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 -
yes_chad.png. See this sketch: there comes a point where the marginal cost of further investment in child protection is greater than the expected return, and those resources would be better allocated elsewhere. No one thinks that spending the entire annual budget to ensure that not a single child dies a premature violent death is a sensible way to allocate resources, which implicitly means that there is some amount of premature violent death of children we are collectively willing to tolerate as the price of doing business. Alternatively, a country in which child murder literally never happens probably curtails its citizens' liberties so aggressively that it would be profoundly undesirable to live there for other reasons.
Maybe you think this point is so trivial and obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning, but I actually don't think it is. During Covid, I encountered plenty of people who really did claim to believe that there was no amount of economic hardship they didn't think it was worthwhile enduring if it meant a few people in their eighties got to live an extra year or two.
Otoh it turned out that the optimal level of smallpox was in fact 0. Don't confuse "eliminating this bad thing isn't worth infinite resources" with "eliminating this bad thing requires infinite resources".
Fair point. I do, however, feel reasonably confident that even if we devoted 100% of a country's budget to preventing e.g. premature violent deaths of children in that country, we wouldn't be successful and the side effects unrelated to premature violent deaths of children would be disastrous.
Your smallpox example reminds me of an old post by Scott:
Eliminating a deadly microorganism is a piece of piss. Eliminating the fact that people will sometimes tell other people things that they know to be untrue, and be believed? I don't even know where you'd begin.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I hope it is with you in your social circle as with the anarchist in "The Man Who Was Thursday" 😁
Though it would be a unique selling point for a creche or daycare: "Some small number of premature violent death may occur on these premises, kindly remember that, should it happen to your children, you are helping preserve our liberties".
Those daycares exist all over the place. They're called Scout camps, of which there are hundreds; rock climbing gyms of which there are nearly one thousand and martial arts gyms of which there are over 40,000 most of which run various kids programs and make their money that way; more than one million kids play tackle football, mostly boys, while more than a million girls compete in horseback riding.
Everyone knows there are risks in those activities, yet place their kids in them anyway. Everyone who participated in them knows someone maimed or killed. But they're wildly popular.
More options
Context Copy link
I have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make.
Just that in the week where there's new stories about the young girls drowned in the Texas floods, a statement about "a certain amount of violent deaths of children happens and we shouldn't get our knickers in a twist over that" sounds a little tone-deaf.
Good thing that's not what I said, so.
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