I think we need to discuss philosophy and learn different views, not refuse to talk to each other and perpetually believe we’re right. What happens when a field of engineers gets outcast from its ideas because it’s viewed as self-serving, or a religion changes its dogma to click bait? What happens when corporate mothers refuse to allow artists to express their own distinctive values? Scott Alexander is correct: if some features occur in naturally occurring systems all the time, then they are features of all desirable systems. It’s not a coincidence that a religion, an organism, a mob of lion fish, and a stock market all look alike; it’s just that as time goes on they all get more complicated and so they look more dissimilar. There are typically relatively featureless seed entities (an exploit, a convert, a founder) and then elaborations and permutations that go on according to the users who follow the ideas and put them to use. It’s not a coincidence that the big disasters of technology in the past couple centuries have been from relatively simple systems that someone can just launch some malicious exploit at and start getting new permutations to exploit without having to get new ideas first.