site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15598 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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.

16
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Standford posts about its Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI), HN Reacts

Links to EHLI source: https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/stanfordlanguage.pdf / http://web.archive.org/web/20221219160303/https://itcommunity.stanford.edu/ehli

Link to HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34039816

Note: my intent in linking to another forum isn't to create a in-group/out-group dynamic. My intent is to comment on how this is a sign about a broader cultural shift. Moderators, if this skirts too close to the offending the spirit of themotte, please let me know (or just delete it).

HackerNews is an online watering hole where a large number of Anglosphere people congregate to talk about startups, programming, and entrepreneurship. There is also no lack of plain old geeking out about cool tech, especially of the DIY variety that relates to drones, 3d-printing, or, more recently, AI.

The group skews somewhat left of center politically speaking. Over the past decade that I've been lurking it, it skewed a little bit more, in the sense that moderators became more accepting of openly political content that was aligned under the "21st century American progressive" label. I witnessed an influx of posts and comments about topics like coops, the evils of capitalism, etc. although, thankfully, that never became the main object of the community.

However, the thread I link to above has accumulated over 1200 comments in under 24h, which is a rare occasion--the death of a great contributor, a major shift in the industry, etc. More importantly, from sampling the first two pages, the overall sentiment appears to be negative toward what Stanford put out.

Before going deeper on the reaction, here's a taste of what Stanford posted:

Grandfather: This term has its roots in the "grandfather clause" adopted by Southern states to deny voting rights to Blacks.

Red team: "Red" is often used disparagingly to refer to Indigenous peoples, so its use in this context could be offensive to some groups.

Blackbox: Assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term.

Brave (do not use): This term perpetuates the stereotype of the "noble courageous savage," equating the Indigenous male as being less than a man.

This kind of political weaponization should all be familiar to experienced Culture Warriors on themotte. But seeing the overwhelmingly negative reaction to this sort of thing on HN makes me adjust my likelihoods around what, excuse the cliche, I see as the pendulum swinging back away from leftist authoritarianism.

I have no idea what it's swinging towards, especially since in reality the pendulum is a 4d object zigzagging through multiple political dimensions. Still, it's a welcome sign that at least this flavor demagoguery is losing its bite.

I don't think the Culture War is in any danger of dying down. But I suspect (and hope) that the reaction on HackerNews is an omen of the CW shifting directions, so at the very least we'll have something new and exciting to debate about.

Edit: Some people have remarked in the comments that this isn't that astounding since HN has always been more grey-tribe aligned and more likely to react negatively to woke overreach like this. I find myself needing to readjust map.

Even if “the pendulum is swinging” (which I have been hearing every year), all the media has to do is gin up another George Floyd. Will these “reasonable” hackernews progressives have the fortitude to keep their cool in the face of the next outrage du jour, having learned from these excesses? Will they actually vote Republican? Doubtful imo

Have Republicans given them any indication that they would not simply impose the same sort of policy but in favour of their own aesthetic preferences and power structures, the moment they gain any amount of power? At the end of the day, SV people are still culturally much closer to Democrats than to Republicans, and the proposition to solve their issue with their progressive overlords by inviting in the Republicans must seem about as sensible to them as if you proposed to Republicans to solve their issue with their Democratic-party overlords by inviting in the Iranians, Russians or CCP (which, I thought, is a known but generally considered edgy and stupid position among much of the Dissident Right).

Republicans aren’t known for forcing speech codes around dubious notions of “harm”, so yea, they should vote R, I’m surprised people don’t realize they are the libertarian team. At worst they might draft a law that states school children shouldn’t be taught america is the worst country on earth that they should defile and shit on at every opportunity

They kind of are known for that, though. Moral majority? The libertarians are bought by gun policy and tax cuts, not free speech absolutism.

Most recently, Christians are less powerful, but the battlefront is anything LGBT. “Don’t say gay,” to quote the boo light.

It’s not “anything LGBT”, but it is gender ideology. Do we really need kids instructed in how to use dildos in sex Ed class? The dems of Chicago seem to think so 🤷🏻‍♂️

If you have to reach back 40 years then no, they aren’t “known for that”. That’s before the lifespan of your average woke millennial

Moral majority seems to loom pretty large in the imaginings of progressives who would consider voting Republican due to woke, though. And it’s not like similar kinds of people aren’t very ensconced in the Republican coalition and very likely to be appointed to important positions by Republican admins.

Are California republicans conservative at the level of >40 years ago though? Because you’re not voting for some southern evangelical when you’re voting for an R in a deep blue state. If people are too dumb to parse this then they deserve their one party dystopia

Yes, most people, even in groups that skew above average in IQ, have trouble parsing that their out group is not monolithic. For hacker news this makes it tough for them to accept that the California republican on their ballot is not Ken Paxton. Actually, it’s far from clear that all of them live in California- given how big the tech industry is in Austin, many of them may literally have the choice between woke lunatic and fire breathing social conservative(who probably is not evangelical, but is definitely a southern religious conservative).

This has actually been a problem for the California GOP (and to a lesser extent, Democratic parties in places like say, Wyoming). The only people left to vote for the out-party are the radicals, which give the radicals more power, which turns off the median voter in the state, and thus, the power becomes even less popular.

Somebody could've beat Newsom in the recall, but they would've had to actually meet the median Californian voter where they were - instead, Republican voters got behind Larry Elder, who has a multi-decade career as a right-wing entertainer.

