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In this episode, an authoritarian and some anarchist(s) have an unhinged conversation about policing.
Participants: Yassine, Kulak, & Hoffmeister25 [Note: the latter's voice has been modified to protect him from the progressive nanny state's enforcement agents.]
Links:
About the Daniel Penny Situation (Hoffmeister25)
Posse comitatus (Wikipedia)
Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison (BJS 1997)
The Iron Rule (Anarchonomicon)
Eleven Magic Words (Yassine Meskhout)
Blackstone's ratio (Wikipedia)
Halfway To Prison Abolition (Yassine Meskhout)
Defunding My Mistake (Yassine Meskhout)
Recorded 2023-09-16 | Uploaded 2023-09-25
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Notes -
I thought you already conceded you tend to assume the perspective of a critic. This is, again, absolutely fine, but again you can't really expect to be cross-examined when you're not giving people that much to hang on to. It's a sound debate tactic - you are minimizing the attack surface - but a bad conversation tactic.
...or I should say, bad asynchronous text-based conversation tactic. A lot of it comes down to form. I listened to this episode of your podcast, and noticed that when you stake out your position, you summarize it to a sentence, and leave it at that, for example when you said you're in favor of giving people free drugs to minimize property crime. That works in a verbal conversation. I feel that I was interviewing you I could take this as a starting point, and get into the thick of things. I feel like I could also do that if we were in a chat room, but I don't think that works in asynchronous text-based communications.
Another thing is - and sadly it's a lot harder for me to pinpoint what the issue is - there's something about your writing style that makes me zone out and ask "wait, what the hell were we talking about?" by the end of the paragraph. Funnily enough this is in stark contrast to Kulak. I think you guys could learn a lot from each other, because I get the same feeling from him when he shows up on a podcast, but his writing is pretty enjoyable.
At the end of the day, feel free to keep doing what you're doing, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that you expressed a desire to get scrutinizing questions, and I'm just saying what's stopping me from giving them. Other people might not have such issues.
Ok, fair enough. In my opinion I've staked plenty of positions that can be attacked, and I have no intention of faking agnosticism to minimize my attack surface. I think that's demonstrated by my willingness to readily offer my opinions whenever asked. I still find it odd that anyone would think I'm trying to hide the ball here, and so I wonder why instances of my genuine agnosticism are interpreted as intentional obfuscation.
Regarding the episode, I play the role of host and it can be tough to balance. I don't want to invite someone on just so I can hear myself talk. It's obviously different if someone is interviewing me and I agree with you on the limits of asynchronous text-based communications.
If you can ever figure out what it is about my writing style that makes you zone out I'd be happy to hear it. I'm always open to actionable feedback. I prioritize making sure that my advocacy pieces lay out my arguments in a clear and easy to follow structure, but if someone disagrees but can't pinpoint why, there's not much for me to work with unfortunately.
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