I agree that the current situation is like McCarthyism/Red Scare. The question is whether it will get worse; hence the comparisons to things which got worse.
If the question is whether it will get worse, then comparisons to events which were similar to the current situation are just as relevant as comparisons to events which were worse (or even more relevant, if the latter types of events didn’t pass through a phase similar to the current situation along the way). E.g., if there were 5 periods of history that at some point passed through a stage similar to the current situation, and 2 got much worse from there while 3 didn’t, that’s good to know for things like crude reference class forecasting. In contrast, focusing solely on the 2 periods that got worse or solely on the 3 that didn’t would give a misleading picture. (Those are made-up numbers.)
That said, I think the question this post focuses on is more what the consequences would be if it does get worse. E.g., the author writes “As an assumption for this post, I will only analyze scenarios where the rates of polarization continue to rise, until they reach extreme levels.” And that does push in favour of focusing on historical events that were worse than the current situation. (It’s very possible that this is what you meant.)
With that in mind, perhaps history-pedant’s comment could be interpreted as either:
“McCarthyism was already worse than this, and it’s much more likely that the current situation would evolve to something like that than to something like the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, considering a McCarthyism-like scenario would be more valuable and would cost less credibility.”
“The analogy to the Cultural Revolution fits with the author’s aims of analysing an extreme scenario, but it’s so unlikely that we’ll reach such an extreme scenario that that’s not a useful aim. One piece of evidence for this is the history of McCarthyism, which is more similar to the current situation and stopped short of Cultural-Revolution-level-consequences.”
(I’d of course have to leave it to history-pedant to confirm whether either or both of those ideas were what they intended to convey.)
Even if we played forward the worst 5-percentile version of the current situation for a decade, it would be importantly disanalogous to the Cultural Revolution. So it’s better to consider a reference class of more similar events: Red Scare 1, Red Scare 2 (McCarthyism), and various of the inquisitions. Possibly also placing a tiny amount of weight on the Cultural Revolution.
I agree it’s appropriate to compare to the Red Scare and I wish people did that more. However, I was responding to a comment suggesting that it was inappropriate to compare to Cultural Revolution. I think it should be compared to both; the Red Scare would be an example of a situation like this that didn’t get worse, and the CR would be an example of a situation like this that did.
(As an aside, I don’t know enough about the Red Scare to say whether it was worse or better than the current situation. Also, to say it’s so unlikely that we’ll reach the extreme scenario is premature; we need to get a dataset of similar situations and see what the base rate is. We know of at least a few “extreme” scenarios so they can’t be that unlikely.)
I’m not personally taking a stand on how similar the Red Scare and the Cultural Revolution were to the current situation, or how likely it is that we’ll reach various more extreme scenarios. And as I mentioned, I do think there are arguments for making the analogy to the Cultural Revolution, especially if the objective is to analyse what might happen if this gets much more. (Though there are also arguments against making that analogy.)
But I interpreted your prior comment as saying “Our objective is to address the question of whether it will get worse. Therefore, we should focus on comparisons to things which got worse.” Which would seem mistaken, because, to get a good dataset and see what the base rate is, we need to look at comparisons to any situation that was at some point similar to the current one, whether or not it got worse.
But maybe you actually meant ”...Therefore, we should think about (without necessarily focusing on)comparisons to things which got worse, as well as comparisons to things which didn’t.” Is that what you meant?
(I think one reason that that interpretation didn’t come to mind is that this post didn’t discuss the Red Scare, so it’s not the case that this post made both analogies and then the commenter suggested it should only make the analogy to the Red Scare.)
Yeah, what I meant was the second thing—I was responding to someone saying it was weird to bring up the cultural revolution; I was explaining why it was perfectly sensible to do so. I didn’t say we shouldn’t also talk about the red scare. Perhaps I misinterpreted the original comment though—maybe they were not so much saying it was weird to talk about the CR, but that it was weird to not talk about the Red Scare, in which case I agree.
I agree that the current situation is like McCarthyism/Red Scare. The question is whether it will get worse; hence the comparisons to things which got worse.
