site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30414 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In a "what the fuck even is this timeline" update: Anderson lee Aldrich, the Q Club shooter, is apparently non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, and already had an Encyclopedia Dramatica article detailing his career as a 15 year old "professional hacker", calling him a pedophile, and describing his absent father as an MMA fighter and porn star.

I'm feeling very vindicated in my impulse to hold off conclusions... but I would think that, given my biases, wouldn't it? The real test would be a tragedy that looks at first glance to fit my biases perfectly and allows me to cathartically Boo Outgroup. I suspect that differences in media ecosystems have that less likely... but I would think that too, wouldn't I?

Plus obvious, audacious narrative updates in real time.

And our first echo shooting, as usually happens in the immediate wake of a highly publicized mass shooting. No apparent political/CW element, disgruntled employee.

It seems to me that his identity is more aligned with a progressive identity than a conservative one. He is the product of a progressive lax culture, not a conservative one. He’s the child of a drug addicted porn star father and a felon mother. His father was addicted to meth, a commonly abused drug in the gay nightclub scene. His parents’ lifestyle was the opposite of conservative.

The fact that he was previously charged for threatening to blow up his mother’s house strongly suggests that he targeted the sexually promiscuous nightclub because of its similarity to his father (in his mind). Clearly he had an interest in violence against his parents before.

If you want less of these kinds of attacks, what is the best course of action?

  • Well, there’s absolutely no association between anti-gay belief and attacks on gays. Many millions of Americans are heavily invested in being anti-LGBT, but they don’t attack gays. Muslims and Orthodox Jews hardly have any interest in attacking gays, despite being anti-LGBT.
  • There’s a stronger relationship between shooters and broken families / traumatic childhoods, in particular absent fathers.

To best prevent future cases of this sort of violence, producing even more lgbt propaganda will accomplish nothing (it’s already omnipresent after all), but fixing society and keening families together would probably help. It would be more advantageous to actually extol the value of a stable mother-father marriage, versus continually talking about gays

Well, there’s absolutely no association between anti-gay belief and attacks on gays. Many millions of Americans are heavily invested in being anti-LGBT, but they don’t attack gays. Muslims and Orthodox Jews hardly have any interest in attacking gays, despite being anti-LGBT.

I'm not sure this is a valid argument. Just because anti-gay belief usually doesn't lead to attacks on gays, that doesn't imply that attacks on gays aren't caused in part by anti-gay sentiment. This ties into your second point. Definitely, shooters are going to mostly be people with other psychological issues, brought on in some cases by a traumatic upbringing, but that doesn't mean anti-gay sentiment didn't contribute.

Which is to say, it takes a confluence of factors to produce a shooter. The importance of upbringing does not imply that anti-gay sentiment cannot have contributed.

fixing society

Not a terribly useful contribution. 'Fix society'. How? Or how would you try to reduce rates of single motherhood?

anti gay beliefs almost never leading to attacks on gays does imply that attacks on gays aren't caused in part by anti-gay beliefs

if you look at any two variables and find near zero correlation, it implies they are not connected or "caused" by each other

Rockets almost never launch humans into space. Does that imply that humans being launched into space isn't caused by rockets?

sure

now what?

no part of a something "implying," i.e., suggesting, something else means it must be the case or not be the case

Or most people don't act at the extremes of their beliefs, but some do. Most Christians do not attack abortion doctors, but the belief system is a vector. Most people who believe climate change is an existential crisis are not killing oil billionaires but again the belief system is a vector.

That doesn't mean the belief system is wrong or should be stopped, bad actors will attach themselves to every belief system. But there is a connection.

Claiming the thinking is a "vector" is muddying the waters to attempt to bridge the substantive evidence gap between the two. It feels intuitive, but "I understand why someone who believes X would do Y" doesn't mean X causes Y. It doesn't mean it partly causes it. There needs to be more and yet there isn't.

