Ok, so I suspect “ideology” in the sense of “production of lots of identity-flavored text and protests and sometimes art” is just modeled on socialist & communist parties. Predictably, actual leftists are going to be better at that than other ideologies, because they’ve been at it longer. Predictably, most coalitions who oppose leftists are going to be using tactics other than ideology. (Fascists are an exception, they really are using similar means to their opponents on the left.)
Which means it’s not ever going to be a *fair* fight. Scott and Cathy are never going to meet on the same playing field and use the same methods against each other and see who is the stronger. I’m trying to imagine how someone *would* set up such an equal contest, because that would seem a lot more aesthetic, but I’m failing to visualize it.
If you are capable of seeing two levels, the social and the intellectual, then this is annoying, because one side has totally ceded the social realm and the other has totally ceded the intellectual realm, so you never actually get critique happening.
A “fair” fight might be possible if insiders bothered to argue “here is why I think this system is a good way to organize things and processing the most relevant bits of information, and why I feel OK accepting this huge endowment of structural power” instead of taking their methods as a background fact in no need of justification. Maybe it wouldn’t persuade the Cathys O’Neil of the world, but I’d bet it would attract better critics.
GiveWell made a decent attempt at times, and did in fact get some good critics eventually.
Ok, so I suspect “ideology” in the sense of “production of lots of identity-flavored text and protests and sometimes art” is just modeled on socialist & communist parties. Predictably, actual leftists are going to be better at that than other ideologies, because they’ve been at it longer. Predictably, most coalitions who oppose leftists are going to be using tactics other than ideology. (Fascists are an exception, they really are using similar means to their opponents on the left.)
Which means it’s not ever going to be a *fair* fight. Scott and Cathy are never going to meet on the same playing field and use the same methods against each other and see who is the stronger. I’m trying to imagine how someone *would* set up such an equal contest, because that would seem a lot more aesthetic, but I’m failing to visualize it.
If you are capable of seeing two levels, the social and the intellectual, then this is annoying, because one side has totally ceded the social realm and the other has totally ceded the intellectual realm, so you never actually get critique happening.
A “fair” fight might be possible if insiders bothered to argue “here is why I think this system is a good way to organize things and processing the most relevant bits of information, and why I feel OK accepting this huge endowment of structural power” instead of taking their methods as a background fact in no need of justification. Maybe it wouldn’t persuade the Cathys O’Neil of the world, but I’d bet it would attract better critics.
GiveWell made a decent attempt at times, and did in fact get some good critics eventually.