site banner
PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   27456 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think it did happen during industrialisation for white collar work, though. Previously, you had a clerk writing documents all day. Maybe he could do ten letters a day (figure pulled out of the air, not backed up by data). The Victorian postal system was incredible; in London you would have multiple daily deliveries of post (so it was possible to write a letter in the morning, post it, and have a reply by the evening).

This wasn't happening in a vacuum, things like the expansion of the railways meant faster travel and now it was possible to send and receive goods over longer distances.

Then the typewriter gets invented. Now your productivity in the office has skyrocketed (relatively). Now you can do ten letters in the morning! Naturally, no employer is going to pay workers to sit around for the rest of the day, or go home after half a day's work. Now that your output is more than ten letters per day, your employer wants you to do twenty letters per day, because now the business can grow to support that.

And typewriters were the thing that made startups (to use a comparison) possible. Now women could work. Now you could buy your own typewriter and set up as a secretarial service for small local businesses that maybe didn't or couldn't afford to employ a clerk, but did need documents written (or typed) up. The new job of "typist" was created:

The typewriter appeared in the latter half of the 19th century, a period of massive industrial and societal change. The Industrial Revolution had paved the way for the increasing dominance of big business, bringing fundamental changes to ways of working. As bureaucracy increased, so did the requirement for documentation and processing. With the emergence of the typewriter and the need to create documents quickly, a new role developed: that of the typist.

...One woman who took advantage of the opportunities offered by typewriters was Ethelinda Hadwen. Born in Lancashire in 1863, she was the daughter of a cotton mill owner, studying in Paris during her teens. After returning to the UK in 1886, she opened a typewriting office in Edinburgh with her business partner Elizabeth Fleming. The office provided typing services to local firms and was the first of its kind in Scotland. The average typewriter office employed four or five people, usually women, and offered typing and translating for businesses, banks, lawyers, authors, architects, and professors. These were businesses where women weren't only workers, but unusually for the time, also employers.

Now costs came down and productivity soared. And gradually the role of "secretary" no longer meant "a job for a man, possibly a university graduate, who will deal with more than just correspondence" and became "a job for a woman who can type and take dictation but is a vocational training job".

By 1891, the time of publication of this Sherlock Holmes story, typewriters as the new office tech were commonplace enough that they could be used in crime:

“It is a curious thing,” remarked Holmes, “that a typewriter has really quite as much individuality as a man’s handwriting. Unless they are quite new, no two of them write exactly alike. Some letters get more worn than others, and some wear only on one side. Now, you remark in this note of yours, Mr. Windibank, that in every case there is some little slurring over of the ‘e,’ and a slight defect in the tail of the ‘r.’ There are fourteen other characteristics, but those are the more obvious.”

“We do all our correspondence with this machine at the office, and no doubt it is a little worn,” our visitor answered, glancing keenly at Holmes with his bright little eyes.

“And now I will show you what is really a very interesting study, Mr. Windibank,” Holmes continued. “I think of writing another little monograph some of these days on the typewriter and its relation to crime. It is a subject to which I have devoted some little attention. I have here four letters which purport to come from the missing man. They are all typewritten. In each case, not only are the ‘e’s’ slurred and the ‘r’s’ tailless, but you will observe, if you care to use my magnifying lens, that the fourteen other characteristics to which I have alluded are there as well.”

Until typewriters, and secretaries, and typing pools, became the new normal and that reached the saturation point of "we are at thirty letters a day" which became the new standard of productivity. And then came word processors, and... rinse and repeat.

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