site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   34787 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 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.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I thought that Goldberg had a surprisingly strong showing

Goldberg was better than Gladwell but she, at one point, did something you should never do in a debate: she basically ceded the argument to the other side by admitting that the media is captured and distorted...by consolidating corporations and powerful moneyed interests like Bezos.

Um...you can't do that. As a sign of good faith it was better than anything Gladwell said. As a matter of tactics, that probably made her, on net, worse than he was.

I might be accused of being uncharitable, I think a lot of this debate employed very common "woke" argumentative tactics that were simply out of place due to the different debate topic, which led to a worse showing than expected.

  1. Turn it into a semantic discussion by insisting no one can define their terms. Gladwell tried this, no doubt having seen it work as a useful defense mechanism/way to run out the clock when progressives ask conservatives to define "woke". The problem is that it obviously doesn't work because all sides seemed to have relatively similar views of what the mainstream media is. Gladwell was guilty of the very thing he accused the other side of (wrongly, since they did define their terms both before and after being asked): just assuming we had the same definition of mainstream media in his anecdotes. Which he was right to do since "mainstream media" is not as contentious as "woke".

  2. Grant that something is happening but it's for [Other Reasons Here]. No, that college professor wasn't fired for saying gays should be careful in conservative African countries. It's actually for this Other Thing That Doesn't Indict Wokeness (e.g. higher tuition fees leading to the idea that the customer is always right). Therefore it isn't damning to wokeness. It's a very common thing around college kerfuffles. Well, yes, the college students overreacted but there was this Holy Context^(tm) of this supposedly egregious thing that happened that makes it make sense besides wokeness being bad.

  3. Yeah, well, everything sucked in the past and you're suspect for even thinking anything was better then (though Taibbi should have really clarified the difference between the media being racially inclusive and politically polarized. Murray's catty defense of Taibbi was true but not really substantive)

Suffice it to say, #2 may work in debates centered around how bad wokeness is, but is horrible in the case of this proposition. Since it doesn't matter why we can't trust the press, the question is merely if we can.

Briefly she claimed that there are clear signs that the media does learn from its mistakes and "overcorrects,"

She's probably correct actually but, again, it doesn't help.

There's a very good argument, made by people inside the media who would understand the psychology, that the media assumed Clinton was going to win because they were in a bubble and, believing this, pivoted to attacking Clinton to prove their bipartisan bona fides.

The problem is twofold:

  1. They had to do this because of the accurate perception that the mainstream media skews to the Left/would support Clinton

  2. The backlash to Trump's victory led to the criticism of this very tendency and the belief that bad actors exploit false balance (see "butter emails"). Arguably, this "overcorrection" led to things like the reaction to the Hunter Biden story or the firing of anyone who broke message in any way during the 2020 riots/protests. Nobody wanted to be the "rube" who helped Trump win again by reporting something that was unflattering.

The problem is: this isn't actually flattering for the MSM since the underlying fact here is that it is biased towards the Left and its attempts to fix this are intermittent, doing their own harm and will be washed away when things get tough.

I do think that the Pro side didn't adequately answer questions about their alleged fixations on culture war issues, but it seems like a charge that could easily be thrown back at the mainstream media over the past decade.

I think this was balanced by their focus on the Hunter Biden story which was probably what Taibbi hammered on the most.

(I guess the trucker protest counts as culture war but the implications Murray was concerned about don't seem to fit in the same bucket as shit like the Covington kid or the other such "meaningless" topics).

Um...you can't do that. As a sign of good faith it was better than anything Gladwell said. As a matter of tactics, that probably made her, on net, worse than he was.

This is public forum, hardly even a debate. Unlike political debates, there is nothing at stake, hence no need for 'strategy'.

There's only a need if you want to do well. If the argument is that she didn't feel said desire, fair enough.

I think it's silly to go up there and make bad arguments for your side (then why bother going?) but YMMV.

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