site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   35680 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 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.

OP of the thread here! Normally just lurk but I'll reply since it's my SSC thread.

Back to my thoughts, I'm extremely skeptical that the disability numbers could halve over such a relatively short period without some sort of accounting trickery. I could definitely see Covid having an impact, especially since the vast majority are older people. But the drop in numbers is just too great for me to take them at face value.

We've seen it before with disability, social security, etc, but often times the medicalized benefits system will just shuffle large amounts of people from one category to another once political pressure comes to bear on a label like "disability."

I agree, it's a really dramatic drop. But I also think it's useful to know that the mid aughts was also a dramatic rise. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2006/sect01.html

In December 2006, about 7.8 million people received Social Security disability benefits as disabled workers, disabled widow(er)s, or disabled adult children. The majority (87 percent) were disabled workers, 10 percent were disabled adult children, and 3 percent were disabled widow(er)s.

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2006/sect01.html

In the same way we halved from then to now, we also had basically doubled during the time period.

If we view the surge during the recession as essentially being a temporal anomaly, then our current numbers are just a return to form with the reduction (and lack of growth relative to population) since the mid 2000s explainable through the increase in ALJ denials.

It going to some other disability program is an interesting hypothesis, but seven million people is a lot to transfer! Heck it'd be more than seven million if we assume that the expected growth had also occured too. And there's no other known disability program this large. So it seems either they genuinely shrank through some mechanism (such as just a return to form as they aged into normal retirement) or they've been heavily fudging the numbers in a consistent manner through two different administrations and Trump 1, Biden and Trump 2 (including groups like DOGE now) haven't noticed a thing.

This also reminds me of the old post by Alone on how SSI is basically medicalizing political problems - can't seem to find it but if anyone knows what I'm talking about and has the link that would be great.

Sounds interesting, but would like to point out that SSI and DI are different programs with different funding. SSI is administered by the Social Security Administration, but the funding comes from the treasury's General Fund rather than the OASDI trusts. SSI is intended as a supplemental (hence Supplemental Security Income) payment to disabled people who don't have enough credits to collect on DI.

Edit: To add, SSI numbers have also decreased too, which means that can't be where the 7 million went. And total social security recipients did go up (despite the 7 mil drop in DI) showing a lot more retirees and quite a bit less disabled. So I stand by the "many disabled people just got older" hypothesis.

Awesome! Yeah you did a great job, I was impressed with the work even if I came off a bit condescending here hah.

Sounds interesting, but would like to point out that SSI and DI are different programs with different funding. SSI is administered by the Social Security Administration, but the funding comes from the treasury's General Fund rather than the OASDI trusts. SSI is intended as a supplemental (hence Supplemental Security Income) payment to disabled people who don't have enough credits to collect on DI.

Gotcha, yeah I could have been more explicit about this. I'm still surprised less people of working age got on disability, but seems the stats bear your argument out.

Dang I'm tired of everything coming down to population cohort sizes but seems like that's a major driver of... tons of stuff in the U.S. Wild.

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