But what makes the barnacles stick to the whale?
philosophybear.substack.com
Yesterday I wrote the following: “There’s an idea I think wrongly associated with the right that our civilization is falling apart because we’ve accreted too much bullshit. Too many processes, forms, best practices, special procedures, liability reduction strategies, niche expertise, etc. Each barnacle means little perhaps, but in total the load is killing the whale.
  • @Bridger
    2•5 months ago

    From wikipedia: some whales may make use of the barnacles as protective armor or for inflicting more damage while fighting, which would make the relationship mutualistic where both parties benefit

  • Lvxferre
    2•5 months ago

    Specifically on the third point (witch hunts): I love seeing parallel development of similar but slightly different analogies. The author is clearly using the expression “witches” to convey “any group of undesirable people”, like I learned; however, the meaning that he’s associating with “witch hunter” is wider than the one that I learned.

    In his [implicit] definition, any time that you seek witches you’re witch hunting. In mine it’s only when you hunt a non-witch as if they were a witch.

    But once you go past those small semantic differences, the conclusion is obvious: you need to allow people to correctly point out actual witches, but you need to crack down on false accusations of witchcraft.

    That’s a damn great remind for people to look at what the words are conveying, not picking specific words like you were braindead and assuming the rest of the discourse out of them.