site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34413 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 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.

12
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

SBF had a long interview with NYT where they were remarkably soft on him. The whole thing can be read read here.

For my part, it seems like he has little remorse and is spinning things as "things expanded too fast and I made a mistake". The fact that his hedge fund (Alameda Research) was propped up by client deposits without their knowledge is not something he wishes to mention.

Over at Twitter, he has been consistently deleting tweets such as his Nov 7th tweet assuring everyone that FTX has a "long history of safeguarding client assets". Some are speculating that his recent gibberish tweets are in fact a way to keep his tweet count constant, so to not alert bots when a large amount of tweets are suddenly deleted (as some bots may begin to do auto-archiving). In his interview with NYT, he instead spun his new tweets as some kind of cryptic message he wants to send.

All these things re-affirm my view that he's basically a manipulative psychopath. What's disappointing but not surprising is the soft gloves treatment he gets in the NYT. One cannot help but ask whether his status as democrat megadonor plays a part in that.

Highly recommend Matt Levine's article on FTX's balance sheet. There is no way to read this balance sheet and come away thinking that Bankman-Fried, FTX, and Alameda were merely incompetent.

In round numbers, FTX’s Thursday desperation balance sheet shows about $8.9 billion of customer liabilities against assets with a value of roughly $19.6 billion before last week’s crash, and roughly $9.6 billion after the crash (as of Thursday, per FTX’s numbers). Of that $19.6 billion of assets back in the good times, some $14.4 billion was in more-or-less FTX-associated tokens (FTT, SRM, SOL, MAPS). Only about $5.2 billion of assets — against $8.9 billion of customer liabilities — was in more-or-less normal financial stuff. (And even that was mostly in illiquid venture investments; only about $1 billion was in liquid cash, stock and cryptocurrencies — and half of that was Robinhood stock.) After the run on FTX, the FTX-associated stuff, predictably, crashed. The Thursday balance sheet valued the FTT, SRM, SOL and MAPS holdings at a combined $4.3 billion, and that number is still way too high.

I am not saying that all of FTX’s assets were made up. That desperation balance sheet lists dollar and yen accounts, stablecoins, unaffiliated cryptocurrencies, equities, venture investments, etc., all things that were not created or controlled by FTX. 5 And that desperation balance sheet reflects FTX’s position after $5 billion of customer outflows last weekend; presumably FTX burned through its more liquid normal stuff (Bitcoin, dollars, etc.) to meet those withdrawals, so what was left was the weirdo cats and dogs. 6 Still it is striking that the balance sheet that FTX circulated to potential rescuers consisted mostly of stuff it made up. Its balance sheet consisted mostly of stuff it made up! Stuff it made up! You can’t do that! That’s not how balance sheets work! That’s not how anything works!

"It was obviously in good faith that we exchanged customer funds in actual things (dollars, bitcoins, whatever) with coins that we made up and whose supply we control and that could not be sold for even a fraction of their claimed value." Or having an account labelled "Hidden, poorly internally labeled ‘fiat@’ account."

At best they had "good faith' in the same way that Theranos did: telling themselves -delusionally- that they'd make it all right eventually and make all the lying worth it.

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