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 -
I've found it impossible to find thorough, unbiased reading material about the Alex Jones/Sandy Hook trial. My take is "what he did shouldn't be illegal, but if it is, wouldn't removing the content from the internet and issuing a retraction be enough?" I'd appreciate some reading material if anyone has any.
At the very minimum he should also apologise for blatantly lying and inventing conspiracy theories about their dead children and refund costs caused by his lying.
And also some reasonable compensation (maybe about 10 000 000 $ per slandered person?).
Why $10M is reasonable? I mean, spreading vile lies is without doubt despicable, but $10M is more than life earnings of most Americans, and that not taking into account future value discounts. Basically, it's a sum that moves you to a category of "never has to work again unless you want to" and maybe the same for their family (depending on the size). I could understand if that was presented as "reasonable punishment" - this is a ruinous amount for the liar, and if you want to ensure nobody lies in such manner ever, it's reasonable to use a huge fine to ensure that. However, as a compensation, I do not understand why it is reasonable that a person who was a victim of a lie (admittedly, a very vile and disgusting one, but still one lie), should instantly become top 1% rich just because of it? I mean, if they suffered huge economic or physical losses because of the lie, I'd understand this, but did they suffer losses like that?
I would not wish to be put through such thing (extreme lies about me and my dead children by someone influential enough to result in idiots and insane people harassing me).
Though I consider being willing to survive through years of that in exchange of massive amount of money such as 10 000 000 $ dollars.
Therefore it seems to me enough to offset damage caused.
And yes, I am not including murders itself in that.
Note also in general I think that transfer of funds to victim should be done more often. You hit someone with a car? That is not your car anymore but goes to a victim. It was not your car or some cheap wreck? 10% of income goes to victim unless huge amount of funds is paid, enough to offset damage you did. You robbed someone? 1000% of what you stole goes to the victims. (note: maybe this is done already in USA). You run automated call spam? Each victim is entitled to 500$. Wage theft? Worker is entitled to 10 times of what they were illegally not paid. Running fraud? You must give back 10 times what you stolen, etc etc.
(if I would be in power to legislate something - then maybe I would end with lower multipliers, but someone losing entire wealth after running large scale fraud seem much more reasonable than going to prison for few months and keeping stolen funds - again, maybe it is problem of local justice system)
"emotional damages" is overused but reasonable in this case. Being victim of top 0.05%* of harassment seems a good reason to get eye-watering amounts of money from chief harasser. In older times other solutions would be used, but this modern one seems preferable.
*1 in 5 000 harassment seems reasonable estimate to me in this case, as in "there are about 168 000 more harassed people in USA and 335 000 000 less harassed ones" but have not explored this one deeply and maybe I was mislead by what reached me.
One issue about this proposal is with the incentive gradient. The penalties you are proposing seem sufficient to be ruinous to perpetrators, not on the "shucks, guess that business venture failed" level but on the "I have to give up my previous life" one. We know from revealed preference that people are willing to take on significant risks of significant jail time for amounts of wealth that are smaller than something that makes a difference between their current socioeconomic status and a lower one (shoplifting, fraud, violent spats over loaned money...). It stands to reason that if the penalty for a set with as high coverage as {insults that hit the mark, minor tort, minor annoyances, white-collar bookkeeping trickery that passed some arbitrary threshold} is dropping out of your social stratum, then a nontrivial number of people would threaten victims into silence or even outright attempt to murder them (or even just run amok on third parties), because they'd prefer the chance of jail time to the certainty of losing $1m.
Of course, as a red-blooded law-and-order individual you could start imagining jacking up punishments and enforcement for everything else until they no longer have that preference structure, but then you very quickly run into the wall of potential disincentivisation capping at whatever value people assign to killing themselves after giving society the largest fuck-you they can muster. Maybe one day there'll be Roko's Basilisk style scifi punishments you can mete out with certainty, but until then...
Yes, I am aware of this and this is more "and that is why I am fine with Alex Jones fined into nonexistence, if this verdict will be applied" and less "that should be legislated immediately".
