site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27060 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

From NYT (archive): Elon Musk’s Starlink has connected an isolated tribe to the outside world — and divided it from within.

As the speeches dragged on, eyes drifted to screens. Teenagers scrolled Instagram. One man texted his girlfriend. And men crowded around a phone streaming a soccer match while the group's first female leader spoke. Just about anywhere, a scene like this would be mundane. But this was happening in a remote Indigenous village in one of the most isolated stretches of the planet.

"When it arrived, everyone was happy," said Tsainama Marubo, 73, sitting on the dirt floor of her village's maloca, a 50-foot-tall hut where the Marubo sleep, cook and eat together. The internet brought clear benefits, like video chats with faraway loved ones and calls for help in emergencies. "But now, things have gotten worse," she said. She was kneading jenipapo berries to make a black body paint and wearing ropes of jewelry made from snail shells. Lately, the youth had become less interested in making such dyes and jewelry, she said. "Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet," she said. "They're learning the ways of the white people."

After only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography.

During the meetings, teenagers swiped through Kwai, a Chinese-owned social network. Young boys watched videos of the Brazilian soccer star Neymar Jr. And two 15-year-old girls said they chatted with strangers on Instagram. One said she now dreamed of traveling the world, while the other wants to be a dentist in São Paulo.

A case study in what happens when you take a “natural” society and introduce the internet. This relates in some interesting ways to an overview of Hunter-Gatherers and Play that I posted a few weeks ago in the FFT:

Given the indulgence that hunter-gatherer adults exhibit toward children, it is no surprise that the children spend most of their time playing. Play, almost by definition, is what children want to do. The adults have no qualms about this, because they believe that it is through play that children learn what they must to become effective adults. In a survey of ten hunter-gatherer researchers, who had lived in 7 different hunter-gatherer cultures, all of the researchers said that children were free to play essentially from dawn to dusk every day (see Gray, 2009). In a published report on how Ju/’hoan children spent their time, Patricia Draper (1976, pp 205-206) concluded: "[Ju/’hoan] children are late in being held responsible for subsistence tasks. Girls are around 14 years old before they begin regular food gathering and water- and wood-collecting. This is in spite of the fact that they may be married before this age. Boys are 16 years old or over before they begin serious hunting. … Children do amazingly little work." In a study of peoples with mixed hunter-gatherer and agricultural subsistence, in Botswana, John Bock and Sarah Johnson (2004) found that the more a family was involved in hunting and gathering, and the less they were involved in agriculture, the more time children had to play.

Hunter-gatherer children are never isolated from adult activities. They observe directly all that occurs in camp––the preparations to move; the building of huts; the making and mending of tools and other artifacts; the food preparation and cooking; the nursing and care of infants; the precautions taken against predators and diseases; the gossip, discussions, arguments, and politics; the songs, dances, festivities, and stories. They sometimes accompany adults on food gathering trips, and by age 10 or so boys sometimes accompany men on hunting trips. In the course of their daily lives, they see, hear, and have the opportunity to explore everything that is relevant to becoming a successful adult in their culture, and they incorporate all of this into their play. They play at the activities that they observe in the adults around them, and as they grow older, their play turns gradually into the real thing. There is no sharp division between playful participation and real participation in the valued activities of the band.

The above-mentioned survey of researchers elicited many examples of valued adult activities that were mimicked regularly by children in play. Digging up tubers, fishing, smoking porcupines out of holes, cooking, caring for infants, climbing trees, building vine ladders, building huts, using knives and other tools, making tools, carrying heavy loads, building rafts, making fires, defending against attacks from predators, imitating animals (a means of identifying animals and learning their habits), making music, dancing, storytelling, and arguing were all mentioned by one or more respondents. The specific lists varied from culture to culture, in accordance with differences in the skills that were exemplified by adults in each culture. All of the respondents said that boys in the culture they studied engaged in a great deal of playful hunting. The two respondents who studied the Agta—a culture in which women as well as men regularly hunt—noted that girls as well as boys, in that culture, engaged in much playful hunting.

Apparently, when children are free to do what they want, they spend much of their time playing at the very activities that they see, from direct experience, are most crucial for success in their culture. Their conscious motive is fun, not education. It is exciting for children, everywhere, to pretend that they are powerful, competent adults, doing beautifully and skillfully what they see the adults around them doing. From an evolutionary perspective, it is no coincidence that children are constructed in such a way.

Equally important to learning how to hunt and gather, for hunter-gather children, is learning how to interact with others assertively yet peacefully. In their play, children practice arguing. Turnbull has described how older Mbuti children (age 9 and up) playfully rehash and try to improve upon the arguments that they have heard among adults.

In a “primitive” or natural society, childrens’ play is an effortless rendition of adult activity. Over their crucial years of cognitive development, children slowly become adults through stress-free exploration and imitation. The playfulness guides them toward skill acquisition, not unlike a fun video game. In the absence of superstimuli, there is no better way to “play”, so boredom promotes the learning behavior effortlessly. This has the inherent benefit of acting as “shaping” (in a psychological sense) because the skill that is learned is never beyond one’s capacity, is imitated through one’s father, and with the older children who act as mentors (“the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise”).

Their original arrangement was paradisal. Just from a psychological standpoint. It is the optimal way for a child to learn. When StarLink was introduced, the paradisal order was disrupted — innocent children have consumed Apple in the prelapsarian garden, so to speak. There is no turning back; they will likely look at their loincloths and feel shame at their nakedness. But I do wonder then, what about us developed people? Are we doomed to fall further and further from grace, our children forever destined to the cognitive hazards of superstimuli? Is there no way out, no rope we can grab to lift us back to grace?

