site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why would being into kink (one class of "weirdo sex perverts") indicate a high rate of committing crimes? It's mostly just a niche interest.

As a tangent - one example I happened to come across - aphyr, the jepsen guy, is quite kinky (obviously nsfw). Jepsen is an incredibly useful project for measuring and improving distributed systems - a good read here. So this is a serious, smart, and useful person. Yet - he isn't just kinky, he directly links from his programming blog to his mastodon account, where he RTs naked bound dudes and posts nsfw pics of himself along with posting about databases. And this with the words - "I've got a Mastodon account for snarky jokes, databases, and leather" - most won't intuit what "leather" means before they click and see a 250lb guy's ass. I've actually been to aphyr.com for programming stuff a dozen times - the technical interview series is based as shit, without noticing that. Most kinky people I either know personally, or know of, are just ... smart people who are kinky.

Tangent tangent - This is a great example of my opinion on "the LGBTs are awful deviants who are undermining civilization" - even if aphyr's homosexuality took a hundred prime age men out of the breeding pool, jepsen's utility to a networked society greatly outweighs it, and this guy's contribution to society is much more than a hundred 100iq people who have children. Being gay is a misuse or twisting of sexuality towards unnatural and meaningless ends, but ... it is so in a way that coexists with the infinitely complex interconnection of physical causation, and said physical causation is not bringing down society, while complex technical achievements are making society even more capable!

this guy's contribution to society is much more than a hundred 100iq people who have children

Smart computer guy with no kids versus ordinary people who have kids - where do you think "society" comes from? If nobody is having children but they are all software whizzes, then after their generation there won't be anyone there to use this wonderful project they created.

I don't know what Jepsen is, I don't know what distributed systems are, but at the end of the day, things are made for people, not people for things. The eventual effect is that all this Smart People Stuff is on the backs of Average Normies who buy, use, consume and need things that they have no idea are dependent at several removes on the Smart People Stuff, but at the same time, without the mass of Average Normies driving the economy because they use, buy, consume and need things, the work the Smart People do would be meaningless.

To be clear, that was a rebuttal to "the LGBTs are actively destroying society". I'd obviously prefer if jepsen was straight and had children.

things are made for people, not people for things.

Which people, though? People can only have purpose to the extent they experience, act, or relate - and more intelligent, capable, and complex people do all of those more, and with more depth, than less so. Which is more or less the same as being more 'productive', whether technically or artistically or intellectually or politically, or even in some other inscrutable personal sense.

without the mass of Average Normies driving the economy because they use, buy, consume and need things, the work the Smart People do would be meaningless.

Marginal contribution isn't "importance if entire class vanished". The US needs janitors and farmworkers a lot more in lower-tech eras than it does now.

Why would being into kink (one class of "weirdo sex perverts") indicate a high rate of committing crimes? It's mostly just a niche interest.

Particularly in the case where it is flouted at the rest of society, it is a form of aggressive norm-deviation that intuitively makes other norm deviations such as criminal activity more plausible.

As a tangent - one example I happened to come across - aphyr, the jepsen guy, is quite kinky (obviously nsfw). Jepsen is an incredibly useful project for measuring and improving distributed systems - a good read here. So this is a serious, smart, and useful person.

So? Not only is there no dispute that plenty of serious, smart, and useful LGBT people, it doesn't preclude the possibility that this particular person doesn't have more transgressive proclivities that you either don't know about or haven't manifested yet. The subject of this thread is (according to some) a serious, smart, and useful nuclear scientist.

this guy's contribution to society is much more than a hundred 100iq people who have children.

That seems dubious, but even so, you could say the same thing about, e.g., Hans Reiser. It proves nothing in itself.

Particularly in the case where it is flouted at the rest of society, it is a form of aggressive norm-deviation that intuitively makes other norm deviations such as criminal activity more plausible.

How much more plausible? 1.05x? 1.5x? 10x? The numbers aren't even the point, it's just that "makes more plausible" is a very vauge statement that covers for a lack of detailed understanding.

Also, 'being a fabulous faggot" isn't nearly as much of a 'deviation' in 2020 as it is was in 1960, to say nothing about 1860! Much of society thinks that's just great, and otherwise we wouldn't have seen the biden admin appointment.

@ rest: yeah, it was a tangent, but the general point is that if there's something wrong with being a weirdo sex pervert, there has to actually be some effect of it, even if it's complicated or indirect or suppressed knowledge, that makes it bad. Using "drag queen kink is norm deviation" + "norm deviation is correlated with norm deviation" + "this kinky drag queen did a bad norm deviation" is absurd, it's a simulacra, circular, you've entirely dodged whether there's something wrong with it!

That seems dubious

It was somewhat rhetorical, but the idea is that the causal impact of a person existing vs not existing on society is quite complicated, and people who do complex, requiring-intelligence work, especially work that improves the quality of infrastructure used by many in a scalable way, and especially work that might not have happened if they weren't there, have a counterfactual effect much larger than someone who does work that's easy, already plentiful, doesn't. have impact that scales. What, precisely, is the impact on society when an extra 100iq person exists? They do some extra accounting, watch some youtube, purchase some extra food, vibe?

especially work that might not have happened if they weren't there

We don't know. I don't know the person used in the example, but let's think about this a bit:

(1) He doesn't exist. That thing never gets created.

(2) He doesn't exist. Someone else creates it.

(3) He exists and is kinky. He creates the thing.

(4) He exists and is kinky. He doesn't create the thing.

(5) He exists and is not kinky. He doesn't create the thing.

(6) He exists and is not kinky. He creates the thing.

Those are the possibilities I could think of, and that seem to break down to about an equal chance of "thing gets/does not get created". Whether or not he's kinky is not correlated with him being smart and creative to create thing. You complain about norm deviation drag queen being "absurd, it's a simulacra, circular, you've entirely dodged whether there's something wrong with it!" but you have not proved either that 'norm deviation drag queen' is a good thing. "Kinky guy creates useful thing" and "Kinky guy commits crimes" are both possibilities. "Alongside the kink, we got the useful thing" is what is argued, and the counter-argument to that is "Without the kink, we might still have got the useful thing". That without the kink we would not have got the useful thing has not been established.

I'm trying to be as fair to Brinton as I can be, but it is true that they made a point of being public about breaking/flouting norms. And now one of the norms they have flouted is about theft. If that brings disrepute upon kinksters, that's on Brinton.

it's just that "makes more plausible" is a very vauge statement that covers for a lack of detailed understanding.

Not at all, my language is vague precisely because my intuitions are vague and I have a lack of detailed understanding.

fair, that was excessive. In political debates people often use vague 'X is associated with BAD THING's as reason for strong condemnation, but you weren't doing that.

Oh shit, this is the guy who made me incredibly curious about Haskell!

It may not have been quite what he implied, but was still really valuable for my programming mindset.