When attempting to find correlations between these beliefs it cannot be distinguished from zero. In that circumstance, that is exactly what the word "implies" means.

if you look at any two variables and find near zero correlation, it implies they are not connected or "caused" by each other

Aside from this formulation just being entirely wrong, you definitely can have causation without correlation (https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/causation-without-correlation-is-possible/), if anti-gay sentiment only causes attacks in people with rare mental issues, then we would surely expect little correlation.

before you attempt to correct anyone, you should first attempt a definition at the word "imply" which is generally agreed upon

that isn't what "imply" means

it doesn't matter if it's possible for something to happen

something can be possible and yet it is not "implied" by it or the vis-a-versa

"imply" isn't a word for possible/impossible, it's a word which means suggests to varying degrees

you are simply misusing the word

I don't think I was misusing it. With respect to questions of logic, imply generally means, as the Free Dictionary has it, to 'involve by logical necessity'. X implies Y means that Y is always a logical consequence of X.

well, I think we spotted our disagreement

In mathematics, "implies" is how we pronounce "⇒". Your statement was mathematically false, which was a useful thing for him to point out.

If you were trying to speak a language other than mathematics, like English, in which there are more and fuzzier definitions, either use a less fuzzy word like "suggests" or "hints", or make your context clearer by avoiding other words with both math and English meanings like "variables" and "correlation".

yes, I will

In hindsight mathematicians should have swiped jargon from a dead language, like the doctors and lawyers mostly did, or at least used more proper names instead of generic words.

I might not even have remembered that "implies" was one of the important words repurposed with a significant confusing distinction in meaning, if I'd been making a list from scratch. There's "or", "in general", just about every word in topology, ... and "significant", ironically.

Teaching the virtues in school with stories and examples, teaching young women how to pick mates in teen years, teaching women to be homemakers which reduces total societal stress, banning degenerative media, publicly executing drug dealers. There’s a lot you can do to reduce the terrible behavior that leads to a kid being born from a felon mom and meth addicted pornstar father. After he’s born, better male role models would also help quite a lot.

If the rate of anti-gay believers who become violent against gays is 1 in 60 million per year, or 1 in 6 million, I do not feel comfortable calling this anything but statistical noise. I do not believe his anti-gay beliefs (if they exist) are causal whatsoever.

Franco’s Spain might have been capable of doing these things with any amount of success. Biden’s(or Trump’s or Desantis’) America is not- either capable of doing these things or capable of being successful in them.

I mean, part of the reason Franco's Spain fell apart the second he died is it turned out there was a whole generation of younger people, including the King who actually didn't agree with Franco all that much.

teaching young women how to pick mates in teen years

don’t they already know how to do that? or are they picking the wrong ones

teaching young women how to pick mates in teen years, teaching women to be homemakers which reduces total societal stress, banning degenerative media,

Can you show me a single instance of such reforms leading to a decrease in single motherhood? Aside from the merits of these goals, you are swimming against an irrepressible social and economic tide here.

publicly executing drug dealers

Well now you're just being silly. The overall body of research on capital punishment, though inconclusive, tends to lean in the direction that there is no deterrent effect. Moreover, considering how many drug dealers there are, the number of innocent people who would die under such as system would be rather large.

If the rate of anti-gay believers who become violent against gays is 1 in 60 million per year, or 1 in 6 million, I do not feel comfortable calling this anything but statistical noise. I do not believe his anti-gay beliefs (if they exist) are causal whatsoever.

Under this argument, you can't ascribe ideological influences to any terrorist act ever. Most fundamentalist Muslim aren't terrorists, so religious motives could not have been causal in Islamic terrorism? What a ridiculous argument.

Such reforms have never been studied, as they haven’t been implemented since modern social science; if and when they are studied, it would take a very good metastudy to determine what’s true from what’s false.

There is no research indicating that public executions are ineffectual in deterrence. There may be some research indicating that imprisoning individuals for twenty years before executing them in private is ineffectual in deterrence. This is different than a speedy public execution in the neighborhood of their peers, which I promise would have a deterrence effect.

