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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Abortion is in my mind due to the debate last night which has led me to this article:
https://thedispatch.com/article/claims-about-children-born-alive-after-abortion-attempts-in-minnesota-are-true/
The gist is: in Minnesota, if a baby was born you were required to care for it to keep it alive. Sometimes an abortion would result in a living baby being born, and doctors were required to give that baby supportive care (they were likely premature, so wouldn’t necessarily survive, although premature babies born wrong 23 weeks survive frequently, that said none of the cited instances of this led to a baby surviving).
In 2019 this was changed to allow doctors to let a baby sit there until it just dies on its own.
Here’s some thoughts about this:
At the point where this is even a question, you’re clearly talking about a living human being.
Simply ignoring a baby until they die is the way that infanticide (usually killing baby girls) is done all over the world
This is another instance of “conservative politician says something that gets immediately ‘fact checked’, but it turns out is at least directionally and likely just literally true.
We should be caring for living human babies whether the mother wants to kill them or not. “Oops I meant to kill it before I could see it out here in the world” is not a valid excuse.
If anything the fact that there were so many cases of this in a single state in such a small period of time moves my needle even further towards being aggressively anti abortion, up to jailing the doctors doing this and charging them with murder.
OK, maybe I'm completely out of the loop, but what exactly are they doing in Minnesota and why doesn't this article explain that at all?
Are late second trimester/third trimester abortions legal in Minnesota? Are they really doing them under conditions where the fetus is NOT suffering from a condition incompatible with life?
Because essentially, what they are performing is an emergency early term induced birth (which is done - and only done - in many places around the world when the life of the mother is in danger), right?
To an outside observer, this just sounds like "if a serious genetic/developmental defect incompatible with life is discovered late in pregnancy, abortion remains legal. In this special case, doctors are no longer forced to get an incubator contaminated for literally zero gain (since the malformed early birth baby will die under any and all circumstance anyway).
If this is the case, I personally would support all this. It would be cruel (and needlessly dangerous) to force the mother to carry a dying baby to term and birth it. It would be wasted equipment and medical labor, if doctors where forced to use an incubator for the dying baby in a case like that.
Because literally nobody is getting an elective abortion late second trimester and going “Oops I meant to kill it before I could see it out here in the world” when the fetus turns out to just keep on living, right?
This idea is just fundamentally incompatible with my morals. Where does this lead?
Just about everything about your life is a “waste of resources”…but human life is valuable.
If you have a heart attack and need an ambulance to take you to the hospital, isn’t it a waste of diesel, and an inconvenience to everybody having to wait for the ambulance to go through lights?
This idea is ubiquitous. One of the point I realized this, was COVID era argument: we have to lock people down in order not to overburden healthcare system. It was one of the most stupid arguments I have heard - my purpose and governing principle in my life is now supposed to be not to overburden healthcare system? This amorphous system is actually more valuable than human life as it is embodied in my daily activities and pleasures. I exist for the benefit of this system - not the other way around. No more dangerous activities such as skiing or anything else. By the way the same goes for other similar arguments: smoking and being fat and chronically ill is terrible for the healthcare system, so you should stop doing it.
It reminded me of the old Monty Python skit.
I find your comment really strange.
The impetus to not overload the medical system during a given situation is not to benefit “the system” but rather to benefit human life.
E.g., if you get sick enough to need medical care then you’ll be likely to receive that care.
During the early days of COVID when it quickly overran hospital resources in places like Italy, Spain, Hong Kong, etc., this was a very present danger and the likelihood in some cases tipped towards being that no, you might not be able to get a lifesaving treatment had you needed one.
This was all fake unless you put up some evidence otherwise
Tone matters. The point of this place is to encourage discussion and let people test their ideas and conclusions, which means thinking can be challenged, but preferably in a way that invites dialog, not just seeing how pithily you can dismiss someone.
"I don't think that's true; do you have any actual evidence that that happened, because I think a lot of it was hysteria and false reports during the pandemic" would be perfectly fine to say. Essentially calling someone a liar or just summarily dismissing what they say as "evidence or it's fake" is not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You get it, if you reduce and equate “human life” with medical system in your assumption, then the rest of the stuff follows. You treat the system as human life, so everyones perogative is to serve the
human lifemedical system. I refuse this equivalency to begin with.But I am not surprised that for instance utilitarians think this way, it is the same idea to sublimate/identify values into something else like utils, and then just follow the calculation to its inevitable and logically sound monstrosity.
The medical system is human life.
How can you not equate those two?
If the medical system goes down, you immediately get loss of human life.
See, for me the human life is about enjoying life, meeting your family and friends, being able to grieve for your lost parents or even putting yourself through some tough events subtracting some supposed utils to achieve one of the myriad of goals you may have. Medical system is down there on the chain of what human life represents to me. I thought most people implicitly understand it, but that is apparently not the case.
I’m having trouble distinguishing your responses from just garden variety selfishness to be honest. Of course you like the good things in life.
The people who die due to lack of medical care usually like the same things too, so we don’t have to redefine the meaning of human life or anything here. It’s just that since they (in this example) have died due to lack of medical care that now they cannot enjoy those things.
