"Use It or Lose It"

diff --git a/content/2019/use-it-or-lose-it.md b/content/2019/use-it-or-lose-it.md
new file mode 100644 (file)
index 0000000..5960529
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/2019/use-it-or-lose-it.md
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+Title: Use It or Lose It
+Date: 2019-01-27 23:00
+Category: commentary
+Tags: discourse
+
+It's [been remarked upon](https://archive.fo/eNcoQ) that popular positions are often supported with weak arguments, because people aren't in the habit of having to defend them. I think there's a distinct but related time-dependent effect on advocates of sufficiently unpopular positions. At first, the advocate of the unpopular position grows more sophisticated over time as they refine and elaborate their case against the orthodoxy—until they eventually notice that arguing doesn't work, at which point their argument quality undergoes a sharp and sudden decline: if there's literally no way you can win (because advocates of the orthodoxy are just going to confabulate a series of ever more ridiculous bullshit objections to waste your time), why bother putting in all that effort?
+
+If "Because while you can _select_ a sample from a different multivariate distribution to match a sample from another distribution along one or a few given dimensions, the samples are going to differ in the variables that you didn't select" is just going to be ignored _anyway_, the temptation to flip a table and just say "Because _fuck you_, that's why" may become nigh overwhelming.