The Fascist Octopus Pipes Up from the Gamma Quadrant or the Region Surrounding Cygnus X-1, Depending

I assume he meant “alternately” rather than “alternatively”.

I dunno. The rhetoric is overblown and the clashing of metaphors is hilarious, yes. But groupthink does tend to get pretty bad around here.

There’s this guy ‘walt’ who’s especially fond of crawling out and declaring how “we” aren’t interested in what this or that commenter has to say. This is always met with tacit approval from the crowd. I think of ‘walt’ as a symbol of groupthink at CT; of course, it happens all the time without him, too.

It could be much, much worse. CT is infinitely more civilised than, say, LGF. But it could be much better, too.

It’s a good reminder that the fight against evil did not end . . .when the Iron Curtain fell. . .

According to Winston Churchill, the Iron Curtain fell when “the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them” were subjected to control from Moscow.

It’s amusing to see a conservative fondly recalling the ascendancy of Soviet communism as a landmark in the epic struggle against evil.

I am also somewhat heartened by the revelation that though the fight against totalitarianism will be unending, the threat posed by totalitarianism will be eternally incipient.

(As parse has just pointed out.)

He was just quoting Clinton: “And at last, through the efforts of brave men and women determined to live free lives, the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell.”

Get serious. It’s a common way of saying it, albeit imprecise.

It’s not that common: “Iron Curtain fell” returns 26,000 hits and “Berlin Wall fell” 150,000.

It’s a joke site, isn’t it?

You realize, Anatoly, that you’ve just made my day.

Walt: I aim to please.

Of course, thinking that people outside of one’s group are all mindlessly driven by “group think” is itself one of the surest symptoms of group think.

By the way, Anatoly, on the subject of metaphor, you are wrong, and you are tedious. Saying exactly the opposite of what you mean is not merely “imprecise”, it’s confused, whether or not Clinton (at whose altar, incidentally, not everyone here worships) said it too.

abb1: You got three out of four right, which, I guess, isn’t half bad.

Argh. Long post just got eaten. Long story short: agreement, even freqent agreement, is just not evidence of groupthink. Groupthink occurs when individual judgments are driven by the desire for agreement, and must be distinguished from reasoned consensus, which occurs when agreement is reached on the basis of (mostly) independent judgment. Groupthink is bad, and tends to lead away from the truth. But reasoned consensus is generally truth-conducive, and a sign of a healthy intellectual climate.

Think that tjic post was good? You ain’t seen nuthin’. PZ has just given us a truly stunning example of the intellectual level of contemporary wingnuttia, one of which I would otherwise have been unaware given that I would not so much as pick up one of that woman’s books without wearing gloves.

Engels: thanks!

I would just like to point out that a curtain can fall, and when it does so it’s usually at least semi-permanently down because it’s damaged. A curtain that rises is one that is still functional and can go up and down at will.

I find the mental conflation of “Iron Curtain” and “Berlin Wall” extremely interesting,

One thing that’s especially interesting about this metonymy is that when using a “the curtain falls” as a metaphor, the usual sense is in “the end of something.” The structure that experienced the literal fall was a wall–and speaking about a wall falling misses all those “end of s story” associations you get when the (theater) curtain falls. So “the Iron Curtain falls” offers itself as a more felicitous substitute to describe the end of the cold war.

Does it seem to anyone else that Crooked Timber always manages to draw a lot of libertarians out of the woodwork?

Libertarians seem to be overrepresented in academic circles, and especially economics circles. CT appeals to academics, and has at least one economist on board. So it’s not surprising that lots of libertarians would come here.

I was wondering why I was suddenly getting hits off an old CT post.

Funny, I’d completely forgotten having written the post Ted linked to originally. Well, looks like my little crusade got pretty much nowhere, didn’t it? Even I forgot I’d started it.

Seems rather a lost cause now, though still not a half-bad point I had, looking back. I’ll stand by it, regardless.

The comments to this post do illustrate the sort of group behavior which gives CT its flavor: a moderately serious post gives rise to a mildly frivolous discussion, in an academic vein, of a completely peripheral issue.

When the curtain falls after the temple falls at the end of Saint-Saën’s Samson et Dalila, one wonders why the curtain itself wasn’t incorporated into the stage scenery.

Walt: I’ve been musing on it, and I really can’t figure out what you’re talking about.

OK, I did a search to confirm my vague recollections and came up with these recent quotes from you in CT comments: “Yes, Steve, you have a lot to teach us about wisdom.”; “Raw Data: I’m sure that this will come as a blow to your surely-inflated self-esteem, but the fact that you don’t approve of the post doesn’t mean we give a shit what you think.”; “It’s not your irrationalism that bothers us, Seth. It’s the monotony of your grudges.” I’ll stop at three, but there’s plenty more, actually.

You seem to have this weird compulsion to speak for everyone at CT, and, by the way, I haven’t noticed any other CT regulars (blog authors or frequent commenters) doing that. Think you could explain that to me?

