site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   27722 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There's a fun dramatic little scissor statement happening in the rationalist / post rationalist corner of twitter at the moment. Started by @_brentbaum talking about his girlfriend's high agency:

i learned something about agency when, on my second date with my now-girlfriend, i mentioned feeling cold and she about-faced into the nearest hotel, said she left a scarf in a room last week, and handed me the nicest one out of the hotel’s lost & found drawer

I, and many others, chimed in saying hey wait a second... this is actually kind of concerning! Some of the negative responses:

  • not to burst your bubble but isn't this kinda stealing?
  • you can just steal things
  • I suspect your about to learn a lot of things

and my personal favorite:

  • was it shaped like a giant red flag?

As I said though, this is apparently a scissor statement because a ton of people also had the OPPOSITE reaction. Some examples:

  • God damn
  • She's a keeper
  • my wife is exactly like this

etc etc.

Now the reason I find this fascinating is that it's one of the clearest breakdowns between consequentialists and virtue ethicists I've yet seen in the wild. Most people defending the girl of 'scarfgate' are basically just saying "what's the harm? nobody ever goes back for those scarfs. besides they're like $20 most of the time anyway."

Unfortunately a lot of folks get drawn into this argument, and start saying things like well, what if somebody comes back for it later and it's gone? Or what if someone's grandma knitted them that scarf?

To me, going down the consequentialist route is doomed to fail. You can justify all sorts of horrible things in the name of consequentialist morality. (Same with deontology, to be fair.) My take is that this is wrong because she directly lied to someone's face, and then proceeded to steal someone else's property. The fact that most people think it's cute and quirky is probably down to a sort of Women are Wonderful effect, imo, and then they use consequentialism to defend their default programming that women can't be bad.

Either way, curious what the Motte thinks? Is scarfgate just salty sour pusses hating on a highly agentic women? Or are there deeper issues here?

The whole thing seems very weird, probably fake, and not primarily about "agency." What kind of weather situation were they in where he was actually cold, not just making idle chatter, and a "nice scarf" was going to fix that? And then he just went around wearing some random woman's scarf the rest of the evening? It sounds funny, I guess they could have a good laugh over it? Definitely manic pixie dream girl vibes.

But, also, I've been confused about how "agency" is being used lately. Assertiveness? Willingness to take action? It seems kind of new to hear that discussed in terms of agency, but seems to have become a thing lately.

It is being used to describe out of the box thinking in this case, as most people wouldn't consider stealing a scarf from a hotel in that manner.

Is it out of the box, or is her box just one filled with low status grifting? Even if I valued out of the box thinking, I wouldn't value the kind of thinking I associate with the underclass or sociopaths.

Yeah, I hate when people use "out of the box thinking" to refer to "strategies that have occurred to normal people, but the normal people didn't use them because they're morally objectionable".

You remind me of the ending of Scott's post on Orban.

There’s an urban legend about a test for psychopaths. Usually the test is some kind of riddle that can only be solved by killing a person for some completely stupid reason - the one I remember hearing involved how to meet with one of your father’s friends, without your father knowing, when you don’t have their contact info - and the answer was to kill your father and assume he would come to the funeral. I assume none of these tests work at all, but the assumption behind them is that if you’re evil enough, it you have more possibilities in your solution set than normal people.

This is what I think of when I look at Orban. He was able to beat everyone else by taking advantage of loopholes everyone else left open because they didn’t think anyone would be crazy enough to use them. I imagine that being Orban feels puzzling, like everyone else is leaving low-hanging fruit on the ground constantly. He’s a fascinating psychological specimen, but everyone else needs to up their game and stop leaving things open for people like him to take advantage of.

I prefer the way Scott puts it in "Book Review: Age of Em":

There’s an urban legend about a “test for psychopaths”. You tell someone a story about a man who attends his mother’s funeral. He met a really pretty girl there and fell in love, but neglected to get her contact details before she disappeared. How might he meet her again? If they answer “kill his father, she’ll probably come to that funeral too”, they’re a psychopath – ordinary people would have a mental block that prevents them from even considering such a drastic solution. And I bring this up because after reading Age of Em I feel like Robin Hanson would be able to come up with some super-solution even the psychopaths can’t think of, some plan that gets the man a threesome with the girl and her even hotter twin sister at the cost of wiping out an entire continent. Everything about labor relations in Age of Em is like this.

For example, suppose you want to hire an em at subsistence wages, but you want them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Ems probably need to sleep – that’s hard-coded into the brain, and the brain is being simulated at enough fidelity to leave that in. But jobs with tasks that don’t last longer than a single day – for example, a surgeon who performs five surgeries a day but has no day-to-day carryover – can get around this restriction by letting an em have one full night of sleep, then copying it. Paste the em at the beginning of the workday. When it starts to get tired, let it finish the surgery it’s working on, then delete it and paste the well-rested copy again to do the next surgery. Repeat forever and the em never has to get any more sleep than that one night. You can use the same trick to give an em a “vacation” – just give it one of them, then copy-paste that brain-state forever.

The thing is, the "test for psychopaths" thing is an example of both: it's a legitimately creative solution, but also a solution that no decent person would consider.

"Steal scarves from hotels rather than paying for them yourself" is only an example of the latter. It's not a creative solution: it's just banal theft. Creativity, bravery and lack of scruples are not synonymous.

Same, I also despise the complementary idea that refusing to engage in such behavior makes you soft, naive and stupid.

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