Thread by @add_hawk

This is super interesting, and close to something I've been thinking about. If a certain kind of messaging is cheap to create but costly for your opposition to deal with, then you have a strategic reason to put out tons of it.

My version of this is filed as "mental spam".

https://twitter.com/ETVPod/status/1329620015398739971

I was thinking about mental spam in relation to the "sea-lioning" worry.

If rationalist bro can just raise any question in public, and demand that their opponent must answer it, then this creates a really cost-effective strategy for interference.

Raising a question is easy. Answer it is hard, especially to an unsympathetic audience. The view that "everybody has a right to raise questions, and you must answer all questions" creates an opportunity for brutally gaming the public discourse, and attacking cognitive resources.

Call the strategy "question-spamming". If we have the norm that "questions should be answered thoughtfully" then you can just create questions willy-nilly and exhaust your opponent by answering them.

What's interesting is that a lot of the philosophy-bros types who engage in it think that there's a norm that all questions need to be answered thoughtfully, but deny any norm that questions need to be raised thoughtfully.

And a lot of counter-logic-bro discourse of the "I'm too tired to respond to this" could be understood as claiming that the *questions* themselves were raised thoughtlessly, without adequate inquiry.

The more I think about it, the more weird it is to subscribe to the following discourse norms:

1. Anybody has a right to raise any question without significant cognitive investigation.
2. All people must put serious thought into answering any raised questions.

My gaming side knows *exactly* how to take advantage of a gap like that. Basic gaming strategy: low-cost moves that require high-cost responses from your opponent should be done in volume. This is literally called "spamming" in games.

These norms permit question-spamming.