Need a better term for this but.. horsehead arguments, after the severed horsehead in godfather.
When you attack something favored by an adversary to persuade them to change their minds on some unrelated or marginally related matter.
Conversation
Eg: attacking space programs and crypto because they are “horses” wealthy people like and you want them to act on different matters — poverty, climate change, Middle East, diversity...
The tactic is a disservice to those other causes. Weakens their ability to stand on their own.
1
17
Most won’t admit this is what they’re doing though. They’ll make specious arguments rather than admit to themselves it’s a psyop. That they care more about defeating people they hate rather than addressing an issue.
1
17
Horsehead argument is a good term on second thoughts
Usually a “weapon of the weak” in James Scott terms. The powerful can attack the weak more directly.
Note in The Godfather, the mafia are the weak party in legitimate business dealings, that’s why they need horseheads.
3
1
9
I am broadly in favor of most weapons of the weak, but horsehead arguments are pernicious because they contaminate truth-seeking discourses for everybody. By contrast, protest marches, guerrilla attacks, etc are more intellectually honest.
2
9
Full disclosure... I am involved in trying to catalyze an open-source space program based on open-source Mars rovers so I can have my own non-billionaire space program. And while I can’t move markets with a tweet, I do hold crypto. These are not exclusively billionaire interests.
1
6
And fwiw, I’ve made between 25-50% of my consulting income from climate/sustainability gigs in the last 5 years.
Replying to
Amazingly space colonies and crypto have basically never bubbled to the top of the priority list as things to work on. Mysteriously, things like “renewables” and “transport” and “building heating” keep coming up as higher priorities. Something must be wrong with our spreadsheets.
1
11
The term is growing on me the more I hold it in my head. The tactic is exactly as ugly. Also, bonus: a discourse based on horsehead arguments is.... wait for it... a horsehead nebula!
Appropriately enough, the horsehead nebula is a dark nebula: it absorbs rather than emits light
1
6
Now that I think of it, horseheading is the offensive version of the motte-and-bailey defensive pattern. I have to work out the precise symmetry here.
1
7
