{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/posts/scissor-statement",
  "path": "/posts/posts/scissor-statement",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-15T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "In retrospect, there is something quite fitting about the concept of a\n\"scissor statement.\"\n\nRationalists are fond of it; just hanging around them over the years,\nI've heard brought up as casual shorthand many times.  I myself have\nused it!  It was coined by Scott Alexander almost eight years ago in\nthe short story \"Sort By Controversial\". There's\nsomething so amusingly Scott Alexander about it.\n\nIf nothing else, it makes for a pretty good story. Four thousand\nwords, yet it's a brisk, casual read.  By turns amusing and\ndisturbingly plausible. If I had to give a blind pitch, think\nLovecraft by way of machine learning, stripping away all the gods and\nmonsters without losing that spark of horror beyond comprehension. If\nanything, it elevates it.\n\nHaving long ago familiarized myself with the \"twist,\" I didn't expect\nto find it this compelling on reread, yet I can almost say it holds\nup.\n\n(And as occasionally happens with rationalist writing, when it speaks\nof AI, it sounds borderline prescient. Eight years ago means it was\nabout a year before [OpenAI would claim][gpt2] their GPT-2 model was\ntoo powerful to release, and remember, it took until around GPT-4 for\nthe world at large to really start to appreciate what LLMs were\ncapable of.)\n\n[gpt2]: https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/openai-gpt2-text-generating-algorithm-ai-dangerous.html\n\nBut I don't bring up that story to glaze its author. The story itself\nis almost irrelevant. The concept has gained a life of its own, much\nlike \"taking the red pill\" is divorced from The Matrix (1999).\n\nSo, what is a scissor statement?\n\nThe idea's simple and evocative.  See, a lot of statements you'll find\nyourself saying are innocuous, obviously true things we can accept\nwithout issue. But of course, there's plenty of contentious things you\nknow will start a fight.\n\nA scissor statement is that rare chimera that seems totally\ninnocuous...\n\n...and now suddenly half the room is at your throat like one of those\nJohn Wick with ten guns pointed at\nhim images\nused for engagement farming unpopular opinions on social media.\n(Incidentally, ragebaiting is exactly what Shiri's scissor was\ninvented to do.)\n\nIt is downright impossible to understand why someone would get mad at\nyou after uttering a scissor statement. Isn't this a settled matter we\ncan all agree on?  And on that point, they do agree! It's obviously\nfalse!\n\nThe concept of scissor statements reflects a real frustration. Haven't\nwe all been there? You say something like \"Christian\nbakers\nshouldn't have to serve gay weddings\" or \"Colin\nKaepernick\nshould have knelt for the anthem\" or \"Brett\nKavanaugh\nbelongs on the supreme court regardless of those allegations, boys\nwill be boys\" and suddenly people look at you like you're some kind of\nbigot!\n\n(Real examples, by the way; in the fiction, these issues are all the\nproduct of scissor statements.)\n\nBut wait, have we all been there? If you have any familiarity with\nthe issues, those statements seem pretty clearly contentious! Only\nignorance could blind you to their implications, let alone their\nliteral content. But okay, we aren't born omniscient, maybe you're one\nof today's lucky 10k, and just didn't know.\nYou made a blunder, but you can learn and not slip up again.\n\nLet me emphasize: scissor statements do not exist. This is not me\nbeing polemic --- we're talking about fiction, Scott made it all up,\nthis is basically an SCP.\n\nBut again, the idea has outgrown the story that spawned it. I can\nsearch through rationalist chats and subreddits and easily find\nrepeated references to this as a meaningful category of thing. (Sure,\nyou can't literally take the red pill, but you can wake up from the\nmatrix, metaphorically. So aren't there things that metaphorically\nbehave like scissor statements?)\n\nThe natural conclusion is this idea caught on because people felt seen\nby the frustration and confusion it portrays.\n\nBut why?\n\nTo quote a climatic passage:\n\n<blockquote>\nIf you just read a Scissor statement off a list, it’s harmless. It\njust seems like a trivially true or trivially false thing. It doesn’t\nactivate until you start discussing it with somebody. At first you just\nthink they’re an imbecile. Then they call you an imbecile, and you want\nto defend yourself. Crescit eundo. You notice all the little ways\nthey’re lying to you and themselves and their audience every time they\nopen their mouth to defend their imbecilic opinion. Then you notice how\nall the lies are connected, that in order to keep getting the little\nthings like the Scissor statement wrong, they have to drag in everything\nelse. Eventually even that doesn’t work, they’ve just got to make\neverybody hate you so that nobody will even listen to your argument no\nmatter how obviously true it is. Finally, they don’t care about the\nScissor statement anymore. They’ve just dug themselves so deep basing\ntheir whole existence around hating you and wanting you to fail that\nthey can’t walk it back. You’ve got to prove them wrong, not because you\ncare about the Scissor statement either, but because otherwise they’ll\ndo anything to poison people against you, make it impossible for them to\neven understand the argument for why you deserve to exist. You know this\nis true. Your mind becomes a constant loop of arguments you can use to\ndefend yourself, and rehearsals of arguments for why their attacks are\ncruel and unfair, and the one burning question: how can you thwart them?