site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29218 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Fires in California seem really bad - Mandate of Heaven in danger?

Let me just preface this in that I'm not American so I don't fully really appreciate what it's like over there or how systems are supposed to work. Anyway, when we have fires in Australia, it exclusively impacts rural areas right next to woodland. Rich people tend to live closer to the cities in inner suburbs, near the sea. It's unthinkable that a fire reaches them, it'd have to burn through huge swathes of suburban sprawl first. All that happens for most Australians (and especially rich Australians) is that air quality gets horrendously bad for two weeks. Of course the state still tries very hard to protect homes but it's very much a rural issue, the rural fire service goes out to volunteer and firefight.

I'm reading that in Los Angeles, it's the opposite. Rich people live on the edge of the city, right next to woodland. You've got expensive houses burning down.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg525q2ggl4o

There are pretty serious complaints about political neglect too. I hear that the mayor of LA was off in Ghana (which is frankly bizarre, this whole subnational diplomacy meme needs to be put down and buried in the backyard). I hear that the LA fire hydrants are somehow out of water in the Palisades. There have also been allegations that homeless people were lighting fires, I haven't seen any proof of this. TBH fire-lighting seems like very low-risk, high-return terrorism, it's astonishing we haven't seen it become more common in certain vulnerable countries.

Naturally the first have turned into a political issue. Anti-Trump people have started blaming climate change and arguing that Trump wanted to cut fire defence spending.

Pro Trump people have pointed out that Trump was critical of California's water infrastructure before. And it's not as though California is known for being run by legions of Trump toadies: https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1877055198604017790

There also seems to be dysfunction in insurance, a very high number of fire insurance plans were cancelled right before the fire (possibly due to regulations preventing rate rises): https://x.com/jeremykauffman/status/1877128641802285064

IMO the solution is intensive backburning when it's cool. There can be no fires if you destroy the fuel beforehand.

However, it does seem like a major failure in state legitimacy if you can't even protect the rich from fires. From Chris Bakke on twitter:

The situation in Pacific Palisades is devastating, heartbreaking, and is also the most “California” thing to happen in California.

The homes burning down are $5M+ homes in neighborhoods surrounded by 1000s of other $5M+ homes.

Owning a $5M house in CA means you pay about $60,000 per year in property taxes.

So you and thousands of your neighbors all pay $60,000 or $80,000 or $120,000, or way more in property taxes every year.

And when a wildfire comes down the hill toward your neighborhood, the firefighters show up and there’s no water in the fire hydrants.

Never change, California.

Thoughts? I don't really have a thesis here.

Fires in California seem really bad - Mandate of Heaven in danger?

California has been forsaken by God for longer than I've been alive.

Some fun word play with your title aside, it feels like at this point if you are stilling living in California, you deserve it. Once upon a time I would have looked at the devastation Democrats have wrought and felt bad for the state, which in my youth was still regarded a purplish state. The home of Ronald Reagan. Now I just can't feel anything. Everyone there voted for this for at least a decade. They voted for it again quite recently in a recall election. They are literally willing to die in a fire than vote for someone who might say something that offends a chosen minority.

I mean they literally refuse to hire white male firefighters. People voted for that. Like this isn't their first wild fire. Their priorities are unfathomable.

It's like hearing about the Heaven's Gate Cult in the 90's. What? They all dressed, talked and acted the same? Some of them chopped their dicks off?! And then they all killed themselves over a prophesy? Some people were able to feel sympathy for the cult members. Maybe they'd lost someone to a cult, or felt they had a close brush with one at a vulnerable time in their life. For most people it was entertainment. They were a laughing stock. And so California is to me now.

The suffering of a Californian is as the suffering of a Flagellate to me. A spectacle of suffering coming from a place of otherworldly confidence that it cleanses. I can't feel bad for them, because they so willfully chose it, and would actually probably hurt me if I tried to save them from themselves. It's best to just leave them to it until they kill themselves.

Edit: Your right, I forgot who I was talking to. Go ahead Californian Rationalist. Keep doing you. This isn't on you at all. Don't change a thing.

I mean they literally refuse to hire white male firefighters.

Are you sure there is a literal refusal to hire white male fighters? The small story from the LibsofTiktok outrage slop -- slop you chose to share -- reports on this organization which facilitates recruitment of minorities. If wildfire firefighters are primarily white, male, and have shit wages why would it not make sense to target other demographics to fill the ranks?

Maybe Californian disasters would be better managed and mitigated by voting Republican. Makes sense to me that competition has a better chance at breeding competence. They might have less damage from fires if they paid firefighters $30/hr instead of 15-20. I'm not sold it's because of bait from LibsofTikTok for one organization doing recruitment in one area targeting one demographic.

Yep, if anything I’d expect the headline shared to work to increase the number of firefighters not decrease it?

Trying to target new demographics who typically don’t go for those jobs, sounds pretty cool.

  • -14

This argument is outdated by about a decade. SocJus outreach programs are always originally justified through "we don't want to discriminate, it's just to tap in to new demographics" and they've descended into attacking straight/cis/white/males enough times, that you have at least an equal burden of proof to show that it didn't happen this time.

we don't want to discriminate, it's just to tap in to new demographics"

And then, when the untapped population of gay hijabi prodigies who were clearly being held back by racism don't show up when the barriers are pulled down, the finger has to be put on the scale.

Sometimes, even if they do:

Blind auditions, as they became known, proved transformative. The percentage of women in orchestras, which hovered under 6 percent in 1970, grew. Today, women make up a third of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and they are half the New York Philharmonic. Blind auditions changed the face of American orchestras.

But not enough.

American orchestras remain among the nation’s least racially diverse institutions, especially in regard to Black and Latino artists. In a 2014 study, only 1.8 percent of the players in top ensembles were Black; just 2.5 percent were Latino. At the time of the Philharmonic’s 1969 discrimination case, it had one Black player, the first it ever hired: Sanford Allen, a violinist. Today, in a city that is a quarter Black, just one out of 106 full-time players is Black: Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet.

The status quo is not working. If things are to change, ensembles must be able to take proactive steps to address the appalling racial imbalance that remains in their ranks. Blind auditions are no longer tenable.

I thought that article looked immediately familiar.

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