If you are an ordinary person who is staying home, taking care of your kids, or putting yourself on the line to do an essential job, you’re already a good guy. If you’re doing “a little” to help, your help matters.
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You *do not* want to demoralize the helpers. You want to encourage them to keep going, not get burned out, support each other. You want to make helping look *accessible* so more people do it. You want to recognize that different kinds of people can help.
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Secondly, and relatedly, “just put someone better in charge” is not that simple. The people who are currently in charge have their jobs for reasons. Someone chose to hire, elect, or appoint them. Those people probably don’t agree with you on who would be “better.”
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It is a valuable informational service to accurately identify who fucked up. We used to call that “journalism.” It helps people decide whom they can trust and whom they can’t.
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It is not valuable, but rather wishful thinking, to say “someone should do X” unless you are specifically advertising to the potential someones.
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This is a really good thing about
@robinhanson’s style of activism that more people should emulate: he makes actual, novel, positive proposals. “We could do this, and here’s why it would be better than the status quo.” Right or wrong, it contributes new information.2 replies 7 retweets 112 likesShow this thread -
A *serious* proposal, even if it’s a rough draft, is written to and for the people you’re trying to recruit to do the thing. It says “here’s something you might want to do.” It’s constructive in that sense.
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If you’re writing about how the Establishment is bad, who are you writing to, and what are you teaching them or encouraging to do?
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Replying to @peroxycarbonate
I think these are fine goals! But I think sometimes the actual instruction trends more in the direction of “be depressed and bitter” or “consume more content in this genre”
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“Stop trusting this institution” is really useful info when it’s *new*. People who once trusted it can actually change their minds.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @peroxycarbonate
Once you start writing for an audience who already distrusts that institution, you need to *move on* to “now what”, otherwise you’re just a demagogue.
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