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Chrisprattalpharaptr

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Chrisprattalpharaptr


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


The current era is best understood as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble.




Still? You can keep saying it, but that doesn't make it true. The current era is best understood as social media-induced brainrot afflicting each generation in it's own way, with zoomers doing whatever it is they do on tiktok, boomers/gen Xers schizo posting incoherently in news comments sections and millennials straddling the line. Then some idiots on the margin actually Do Something, and the rest of us are dragged through the ensuing shitstorm.


If you still believe your model has so much explanatory power, make some predictions:




This time, I'll ask: do you genuinely think my prediction was wrong, and that we are in fact moving away from large-scale violence? Do you genuinely believe the Culture War is winding down? And since no FCfromSSC post would be complete without a link to some other excessively-long comment, nor with a listing of recent violence datapoints, here's both in one from last week.






I do not think I am obsessed with small-minded, zero sum games. I am interested in what is going to happen next, and what is happening next is, it seems to me, largely determined by such games. Most people are obsessed with winning and losing, and because their values are now mutually-incoherent, cooperative victory is no longer a viable option. I think that internalizing this insight gives me a clearer picture of where we are heading, which is of course the main question we've debated for some years now.






As for myself, I am already saved. I think my side will win, but whether it does or not does not is a matter of no true consequence; nothing that truly matters to me is protected by victory or lost by defeat. I do not believe in progress, moral or otherwise. There is nothing new under the sun, all things are wearisome more than one can say. This is the bedrock truth as I understand it, and while I freely admit that it does not come naturally to me, I try to maintain a clear sight of it, even at some personal cost, even here.




Riots and political violence failed to manifest after a brainrotted zoomer killed Kirk two months ago, elections ran smoothly and the political momentum seems to be swinging away from 'Your Side.' I'll give you and @ThomasdelVasto ten to one odds that there's no civil war before the completion of the next presidential election, and I'd give you much better odds if I sat down to think about it more and actually had the money to bet on it. I'd wager that if we had some indices of political violence and economic prosperity, the former would be below 1960s/1970s level, the latter would be close to some ATH and the only way the current era is remarkable is how efficiently the internet has divided us.


But please, make your own predictions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How do you, personally, decide who is to blame for the government shutdown? If Republicans had made concessions to Democrats, would you then be here arguing that it was a 'Republican shutdown?'


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thomas Jefferson was a botanist, architect, paleontologist, president of the American Philosophical Society, politician and other things I'm surely missing. Benjamin Franklin had a similar resume. An LLM or a better historian than myself could fill in the blanks for some real Renaissance era Renaissance men.


Fast forward to the mid-late 20th century, and we're in an era where scientists can conceivably read every manuscript/major text in their field. By the 90s, the scope narrows a bit so that you could reasonably have read every paper in your subfield, by the 2000s we're talking sub-sub field. Today, if you look at one of the popular genes to study there are literally >100,000 papers published on it, with about 5,000 more coming out per year. The scope has narrowed from comprehensive knowledge about biology -> subfield (genetics, immunology, oncology, etc) -> sub-subfield (autoimmunity, leukemias, etc) -> gene or gene family -> some aspect of a gene family or cell type. Teamwork, communication and interlocking specialties are hugely important in ways that they weren't before. My main paper had over 50 authors and included dozens of different specialties and techniques I have no idea how to do.




Now it's beyond that, it's systems of shoggoths that we can tweak and manipulate, but none of us can truly grasp as a whole - and we can't even really imagine someone who can.




Biology is a shoggoth we can't ever grasp as a whole. Maybe there are limitations to intelligence, and no being is ever going to truly grasp biology in a comprehensive way. But if you want to keep making progress, you either need to build a shoggoth-oracle and have it teach us or you need to enhance our brains somehow a la neuralink. Otherwise, we're just going to keep spinning our wheels pumping out shitty papers that nobody reads or can fit into any kind of coherent picture.