Me behaving slightly differently for a few weeks during a triage event in the local hospital is a pretty small price.
A small bit of sacrifice for the wellbeing of others is a relatively common human characteristic, but there are definitively also a number people who don’t come equipped with that chip.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You can make anything sound stupider if you stop halfway through the reasoning. Preventing the collapse is valuable if it prevents massive amounts of unnecessary suffering. Doesn’t that sound like something people might want to avoid?
I observe that skiing is not actually banned. Neither is smoking or being fat. There is legislation to make them more difficult, especially smoking, but the reasoning is more “to reduce the bad thing itself” than “to prevent healthcare collapse.”
One of those things was banned during COVID lockdowns, the other two were exempt. Maybe somebody thought through it stupidly, stopping halfway through and other stupid people ate it.
I mean, I agree, but that’s because I think you’re the one stopping early.
Do you think the average lockdown enthusiast would have said defending the healthcare system was their purpose and governing principle?
Yeah, the whole "flattening the curve" slogan by measures such as social distancing and lockdowns was based on not overburdening the healthcare system as the primary argument. Were you living under the rock? Elective surgeries were cancelled, medical screenings were postponed and more - all in the name of "the system". I had a friend working in a hospital during lockdowns, when self-isolated people were beating on pots from their balconies, giving praise to heroic doctors, while she was sitting in empty hospital doing nothing. She thought it was stupid. And I really think that the system was the primary concern, stupid halfway-thinking people just substituted "human life" with "healthcare system" and then went from there.
So yes, I do think that "saving the system" was the primary concern, with some vague nod to "human life" to justify it. And as I said, this thinking is now pervasive and it will get worse.
I saw the same actions you did, but I don’t believe people stopped reasoning at the vague nod. It was all “one hopes, resulting in fewer deaths” and think of the children. Those are pretty explicit substitutions for human life!
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Only in the UK would it be the modal response. But it was common in the US as well.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The idea is that overburdening the health care system risks other people's lives, so you're actually still comparing your life to lives, not your life to an amorphous system.
Of course, even this version can be criticized in the way that socialism in general can be criticized.
Sure, but there is more to the life than just your pulse. Should we ban kids skating, because they can break their bone and thus be the burden on the system? What I found more scary is how readily this thing was accepted without question. Ask not what the healthcare system can do for you, ask what you can do for the healthcare system. And again, this is nothing new, I just realized it at that point. For instance in the UK there is heated debate if immigration is good or bad thing for their National Health Service. The NHS is like a sacred cow, people accept it without thinking and put such an importance on it, that it is almost as if NHS has agency of its own, and we need to think what will harm NHS. It is just weird.
It’s just a garden variety situation where you’re asked to pitch in so as to avert larger scale hardship.
Was that so alien to you beforehand?
For example, during the world wars people had to ration their goods so that everyone can eat and so that the soldiers could be supplied.
Would you have pushed back and eaten a second sandwich at lunch because you’re not going to sacrifice your personal enjoyment for some “system”?
Say you’re in a house with 3 other people. You all want a hot shower because you just got back from a long trek. You get the shower first. Are you really going to use ALL the hot water just because you like long hot showers? Or do the preferences of others enter into the mind at some point? Because if so, well it’s just the same logical process.
I know where I was at during COVID, the hospitals weren’t at capacity, but there was a time when it stayed right at the edge of capacity for a few weeks, and they had to roll up a few mobile morgues during that time (air conditioned shipping containers) to process the extra bodies.
I did personally see it as valuable for me and the community I was in to take at least some small sacrifices to make sure that those morgues didn’t fill up too quickly during those few weeks.
Britain could have just not fought the world wars and not rationed, next
Why am I in the house with three other people? Are they my immediate family? If yes, then obviously I will let them shower and skip my entirely because I love them.
If no, then I will pay for my shower and everyone else will pay for theirs, as befitting our agreement. Next.
I know where I was at during COVID (WTF is that? who came up with that? It's like Kyiv) and it was trying to get my dad an "elective" surgery that they cancelled because all the doctors wanted to televisit
Then he died.
Think about him please before the next time you start lovin' on 'the system' -
Ah, diseases used to be named by places where they are first discovered (Ebola, Marburg, Spanish flu, West Nile virus, Zika, MERS, Lyme, etc.) But when the deplorables started using "Wuhan flu", the left declared it racist because naming anything bad after anything non-Western is clearly white suprematism, so they renamed it to COVID (which is an awful name since it means "coronavirus disease" and there are tons of coronaviruses which can cause all sorts of diseases, but anything not to be racist). They also renamed "monkeypox" to m-pox because mentioning monkeys is somehow racist too (don't ask, I have no idea).
BTW can confirm denial of medical services during the pandemic panic. Fortunately, in my wife's case we were able to find a less insane provider and also the services we needed didn't require a lot of personal attention, most of it could be managed by email, so it ended up well, but the state of utter panic and disarray which was everywhere among people who were supposed to know better and serve as guardians for the masses (I know, way too naive) is something I will never forget.
More options
Context Copy link
That’s a shame to know that your father died due to inability to access medical care
However it’s illustrative that the medical system is obviously important, and of what happens when people cannot access it
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link