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 -
I don't understand why you think B follows from A.
Our current understanding of physics suggests that amongst IRL, non-simulated beings more experiences will happen inside grabby civilizations than outside. But there's no reason to think that Grabbys will predominantly run simulations of other Grabbys. If anything, they should be running simulations of any civilizational stage EXCEPT Grabbyness because if they want to know what being in a Grabby civilization looks like, they need only look out the window, no need to sim it.
We should therefore think it probable to be born as (a) an IRL Grabby or as (b) a simulation by but not of a Grabby.
Simulated civilisations are not subject to the same anthropic logic as non-simulated civilizations, because simulated civilizations don't have to deal with pesky encumbrances like "making chronological sense". A simulated civilization neither has to start low tech to become high tech, not does it have to persist for arbitrary aeons into the timeless depths of the cosmos until it dies out. The IRL Grabby simulator can just go "Uhhh, today I feel like starting at the Hypernegentropic Noosphere stage of civilization and continuing until the discovery of Sanguomaxtic Inversiololology, then I'll turn it off".
Assuming we are in a simulation, I don't think we can draw really any conclusions about our simulators, including whether they're Grabby or not. We have literally no evidence at all about that layer of reality except that they simulated us. I can think of countless reasons why they would simulate other Grabby's--maybe they want to simulate a war, or how history would have unfolded differently, etc.--but they're all worthless because we know nothing at all about our simulators.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link