site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28802 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 21, 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.

A century ago, not wanting to have kids was seen as much more eccentric than it is today. Now there's a whole "childfree" movement and the birthrate is dropping precipitously. Biology didn't change that fast. A change in material and social conditions caused a change in desires. So before you say "well this is the best way to satisfy human desires", you have to ask whose human desires.

Natural biology didn't change that fast. Chemicals that changed people's biological makeup in subtle but drastic ways probably did, I'd wager. Lot of social changes downstream of that, though, which of course we've discussed.

If the Marxist critique was more limited to "Capitalism generates feedback loops that can spin off and have 'unexpected' effects that harm more people than they benefit in the medium term" I'd not push back hardly at all.

But we've had a theoretical solution to that issue for decades. Marxism didn't generate that solution.

I mean, were they? What is "winning"? Is the winner the one with the most weapons, or are the weapons just a means to some other win condition?

The weapons can make them more efficient hunters (or maybe the weapons are more durable and so can be used more than once) so as to increase their surplus, in this case.

Which can either free up the time and labor of some of the guys who would have been hunting to work on other things, or allow them to store up more meat for lean times like winter, and if they make good use of that surplus they'll be positioned to be even more productive on the other side of it. I think Irwin Schiff's How an Economy Grows and Why it Doesn't gets this right in the particulars.

I don't necessarily think there is any 'final win condition,' mind, at least not in an entropy-increasing universe, just the process of ensuring continued improvement as long as possible and, ideally, the continuation of your genetic line.

Capitalism is not an aberration or a mistake. It's a necessary phase of development; albeit one that contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is in fact the only thing that can give us the tools to go beyond itself. It is always and only the master's tools that dismantle the master's house (if you believe Hegel).

Well, I don't believe Hegel.

Again, I don't see this as an 'insight' of Marxism. Capitalism is a 'necessary' stage of development if humans want their desires to continue being fulfilled.

Capitalism (even if we limited it to your preferred "industrialization and its consequences" definition) continues to adapt to fulfill a greater array of human desires using the tools of 'free' trade, development of ever greater capital stock, and innovation towards more efficient use of resources. It isn't necessarily building 'towards' something or to any other new phase of existence unless, I suppose, we somehow manage to actually satisfy every human desire to the point of full contentment.

To my personal dismay, it turns out that people's desires tend to skew towards seeking pleasure and raising their own status (which makes sense, when you consider our evolutionary history) over trying to elevate the species as a whole towards controling more energy and resources than those found in the crust of our little spinny space rock.

But then Capitalism also permits the existence of Billionaires who use their surpluses to fund their own preferences, including creating really massive rockets which can be used to bootstrap further industry in outer space.

(which yes, goes towards the whole "people's desires change." If affordable flights to Mars ever become available, there's probably a lot who would take those, even if it barely crosses their mind right now).

Marxists get REALLLLLLY mad about this for some reason, that we might get "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism"... without the Communism.

I don't see any good argument from Marxists for:

A) Why we ought to go beyond Capitalism (Hume's Guillotine notwithstanding, even!). Its working well, if we assume "fulfilling human desires" is the game and is a worthy goal;

B) How Socialism/Communism is going to replace it when its a fundamentally broken system that can't coordinate human society beyond the tribal level.

Its a seeming dead end in both those respects. It can't fulfill the role they predict for it, and there's no cognizable moral imperative to try and make it fulfill the role.

So what use does Marxism have on offer for any rational human being, other than perhaps allowing incisive critiques of the flaws in a Capitalist system which we can then try to address and fix within said system?

I'm still a bit unclear on whether you think increasingly efficient production is a good in and of itself, or if you think it's only good insofar as it can be a means to other ends.

Which can either free up the time and labor of some of the guys who would have been hunting to work on other things

What kinds of other things?

