It’s going about how I expected it would. (I wasn’t expecting any amazing results. Especially since all I’ve done is post a few links and email a few people. If that was all it took to successfully promote something, then many things would spread like wildfire.)
If I kept doing this kinda stuff for a while and it resulted in you having some new fans or a new forum member or someone having a proper debate with you, I’d be very happy with that.
Some tips:
People are wary of outsiders. There are signal/noise issues on the internet. Actually spending time in communities and chatting/bonding with people more can help.
Think about your audience and their point of view and what they care about. E.g. on an Objectivism group, they probably don’t know or care who David Deutsch is. They’d also probably be more interested in a defense of Rand than a smear of Rand.
One thing I’ve found effective is offering to read things or debate other people if the person can refer you to good stuff on their side. E.g.:
Can you point me to writing which you think makes a correct, reasonably complete (across multiple sources is fine), and persuasive case for this reasonable chance of revival?
If I’m mistaken about this I’d like to find out (and sign up for cryonics), and I am willing put in the effort to find out.
This discussion went on much longer after I said this and his response began “I can’t point you to anything better than what is posted at Alcor’s and CI’s sites, no. Instead let’s look at what you say below.”
You could similarly ask people, if they don’t want to debate, if they know anyone who agrees with their position who does, or if their entire side is closed to debate (in which case, arguably, the more popular their side is, the worse they look – it kinda inverts the value/impressiveness of popularity if it means an even larger group of people all won’t debate).
Does anyone have experience with debate websites like these?
I don’t have experience with debate websites like those.
I did, however, do debating as an extracurricular activity in high school and recall that nobody (as far as I remember, including myself at the time) cared about the ideas or truth per se. It was just a sport. So it may be better to find people who already sincerely believe something and try to change their mind rather than engage with people who view it merely as a sport and don’t care much about the truth. (I don’t know if the people on those debate sites are different from my high school experience though.)
Would the idea be to try to use those sites to recruit advocates and promote CF and Paths Forward? Or what did you have in mind?
I had in mind debating someone but I looked at them a bit and didn’t see anything that looked like an active site where I could get anything resembling a debate attempting to rationally reach a conclusion (rather than get audience upvotes within time and length limits). I also didn’t get the impression that the sites have many members who read many books or know much about philosophy.
Zulu recently made a video calling out Dave Smith. It is broadly about whether the libertarian movement ought to be pragmatist or principled, and he attacks Smith for moving the libertarian movement in a pragmatist direction. What’s interesting to us is that Zulu critiques Smith for posing as a principled representative intellectual for the libertarian movement, but not actually being knowledgeable about libertarian theory and being bad at debate and then refusing to debate with Zulu and others.
The problem with Dave’s performance here is not just that he lost a debate on a technical level or anything. The problem is that he is representing himself as not only a spokesman of libertarianism, but the best spokesman of libertarianism.
So I’m thinking we should tell Zulu and his community about debate policy and how intellectuals ought to have them or otherwise be discredited and connect it with how they would expect Smith not to survive as the spokesman of the libertarian movement if debate policies were the norm. We could also say how debate policies could save the libertarian movement from the pragmatists, since the principled proponents generally have the upper hand in debates. I don’t really have a position on this myself, but the point is more that people how are confident in their positions shouldn’t fear Paths Forward, but should rather champion it since they should think they’ll win lots of debates.
There’s also pointing out how Austrian economics and liberal/libertarian ideas claim rational and logical basis and think they would win and get implemented in society if only rational debate were had more often. That’s maybe not necessary to point out, they would likely extrapolate it themselves.
I would like to have it posted on his discord channel (if he has one, I kind of assumed he has) and not just let it be an email sent to Zulu. He’s part of a community of other libertarian creators who all seem to like debate, I would expect some of them to be in his discord channel. So if Zulu doesn’t like the idea some of his fans, some of whom are creators and intellectuals, might like them.
I thought we could suggest Zulu to challenge Elliot using his debate policy to get him used to it, but Elliot’s policy is for written debate. I would like to bring up the superiority of written debate with Zulu’s community as well. Zulu might have bias against written debate because it would lessen the value of all the voice debates he has done and put on youtube, and written debates aren’t as easy to make content of. I don’t know his psychology, maybe he’ll be excited to find a better truth-seeking method. Anyway, what’s the point if he doesn’t want to do text debates?
I sent an email to Zulu asking to join his discord server.
That is, he must restrict his debates to being against regime pundits and leftist infiltrators because he just does not know the philosophy even 1% as much as he thinks he does. He feels emboldened to prance around and claim that he knows his stuff and that people like me don’t, but the truth is revealed the instant that Dave steps out of the hug-box debates he has made a name in dominating.
Dave has said that he refuses to debate me, and that he “genuinely [doesn’t] know who the opponent would be”18 on the topic of his support for immigration restrictions; and that he is “thorougly unimpressed with the arguments that everyone was making” in his twitter space on the topic; and that he “[doesn’t] have interest in beating up on weak libertarians.”
He’s able to argue against Andrew Cuomo, or Laura Loomer because they are fundamentally unimpressive people, by Dave’s own admission. He says outright on the Your Welcome podcast that he has a policy of refusing to debate anybody who knows more about the topic than him:
An organisation reached out to me about debating Benny Morris. And I was like: “no! That’s ridiculous! That’s just like absurd!” I’ve read a lot of books about the Israel-Palestine conflict but he’s written a lot of books—like I’ve read his books.29
What is extra funny is that Dave attempts to spin this into a dunk on Destiny, saying that Destiny is a person who is more interested in winning debates than being correct in his ideas. But he says this with respect to Destiny actually debating Benny Morris. Surely it is the man who refuses to debate people who are more well-read than him who is concerned only with winning debates, rather than the people who go into such debates.
