site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If the intended release schedule for this is that we're going to be getting drops well into Jan or Feb, I'm probably just going to stop reading. I appreciate Musk for letting people report on it, but if this requirement to publish nothing off Twitter that isn't first reported on-site stays in effect, I'm going to lose my mind and patience.

Why? In someways I think it’s more interesting because it allows for responses that appear foolish days or weeks later. If you believe many actors are conflict theorist, then the drip drip drip exposes them.

It might be interesting from a "own my enemies" kind of view, but I'm not interested in owning the whomever, I'm interested in what actually happened. This drip-drip-drip / insistence on controlling the rate/flow of information is making me suspicious in ways I can't quite articulate properly.

It can only be interesting to the extent that there's actually interesting information coming out. A lot of releases are misses rather than hits, but all of them get hyped like they're about to prove that lizard people are real.

I don’t think they’ve been missed. It has been people saying “nothingburger because not XYZ” or “we knew that.”

To the first, later releases clarify that XYZ is not a good argument. To the second, ”knowing” something is different from knowing it. That is, confirmation is important.