site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   27982 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 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.

You and I could be simulations inside a simulation, but it's a possibility we can't prove or exclude at the moment, so the sensible thing to do is to ignore it and move on with our lives.

Even if you did start out as a Real Human, then I think that with the kind of mind editing in Lena, it would be trivial to make you forget or ignore that fact.

And if that was true about us, then your opinion or mine considering the ethics of mind emulation would be utterly irrelevant. Not to mention that it wouldn't be the world of Lena, exactly. The entire point of Lena is that the simulation is very different from reality, in the worse direction.

Further, I don't think continuity of consciousness is a big deal, which is why I don't have nightmares about going to take a nap. As far as I'm concerned, my "mind" is a pattern that can be instantiated in just about any form of compute, but at the moment is in a biological computer. There is no qualitative change in the process of mind upload, at least a high fidelity one, be it a destructive scan or preserving of the original brain.

I think your true belief in what counts as death will be revealed once death starts breathing down your current biophysical instantiation's neck, and conflating deep sleep with death will not look so convincing.

If continuity of consciousness isn't a big deal then we can forget the assumption that consciousness is tied to specific mind patterns at all. Maybe one second you're self_made_human, and another second you're Katy Perry, and the next second yet is spent in a nascent Boltzmann brain halfway across the observed universe.

And if that was true about us, then your opinion or mine considering the ethics of mind emulation would be utterly irrelevant. Not to mention that it wouldn't be the world of Lena, exactly. The entire point of Lena is that the simulation is very different from reality, in the worse direction

If we didn't know for a fact that we are/aren't in a simulation, it remains entirely applicable. Besides, my entire point is that Lena isn't an accurate prediction of what the world will look like given its current trajectory.

If continuity of consciousness isn't a big deal then we can forget the assumption that consciousness is tied to specific mind patterns at all. Maybe one second you're self_made_human, and another second you're Katy Perry, and the next second yet is spent in a nascent Boltzmann brain halfway across the observed universe.

That doesn't follow, when I temporarily lose continuity of consciousness, I wake up more or less the same person. I don't even perceive the gap, sleeping is pretty much an IRL time skip. That's because the underlying pattern of embodied cognition is minimally affected in the process.

In what meaningful way can the "same" person be me and then Katy Perry? The word "same" becomes entirely meaningless.

A butterfly can't actually dream of being human.

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