You are making a ridiculous, silly, ignorant category error by confusing conservative Islam with the potent terroristic ideology that causes young Muslim men to commit terrorism. It’s really not fundamentalist Muslims as a category who commit terrorism, but a small subset who subscribe to radical terroristic ideology promoted by a small few. At least in the West. That’s much more than 1 in 6 million. It’s probably more than 1 in 100,000. Of the adherents to ISIS ideology, or Al qaeda ideology, I’d say 1 in 20,000 probably commit terrorism. No, there is no study on this either.

That’s much more than 1 in 6 million. It’s probably more than 1 in 100,000.

Well this is my point. 1 in 100,000 is still vanishingly small. Where would you draw the line for saying we can just chalk something up to statistical noise. 1 in 5 million? 1 million? 200,000?

This is different than a speedy public execution in the neighborhood of their peers, which I promise would have a deterrence effect.

Well, aside from what is asserted without evidence being able to be dismissed without evidence, the wrongful conviction rate would be to most people intolerably high. Executions are slow for a reason; the appeals process is there for a reason. John Grisham estimates the wrongful conviction rate to be between 2% and 10% - now, he isn't necessarily unbiased considering he works with the Innocence Project. So let's go with the lowest end of his estimate, 2%. In 2019, over 240,000 people were sentenced to prison for drug-related crimes, the most serious offence of whom was possession in only 3.7% of cases. But let's say your policies reduce drug crime by half - which is very unlikely - and then half the number again to be generous so we get 60,000. These are the ballparkiest of ballpark figures, but I think if anything I've surely got an underestimate, and that still leaves us with over a thousand wrongful drug executions per year, for apparent benefits in defence of which you can't even cite a single piece of evidence.

We are already completely fine with wrongful convictions, which is why we throw people away for life despite a chance of wrongful conviction. The difference between being killed, and being thrown away in a tiny cell for your whole life, is vanishingly small, It is the bulk majority of the moral harm done already. You cannot reasonably be against killing people, despite the chance of wrongful conviction, and yet be perfectly fine completely ruining their life in every way short of killing them, despite the chance of wrongful conviction. (As, the number of people eventually freed from wrongful conviction of murder is much lower than not.) Chance is a fact of life that we all deal with every day. Sometimes we just die. The small chance of being executed wrongfully for a murder we didn’t commit does not somehow make executions not worth it, any more than dying when a bridge collapses makes building a bridge not with it.

The evidence for deterrence is that we are promptly executing the drug dealers in front of their community. If you can’t even attempt to reason from first principles why this might deter future criminals, I have no idea what to tell you. Nations that execute drug dealers (and have high catch rates) do shockingly well in deterring drug use. You can look up interviews on YouTube of international drug traffickers talking about how none of them would ever traffic into Singapore. Because they would be executed. I promise you that if you, at the age of 12, saw your uncle executed for drug dealing in front of you, your chance of subsequently dealing drugs will plummet.

Also, we’re obviously talking about dealers of hard drugs, not “drug related” offenses.

The evidence for deterrence is that we are promptly executing the drug dealers in front of their community. If you can’t even attempt to reason from first principles why this might deter future criminals, I have no idea what to tell you.

You can't reason your way to a conclusion on a topic so impossibly complicated as deterrent effects of certain punishments. After all, it's surely intuitive that the existence of the death penalty for murder would deter murder, but it doesn't seem to. These are essentially unfalsifiable arguments, and therefore entirely worthless and unproductive.

have high catch rates

I agree with this part because it is well-evidenced that the single most important factor in deterring crime is the chance of getting caught.

More comments

The difference between being killed, and being thrown away in a tiny cell for your whole life, is vanishingly small

yeah but if you’ve been wrongfully convicted that difference starts to feel pretty big. exoneration doesn’t do me much good if i’m already dead. personally i don’t think the death penalty is really “worth it” regardless. summary execution is a different story, that’s a pretty good deterrent imo. not really how i think the state should be operating though, it’s unbecoming. leave that sort of thing to the street gangs

More comments

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