site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 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.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Does anyone here actually get extra tangible uses out of the new iphone versions?

I have owned the 4, 5, 6, 8, and currently 11. Upon recent reflection, I that all the iPhones past the 5 have added nothing of meaningful value in terms of new features only minor quality of life updates like a better battery and camera, but nothing that has actively changed how I use the product. For this reason I won't be buying any of the newer versions of the iPhone.

So I'm curious if anyone here has an experience where there WAS a new feature added (past the iPhone 5) that has actively changed how they use their iPhone in some tangible way.

that has actively changed how they use their iPhone in some tangible way.

The LIDAR scanner is niche but sufficiently transformative (the FaceID camera can be used in this way as well due to the way its hardware works- and yeah, it actually does require special hardware for the required depth mapping). I'll likely be upgrading to a model that has it, because sometimes I want to 3D print things I find difficult to measure directly (curved internal surfaces are a real bitch to get right the first time).

Of course, that generally requires third-party applications to create and export the mesh as opposed to a first-party "we designed the phone to do this" philosophy Apple has always had, so I'm not entirely sure that counts. And it's not something I do every day, either.

For this reason I won't be buying any of the newer versions of the iPhone.

The same conditions are true for most Android devices; the iPhone just has far more useful lifespan per dollar especially once you're in the sub-500 price range (I legitimately don't understand the point of buying a new phone before the hardware physically dies or the software is too old to run anything, but I'm probably in the minority here).

There is one exception to this, however, and that's the folding-screen phones: they're ludicrously expensive, but being able to have 2 apps open at the same time is a really big deal just like it was for PCs back in the 1980s.

I think Google is wise to go all-in on this tech, even though it's going to take a while to trickle down into the 400-dollar phone market, because this really does bridge the usefulness gap between phone and tablet, and it's easier to stomach replacing a 200-dollar phone every 2 years than it is a 1000-dollar phone because the screen physically can't hold up to being bent that many times.

It's also not something Apple is going to be able to match for a long time if ever; multi-tasking has always been an afterthought for them.

The Face ID thing is kind of nice. But yeah; marginal improvements. Nothing transformative.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't Face ID completely a software change. So theoretically couldn't apple have put that same software on the iPhone 5? Or would the specs of the iPhone 5 not cut it to run whatever ML model they are running?