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.
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Shaming.
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Notes -
The idea that there is some state of pure discourse free of even the hint of antagonism where humans merely discuss, unmolested by concepts like personal interest or context, the culture war without waging it to any degree is a fantasy, unless they're Spock (in which case they aren't human) or some secret time traveler posting from 3050 who finds the whole thing irrelevant. Maybe it's an important or necessary fantasy to prevent a discussion forum from entirely turning into /pol/, so maybe me getting banned for stretching kayfabe a little too much with my prior post was necessary (not that I really think so, but I have no idea where the Culture War Roundup community went or how I can participate in it), but it's still a fantasy.
But no, I wasn't optimizing for heat instead of light in that post. (That's more like a genre of post not uncommonly made on /pol/ that says something like "All women like to be dominated, therefore all Israeli women secretly want BHC (Big Hamas Cock). Only JIDF shills disagree. Prove me wrong, if you work for Mossad. Also, God doesn't exist, and Nick Fuentes is confirmed gay. But don't post in this thread if you have an American flag, because I don't want to talk to mutts who can't stop getting themselves shot." (Pls don't ban me mods for accurately imitating a /pol/ poster like you previously banned me for accurately imitating a black person. It's genuinely just an example to illustrate the difference between what I posted and what actually optimizing for heat is.)) I simply acknowledge that there's no light that doesn't also produce heat, and sometimes the best way to get the kind of light you need effectively is to turn up the heat a bit (whereas with my current post I instead tried a more logic-based rhetorical approach). Again, only in a fantasy world is this never the case.
The only thing strict adherence to the absolute most literal letter most rules here gets you is the culture war still being clearly waged, just in an infuriatingly indirect, passive aggressive fashion, like when Andrew Yang fans would pretend they were entirely non-partisan even though they obviously leaned heavily to the left. (And this is why the strictest literal letter of the rules here is rarely/only selectively enforced, though who gets the privilege of bending them the most can differ based on mod fiat.) I prefer my direct approach, though it's of course necessarily limited by the venue.
And I am traffic as opposed to merely in it? Good. I appreciate the compliment. The only thing that gives me pause about the current state of this world is that I'm not getting in its way enough, not that I'm getting in its way too much. You know who also acted as really infuriating traffic for the drivers on the road once? This guy. Traffic can be a noble thing.
So am I just waging the culture war? No more than basically anybody else here, even if I acknowledge it a bit more than some. Maybe I'll get popped extra/again for rejecting the polite fiction that this is a venue inherently opposed to that, but again if that happens given the pretty anodyne tone of my current posts then that's just a matter of selective enforcement, not reality.
In any case, if you think my prior post was wrong, then you should be happy with the mods here, who banned me and incentivized me to use a different rhetorical strategy this time. Your Motte lives, or at least its naked emperor has not yet ended his alleged fashion show.
That's good for me. They should be in my view.
Yes, I'm happy to confirm that some reasonably intelligent people agree with me. (Though according to the OP's count, almost a quarter of voters still disagreed with me, so hardly an echo chamber. Perhaps I just made a good point, even if it wasn't dressed up all fancy in pretending that I have no dog in the fight?)
I remember those days too. They were called the '90s when I lived them. Alas, they've changed some things since then that have affected people's propensity for anger and hatred.
"Kind", no. But I do desire to be relatively unbiased (other than by what I see as the truth) and knowledge-seeking (and it's worth noting that it's the pursuit of "kindness" that often inhibits those two more important values), and I think that I'm at a reasonable level of both and that the quoted paragraph in controversy by no means contradicts that. If effective rhetoric invalidates truth and knowledge-seeking, then there is not a truthful or knowledgeable person on this planet (or if there is, he has zero tools to communicate any of it to the rest of us or at least is apparently not supposed to use them, which seems a bit unproductive to me).
That's the rub, isn't it? Any time you make a venue to attract intelligent people founded on a certain set of principles, if you succeed, those principles will inevitably be challenged, because intelligent people (who you wanted to attract) always challenge principles and ideas. Perhaps by its original standards this place would have stayed better if it had stayed dumber, because dumb people listen and obey.
But yeah, I'm fine with being proud of not being lockstep in agreement with communicative norms inspired by weird Berkeley polysex people who have for the most part collectively accomplished nothing, even easy layups like all getting rich on Bitcoin so they could influence everything with money, other than mostly ruining their reputation in the mainstream. They don't have a monopoly on truth or knowledge-seeking any more than I do, and their blog posts from 2014 or whenever about Edwardian Salafi Confucius Lite etiquette or whatever are not the gospel for all time.
