SlatStar on My Id on Defensiveness

Here's another great post by the best blogger in town (high praise from both David Friedman and Bryan Caplan) Scott Alexander:

I like discussion, debate, and reasoned criticism. But a lot of arguments aren’t any of those things. They’re the style I describe as ethnic tension, where you try to associate something you don’t like with negative affect so that other people have an instinctive disgust reaction to it.