site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36149 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 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.

20
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

deleted

Is there an explanation anywhere, for the uninitiated, why leftists like codes of conduct so much? What does introducing a code of conduct accomplish?

It excludes the outgroup, or at least forces them to adopt your norms.

But all the CoCs I've seen seem pretty banal. How does it exclude people? A right-wing person can just focus on the actual development and not get involved in the political disputes and they should be perfectly fine.

Are you actually kidding? The default template for all tech codes of conduct specifically states:

[COMMUNITY] prioritizes marginalized people's safety over privileged people's comfort. The administrators will not act on complaints regarding:

'Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’.

Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial.

Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions.

I refuse to believe you have not seen this. It's the most common one out there. Look me in the eye and tell me you're not trying to gaslight people.

OK, this is my fault. Hanlon's razor and all that.

The phrase "all the CoCs I've seen" implies I've seen a decent number of them. In fact, at the time of writing that comment, I had only really seen two: the one that was removed from PolyMC (linked in the top comment) and the Wikipedia/Wikimedia "Universal Code of Conduct". Those two just happened to be fairly reasonable (in my view). The W3C CoC you linked below is egregious, and I can see how that sort of CoC could become a culture war battleground.

That, along with the comment by @thrownaway24e89172, answers my original question. My understanding now is that CoCs do not necessarily need to be designed to enforce wokeism, but actually existing CoCs often are. And I suppose a CoC that amounts to "be nice to each other" is kind of pointless, so people who are trying to get a CoC adopted usually have an ulterior motive. The PolyMC CoC still seems innocuous, though.

I’ve been in a group that tried to do things like banning “slurs” like “crazy” (even when used innocuously, as in “how crazy is that”) because it’s “harmful to neurodivergent and folx with mental illnesses” or something of that nature, explicitly in their CoC. (I wonder if it’s still up there?)

That said, this was also a group that had a serious discussion on their slack (or discord? Idk) about whether they should ban food photos because it’s exclusionary to people with eating disorders. I have to assume not all places are this nuts.

The default template for all tech codes of conduct

It's the most common one out there

Github's two default choices are the Contributor Covenant and the Citizen Code of Conduct, and neither of those documents contains that passage. It's true that a quick Google search for "will not act" "reverse racism" turns up quite a few hits, but I think you need more evidence for your inflammatory claims.

GitHub made it their code of conduct all the way back in 2015. The fucking W3 consortium uses an even worse version of it that bans "dog whistles and microaggressions"! Is the main internet standards organization that literally controls HTML not big enough to count?

He's claiming he's never seen such codes, which I think is an incredibly unreasonable claim to make and requires some kind of evidence, because he's insinuating that everyone else is imagining it and low-key sneering at them for it.

I did provide evidence such codes are widespread among major organizations. He should have to provide some evidence they're not if he wants to make that claim.

Is that good enough for you? Is anything good enough to counter zero-evidence claims of "I haven't seen this, so you're making it up and probably crazy"? Because gaslighting people about this seems to have worked without fail since 2015.

A quick Google search for "code of conduct" reverse turns up a few:

GNOME Foundation:

Safety versus Comfort

The GNOME community prioritizes marginalized people's safety over privileged people's comfort, for example in situations involving:

  • "Reverse"-isms, including "reverse racism," "reverse sexism," and "cisphobia"
  • Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as "leave me alone," "go away," or "I'm not discussing this with you."
  • Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
  • Communicating boundaries or criticizing oppressive behavior in a "tone" you don't find congenial

GeekFeminism's Recommended Community Anti-harassment/Policy:

COMMUNITY NAME prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. RESPONSE TEAM reserves the right not to act on complaints regarding:

  • ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
  • Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.”
  • Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
  • Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

IIRC, the GeekFeminism policy recommendation in particular came out right when these started showing up in a lot of open source projects and is probably responsible for a lot of the culture war surrounding this due to being widely cited.

EDIT: The links at the end of the GNOME Foundation's code of conduct include more examples, eg this template has an example section on reversisms.

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