At Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander provides a blueprint for discrediting anyone so you can avoid grappling with their actual arguments:
Here’s a fun argument you can use to discredit anyone at any time.
Start by calling them an arrogant fanatic with a totalizing ideology, someone who thinks they personally have solved all problems and can’t possibly learn from anyone who disagrees. If they have friends who agree with them, they’re a cult who collectively work to shelter themselves from any dissenting viewpoint.
Then your victim responds by presenting one hundred notarized affadavits describing times when they have engaged with their critics, spent years studying books by their critics to see what they could learn from them, and even changed their beliefs in response to criticism.
Then you spring the trap: “Ah, but you cherry-picked critics who operate within your worldview, a sort of loyal opposition. You continue to dismiss and exclude genuine critics who challenge your smug assumptions.”
This always works. If your victim protests that they do like and appreciate many critics with worldviews different to theirs, you object that no, those guys are also within the system. You meant a different guy, even further away from their own view. Oh, they read that one too? You meant an even more different guy. Eventually, no matter how cosmopolitan they are, you will reach someone they actually don’t respect — let’s say a Stalinist pedophile who believes the Papacy is a Jewish plot — and then you go ha! I told you that you rejected everyone outside your little bubble!
Everyone has people close to their ideology who they respect, and people far away from it who they don’t respect. Professionally, I work from a tradition of medicalized psychiatry influenced by figures like Kraepelin, Kline, and (sigh) Stahl. When I operate within that tradition — let’s say by prescribing escitalopram to a depressed patient — here are five circles of critics I might consider listening to:
- The Colleague: “Instead of prescribing escitalopram, you should prescribe bupropion, which studies show is equally efficacious with fewer side effects.”
- The Biopsychosocialist: “Instead of just using medication, you should treat depression with a balanced regimen of biopsychosocial interventions, including improved diet, better sleep schedule, and helping the patient overcome obstacles in their life.”
- The Freudian: “Have you even considered that the patient might be repressing his latent desire to kill his father and marry his mother? Maybe you should analyze him weekly for ten years.”
- The Zealot: “Mental illness is caused by separation from Christ/Mohammed/Buddha/Confucius. Your patient should seek forgiveness and let God/Allah/enlightenment/filial piety into their heart/soul/chakras/family.”
- The Scientologist: “Psychiatrists are hostile aliens from the planet Farsec. Mental illnesses are caused by body thetans under the influence of the evil overlord Xenu, which can only be removed through dianetics classes, especially the expensive ones.”
In practice, I devote a lot of time and energy to the Colleague and the Biopsychosocialist’s criticisms, a small amount to the Freudian’s, and very little to the Zealot’s and Scientologist’s.
If you portrayed me as a blinkered fanatic who refused to consider other views, I might object by talking about all the time I spent engaging with my colleagues and the biopsychosocialists. Then you could say that those are just loyal opposition within my own modern-20th-century-medicalized-psychiatry paradigm, but, if I’m so broad-minded, why don’t I engage more with Freudians, zealots, and Scientologists? I can only answer that I think those people are wrong. Then you could say “See, Scott admits that he thinks that his own ideology is the sole source of truth and that outside critics have nothing useful to contribute”.
This is what Eric Raymond calls a Kafkatrap, where any denial is further evidence of guilt. The victim insists “I do so listen to criticism! See, I draw my boundary of who to listen to way out here“, and points to some place very far away from him. The attacker answers “See! Everyone inside that boundary is within your worldview by definition, so you’re admitting that you refuse to listen to criticism from outside your worldview!”
Raymond coined “kafkatrap” during the first round of Social Justice Wars, and this argument figured heavily there. You’re in medicine? You read dozens of books by highly-educated critics of medicine all across the political spectrum? Ah, but have you engaged with this anthroplogist who says medicine is fundamentally racist because surgeons don’t start every operation with a land acknowledgment? Oh, you don’t take her seriously? Seems like you’re one of those insular elitists who think true outsiders, especially black outsiders, have nothing to contribute. If you get my drift, mein Führer.
