site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29415 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Recently there has been some discussion in the media about fare evasion, and I thought in light of @WhiningCoil's comment on low trust societies it might be of interest to you all.

Over the past five years the fare evasion rate on New York City's bus lines has risen from 20% to 50%. while there has also been a similar (but less dramatic) rise among subway customers.

Recently the MTA commissioned a study to investigate the psychology of fare evaders and The New York Post has picked this up and mocked the project.. The study broke down different "personas" of fare evaders like a software product manager might. The NYP felt that this was inane as the obvious conclusion was that scofflaws were simply motivated by a lack of enforcement:

The pricy research – which comes as the authority is crying poverty and pushing for a detested congestion pricing plan — is being blasted by critics as a huge waste that will only tell them what anyone with common sense already knows about scofflaws....If we are going to hire a behavioral consultant, it will be to help change the behavior of a criminal justice system that has determined that fare evasion should have no consequences

I enjoyed this article by Manhattan Contrarian that criticizes the New York Post for completely ignoring race when discussing this issue, and pretending that lack of enforcement is the source of our woes.

But even the Post, in both its editorial and news pieces, is not willing to talk honestly about the association of race and fare-beating. Neither their news article nor editorial says a word about the race of the fare beaters. The subject is too sensitive even for them. But the problem is that until we can have an honest discussion about the association of race and fare-beating, it is almost impossible to address the issue.

I'll note as an amusing aside, that even the conservative Post uses an image of a White teenager for their illustration of a common fare evader.

However, I have to disagree with Francis Menton of The Manhattan Contrarian here when he writes the following:

To enable such a program to begin and to move forward, it is necessary for the issue of refusal to pay fares by race to enter the public consciousness. Someone first must collect systematic data and report it and point out what is actually going on. If it is too sensitive to report by race per se, then how about reporting by zip code? And then the newspapers and TV stations and podcasts and websites would need to pick up the story and make something out of it.

The racial makeup of fare evaders is perfectly well known of course and actually quite openly acknowledged so long as it is being done by the right sorts of organizations for the right ends.

I also wonder why the Post refuses to ask why draconian fare enforcement measures are only now needed? Somehow the MTA functioned perfectly fine with its easily-avoidable turnstyles decades ago. To relate it back to WhiningCoil's comment, I can only say "I think the bottom line, is this is just what a low trust society looks like."

I enjoyed this article by Manhattan Contrarian that criticizes the New York Post for completely ignoring race when discussing this issue, and pretending that lack of enforcement is the source of our woes.

I have to say that disagree with Manhattan Contrarian and am prepared to defend the New York Post's take.

If you start from the supposition that humans are (for the most part at least) individuals who exercise personal agency it doesn't really matter to the transportation agency what color the free-rider is or how they justify thier actions. The motives of the finance bro who can't be bothered to pay, the edgy teen jumping turnstiles for a thrill, and the homeless bum who just doesn't give a shit about your rules (but will shit on your floor), all ultimately boil down to the same thing. They do it because they beleive they'll get away with it. Thus the clear solution to fair-evasion/free-riders (a solution so obvious that only someone very educated or deep in the terminal stages of woke brain-rot could fail to see it) is don't let them get away with it.

As I was telling @The_Nybbler a couple weeks back, the reason for unchecked crime is that people have chosen to allow crime to go unchecked.

Or to riff off of your own post from down-thread, I think the reason New York has these sort of problems is that woke Democrats, and the people who elect them, are getting the system they deserve.

Want to live in a safe, well-ordered, high-trust society? Try prosecuting trouble-makers and promoting men like Daniel Penney instead of the reciprocal.

Thus the simplest solution to fair-evasion/free-riders (a solution so obvious that only someone very educated or deep in the terminal stages of woke brain-rot could fail to see it) is don't let them get away with it

There is a slow convergent point in most criminal justice studies is that law enforcement works by true arrest rate, not necessarily severity. The problem in the USA and Europe is that the disproportionate arrest rates of minorities is attributed to societal failures that one of the competing dominant political arms can use to attack the other in order to further their own political interests. So long as heterogenous outcomes are treated as failures requiring intervention, the meta will incentivize redefining heterogeneity to maximize resource capture.

The ROI of fare enforcement is the higher utilization rate of commuters when criminal vagrants are no longer an everpresent concern. The ROI of fare enforcement is the lower maintenance costs for repairs and cleanup when mentally ill homeless no longer defecate and trash the public space with the full expectation of someone else cleaning up their mess. The ROI of fare enforcement is the higher communal trust that the MTA will enjoy when it looks to be an organization that can steward its received resources with competence and clarity, instead of burying its head deeper in the sand about extant problems too inconvenient to address openly.

The Shopping Cart Theory is a great first-order test to determine prevalence of antisocial elements. Disproportionate amounts of resources are invested in cleaning up after noncooperatives, and even more are invested in resources to gently nudge them into being cooperative of their own recognizance or accommodating their preferences through rehabilitation and custodial services. Some people get off on being as difficult as possible because they fundamentally hate the people offering them help to begin with, and self-flagellating to absolve the noncooperative of their responsibility does not lead to greater resource utilization efficacy.

Just like how drug-testing welfare recipients does not meaningfully capture significant amounts of drug abusers or signalling immigration crackdowns does not actually catch many illegals, these programs are meant as signals to the noncompliant that mercy is no longer guaranteed. Less fare evaders will use the services on offer to begin with, and that is a perfectly acceptable outcome.

There is a slow convergent point in most criminal justice studies is that law enforcement works by true arrest rate

I think that there is a very real sense in which surety of consequences is a more effective deterrent than severity. IME lots of people who might roll the dice on a 5% chance of something very bad happening become an order of magnitude more careful/conservative/cooperative when presented with a 50% chance of something moderately bad happening.

The ROI of fare enforcement is the higher utilization rate of commuters when criminal vagrants are no longer an everpresent concern. The ROI of fare enforcement is the lower maintenance costs for repairs and cleanup when mentally ill homeless no longer defecate and trash the public space with the full expectation of someone else cleaning up their mess. The ROI of fare enforcement is the higher communal trust that the MTA will enjoy when it looks to be an organization that can steward its received resources with competence and clarity.

I believe that you, I, and the NYP are all in broad agreement here.

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