in politics.
More directly: it is useful for political movements to have convenient enemies, but you should always wonder whether you or your enemy is the convenient one. A bunch of wealthy libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley nerds who routinely dismiss the concern that wealthy countries could exploit poor countries, to the point that they’re offended when they’re asked to even address that concern in their manifestos against Greenpeace, are more or less Greenpeace’s ideal enemy. Maybe you aren’t such an enemy! But you sure are doing an excellent job blending in with them.
You are projecting.
I have written in the past specifically against tech-libertarianism, in the context of wealth concentration leading to abuses of power.
I’m not offended that I’m asked to address a concern. I merely find it irrelevant.
What offends me is the lack of thought behind assuming that I didn’t know that Greenpeace had arguments. I have seen better on Lesswrong.
I think I was pretty clear in saying that this characterization may be invalid, was I not? You read the characterization as an accusation, for which I apologize, but I worry that this might speak to your state of mind in this discussion, which makes me worry that further discussion may be unproductive.
I notice that when you’re concerned about your views being characterized correctly, you address arguments and not just positions. Perhaps when you’re writing about the importance of choosing one’s enemies in politics, in the part where you explicitly choose an enemy and explain how your views differ from theirs, you could do that without needing to be provoked.
To be clear, I suspect we agree about enough issues of policy that in a reasonable political landscape, we should be allies. I’m certainly not a libertarian, I’m not projecting here, I’m trying to explain how I expect your political project to be categorized and defeated if you continue to approach politics the way you do in this essay. I’m frustrated with you because I would like my potential political allies to not make easily-avoidable mistakes and you are making one. Greenpeace is a bloated, inefficient, anti-progress organization, and yet it persists and amasses power because its political situation is convenient. Greenpeace has picked the right enemies, has (often correctly) accused them of acting in myopic and self-serving ways, and so has endured. If you make Greenpeace your enemy, you should try to understand what their favored enemy looks like and try to be visibly something other than that, not just in the abstract across your body of work, but specifically when you talk about Greenpeace. As I said earlier, and as I’m willing to explain if needed, this is the canonical losing move in politics.
This seems very fake, idiosyncratic, a much smaller problem (if any) than failing to organise against one’s enemies.
Nevertheless, if you have a write-up about it of −10 pages, I’m interested in checking it out (I often routinely get proven wrong, and I have found it good to extend this amount of interest to ~anyone who engages with me on a topic that I started).
I don’t currently have a write-up of that length or with the right lens, I have a draft that I’ve been working on for a while. Next time I’m working on it, I’ll see if I can consolidate this claim from it and ping you? Incidentally, I appreciate your willingness to engage and retract my previous worries about this conversation being too charged to be productive.
It has in fact been a while since the last time I have had written conversations with strangers, I’m sorry that my tone came up as too abrasive for productive conversation.
> Next time I’m working on it, I’ll see if I can consolidate this claim from it and ping you?
I have shared my email in DM.