And here was my reply to Zak:
Hi Zak,
I appreciate your concerns 100% and agree with some of them. Yes the episode title could have been clearer. And yes, Dalrock’s mischaracterizations of those good men’s arguments is much of the problem with him.
I do see inherent problems with pseudonymity, and the lack of authority and accountability that it generally entails. We had pseudonymous writers on Baylyblog back in the day, but Tim and Clearnote Church were never pseudonymous, so there was always a person and an organization lending their weight to the pseudonymous individual.
I wouldn’t say that Dalrock’s pseudonymity (and subsequent lack of authority or accountability for his writing) is necessarily a “sin”, per se. But it is a recipe for disaster. Dalrock’s hunger for validation, his lack of ability to fight fairly, his playing to the worst instincts of his crowd––these are all things that would likely be avoided or (at least) minimized, if he had to put his real name to what he wrote, and let it be tempered one way or another by real people in his life.
Maybe another way of saying it is this: I’m not saying there’s never been a need in any society for Batman or Robin Hood. But generally speaking, I am very suspicious of masked vigilantes without accountability or authority over them. Know what I mean?
And yes, I agree that we could have presented the context for what we were talking about with Dalrock more clearly. This is a failure of the episode. I don’t have enough perspective on it right now to judge how much of a failure it is. I hope not too much of one. But it is something of one.
I won’t make excuses for it, but I will give you two reasons why it wasn’t as strong as it could be:
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It was hard to get right. We didn’t want to get too far into the weeds of Dalrock’s philosophy. To do that was to risk validating a dishonest and uncharitable man.
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We ran out of time and energy. Wish it wasn’t true, but it is.
Hope that helps!
-N