It is worth noting that this podcast was recorded shortly after his debate with Wilson. Perhaps it is a new policy in the wake of his utter failure to win debates with competent people.
In this very stream where you completely embarrassed yourself by not being able to answer basic questions any libertarian has faced, I was specifically called out twice as a better proponent of this stuff than you. There just is no denying my prowess when you have two separate people telling you, to your face, that I am better at this shit than you are.
You can keep running whatever gambits you want to get out of debating me, but they keep falling one after the other. You can say that you won’t debate me because I’m just not good enough on libertarian theory so you would easily crush me, but that has been shown as completely false by this debate.
You can say that you won’t debate me because I’m just too irrelevant for you, but that has been shown to be false by my double-citing in the debate you are having as a better proponent than you, and by the fact that my top video easily sits in your top five videos of all time, and I did it without interviewing fucking presidential candidates.
Dave, you can keep giving out these excuses to not debate me, or you can give whatever the real reason is. Maybe you just don’t like me; well, you debated Andrew fucking Cuomo, so I guess you guys are best buds.
Maybe I just fit into that category of people who are far more well-read on this topic than you are and who are therefore banned from debating you. It would just be nice if you would embrace this fact, explain to everyone that you are a coward who prefers preaching to the choir, and then we can all move on.
It’s not just that he is bad at expounding these ideas beyond a few carefully selected soundbites—its that he does this whilst painting himself as nothing less than “the most consistent motherfucker you know.”
The fact that he has chosen to put himself in this position leaves him open to extensive criticism on how he is performing in that role. If you cultivate a career built around being a prominent libertarian who knows all of the facts and can beat anybody in a debate, it reflects on the wider movement when you fail so miserably. I am not interested in criticising everyone who has ever lost a debate before. But in this particular case Dave has branded himself as an expert and has used that expert branding as a justification to refuse to debate me or anybody on my side of these issues.
I’m open to some voice debates as long as the format is OK. I think flexibility for debates is important. For format, unstructured talking or a good structure is fine but not:
I know you’re generally open to debate but you wouldn’t be obligated to accept based on your debate policy.
Zulu usually does unstructured with no moderator.
What does “it” refer to? I assume some Paths Forward or debate policy promo/explanation?
One difficulty I foresee is trying to convince them of debate policies. Like I feel like people have little patience for outsiders who are trying to pitch something (e.g., consider people’s attitude to door-to-door salesmen). So I assume we’d either have to have a very brief pitch or, alternatively, become more genuine members of the community first.
Yeah I like that idea. It definitely seems like it could be a good idea to mingle with and target some of his fans and Zulu-adjacent creators too.
Speaking of that, the other day I connected with two small Zulu-adjacent/Zulu fan YouTubers on X/Twitter: Tucker Marlor (YT, X) and Rational Frontier (YT, X). So I can try DM them stuff if you think that might be helpful. I could perhaps try connecting with some more people in that community too—maybe by finding some more ppl like that on X/Twitter and commenting on their stuff and then DMing them. (Btw, do you have an X/Twitter account? If so, I can try connect you with those two Zulu fan creators I mentioned if you think that could be helpful.)
Also, since the preferred media format of Zulu fans is presumably YouTube videos (vs forum posts lol), it occurred to me that I could maybe even create a YouTube video explaining our plan for saving libertarianism from the menace of irrational grifters etc etc (or however they view the issue—I’d have to study their perspective more before creating such a video (and I haven’t watched Zulu’s vid yet since it’s quite long)). And maybe we could share my YT vid in the Discord or wherever we end up. And maybe even try to team up with or collaborate with other Zulu-adjacent creators like the ones I mentioned.
These are not firm plans btw. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable making a video. I’d have to think about it more. I’m just thinking out loud—not committing to anything yet. Let me know your thoughts anyway. (Btw I’m dreadful at speaking off the cuff so don’t suggest I try do a live debate/interview lol. I would fail miserably at that. But a scripted YT video I could maybe do if I thought it would be significantly helpful.)
And going back to the idea of connecting with other Zulu fans, maybe another strategy could be to create a sort of “grassroots” movement? What I mean is like if we convince a few other Zulu fans of our plan, then we can get them to ask Zulu too. And if there’s like several of us requesting the same thing from Zulu, maybe he will be likelier to acquiesce than if it’s just one or two of us. This indirect approach could be better. It could also give us a “practice run” (so to speak) where we get the opportunity to sharpen our pitch by practicing it on lower status people and iterate on it to make it more convincing before approaching Zulu himself.
Let me know your thoughts.
I wouldn’t be surprised.
If we can get Zulu to debate Elliot, that might still win Elliot a couple of fans from Zulu’s audience who could then become rational debate advocates.
Also, even if Zulu doesn’t go all in on text debate, he could still adopt a written debate policy for who he’ll debate on video. And then that might inspire others to adopt written debate policies too.
He could also perhaps still engage with written material by doing video responses to written stuff.
Or maybe we could agitate for him to create a forum which could operate in conjunction with his YT channel.
I’m not exactly sure though—I’d have to think about this some more. Let me know if you have any ideas.
Let me know how that goes. I guess I should do the same.
How could Elliot’s offer to do voice debates fit into our plan? Maybe if Zulu disagrees with our mini grassroots movement we can all beg him to debate Elliot about it instead? Idk.
Anyway, here’s a little to-do list or list of reminders for myself (you’re welcome to answer some of them):