Defense in depth
I'm strongly suspecting that New Year's is going to be a time of listicles and advocacy. Everyone's going to be at us to support this cause or that, act in this way or that, over the coming year. Everyone has priorities, urgent issues, things they think we should care about most of all.
And that's cool. Passion is wonderful, and clearly many hands are going to be needed for the work ahead.
But when others have different priorities than you, things slide so easily into guilt-tripping and blame. Accusations of indifference. Spoon banditry. And that's not so cool; it robs us of energy and joy that we need as a community. Someone 100% committed to Cause A, if persuaded to switch to Cause B, may only have the talents, resources, or passion to give 70%-even after the energy costs of diverting their attention are paid off.
Can I suggest an XKCD-like reformulation? Can we think of this diversity of tactics and causes not as dilution or diversion, but as defense in depth?
I first encountered the term defense in depth in its infosec incarnation, where we use multiple independent means to combat possible intrusions. Run antivirus software and have a strong-password policy and train your staff against social engineering. It's based on a broader military strategy where you use multiple layers of resources, even weak ones, to bog an attacker down, rob them of their momentum, and leave them vulnerable to counterattack.
It may not be, in the abstract, the best strategy for the time ahead of us-the Wikipedia entry points out that it's most effective in opposition to a single, focused attack, and we're facing something much broader-based than that. But given the costs and risks of circular firing squads, given that our strength as evidence-based thinkers and anti-authoritarians will be in nurturing diverse opinions and tactics and then sharing the results widely to expand everyone's toolkit, it's the most pragmatic approach to moving in a generally-agreed direction with people with whom we may not always see eye to eye.
A couple of skills for that toolkit, if you're going to follow this model:
- figuring out how to work respectfully with people who think your priorities are wrong
- being mindful of why, whether, and how to discuss other's choices when you think they're actively counterproductive
Any more resources? Or am I talking out of my arse here?