As mentioned too, the people who most adhere to the commandments of "niceness" on this site and other places like it overwhelmingly aren't actually that nice deep down either (including its alleged enforcers, if you'll look at the angry response left on my post by a mod here who chose to don their hat for it despite declaring it not even a warning) I often find. At their best, they're better at keeping the knife hidden behind their back. At their worst, they're merely sneakier about pulling it out and plunging it into your throat before you've even noticed.
That's why I'd rather hear it straight and say it straight, even if pesky human feelings and shocking realities like "conflict" and "People often associate negative emotionality with sociopolitical and cultural issues, especially when those who oppose their preferred beliefs and have hurt them over it appear." end up involved. That to me is helping the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Revealing that I'm biased by what I see as the truth in a particular evidentiary or even emotional (yes, we are not Vulcans, not even the rats) direction is helping the conversation stay overall less biased (or at least transparent about it, which realistically with humans involved is the best you can hope for). Everything else is a smokescreen of little imperial court mandarins just desperately trying not to rock the boat. Boring and pointless.
There may be a correlation between intelligence and contrarianness, but I think you're going a step beyond that and asserting a correlation between intelligence and aggression, or between intelligence and lack of charity.
I find that much more doubtful.
I will repeat my recent reply to a very similar objection for efficiency's sake in response to you:
So while I was perhaps asserting such a correlation (not sure if I want to commit to that or explain more nuance, but it's not super important), and I am perhaps wrong if I was, it's still worth nothing that no such correlation is required for "aggressive", "charity-lacking" (by your standards, as by my standards the mods here often lack the most charity when modding others' posts) people to be all up in your intellectual discussion venue (based on subjective frequency of appearance).
I haven't asserted that agreeability correlates with intelligence either. In fact, I just said that I think plausibly intelligence correlates with being contrarian.
But being contrarian, or even just disagreeableness simpliciter, is not the same thing as being a passionate culture warrior who seeks heat rather than light. I don't particularly care to discuss moderation here, particularly since, in my experience, culture and implicit norms are vastly more important than explicit rule enforcement.
Where I object to what you're saying is that I think you're defending a pugilistic, uncharitable approach to discussion, which I think is opposed to a goal like actually learning. I think a measure of charity, of good-faith curiosity and desire to understand different perspectives, is necessary for intellectual growth, and that's what I think is lacking in what you advocate.
That doesn't mean I think people should be dishonest, passive, or should feign agreement. Forthrightness is an intellectual virtue. But that is still a long way away from a Hitler-like "fire and brimstone" approach.
It may be that fire and brimstone are more persuasive - indeed, if your goal is to sway the public, they almost certainly are. In your top comment, you described Hitler as a 'great rhetorician', and indeed he was. But rhetoricians optimise for persuasiveness, rather than truth-seeking. 'Winning' in the sense of swaying more of an audience is something you may sometimes want to aim for. But here is supposed to be a place about 'winning' in the sense of learning and increasing your understanding.
That's why I think the aggressive, militant approach is wrong here. Soldier mindset, to use Galef's term, may be great for soldiers - but we're not soldiers. This is not a barracks.
I think the main conflict between us here is I don't see my "pugilistic" (good description) approach as inherently uncharitable. Can you point out where you think I lacked sufficient charity in terms of inaccurately or mendaciously characterizing things?
If I attack someone fiercely for what they've actually done that's truly terrible, then I've given them as much charity as they deserve, which is none, which means I've still been optimally charitable. Nor has the revelation of the truth been harmed. In fact, it's been enhanced by accurate characterization.
I'd argue that in the top post here you go beyond merely not being maximally charitable. You also engage in what I'd argue is childish name-calling. I won't criticise e.g. calling Scott's argument 'facile', which I think is within bounds, but how do you justify phrases like "ever since he let himself be fully chastity caged by Ozy and co."? That's a childish insult that is entirely unnecessary to the point you're actually making.
That seems to be to be more aggression than the minimum needed for truth-seeking or truth-speaking.
For what it's worth, I am in no way sympathetic to Scott's lifestyle or that of the Bay Area rationalists. You describe them as "weird Berkeley polysex people" above, and as it happens I fully agree that their lifestyles are deserving of contempt, particularly as regards so-called 'polyamory'. But when that is not germane to the point being made, I omit it.
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