site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35419 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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.

24
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Just got a RemindMe message from January and want to follow up on it. On January 3, one of @Highlandclearances's predictions for 2022 was that all mask and vaccine mandates in Western countries would be lifted by September. They said:

90% All mask and vaccine mandates in all Western countries will lift by September. 30% by June.

I said:

If you’re taking bets I’d take this one at even odds. This seems so extremely unlikely to me that it’s hard to believe you mean it.

They said:

I do. I think the median voter in most countries has pivoted from concern about Covid to exhaustion fairly rapidly. Even the most risk-averse people I know personally now want full reopening. Eventually power hungry governments will deliver reopening especially once vaccines are approved for children under 5 and there is no further milestone to justify waiting for before the end state is reached.

That said, I have a charitable view that governments are not using Covid to arrogate permanent powers and restrictions. I think very soon, if not now, their incentives from the public will flip to normalize as fast as possible and away from being biased toward social desirability (being seen to do more rather than less).

It's true that many mandates have ended. But they said all mandates would be lifted, and the US still has a mandate for healthcare workers to be vaccinated against covid. The Pentagon also has a vaccine mandate. Many colleges also mandate covid vaccines. I think I was right. I'd be curious to hear what Highlandclearance thinks they got wrong in this prediction.

(This feels like a mean callout post, but that's not my intention. I greatly respect people who are willing to go out on a limb and make falsifiable predictions. I didn't have a list of a bunch of 2022 predictions, so I recognize that there is some unfair asymmetry here.)

But they said all mandates would be lifted, and the US still has a mandate for healthcare workers to be vaccinated against covid.

Isn't that to be expected, though, don't they have the same for the flu?

The Pentagon also has a vaccine mandate

But the military has had vaccine mandates for a variety of vaccines for centuries?

In general, if something mandates a flu vaccine, mandating a covid vaccine too is expected. So that'd also explain colleges.

Anyway, his mistake was taking a bet saying 'all mandates' (what criteria) when he meant 'most mandates', there are many cities / states / countries / institutions, and many of them have very slow bureaucracies or processes, so even if all of them intended in some sense to repeal something, one might stick around for a while.

As I've said before, if you have good reason to be confident in a proposition, losing a bet made about that proposition will be dominated by the cases where you didn't phrase the bet properly. This is one of the reasons bets are a bad idea.

Hardly anyone is going to phrase the bet properly. It's as if the bet is a computer program, and you are forced to make sure the program runs perfectly the first time you try it.

Sure, but it's a relatively simple computer program. And you can write those to run perfectly the first time if you are very careful, and if the stakes are high enough to incentivize you to double check your work before submitting.

Importantly, the ability to do this is a skill which can be learned, and is important to actually use when making predictions. When I see

90% All mask and vaccine mandates in all Western countries will lift by September.

a red flag goes up in my mind. Because "all" is an extremely ambitious condition, and 90% seems way too high for that. And part of the point of being rational (or rational-adjacent) is to recognize and avoid the exaggeration and hyperbole that everyone else uses in common speech. You might casually say "all of mandates will be gone by September" and, when someone calls you out and questions that as being unrealistic, and asks for a concrete prediction, you should think about it more deeply and walk back the exaggeration. "Well, not literally all, they'll probably keep some for healthcare workers, and maybe one or two nations will keep most of them, but I predict at least 8 out of these 10 specific nations will lift mandates for 90% of the population" or something like that. The fact that this person didn't walk back their bold and unrealistic claim when making a bet is an actual mistake that deserves a loss, not a technicality. The term "all" didn't set off a red flag in their mind, and it should have.

It's a technicality. The proposition it's trying to prove is not "literally all", it's "substantially all". That proposition was proven true by reality,.

The fact that he literally said X doesn't mean that the intent of the bet was to prove X.

"All" means "all". "Substantially all" just invites arguing over "substantially" after the fact. Perhaps you can quibble about rules from subnational entities (since the bet was about "Western countries"), but there are still national mask mandates and national vaccine mandates in place.

"All" means "all".

My whole point is that, no, it doesn't, except literally, and literally is not the intent.

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