site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31649 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.

Aella recently made an online survey about escorting and posted a chart on Twitter. It shows monthly earnings binned by BMI and clearly depicts that escorts with lower BMI making more on average than escorts with higher BMI. I would not have thought anybody would be surprised by that. The comments under the post proved me wrong.

Christ almighty, I had no idea that there are so many statistically literate whores around just waiting to tell you your survey is bad. I also wasn't aware that escorts advertise their services so openly on social media.

The number of escorts, both slim and not so slim, calling her out with little to no argument is mind blowing. The arguments they do give basically amount to sample size too low, BMI isn't real or "your survey is bad, and you should feel bad". Some of them also appear to lack reading comprehension. They point out that a sample size of 30 doesn't tell you anything meaningful. The post, however, clearly states that the sample size is about 30 per bin (which Aella points out is kind of low), making it about 150 total. Some give the argument that they themselves have high BMI but earn way more than that, and therefore the survey result must be wrong. Averages are seemingly a foreign concept to some.

A lot of them don't give much of an argument at all but question her intentions. Why would anyone be posting such dangerous information targeting the doubly marginalized group that is fat escorts? Their point seems to be that such information serves no purpose for anyone and should be kept hidden, which is ridiculous, since any woman considering escorting must have an interest in how much she can expect to earn based on her body type.

Others claim Aella is trying her hardest to stir the pot for attention. That could have been a valid point, if what she posted had been the least bit controversial. If you went out and asked 100 random people, I can't imagine that more than a few would say they believe fat escorts on average make the same as normal weight escorts. I also can't imagine any of these offended women would have any sort of problem with a chart showing that taller men make more on average than shorter men.

A few are asking what Aella's credentials are or whether the survey has been reviewed by an ethics committee, as if you need any of that to do a random google forms survey on the internet. They appear to believe that ethics committees are to protect people who might find the result offensive and not the participants of the study.

I also can't help but find a bit of irony in prostitutes trying to discredit someone based on their credentials.

Anyways, the data from the survey is available on Aella's website. I had a quick look at the correlations. It seems to be mostly what you would expect, but one thing that I don't get is that condom use shows no correlation with contracting STDs, which makes me quite suspicious of the data. It isn't correlated with education level either, but somewhat correlated with doing the job out of desperation (0.19). I would assume it would be the other way around. What is even crazier is that condom use is slightly negatively correlated (-0.11) with having a romantic partner. That seems absolutely insane to me, but maybe they use protection when they are with their partners?

I thought maybe BMI was confounded by age, but it turns out age isn't a good predictor of monthly income. Here's a linear fit with age and log(monthly income)


                 coef    std err          t      P>|t|      [0.025      0.975]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

age           -0.0025      0.010     -0.260      0.795      -0.022       0.017

bias           8.2223      0.292     28.195      0.000       7.648       8.797

(n=223)

And here it is with bmi and age


                 coef    std err          t      P>|t|      [0.025      0.975]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

age            0.0034      0.009      0.370      0.712      -0.015       0.022

bmi           -0.0636      0.013     -4.978      0.000      -0.089      -0.038

bias           9.5392      0.383     24.899      0.000       8.784      10.294

Then I thought maybe older women are working more hours, but the regression on log-hourly income (rather than monthly income) is similar:


                 coef    std err          t      P>|t|      [0.025      0.975]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

age            0.0024      0.006      0.416      0.678      -0.009       0.014

bmi           -0.0275      0.008     -3.414      0.001      -0.043      -0.012

bias           6.3876      0.241     26.454      0.000       5.912       6.863

Edit: here is the data in a form more friendly to a python programmer https://pastebin.com/aZqGTbG5

I was wondering if BMI was also interacting with social class.

These are escorts. Part of their whole schtick is being able to consistently ape a upper social class. Aside from some kind of outlier, we should assume that they're all able to do so, and that includes semi-permanent characteristics like conforming to beauty standards, or they would not be working as escorts.

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