site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   32440 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 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.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Basically every other western nation manages to spend equivalent or less amounts of healthcare than the USA, and has equivalent or better outcomes.

Observably, this statement is (still arguably, but commonly presented as) true if you replace "healthcare" with "education". But the typical solutions presented by the left are in the opposite direction there: few are suggesting we adopt European (or more extreme, Korean or Japanese) norms in education and cut funding. Is education different, or is this just a case of "conveniently, this evidence supports the action I already wanted taken"?

Liberals do not want healthcare costs cut, whatever gave you the impression that they did?

Education strikes me as fairly similar. It's kind of a monopoly good (oligopoly good?), demand is fairly inelastic, as a service it is incredibly hard to quantify cost vs benefits ahead of time and suss out who's the best at providing the service.

I'm generally pretty ideologically unbound, whatever system is shown to work the best is the system I want implemented. So yeah, implement European educational institutions, I think that western school board bureaucracy is an uninhibited nightmare so I'm all for getting rid of as many of them as possible. Korean/Japanese/Chinese ones seem fucking awful though, they make smart kids but I'm not sure if it's worth the hit to human wellbeing.

My uninformed opinion is that a ton of the USA's education woes are the fault of American parents, which is downstream of American inequality/poverty. But I have nothing to back that up aside from vibes.

I’d expect a significant portion of even Mottetizens to scream bloody murder if European style education system was implemented as that would also mean getting rid of their precious liberal arts education system in universities.

Back in college some engineering students thought that would be better. Shave a year off of college and skip the mandatory liberal arts classes. I'm not sure how enriched I really was taking intro courses in anthropology and gender studies. I might have been better off taking more technical classes or graduating sooner. But that's admitting college is a training program for professional tech workers. Some people really don't like that thought.

That's a spicy take because I would have assumed this place would shit all over liberal arts degrees in favor of STEM + finance + coding

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