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 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.