He covered a lot of ground there. It's all all very solid, even the "This is the only time to copy Trump." He managed to be the only man who ran twice as a Democrat to take over the Republican...
He covered a lot of ground there. It's all all very solid, even the "This is the only time to copy Trump." He managed to be the only man who ran twice as a Democrat to take over the Republican party. I don't know if he knew what he was doing, necessarily, but it worked, probably like when you accidentally cheese a puzzle in a video game and just keep moving forward.
The part with changing your approach based on your audience was particularly interesting, with how a simple thing like a content warning can change the audience of a post, or leading in with some opposition to a point you're trying to support to get eyes on your discussion. I wouldn't have expected to see it as a targeting tool, but I guess if it works, it works. There's a lot more I found interesting, but don't have much to say about beyond "that makes sense."
Scott Alexander starts off with good but pretty conventional writing advice. I was surprised at some writing advice that is more like political advice: [...] [...] (The stuff about Trump doesn’t...
Scott Alexander starts off with good but pretty conventional writing advice. I was surprised at some writing advice that is more like political advice:
Figure out who you’re trying to convince, then use the right tribal signals
[...]
For example, when I’m trying to convince conservatives, I veer my signaling way to the right. I started my defense of trigger warnings with “I complain a lot about the social justice movement”. [...]
On the other hand, when I’m trying to convince feminists of something, I start with a trigger warning – partly because I genuinely believe it’s a good idea and those posts can be triggering, but also partly because starting with a trigger warning is a tribal signal that people on the right rarely use. [...]
[...]
Crossing tribal signaling boundaries is by far the most important persuasive technique I know, besides which none of the others even deserve to be called persuasive techniques at all. But to make it work, you have to actually understand the signals, and you have to have at least an ounce of honest sympathy for the other side.
(The stuff about Trump doesn’t age well, though, just because it’s too serious a topic to be used in an example. I guess he wasn’t taking Trump seriously in February 2016.)
It looks like he stumbled into one of his rules I'm mostly kidding.
It looks like he stumbled into one of his rules
A related note: when talking about controversial things to a potentially hostile audience, look through every single sentence of your work and imagine how it would sound if it were quoted out of context and used as a summary of who you are as a human being.
I was thinking that the sentences I quoted were a good example of following that rule. If more carelessly written it would have been very easy to sound like he’s recommending that you lie about...
I was thinking that the sentences I quoted were a good example of following that rule. If more carelessly written it would have been very easy to sound like he’s recommending that you lie about your beliefs to suit the audience, except he’s clear that he’s in favor of trigger warnings, he just doesn’t always use them.
He covered a lot of ground there. It's all all very solid, even the "This is the only time to copy Trump." He managed to be the only man who ran twice as a Democrat to take over the Republican party. I don't know if he knew what he was doing, necessarily, but it worked, probably like when you accidentally cheese a puzzle in a video game and just keep moving forward.
The part with changing your approach based on your audience was particularly interesting, with how a simple thing like a content warning can change the audience of a post, or leading in with some opposition to a point you're trying to support to get eyes on your discussion. I wouldn't have expected to see it as a targeting tool, but I guess if it works, it works. There's a lot more I found interesting, but don't have much to say about beyond "that makes sense."
Scott Alexander starts off with good but pretty conventional writing advice. I was surprised at some writing advice that is more like political advice:
[...]
[...]
(The stuff about Trump doesn’t age well, though, just because it’s too serious a topic to be used in an example. I guess he wasn’t taking Trump seriously in February 2016.)
It looks like he stumbled into one of his rules
I'm mostly kidding.
I was thinking that the sentences I quoted were a good example of following that rule. If more carelessly written it would have been very easy to sound like he’s recommending that you lie about your beliefs to suit the audience, except he’s clear that he’s in favor of trigger warnings, he just doesn’t always use them.