site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Seconding much of what @07mk said. First and foremost that “my outgroup is stupid, pls explain” ought to be a nonstarter, especially in this community. Adding 8,000 words about natural selection does not detract from the foundational booing.

I’ll also sign on to 07mk’s thesis that the average person of any political inclination is not constructing theory from first principles. We instead start from intuitions, then try and adopt or build out an ideology. This can be the natural human tendency to make patterns, or a rhetorical strategy, or an attempt to reason beyond those intuitions. Regardless, “based” usually comes first, with “...on facts and logic” as an afterthought.

Oh, I guess there’s an is-ought problem too. No one likes dealing with those, so the gap between “races have (in)significant intellectual differences” and “races should(n’t) be treated differently” gets skipped over as an axiom. That probably accounts for some of the contradictions.

First and foremost that “my outgroup is stupid, pls explain” ought to be a nonstarter, especially in this community. Adding 8,000 words about natural selection does not detract from the foundational booing.

Fair enough. It was a genuine attempt to source opinions (about how they reconcile certain beliefs which simply seem completely and utterly incompatible to me) from people who do not subscribe to the ideology, since attempting to understand the mindset of its adherents from people who do subscribe to it has so far been an unsuccessful endeavour that has left a very sour taste in my mouth, but I understand the optics isn't fantastic. I suspect if I'd posted it in the small-scale question thread instead of the main CW thread it wouldn't have gotten quite such a negative response (and that's initially what I wanted to do), but I didn't expect anyone to see it since that thread was so far down.

Either way, I've gotten some interesting responses (not all of which I entirely agree with, but which do merit more consideration).