site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   32628 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm currently having a debate with my dad.He asserts that voting is a civic duty, and that if you don't vote you can't complain about outcomes.

I disagree with both halves:

  • voting is commendable, but supererogatory, and in practice futile compared to lobbying and coalition-building

    • If it's a duty, why don't they arrest you for not following through? Failure to comply with taxes and selective service both get people very angry.
    • If it's a duty, why is it made practically harder than the intrinsic difficulty of developing an informed opinion? There is no Voting Day or Weekend, there is no guarantee of no reprisal for taking time off to do it.
      • Tangential rant: why the fuck is the most powerful country on the planet apparently incapable of deploying world-class secured online voting? Why is the single fundamental operation of ensuring political legitimacy treated so unseriously? You have to show up in person? And you're authenticated by showing a $15 license-like thing at best? Scribbling on a register? Scribbling on a mailed-in slip?
    • If I'm honest with myself there's an element of go-to-hell rebellion. Duty is meaningless if you didn't sign up for it with full comprehension, and you can take your cultural-indoctrination-by-bullying and shove it. I'd happily trade my federal suffrage for my federal tax burden.
    • An individual vote isn't much power at all. In an age where a junior senator can be bought for $10K, you properly 'vote' by organizing a Fun Run and starting a war chest, or finding a way to enhance or steer an existing one. Voting by voting is a loser's game.

  • it's obviously viable to hold an opinion on how a leader you didn't vote for is acting. Flippantly, it's like atheism: you didn't vote for every other pol, why is the one in power different somehow? Practically, we don't say you can't hold an opinion about your driver falling asleep if you're a passenger.

    • Less flippantly, if no leaders on offer will implement policies or styles/frameworks that you'd prefer, then participation at all indicates a mandate, and refusing participation expresses protest. Especially in the US federal system, where there is no "none of the above" option.
      • He assures me that spoiling your vote in protest implements this, so long as you Do the Voting Ritual. I don't trust the opaque interpretation of unknown officials, and these days don't trust that it won't be used in some vote hack.
    • You don't vote for high leadership's direct actions, you can't predict what decisions they'll take for reference situations, there is no standard expression of personal style. You're already an ignorant passive passenger once the vote is cast, why is intelligently and deliberately refusing to vote somehow special?

There's mutual incomprehension, here, and frankly he doesn't seem sophisticated in his thinking; it's just repeating a slogan with the vehemence of a moral axiom, pure meme replication, pure social force on force. Can someone steelman his side for me? Mind read if you need to. Can someone steelman my side for me?

Voting is a Prisoner’s Dilemma, where if everyone cooperates (by voting) the politics are sane and geared after the medal voter. But one’s vote is so insignificant, it is more beneficial to not waste one’s time and defect by not voting. However, if too many people defect, the parties polarize and scare the median voters away from the pools, and polity goes bouncing from extreme to the other. Compulsory voting, as in Australia, solves the PD.

Median in terms of polarization? I like your comment but you didn't do a lot of work to actually describe the particular outcomes that would be better if the median voter had more say.

Do you expect higher quality decisions from the median voter? Or is this just about avoiding outcomes such as wokism/far right?

The Median Voter Theorem states that a majority rule electoral system will elect the candidate preferred by the median voter. However, if the middle drops out and doesn’t vote, the candidates can easily be more extreme than preferred by the broader populace.

This doesn't make sense to me. Why would "the middle drop out"?

I assume that most people who believe that voting is a waste of time also believe that the major candidates don't reflect their preferred policies. This makes these "drop outs" by definition very far from median.

Dropping out should only matter if the two extremes do them at different rates. If dropouts are uniformly distributed or distributed at the extremes, then there's no change in the stability of the results.

The middle drops when the parties rely on negative campaigning to energize their (more extreme) base at the expense of the middle, who are usually already annoyed by politics. Negative campaigning affects partisans differently than non-partisans. When the middle drops out, the party that is marginally more effective at turning out their base win.

My intuition is that the opposite happens because there's more people in the middle, and so pandering to the middle is more useful. At least in swing states where pandering actually matters.

Is there any actual evidence of moderates voting less than extremists?

Pew research shows consistent voting is a U-shaped curve.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/

That link is super interesting, thanks for sharing.

Two comments:

  1. The U-shaped graph about the "political activism graph" directly speaks to the idea that the "middle is dropped out". What this graph doesn't show is that this phenomenon is getting worse (i.e. that the middle today are voting less than they voted 20 years ago). I interpreted your previous points as the middle is dropping out even more than it used to, and I don't see evidence of that.

  2. What there is evidence for in your link is that the middle is getting smaller and the tails of the distribution are growing larger. This is different than "dropping out" (which I interpret to mean not voting but continuing to have the same beliefs and staying in the middle). It seems to me that the actual polarization of beliefs is what's causing the polarization of discourse/policy and not the fact that the middle has stopped participating as much.

I understood that part, but I still don't understand the broader implications. In particular, you seem to be implying that electing a candidate preferred by the median voter is better than the alternative, and I asked about the reason why. I can come up with some reasons, e.g. you don't get policies such as reparations or bloody deportations because those are preferred only by the extremes. But what about broader policy questions, or those unrelated to polarization or culture war?

I’m not asserting a link between turnout and quality, though there may be one. Indeed, Public Choice Theory suggests that for certain policies democracy and majority voting is no guarantee of quality.

Public Choice Theory suggests that for certain policies democracy and majority voting is no guarantee of quality

Is there a salient example for this?

Usually it’s with policies with concentrated benefits for a few and diffuse costs for the rest, like rent control, occupational licensing, NIMBY, the list goes on.

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