Orbital Decay

Only a few weeks ago, The Orbit was launched. Despite my personal and philosophical differences with several of their authors (e.g. Gabriel, Zvan) I tried to remain upbeat about the project. My friend Adam [REDACTED] was less than sanguine, starting a betting pool on which one of their allies they would throw under the bus first.

Turns out the answer was Surly Amy:

Many Orbit bloggers, who have different relationships (or lack thereof) with Amy and Surly-Ramics, are ourselves disabled and engaged in disability advocacy to different extents. While some now feel comfortable promoting Amy’s work, others differ, and individual bloggers will continue drawing their own lines. As a network, however, we recognize offering Surly-Ramics was a mistake, both because no consensus existed on our network and because doing so without explanation cast doubt on disability rights’ importance to us. We apologize for that mistake.

Evidently Amy has been cast out of the orbit of her erstwhile allies on account of calling people stupid, of all things.

@SurlyAmy I usually love you but holyfuck your valentine to DDOSers was the most ableist thing I've seen in a WHILE. Be better. — Kassiane (@UVGKassi) February 13, 2014

@SurlyAmy all the "stupid" & "I'm surprised you remember to breathe". Like, holy fuck ableism. Considering tossing my surlies. It's THAT BAD — Kassiane (@UVGKassi) February 13, 2014

@SurlyAmy Stupid, IME, is polite-company "r*****d." I say as a person who has been called both. — ischemgeek (@ischemgeek) February 13, 2014

@SurlyAmy further clarification: Stupid is to retard as shrill or harpy is to b***h/c**t. It's a dogwhistly way of saying the same thing. — ischemgeek (@ischemgeek) February 13, 2014

There is a lesson to be had in all this, for those who care to listen. It has to do with group dynamics and the pursuit of ideological purity:

…it’s important to be prejudiced in favor of tolerating dissent. Wait until substantially after it seems to you justified in ejecting a member from the group, before actually ejecting. If you get rid of the old outliers, the group position will shift, and someone else will become the oddball. If you eject them too, you’re well on the way to becoming a Bose-Einstein condensate and, er, exploding.

That last bit will hold an intuitive appeal to physics majors, mostly. The lesson is clear enough, though. Once you start shunning allies for failing to see the world in precisely the same way, you run the risk of spiraling downwards into ever stricter purity tests until there is virtually no one left.