If the paradisal order was so great, hunter-gatherers wouldn't have been getting stomped by farmers for the last 10,000 years. Yes, occasionally the nomad horse-archers went out on great rampages to beat the farmers - but they always lose in the end.

Suppose we took the socialist narrative as true. Maybe women did have better sex under socialism, maybe it was fine to work casually at your guaranteed state job and have fewer Bing Bing Wahoo electronic gadgets that destroy the souls of children. I expect people here immediately think about leaky refrigerators, televisions that exploded, 10-year waitlists for bad cars, breadlines, torture and repression...

Imagine that the social, human-enjoyment problems of socialism were greatly ameliorated - it still wasn't competitive. Capitalism produced greater technical sophistication, more advanced weapons, more of everything. Even if socialism was more fun, it couldn't compete. The innate human will to power and wealth draws people away from socialism. Likewise with hunter-gatherers. As Scott says, maybe it was really fun to hunt without much care for the future, have fun around the fireplace, skin and brutally torture beaten enemies. Maybe it was way more fun not having to do these tedious scientifically managed tasks. Even then, there was a darker side to their existence.

Noble or Savage, it still doesn't matter, they couldn't compete in armaments or numbers. And so they go into the dustbin of history. If apprenticeships and playful imitation were the optimal way to learn, they'd be the ones ruling over us. We need literacy, advanced mathematics, management and hyperspecialization to maintain a vastly more complex civilization. We need hundreds of thousands of words to describe everything in the universe, they only need to worry about things they can physically observe in their forest.

Of course there are problems in our civilization. Superstimulus for instance can and should be regulated. Education can be greatly improved, it's not fit for function even by scientific standards let alone student enjoyment. There are many political/societal problems that need to be addressed. But we're not falling from grace, hunter-gatherers are far below us.

If the paradisal order was so great, hunter-gatherers wouldn't have been getting stomped by farmers for the last 10,000 years.

At the time most of that stomping took place, your average farmer was stunted, malnourished, and sickly compared to his hunter-gatherer counterpart and beat them simply because they could sustain a much higher population of miserable peasants. Of course, if you are evaluating societies on a purely Darwinian basis of survival then whatever won out is superior, but that leaves out every moral and aesthetic consideration that informs most people's judgement of what makes life worth living.

As an example, if we extrapolate current trends in fertility, the median Motte user will be outbred and replaced by individuals with lower IQ and religious sects like the Amish and Hasidic Jews, whose descendants will most likely be either disinclined to or incapable of maintaining our current industrial civilization. Would that then make them better than us? (I know there's a half dozen ways to yes.chad this, but I'm just curious if you hold any of those positions)

if we extrapolate current trends in fertility, the median Motte user will be outbred and replaced by individuals with lower IQ and religious sects like the Amish and Hasidic Jews

If they're around and we're not, then they would be better than us. I subscribe to 'if you're so smart, why aren't you rich' logic on this. Unless we get wiped by something beyond our control like an alien invasion, we're responsible for our own destiny.

I say no, the Amish and Hasidics won't be around. If society breaks down you get warlordism and peaceful religious cults will get shredded by the violent ones. Something like the Taliban or a drug cartel is more competitive than Amish and Hasidics. Hasidics are very good at surviving in these credulous bureaucratic states that can be rules-lawyered. Amish technology is simple and robust in certain respects against EMP or supply chain breakdown. But their culture is not on the upward path.

If our civilization fails, someone else will use the methods of industrial civilization to subdue the rest, they'll re-establish the upward path. Someone will try course-correction, aggressively increasing fertility or embracing massive cloning or AI...

Aesthetic and moral considerations are secondary to survival. It's no good saying 'oh preindustrial civilization is so great' even if it's true, Ted should've had the wisdom to understand that nobody is going to pull back. Competitive dynamics prohibit it.

Fertility just isn’t going to be necessary in the near future with mass automation. Having 300 million useless mouths to feed vs 50 million is only going to be a drag on productivity and prosperity for those left. In addition, tfr in the rich world might well rise when most people are ‘retired’ and no longer have a career to provide a sense of purpose.

A few countries with extreme collapsing rates like South Korea and possibly China might struggle briefly while human labor is still widely necessary, but for the West, where native tfr still hovers above 1.5 in most countries, there’s more than enough time left. And as you note, the Amish, Hasidim and so on are - in a true ‘collapse’ scenario - sitting ducks for faction with modern weaponry.

Useless mouths still vote and affect culture. Enough useless mouths can theoretically reject automation in increasingly violent ways. Useless mouths can do a lot of damage. There’s a reason the Catholic Church wants you to raw dog your wife endlessly and have 9 children before she gets too old.

I agree, I think "a useless mouth and his clout are soon parted". To the extent that competition still operates at any scale, I worry that anti-automators will be eventually marginalized, no matter how many kids we have.

USA imported black slaves to pick cotton, not needed anymore, and they are now a net drain. They are not "soon parted" but have privileged status.

Good point. I agree they have de jure privileged status, and that this leads to some substantial concrete benefits. But I'd counter that, to the extent that competition operates, it naturally disenfranchises them from almost all angles and makes their own self-advocacy ineffective. E.g. affirmative action spots mostly go to non-ADOS, BLM was a corrupt waste of political energy (compared to e.g. the at least-somewhat effective ADL), high-income people move away leaving places like Detroit.

I'm saying that a human worker advocacy org, in a world of more sophisticated machine actors, would similarly end up being a useless skinsuit pretending to advocate on behalf of humans, but wouldn't be able to avoid the important sources of influence all naturally routing around human agency. E.g. if you were a rich human, would you use an inferior (by supposition) human-run investment firm to manage your assets, or a machine-based one?

So my ultimate claim is that we have to choose between freedom and competition versus the continued relevance of humans. I really don't want to have to choose between these things, but I think we do.

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats