Wow, I haven't seen Phil Plait's post until now. Bloggingheads "called Creationism science"? I can only guess what tortured reasoning gave rise to this claim.

But I think, Eliezer, that you're being too charitable to those who are jumping ship. Sean and Carl aren't doing so because they're anti-accomodationist, they just can't stand the thought of being within 300 internet meters of Creationists if they don't think they can leverage the situation against them. Whether this particularized form of distaste is justifiable is an interesting issue and one I look forward to losing more karma points arguing here. Suffice to say, I would be surprised if there's a non-arbitrary standard that would dictate that advocating Creationism is the most boycott-worthy of all views represented on BhTV.

But this does raise a lot of issues that I'd like to see developed here a little more. We talk about "raising the sanity waterline", but there's not much discussion of how exactly this would be done, what exact institutions and rules of rhetorical engagement tend to actually promote becoming less wrong. One thought that I was toying around with was that irrationality, like many other problems of insufficient virtue, is something that should be attacked from the demand side, not the supply side - meaning that boycotts on ideologies should be looked upon skeptically. I suspect that much of my discomfort with "silencing" tactics arises from my background in the social sciences, where politics frequently manages to honest inquiry because of well-intentioned tactics such as those employed by those who would boycott Bloggingheads for daring to host a podcast they found irresponsible.