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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It's come to my attention that in addition to the F-117 everyone acknowledges that they had shot down, Serbian military records list a shoot-down of a B-2 , which crashed in Croatia, using a similar method - booting up the radar extremely briefly during a NATO bombing mission. Saw loads of targets - one of them was ~ 15km away, looked very peculiar. Fired two S-125 missiles at it. The plane immediately started evading but was damaged by either or both 60 kg blasts, and then crashed just outside of Serbia, in Spačva basin.
Here's the fairly pretty interesting in-depth account on how it supposedly went down. It opens up with claiming that after may 20, 1999, all B-2 bombing missions of Serbia ceased, that the Spirit of Missouri was withdrawn from combat operations on May 20 and also presents a possibly verifiable claim that a section of near border woods in Croatia had an unusually heavy military presence.
At the end is they also present a Serbian hypothesis that the 2008 crash of B-2 in Guam was staged by crashing a remote-controlled B-2 test article that was secretly assembled at Guam, crashed via stall at takeoff and then passed off as the plane lost in '99.
Found this interesting bit of information on Quora, from a Serbian.
/images/1751914589569709.webp
EDIT: interesting info on in New York Times from 1991.. Full article.. I was previously unaware B-2 was ever found insufficiently stealthy in tests.
Strange and convenient coincidences of this kind happen more than you might think. Pakistani civilians in Abottobad reported that several Navy SEALS were killed during the Bin Laden raid when their Blackhawk crashed, and that they saw bodies and body parts being loaded onto another helicopter for evacuation. A few weeks later, a helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan, killing about half of the exact same SEAL team that were on the Bin Laden raid.
Carrier groups fighting the Houthis in the Red Sea suffer all manner of random bad luck. Bad luck that strangely always seems to coincide with Houthi claims that they have struck American carriers. The USS Eisenhower had to be towed out of the Red Sea due to unspecified mechanical issues a day after the Houthis claim to have struck it. A few months later several members of its air wing died in a helicopter training crash. The USS Truman suffered extensive damage due to a freak collision with a civilian merchant ship just days after its Red Sea deployment. It also lost a fighter a few days after that because... because it just fell off the ship ok??
An American Marine general was mysteriously found dead in his quarters at 29 Palms Marine Base in California. Coincidentally he had just returned from unspecified duties in Ukraine. Coincidentally there had just been a particularly large round of Russian ballistic missile strikes against Ukraine, many of which OSINT analysts theorized were targeting NATO military advisors in Kyiv.
Members of elite special forces units tend to die in helicopter crashes during training exercises off the East and West coasts. Usually these training mishaps happen a few days or weeks after major Ukrainian offensives. A particularly nasty one claimed the lives of several Delta Force soldiers about a month after October 7, 2023. It was confirmed that Delta Force was assisting the IDF during raids to rescue hostages held in Gaza, but this crash is of course completely coincidental and did not happen anywhere near the Middle East.
AAQC'd even though it doesn't fit the "normal" profile of an AAQC because I really appreciate these types of comments that tell me about something interesting I didn't know about before (especially on topics that don't fall within the ambit of what normally gets discussed on TheMotte) and I want to encourage more of them.
Maybe you don’t know about them because they’re not actually reasonable?
Like, the same reasoning applies here as to underwater pyramids. Or moon landing skeptics. Or celebrity gossip. It’s bad epistemics.
Do you think it’s ever reasonable to infer that the government is lying about anything, prior to it being vetted by “official” sources?
I distinctly remember thinking “damn why are training missions so dangerous?” at several points in the past. And this seems like a pretty reasonable explanation for why they’re so “lethal”. I don’t think that the government lying about cause of death for service members is on the same level as moon landing and UFO theories.
Occam's Razor says that the same USN that's had multiple destroyer and carrier collisions in the past, including with merchant ships, including lethal ones, might also have another one, rather than a massive conspiracy that requires the entire crew of both ships (and any potential nearby observers) to be in on it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link