\nHow can you convince people not to listen to them, before they find\nthose people and exploit their biases and turn them against you? How can\nyou combat the superficial arguments they’re deploying, before otherwise\ngood people get convinced, so convinced their mind will be made up and\nthey can never be unconvinced again? <em>How can you keep yourself\nsafe?</em>\n</blockquote>\n\nThis would resonate with you if you've repeatedly run up against this\nsort of interminable argument, ever felt a schism down the deepest\naxioms and definitions.\n\nOr to put it bluntly, if you find you keep stumbling into rhetorical\nblunders --- almost like you're making a habit of it. I'd argue this\nutter incomprehension of controversy can only be so persistent in\none's experience if one has a lot of ignorance of others'\nperspective (i.e. privilege), or if after stepping on a rake once, you\nfail to internalize the presence of rakes enough to look before you\nstep.\n\nThere's an interesting take on The Room (2003) which posited that\nthe movie was a great portrayal of an abusive relationship --- by\naccident, in spite of itself.  Because the way it portrays the\nprotagonist's girlfriend as this inexplicably treacherous force\ntearing apart a man who never did anything wrong is deeply revealing\n--- a self-portrait of how the world looks through a warped and\nignorant perspective.\n\nTake a closer look at that passage from the story quoted above. It's\ninane, preoccupied with the statements themselves, with the words.\nIt takes its own perspective for granted (trivially true) and all that\nopposes it are fleeting lies cooked up to support a trivial falsehood.\nNow saying this alone, I admit, would just be nitpicking.\n\nBut the words you hear are just a tail, not the dog wagging it. They\nare the output of another perspective and worldview.  People are\npenetrable to analysis; you can understand them!\n\nI called this passage inane, and I mean that in a etymological\nsense. It is empty, vacuous, starved of meaning. Where are the stakes?\nStatements about gay weddings and systemic racism protests and rape\nculture are not trivial. Maybe they seem that way if you don't care,\nif you uttered your \"scissor statement\" heedless of its implications.\n\nBut these thing matter. Have your critics \"dug themselves so deep\nbasing their whole existence around hating you,\" for no reason other\nthan you uttered a trivial statement, or did that \"trivial\" statement\nnaturally hook into a prefigured, entrenched system of conflict you\nwere already unwittingly a part of?\n\n(One can imagine a very different, more conscious horror story, where\ninstead of the big reveal being that banal trivialities can tear the\nworld apart, you find that speaking certain words reshapes the world\nin ways you don't understand, culminating in a grand reveal that\nwielding this strange power required that you be at birth drafted into\na power struggle you knew nothing about and never asked to be a part\nof.)\n\nA scissor statement isn't just someone disagreeing about something you\nthink is self-evident.  To believe in even the weak, metaphorical\nexistence of \"scissor statements\" requires dumbfounding yourself about\nthe source of your disagreements, reifying it into the fruit of some\nmagical, malign influence. In the story, scissor statements are\ndeployed like weapons, inflicted upon us by an unknown faction to\nmanipulate our world's politics.\n\nIt's like all the feminists arguing with you are pawns in service to\nsome nefarious agenda...\n\nThere's a distinct rhetorical effect to calling something a scissor\nstatement --- scissors cut symmetrically.  It's neutral, agnostic,\nblaming both sides equally. If you call something a \"ragebait\" or\n\"dogwhistle\", there's an implicit accusation of bad faith.  If you\ncall something \"misinformation,\" you acknowledge that one side is\nright.\n\nIf you call something a \"scissor statement\", which side you end up on\nfeels as arbitrary as whether you have the gene for tasting cilantro.\n\nPolitics is an alien force acting on you, not a system working through\nyou.\n\nRationalists were well-primed to accept this sort of framing. After\nall, politics is the mind-killer.\nIt's this insidious evolutionary glitch able to flip off the brains of\neven high INT rationalists and turn them into \"slogan-chanting\nzombies.\"\n\nEarlier, I wrote that believing in a scissor statement requires a deep\nignorance, or a skill issue in the face of opportunities to learn\nmore. But there's a third possibility. That the incomprehension here\nis purely rhetorical, a deliberate dumbfounding.\n\nYou treat these d",
  "title": "Cutting Apart Scissor Statements"
}