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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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So it looks like our long-term users have mostly already said what needs to be said, but I'm basically going to say it again with a mod-hat.

This is essentially a long boo-outgroup post. You start with:

How do wokes/social constructionists/etc reconcile their views with the actual state of scientific knowledge or even basic logic?

and that's nothing more than an accusation that woke people don't understand basic logic. That's a hell of an accusation.

So, a few rules to note:

Do not weakman in order to show how bad a group is

Post about specific groups, not general groups, wherever possible. General groups include things like gun rights activists, pro-choice groups, and environmentalists. Specific groups include things like The NRA, Planned Parenthood, and the Sierra Club. Posting about general groups is often not falsifiable, and can lead to straw man arguments and non-representative samples.

Be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument.

Some of the things we discuss are controversial, and even stating a controversial belief can antagonize people. That's OK, you can't avoid that, but try to phrase it in the least antagonistic manner possible. If a reasonable reader would find something antagonistic, and it could have been phrased in a way that preserves the core meaning but dramatically reduces the antagonism, then it probably should have been phrased differently.

Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

If the goal of the community is to promote discussion, then we ask that people keep this in mind when posting. Avoid being dismissive of your political opponents, relying too much on injokes at someone else's expense, or anything that discourages people from participating in the discussion. This is one of the vaguest rules and one of the rules least likely to be enforced, since any real violation is likely to fall under another category. But please keep it in mind. Discussion is a group effort; be part of the group, and invite others into the group.

And from the intro post:

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:

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.

(This isn't technically a link, but I'm calling this close enough.)

The tl;dr is that this isn't a place for attacking people you don't like, and if you want to write something that looks even vaguely like "why are my political opponents so dumb", you really need to phrase it better.