If the question is whether it will get worse, then comparisons to events which were similar to the current situation are just as relevant as comparisons to events which were worse (or even more relevant, if the latter types of events didn’t pass through a phase similar to the current situation along the way). E.g., if there were 5 periods of history that at some point passed through a stage similar to the current situation, and 2 got much worse from there while 3 didn’t, that’s good to know for things like crude reference class forecasting. In contrast, focusing solely on the 2 periods that got worse or solely on the 3 that didn’t would give a misleading picture. (Those are made-up numbers.)
That said, I think the question this post focuses on is more what the consequences would be if it does get worse. E.g., the author writes “As an assumption for this post, I will only analyze scenarios where the rates of polarization continue to rise, until they reach extreme levels.” And that does push in favour of focusing on historical events that were worse than the current situation. (It’s very possible that this is what you meant.)
With that in mind, perhaps history-pedant’s comment could be interpreted as either:
“McCarthyism was already worse than this, and it’s much more likely that the current situation would evolve to something like that than to something like the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, considering a McCarthyism-like scenario would be more valuable and would cost less credibility.”
“The analogy to the Cultural Revolution fits with the author’s aims of analysing an extreme scenario, but it’s so unlikely that we’ll reach such an extreme scenario that that’s not a useful aim. One piece of evidence for this is the history of McCarthyism, which is more similar to the current situation and stopped short of Cultural-Revolution-level-consequences.”
(I’d of course have to leave it to history-pedant to confirm whether either or both of those ideas were what they intended to convey.)
My position is more like the following:
Even if we played forward the worst 5-percentile version of the current situation for a decade, it would be importantly disanalogous to the Cultural Revolution. So it’s better to consider a reference class of more similar events: Red Scare 1, Red Scare 2 (McCarthyism), and various of the inquisitions. Possibly also placing a tiny amount of weight on the Cultural Revolution.
Disanalogies with the cultural revolution:
No recent civil wars
Taking place in old democratic societies
Situated within Western culture
No targeted physical violence
State not supporting the violence
etc.
I agree it’s appropriate to compare to the Red Scare and I wish people did that more. However, I was responding to a comment suggesting that it was inappropriate to compare to Cultural Revolution. I think it should be compared to both; the Red Scare would be an example of a situation like this that didn’t get worse, and the CR would be an example of a situation like this that did.
(As an aside, I don’t know enough about the Red Scare to say whether it was worse or better than the current situation. Also, to say it’s so unlikely that we’ll reach the extreme scenario is premature; we need to get a dataset of similar situations and see what the base rate is. We know of at least a few “extreme” scenarios so they can’t be that unlikely.)
I’m not personally taking a stand on how similar the Red Scare and the Cultural Revolution were to the current situation, or how likely it is that we’ll reach various more extreme scenarios. And as I mentioned, I do think there are arguments for making the analogy to the Cultural Revolution, especially if the objective is to analyse what might happen if this gets much more. (Though there are also arguments against making that analogy.)
But I interpreted your prior comment as saying “Our objective is to address the question of whether it will get worse. Therefore, we should focus on comparisons to things which got worse.” Which would seem mistaken, because, to get a good dataset and see what the base rate is, we need to look at comparisons to any situation that was at some point similar to the current one, whether or not it got worse.
But maybe you actually meant ”...Therefore, we should think about (without necessarily focusing on) comparisons to things which got worse, as well as comparisons to things which didn’t.” Is that what you meant?
(I think one reason that that interpretation didn’t come to mind is that this post didn’t discuss the Red Scare, so it’s not the case that this post made both analogies and then the commenter suggested it should only make the analogy to the Red Scare.)
Yeah, what I meant was the second thing—I was responding to someone saying it was weird to bring up the cultural revolution; I was explaining why it was perfectly sensible to do so. I didn’t say we shouldn’t also talk about the red scare. Perhaps I misinterpreted the original comment though—maybe they were not so much saying it was weird to talk about the CR, but that it was weird to not talk about the Red Scare, in which case I agree.