To be fair, it is Chicago. Without instruction the kids might stab each other to death with them.

Avoid low effort sneers like this.

Republicans would probably have fewer ridiculous speech codes as they apply to average people, sure, but if pro-homosexuality, anti-clerical, or anti-military speech is important to you, then I have bad news about Republican governance.

I mean, it isn’t important to me, and I’d rather not deal with it, so it seems like a no brainer. But some people really do think that stuff is important.

I’m not saying Republicans would be any better if they had similarly ironclad control of every university in the country. But they don’t, and even if Republicans won every election for the next 20 years they still wouldn’t. But if these HN contrarians are not actually willing to defect, then how is the pendulum shifting at all? They can say all day “Gee these woke universities sure are crazy!” but as long as they continue to donate to them, attend them, vote Democrat and dutifully rename master branches to main, what good is it?

Republicans aren’t known for forcing speech codes around dubious notions of “harm”, so yea, they should vote R, I’m surprised people don’t realize they are the libertarian team. At worst they might draft a law that states school children shouldn’t be taught america is the worst country on earth that they should defile and shit on at every opportunity

There really is a wide gulf between (formerly) mainstream 1990s centrist Republicans and New Right-ier Trump Republicans on this, and (sadly, for me) it looks like the centrists are losing. I have no doubt that most Rightier Republicans would gleefully embrace the ability to ban language and behavior for "the greater good" with just as much zeal as the Progressives; whether or not the 1990s GOPers have enough sway to argue effectively for the principle of "free speech" is an open question, but not one for which I hold much hope.

The difference between the two factions is where each thinks we are on the: "my rules, applied partially > my rules, applied impartially > your rules, applied impartially > your rules, applied partially" spectrum.

Republicans aren’t known for forcing speech codes around dubious notions of “harm”, so yea, they should vote R

Depends on how long you've been alive. That was very much what republicans were known for in the early 2000's. Insufficient demonstration of "supporting the troops" was enough to get you cancelled (to the extent that republicans could cancel you). But the media anti-bodies against republican cancellations had been built up over two decades. Back then cancellations were more for religious and naughty language violations. Howard Stern, NWA ("Fuck the Police"), or Vanessa Williams being stripped of her Miss America crown for having done a nude/lesbian photo shoot.

I always have to scratch my head at the idea that Republicans are the party of deep commitment to free speech; did these people not pay attention to the post 9/11 era and Iraq War?

Then I realize that lots of the people commenting were probably learning to count then, and I feel old.

I do get that was a generation ago, but the core Republican coalition in 2000/2004 isn't too dissimilar to the one today. I guess my general tendency is to always side with the losers, who are structurally incentivized to push for a more open public square. In 2004 the losers were Democrats, and in 2022 the losers are Republicans. But deep loyalty to a particular ruling clique isn't a road I'm willing to go down.

did these people not pay attention to the post 9/11 era and Iraq War?

These were a long time ago now: about 10 years, I think.

I remember warning social conservatives back then that they wouldn't like state power if the other side had it.

9/11 was 21 years ago.

Republicans are quite known for forcing speech codes around dubious notions of "obscenity", and until recently sex education and even teaching of evolution, though, and this "libertarian team" among others is known for having authored the PATRIOT act. I'm not aware of any evidence that Republicans demonstrated civic libertarian (as opposed to economic ones, which are dime a dozen among rich people) impulses at any point they were actually in power; restraints on power are easy to advocate for if the power you wish to restrain is largely being used against you.

In addition to what @zeke5123

One should remember that Bush was perceived as the moderate centrist candidate in the 2000 election. A return to "polite" "collegial" politics after the naked partisan backstabbing that had defined Clinton's two terms.

You very well may be right. But patriot act was 2001.

While both parties seem to support it, a lot of the opposition (at least in the senate) has been in the Republican side (eg Rand Paul, Mike Lee).

The original PATRIOT act passed 98-1 in Senate with the lone nay being a Democrat. The following PATRIOT act extension/reauthorization votes were 89-10 (all Nays Dems or Dem-caucusing Independents) and 86-12 (10/12 Nays Dems or Dem-caucusing Independents). So it would seem false, at least for the first 10 years (ie the active phase of WoT which, I believe, would be the era being discussed here) to say that "a lot of the opposition (at least in the Senate) has been in the Republican side", and the Republican side would appear to be greatly united.

In general, I've seen, on this forum and elsewhere, something like almost a revisionist effort by some libertarians and isolationist conservatives to portray Iraq War and its public support differently from reality by blowing the influence handful of anti-war figures on the Right (like Ron Paul) completely out of proportion and similarly dismissing the comparatively larger liberal/leftist antiwar movement on the left by saying "Ah well, the Iraq war was a bipartisan affair". Which it was, of course, but still it seemed obvious to me during the time, as an external observer, that the American right-wing movement had rarely been as united as it was in support of Iraq War and related authoritarian measures, while the left side was at the very least more divided and more likely to oppose the war and the measures.

I mean, given that the people I am mentioning are Rand Paul and Mike Lee it seems pretty clear I’m not talking about the period 2001-2011.

until recently sex education

They never stopped with this one, afaict

Patriot act isn’t about aesthetics or speech codes, but yeah like I said they might change some schooling practices (though I highly doubt they would do so in a place like California). A lot of what your mentioning though is 2000s era Deep South republicans, and the party isn’t a monolith

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