| HN Mirror

MAD doesn't work when the people who get destroyed aren't the people who launched the missiles. It isn't enough for them to be other people from the same faction.

When Kennedy was considering nuking Khrushchev, he had to face the reality that, if he did, his own family would die, and if he didn't, they probably wouldn't. Khrushchev, mutatis mutandis. If Kennedy had given the first-strike command, an individual colonel in a missile silo pondering whether to disobey wouldn't face a similar choice; he would know that, whatever he chose, hundreds of other colonels at other missile silos would launch their missiles, the Soviets would retaliate, and his family would die. So his only self-interest was not getting court-martialed for insubordination.

The difference with cancel culture is that there is no Kennedy and no Khrushchev who has the authority to not fire the missiles. Every missile silo independently decides whether to fire and who to fire at, but they compete with other missile silos on the same side to demonstrate greater viciousness. And, instead of killing a million people, every missile kills a ten-thousandth of a person. So it's more of a grinder, as you say, than a firestorm.

So, there's no net gain, but abstaining from the witch hunt is not a Nash equilibrium. It may even put you up at the stake next week when it's seen that you were insufficiently enthusiastic about today's Three Minutes Hate.

More concretely, if you choose not to fire your employee because there's a social media hate campaign directed at him, whether you're right or not, that won't provide you any protection at all when it comes out that twelve years ago you posted something anti-transgender. Or pro-transgender, depending on who's canceling you.

Your optimistic prediction would be true in a world where collective action was easy, and we had plenty of free software, no global warming, and no taxes, just volunteer work.