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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
So a border patrol agent was killed by a trans vegan-extremist terror cult that came out of Bay Area rationalist culture. they seem to be responsible for at least 3 other deaths (including family members and a former landlord who was going to testify against one of their members on a felony murder charge), but have taken 40% casualties in the process.
Here is an archive link to the leader's blog
As usual Andy ngo is the only person talking about the case at all, although his summary seems to miss a lot of important details.
This is the same group that got arrested in Sonoma a few years ago while raiding a CFAR camp. I predicted at the time that this group would make the news again, so you can imagine that I am Steve's Complete Lack Of Surprise.
So, thoughts. San Francisco continues to generate weird murder suicide cults just as it has for the past... 80 years? This really needs to be investigated because the effect has persisted over numerous different ideological movements. My running theory outside of "something in the water" is that selective migration brings a lot of that sort of person to SF (with flowers in their hair); you'll notice the men in this group were from all over the country (and one from Germany), but were all the sorts of people who were looking for some militant cult to give them a sense of belonging.
Second, and this might be beating a dead horse here, consider the reaction of the "rationalist community" to this group over the years. Even after the murders started, the "horrible dangers of moldbug and why reactionaries must be purged from the community" got oceans of ink spilled compared to one or two blog posts about this group. Meanwhile rationalist groups were still awarding these guys grants. Here is another trans-vegan-r/sneerclub-LW activist who still supports them because murdering landlords is good.
The ability to selectively "problematize" and craft narratives continues to be the main source of leftist power, and seems to be almost completely impervious to evidence-based arguments.
Lastly, it seems like literally every member of this group was a transexual (it's hard to be sure when the news steadfastly refuses to notice "Emma's" Adam's apple) Considering this case alongside the now-infamous "trans-alpaca ranch holocaust", it really does seem like sexual ideologies act as a social technology that allows disturbed and dysfunctional men to overcome social atomization and organize into warbands. "Cut off your family but keep demanding money from them to fund the group" seems to be the main way the cult leaders both control people and fund their lifestyles, when they're not getting grants or NPR fundraisers organized for them.
15-20 years ago, during the great internet atheism wars, it was popular to argue that morality is 'obvious' and that any rational person could easily determine its rough outlines. Is anyone still arguing this?
I was an atheist then and people kept referring me to Harris's The Moral Landscape. So I read that. His argument seemed to be roughly the same: we all sort of just know what's right and don't need reference to any kind of overarching moral framework. He intrigued me by granting that some people clearly just don't see things the way the rest of us do, e.g. psychopaths, but that he'll address this problem later in the book. AFAICT he never actually does, though.
Found it disturbing then and I find it disturbing now. Ran into a guy on reddit quite a while ago who suggested that atheism is best classified as a 'moral parasite'; that it relies upon existing metaphysical systems to generate a socially-agreed upon moral framework, at which point of course an atheist can conform to that and 'be a good person' according to whatever their society thinks that means -- but that atheists also tend to work to undermine the roots of that system itself, resulting in moral collapse.
No real point here; just musing.
ETA:
Is /r/bandnames still a thing?
Sam Harris would not agree that:
His book was focused on countering the argument that science cannot inform morality in some objective way as nonoverlapping magisteria, not outlining a moral framework in any real detail beyond "well-being of conscious creatures." Harris is a consequentialist and very influenced by Derek Parfitt and the overall liberal/humanist tradition. Given the state of the world, no one should argue that liberalism/humanism is humanity's default and indeed Harris's original project was pointing out how badly Islam is opposed to that moral framework.
Atheism by itself is no moral system. Communists were atheists and had/have a moral system quite different from liberalism/humanism. Western atheists today see a big split between classic liberals and post-liberals (i.e. progressives and "Atheism+") split along Culture War lines.
But this begs the question, does it not? Given that we arbitrarily establish some kind of objective quantifiable framework for evaluating well-being (which I'm sure I don't need to tell you is itself difficult and unsolved to say the least), sure, science can definitely be of use there. Doesn't help with the first part.
Well not begging that question is one of the main points of the book, so no it doesn’t. (Many disagree that he succeeds in the philosophical grounding of his moral frame, but he does try.)
Of course, many people take issue with even the second part where you agree science can help. The “how” as opposed to the underlying “what/why.”
Any moral system requires some axiom to start from and Harris explains how we can use reason to arrive at that rather broad one. The lack of other sensible contenders helps here (for those with proper priors, anyway). Of course, there have been materialist contenders, such as communism and whatever we want to call the anti-human environmentalist ideology.
Admittedly it's been a dozen years since I read it but I mainly remember him vaguely gesturing at the possibility in a very unconvincing way.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link