I recorded an audio version of my first Intellectual Denial of Service Attacks blog post from March 2019. Let me know what you think!
Intellectual DoS
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Over the last few years, I’ve seen several instances of (and reactions against) an intellectual denial of service attack that I’ll call “The Number One Priority”. Maybe you’ve seen it, too.
conversations lately:
— Mike Solana (@micsolana) March 24, 2019
“let’s terraform mars!”
“let’s fix earth, first 😒”
“let’s do both!”
”... anyway terraforming venus makes more sense 😒”
“it really doesn’t! [details!]”
“whatever, people are a virus 😒”
“that is a quote from the matrix! the evil guy says it!”
We cannot do anything until someone’s Number One Priority is satisfied. Exploring Mars? What about the starving Earth children? Developing a decentralized alternative to the current global monetary system? Fix this one first! Building a mobile scooter company to facilitate easy travel in big cities? NOT EVERYONE LIVES IN CITIES!
In my first post on intellectual denial of service attacks , I covered something I dubbed “bad infinitum,” a tendency for non-experts to overwhelm experts with repetitive, costly, and often unproductive demands for evidence or counter-argument to oft-debunked or misleading claims. Here, I’ll cover another of these intellectual attack vectors, which I’ll call “the map to nowhere.” An asymmetry exists in each of these attacks: easy to launch, hard to counter.
We live in an era that devalues conformity, while simultaneously preserving it in many interesting ways. Everyone is allowed to have an opinion. Divergent views produce conflict, however, and disagreement, argument, and debate define our current moment.
If we merely disagreed on matters of taste - our favorite color, music, movies, etc. - we could avoid such conflicts. Increasingly, though, we disagree on more fundamental ideas. Some deny the spherical shape of the Earth and the heliocentric model of the solar system (I highly recommend Behind the Curve , a movie about this movement). Arguments of all shapes and sizes spring up everywhere: capitalism vs. socialism, humanity’s role in climate change, on and on.