Dude, that doesn’t make any sense. People making their secrets public is the opposite of what blackmailers want.
This logic is so bad that I think it should be a flag to you that you are clearly motivatedly reasoning real hard here.
I want to flag that you are unilaterally escalating this conversation rhetorically, and making accusations about my psychological state that I really do not appreciate. Let’s keep it civil and focused on the object-level topic.
Literally, on a surface level, you are correct that publicly posting dirty secrets online pre-empts some blackmail threats, although it still exposes the poster to the risk that those posts will be distorted or amplified in ways they didn’t intend.
Functionally, my argument is plausible and logically sound that the outcome of blackmail and publicly posting secrets can be very similar. Both practices can result in an individual being trapped in the group/cult by the perception that their action (handing over blackmail threats or posting embarrassing secrets online) has now cut off or created friction for pathways to careers and relationships outside the community.
Furthermore, if the group acquires an even stronger perception of being a cult than it has as a result of adopting the practice of encouraging members to post dirty secrets about themselves online, then that perception will further taint the reputation of and isolate its members. These sorts of ideas can be a way of gradually converting a formerly healthy community into a cult.
Do you have a particular example in mind which is generating this whole thread, which you’re willing to gesture at? I was escalating because it’s seemed-to-me from the beginning that this whole class of objection is very obviously statistically unrealistic (once one sets aside its emotional salience), and the arguments you’ve made seem to me not only wrong but obviously wrong (again, once one sets aside emotional salience). In my experience, just continuing at the object level usually doesn’t prove useful in such situations.
If I’m being epistemically generous, I would guess that you have some specific example in mind which is very different from the sort of thing I was imagining when writing the post, and as a result we’ve been talking past each other a lot. For instance, elsewhere in this thread, David Davidson brought up “Many people in countries with more authoritarian governments have to worry about going to prison over having the wrong opinion (like China or the UK).”. I thought the examples in the post made it pretty obvious that that was not the sort of thing I was talking about, but maybe that was not obvious?
My core belief on this topic is that coming out is, in fact, a risky practice in America and world wide. It’s risky to come out about your kinks, your sexual gender orientation, your political beliefs, and your historical affiliations with groups or types of groups that have controversial reputations.
Coming out can be net beneficial under controlled circumstances. Generally, it is better to have a world in which people have the ability to achieve those benefits. That starts by being aware of and working to mitigate those risks. The queer community is an excellent example of a group of people who’ve done that and reaped the rewards.
My central problem with your OP and responses here is that you seem to be rejecting the need for consideration or mitigation of those risks. This flies in the face of the historical experience of queers, apostates, atheists, political, radicals, and other groups who’ve come out in ways that failed to control those risks and suffered for it. By encouraging people to just come out without considering or taking steps to mitigate risks, you encourage them to make themselves vulnerable in ways that may make them more dependent on the rationalist community as the place where you’re seeking to enact this attitude toward coming out.
In my view, there is an enormous volume of historical experience of a wide variety of groups that backs up the profound risks of coming out. These risks include ostracism, exclusion from job opportunities, public humiliation, and physical violence. Again, those risks can be mitigated and the reward for doing so are great. But flat out denying those risks strikes me as foolish when it’s done by an individual, and cult-inducing when it becomes a community norm.
There are stories of people losing their jobs over social media posts—the stories I’ve heard have been about high school teachers getting fired over things like pictures of themselves on Facebook drinking at a party.
I want to flag that you are unilaterally escalating this conversation rhetorically, and making accusations about my psychological state that I really do not appreciate. Let’s keep it civil and focused on the object-level topic.
Literally, on a surface level, you are correct that publicly posting dirty secrets online pre-empts some blackmail threats, although it still exposes the poster to the risk that those posts will be distorted or amplified in ways they didn’t intend.
Functionally, my argument is plausible and logically sound that the outcome of blackmail and publicly posting secrets can be very similar. Both practices can result in an individual being trapped in the group/cult by the perception that their action (handing over blackmail threats or posting embarrassing secrets online) has now cut off or created friction for pathways to careers and relationships outside the community.
Furthermore, if the group acquires an even stronger perception of being a cult than it has as a result of adopting the practice of encouraging members to post dirty secrets about themselves online, then that perception will further taint the reputation of and isolate its members. These sorts of ideas can be a way of gradually converting a formerly healthy community into a cult.
Do you have a particular example in mind which is generating this whole thread, which you’re willing to gesture at? I was escalating because it’s seemed-to-me from the beginning that this whole class of objection is very obviously statistically unrealistic (once one sets aside its emotional salience), and the arguments you’ve made seem to me not only wrong but obviously wrong (again, once one sets aside emotional salience). In my experience, just continuing at the object level usually doesn’t prove useful in such situations.
If I’m being epistemically generous, I would guess that you have some specific example in mind which is very different from the sort of thing I was imagining when writing the post, and as a result we’ve been talking past each other a lot. For instance, elsewhere in this thread, David Davidson brought up “Many people in countries with more authoritarian governments have to worry about going to prison over having the wrong opinion (like China or the UK).”. I thought the examples in the post made it pretty obvious that that was not the sort of thing I was talking about, but maybe that was not obvious?
My core belief on this topic is that coming out is, in fact, a risky practice in America and world wide. It’s risky to come out about your kinks, your sexual gender orientation, your political beliefs, and your historical affiliations with groups or types of groups that have controversial reputations.
Coming out can be net beneficial under controlled circumstances. Generally, it is better to have a world in which people have the ability to achieve those benefits. That starts by being aware of and working to mitigate those risks. The queer community is an excellent example of a group of people who’ve done that and reaped the rewards.
My central problem with your OP and responses here is that you seem to be rejecting the need for consideration or mitigation of those risks. This flies in the face of the historical experience of queers, apostates, atheists, political, radicals, and other groups who’ve come out in ways that failed to control those risks and suffered for it. By encouraging people to just come out without considering or taking steps to mitigate risks, you encourage them to make themselves vulnerable in ways that may make them more dependent on the rationalist community as the place where you’re seeking to enact this attitude toward coming out.
In my view, there is an enormous volume of historical experience of a wide variety of groups that backs up the profound risks of coming out. These risks include ostracism, exclusion from job opportunities, public humiliation, and physical violence. Again, those risks can be mitigated and the reward for doing so are great. But flat out denying those risks strikes me as foolish when it’s done by an individual, and cult-inducing when it becomes a community norm.
There are stories of people losing their jobs over social media posts—the stories I’ve heard have been about high school teachers getting fired over things like pictures of themselves on Facebook drinking at a party.