If I would be proposing actual law then it would be more reasonable - but still going into this direction.
But for example for predatory banks some actual penalties should be happening. It is absurd that entire sale division blatantly lies to people, companies going bankrupt and people losing their wealth - and nothing happens to people responsible for that. I consider "I have to give up my previous life" as desirable for CEOs presiding over this. Though not "and now they are homeless and starving".
Yes, that is a risk. "You lose your home if you hit pedestrian" may end with China-style "we hit pedestrian? lets be sure that they end dead".
Again, it is more personal emotional reaction that ready legislation. In such cases I put much more effort and thinking into that (and what I got passed was extremely minor compared to what is discussed here, and I put much more effort into it)
That would be unlikely to work, the problem is that many people outright ignore potential negative consequences. I am thinking more about compensation to victims than deterrence.
What happens if the predatory bank is enabled by someone else? If your high-risk clients are minorities and the government says that if you don't lend to them, you get shut down for discrimination, and then a lot of those high-risk clients default on their loans, is it really fair to make the banks pay?
Have bank lied to them and promised that defaulting is impossible, taking loans has no risks or deliberately mislead them into this? Are they blatantly lying about lack of risk? Are they telling them to disregard mandatory disclosure of risk? Are they promising that they will repay less or the same despite that real interest is >0? If no then it does not really apply.
Though bank would have a problem if doing this would be needed to reach some diversity ratio or something.
And obviously, "the government says that if you don't lend to them, you get shut down for discrimination" is stupid and should be fixed. And yes, I know that it is easy to say.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think this scenario you are painting is still a lot more specific and limited in scope than what I'm thinking of. People who feel like society treats them unfairly, or even that society has announced its intention to treat them unfairly - which, as hard as this may be for you to theory-of-mind into, will in your proposal include the sketchy businessmen who merely consider running robocall spam campaigns and choleric and borderline people who casually slander others on a daily basis and think it's just how they express themselves - often respond by general refusal to engage in prosocial behaviour, as exemplified by cases ranging in scale from bounded-scope ones such as "triumphalist copyright laws result in software/music pirates who laugh in your face if you make moral arguments about the wellbeing of content creators" (that's me, too!) to pretty general ones like "minority that believes it is being discriminated against will steal and vandalise anything the moment the eyes of the state are looking away".
As it stands, even a pyramid scheme operator will probably stop to help an injured child in a dark alley; I think he would not do that if he though that society's preferred fate for himself violated his sense of justice. I doubt you can run a society with too many people who will not do anything prosocial unless a policeman is standing next to them without it turning into a third-world hellhole.
My expectation is that pyramid scheme fraudsters (and similar) behaving even less prosocially will be more than outweighted by curbing stealing that currently is de facto legal. And that sketchy businessmen will switch to other technically legal or forbidden by unenforced bans or punished but not enough things. Rather than going around and vandalising stuff because some specific scam is no longer viable.
And I disagree with this argument as it seems to be general argument against punishing any criminals short of murderers. For reasons similar as I would disagree with "As it stands, even a thief will probably stop to help an injured child in a dark alley; I think he would not do that if he though that society's preferred fate for himself violated his sense of justice." arguments against actual punishment for theft.
(I do not see a real difference between thief breaking in and causing damage of 10 000$ and stealing things worth 10 000$ and banker convincing the same person to gamble 20 000$ on "it is risk-free, ignore that standard warning template about risks" and proceeding to lose that, and I would love to see both actually punished and treated both behaviour as antisocial evil)
Though at least in USA with current asset forfeiture laws it is clear that care about such things as blocking currently legal stealing is nonexisting among lawmakers.
That is legitimate risk, but currently financial fraudsters will basically laugh at victims, fully aware that in the worst case they will lose what they stolen and get slap on the wrist as their activity was technically legal or de facto legal. Except outrageous cases like FTX where there is a decent chance for some punishment at least for some.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link