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 -
Some quick hits:
A) Cremieux argues that much of the gap in life expectancy between America and Europe is due to obesity. But America is good at one thing at least – spending money on health care. Combine high spending with effective weight loss drugs, and the U.S. is on track to significantly narrow its life expectancy gap with Europe.
Self-driving cars will close the gap further.
B) Drug overdose deaths are down in King County (Seattle area) this year after more the tripling between 2019–2023. This is probably because fentanyl has already killed a significant percentage of the junky population. There has also been some modest progress in cracking down on open air drug markets. In the last 2 years, about 1 in 1000 King County residents died of a drug overdose.
C) Health insurance companies have a terrible reputation. But it's hard to fix. It's a viscious cycle which goes something like this:
Company has bad reputation
Due to bad reputation, the company has trouble getting talent, so they compensate by paying a lot
This selects for people who care more about money than reputation
Money-grubbing behavior leads to bad reputation
If you were next in line at United Health, how would you fix the problem?
Note: Many societies in the past (India, Japan) created special undercastes to do necessary but unsavory work such as working with dead bodies. Should we do likewise and create a special caste of health insurance workers that are not allowed to work in other fields and we can treat like shit with impunity? Reddit probably thinks so.
D) Epistemic status: uncertain.
Many people in the China tariff post said that China is "not expansionist".
But what is today China was, 2500 years ago, just a small collection of states along the Yellow River. Gradually, over the millenia, they absorbed more and more territory into their country.
It's as if the Roman Empire still existed today and controlled all of Europe.
Genetically speaking, the Han people seem to have done much better than Rome. The Romans, the people who lived in the city of Rome circa 500 BC, essentially all died out. For centuries, Rome's population could only be sustained from continual influxes of people from the countryside, and later, far flung areas of the Roman sphere. This doesn't seem to be the case in China. Even today, there are people who can trace direct male lineage to Confucius who lived around 500 BC.
If a city has a fentanyl epidemic, is it best to do nothing and let it run through the junkies ? Gate them to a neighborhood, soft limiting how many new junkies can join them. But don't fix it.
Set up a 'clean up insurance' job with a wholly owned subsidiary 3rd party. Instantly high prestige.
Something like "Health insurance companies spend too much money on goodies making your healthcare expensive. Healthcare Janitor comes in to eliminate wasteage and make insurance cheaper." Really it's like any capital efficiency, accounting, analytics job. Hire STEM grads to keep the activists out. Markets are happy cause it saves company money, people are happy because Insurance seems to have a watchdog, employees are happy because they are supposedly reigning in the greedy insurers.
Separately, this assassination sets a terrible precedent. Logistically, Assassinations are easy. In NYC,USA where crowded streets, guns & hoodies are common, you may even escape. If a felon is going to recidivate, then might as well go big. Grand conspiracies are hard to keep under wraps. But, one off killings have perfect secrecy by definition. In imperfect conditions, the Homicide clearance rate is 50%. With a perfect disguise, you'd have much better odds.
The only reason we don't see more assassinations is because "we live in a society." American society has broken down before (Inner city gang violence), but it localized to intra-ghetto squabbles. A (resigned) cultural acceptance for freak assassinations may develop. Then the pandoras box is open. I bet freak assassinations follow a similar social virality pattern as suicides. Similar to suicides, once it becomes a cultural meme, it's hard to take it below a certain base rate.
I do find it surprising assassinations aren’t more common given Americas high suicide rate. If you already feel like checking out of life, why aren’t you doing other reckless stuff beforehand? Of course there are mass shootings, but those seem so pointless and nihilistic.
Because you're incapable of doing those things, by that condition's definition.
Mass shootings are not generally perpetrated by those kinds of people- the vast majority of them are targeted, and the death [functionally, execution] of the criminal is simply priced in as their cost of doing that violence.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link