If you want my opinion, here it is. I understand the feeling of irritation at someone you think is just trolling to annoy the community. In other forums and on other occassions, when I was a part of the core group or felt an affinity to the core group, I, too, found myself itching to tell someone off in the name of everyone around, all the “good people”. After a few false starts, I learned to restrain myself from doing that. The atmosphere of groupthink, the false and positively LGFish picture of all of “us” united against an “intruder”, is much more poisoning to the “freewheeling discussion” you like so much than anything that seems to you like trolling (and may, just may, appear to some others as questions worth asking or challenges worth answering).

My point is not to demonize you or anything like that. My real point is that in a somewhat healthier blog atmosphere, after having used once or twice the kind of rhetorical device exemplified in quotes above, one of the blog authors or another regular commenter would have politely asked you to refrain from speaking for everyone. That this doesn’t happen, that pronouncements of this kind are met with tacit approval, is in my mind a symbol of the atmosphere of groupthink at CT. Not that it’s an especially severe atmosphere or anything; could be much worse – but I seem to repeat myself.

Hope I’ve helped you understand what I was talking about, as concerns specific details. In general terms, meanwhile, I strongly identify with Henry’s #35 and couldn’t possibly say it better myself.

I generally prefer groupthink to groupnonthink on the grounds that there is at least one thought involved.

I’m frankly just excited that someone thinks I am part of some sort of league of super-villians hell-bent on taking over the world, and then taking a chainsaw to all that is good and decent in human life so that it can fit on the procrustean bed of my radical social engineering…in space!!! space, where no one can hear you scream “damn you wonky mildish lefty types interested in the social sciences and literature! from hell’s heart I stab at thee!!” steve is free to complain about my free-associative ways at this point, but I’m going to spoil the joke my explaining that I’m making fun of the blood boiling guy. see how easy that is? I’m setting up a round of interpretive charity for the house. it’s on me.

Note that tjic has not one, but four snarling ‘anti-idiotarian rottweilers’. Meaning that he’s an idotarian^4.

Jonathan, not every snarky 1st person plural is evidence of groupthink, only those coming from a purported member of a group and directed at dismissing the outsider (who’s engaged in arguing with many members of the group) in the name of the group. And even then, it’s not the plurals themselves which are evidence of groupthink but the group’s tacit acceptance of their deployment. That’s my argument, more or less.

I write a blog (in Russian) which frequently sees spirited discussion in comments; on some issues most of my readers and I share roughly the same opinion (though I’m lucky enough that often this is not the case). When someone from the opposite “camp” of whatever issue’s being discussed comes in and argues against the consensus, I never allow myself to mock them with a first person plural, and would censure any of my commenters if they did that.

Perhaps you get a better quality of troll in your Russian language site, Anatoly. I would expect most like-minded people to think like-mindedly yet I’ve noticed no short of detail-oriented folks debating details here.

Anatoly, I think you’re conflating two things here, one of which is basically fine, and the other of which isn’t. That there is a group identity of some sort, which may be expressed & defended in not-infrequently snarky ways, just shows that there is an intellectual community here of a snarky flavor. There’s nothing wrong with that, and likewise there’s nothing particularly wrong with an individual snarkifying in the name of the group when would-be interlocutors are making annoyances of themselves, e.g. by persistent threadjacking. I think there is evidence of this kind of benign (modulo the snarkaliciousness) community behavior here at CT.

But this is not the same as what you describe in the second part of your comment: a party-line that is enforced by refusing, as a group, to consider alternate viewpoints, and to snarkily eject any who would attempt to express such viewpoints. That’s just not generally the case here; or, at least, I have yet to see any evidence that it is so.

Would anyone seriously argue that Steve is anything other than a troll? Raw Data is trolling 80% of the time. Seth isn’t exactly trolling, but it’s clear that he has a enemies list that includes all scientists, all engineers, and all analytic philosophers. If Steve and Raw Data never posted again, no one would miss them. If Seth never posted about how he hates 20% of the human race, no one would miss that either. Shit, if that’s groupthink, then sign me up.

Walt: whether those particulars posters are trolls or not is not the point, but I’m tired of repeating the point so I won’t anymore.

Jonathan: you may be right. I agree with you that CT is nothing like the second option you describe, but I see its comment section atmosphere as worse than the first option you describe.

He wants to get that dog seen to.

“A troll post is the equivalent of a rock thrown through your front window.”

Nah. A troll post is an attempt to get attention. The entire point is to get enraged responses. The only way to deal with a troll is to deny the troll what the troll wants, and ignore the troll.

This has been the common online wisdom for well over fifteen years now. Don’t feed the troll. (Too bad that blog comment threads don’t allow for killfiles, but one can do it mentally easily enough — so long as people aren’t feeding the troll, in which case the best idea is to quit reading the thread that people have ruined by responding to the troll.)