site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32049 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 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.

24
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Matthew Yglesias has a post about fare evasion. I especially love this part:

In theory, if you’re out on bail but you skipped your court date, you ought to be extra-cautious in your day-to-day behavior. In practice, a lot of people who commit crimes don’t make that decision. The police walking around the street aren’t clairvoyant; they don’t know which passersby have outstanding warrants. But if they catch someone jumping the turnstile, that’s a perfectly valid reason to run them through the system. Police can catch bail skippers or people who are already wanted for some other reason — they can also catch people carrying illegal guns.

I know he's moved away from Vox/Slate towards the center, but just this year, places like Philly and Oregon no longer allow the police to pull people over for broken lights because it is racist, and here is Mr Yglesias, literally advocating for more terry stops. I actually think it's a good thing: if both neolibs and neocons are trying to re-center and narrow down the Overton window, this thread might get slow and boring.

As with so many things like this, I do wind up with an involuntary "Dems are the Real Racists" response when I think about the notion that it's "racist" to stop people for things like jumping turnstiles. Whatever racial bias I may have, it's nowhere near strong enough to believe that it's unreasonable to expect people of all races to not go around acting like anti-social scumbags all the time. I would think decent black people would be thoroughly affronted by the idea that they can't really be expected to act like decent people.

The basis is not "let's lower these standards so the savages can get stay out of jail." It's "let's remove these opportunities for selective enforcement."

Proponents agree with you that jumping turnstiles or driving with broken taillights is bad, and that no one should be expected to do them. They disagree that the laws on the books are good at discouraging such, because they observe (or assume) that those laws are being exploited by racists.

Compare also the three-felonies-a-day canard which gets cited whenever someone wants to minimize a crime.

Proponents agree with you that jumping turnstiles [...] is bad

If even looting can be justified by outlets as mainstream as NPR, I doubt that free-riding the tube, which inflicts a lesser and a more abstract sort of harm, would be difficult to rationalize.

NPR is often embarrassing, but I am curious if you are willing to co-sign Wesley Lowery’s “moral clarity” replacement for aiming in the direction of objectivity in journalism?

While your politics might or might not differ from Lowery’s, who is on the id-pol segment of the American left, you certainly seem to share his idea that a news outlet interviewing someone with controversial opinions is an endorsement of them — as evidenced by your framing of that NPR interview with an author who does not work for NPR but thinks looting is justified.

Not the person you are replying to, but.

I suspect how the coverage is affects that judgement, as does whether the platform hosts other arguments and interrogates them at the same level of rigour. It’s probably also important to note that someone - or some organisation - might not be strictly “pro-x”, but nonetheless is “x-sympathetic”.

As far as that goes, I’m willing to agree with the woke left on a very weak version of that argument, but that amounts really to no better than “people and organisations have biases, and some groups often find common cause or sympathy despite disagreeing on some issues”. It certainly is not the almost maximalist version of that idea that woke people often resort to (the “you tried to argue with some right wing person? Literally Hitler!” level of guilt-by-association), and I suspect most would not take kindly to efforts at equivocating the extreme end of this with the mild end of it.

In any case, though.

share his idea that a news outlet interviewing someone with controversial opinions is an endorsement of them — as evidenced by your framing of that NPR interview with an author who does not work for NPR but thinks looting is justified.

I thought that piece close to a puff piece, or at the very least tries really really hard not to ask any real questions of the author. Does NPR do similarly toothless pieces on other political positions?

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