I don't necessarily think there is any 'final win condition,' mind, at least not in an entropy-increasing universe

What if we could hypothetically assume an eternal universe? What then?

the continuation of your genetic line

Well, there are multiple ways to read that.

If we start talking like "the best man is the one who sires the most children", then all we've done is smuggle the same language of marketplace efficiency into a new domain.

I'm still a bit unclear on whether you think increasingly efficient production is a good in and of itself,

I used to, but I do not anymore. Increasing efficiency is still pretty close to a primary goal, though.

However its a prerequisite to many, MANY good things. Some of those things result in less efficient use of resources, however (broadly speaking, leisure/leisure activities).

What kinds of other things?

Have they invented the wheel yet? If so, lot of things they can work on with wheel tech available.

If not, it slightly increases the odds of someone stumbling upon that invention.

That's closer to my conception (contra Hegel et. al) of how society ends up improving changing.

What if we could hypothetically assume an eternal universe? What then?

From my perspective, seems obvious: develop tech as close to immortality as you can, then go travel around to see all you can see that's out there. Unless we can mathematically prove that we'll eventually saturate our desire for 'fun' and novelty, and we can't augment those desires, seems like one can make good use of eternity tooling around the galaxies looking for cool stuff.

If we start talking like "the best man is the one who sires the most children", then all we've done is smuggle the same language of marketplace efficiency into a new domain.

I kind of use it in the broad sense of "there exist some people who can trace their genetic background to you (and beyond) and thus will acknowledge your existence long after you're gone."

Add in some sci-fi, and it becomes "you have descendants who might be interested enough in stuff that happened in your lifetime to run a simulation of you, assuming they can't resurrect you directly."

I dunno, I'm not trying to impose my terminal values on everyone else. To the extent people have different terminal values, increasing the amount of energy and resources available to people, and increase the efficiency with which we use them means more people can chase their preferred terminal values without stepping on each other's toes/inciting conflicts.

As I asked, what use does Marxism have on offer for any rational human being, other than perhaps allowing incisive critiques of the flaws in a Capitalist system which we can then try to address and fix within said system?

All the stuff I'm suggesting up there are achievable within Capitalism.

Increasing efficiency is still pretty close to a primary goal, though.

Pretty close? Is there anything closer?

You may have an answer, or you may not. It's fine to say you're not sure.

develop tech as close to immortality as you can, then go travel around to see all you can see that's out there.

Wouldn't this just be the sort of pursuit of pleasure/leisure that you've been criticizing? Or do you not see it that way?

As I asked, what use does Marxism have on offer for any rational human being, other than perhaps allowing incisive critiques of the flaws in a Capitalist system which we can then try to address and fix within said system?

I'm much more interested in the way you think about value than the way you think about Marxism.

Given the quality of your questions, I'm really interested in the way you think about value

What is valuable to you?

I believe I value multiple things, as one might expect. But I suppose if I had to put my "highest" value in as concrete terms as possible, it would be "that which pays respect to the mystery":

"[Object a] represents God. Object a is the unsymbolized object-cause-of-desire. [This position] is fundamentally unknowing, fundamentally hysterical [in the precise Lacanian sense] because at the very core of his position is an unsayable, unknowable mystery. Christ is the barred subject, because Christ goes, 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' And this is why it's beyond theism and atheism, because technically object a doesn't exist, right? But let's say it's the unsymbolizable real.

"It confronts the congregation to create knowledge. I want to create a church where the liturgy is hysterical. Where the liturgy embraces doubt, complexity, unknowing, and mystery in the music, in the art, in the ritual, in the sermons. You, the congregation, kind of without knowing it, we have an ideology. We have an ideology of wholeness and completeness. We would be confronted by an hysteric discourse that causes us to rethink and generate new ideas and we start to enjoy not knowing. We start to enjoy the process of life itself. And what sustains this entire project is a fundamental ontological mystery."

(I recommend listening to the whole video if you have time, it's really quite lovely.)

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