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 -
Fair point. That response was less than maximally pro-gun, but it is 1. is mostly on the topic of suicide, 2. still pretty lukewarm, and comes with a healthy amount of throat clearing: "I'm not arguing that this, in itself, is a persuasive argument in favour of banning guns, and can see the merits of both sides of the debate (particularly the "guns as a check against encroaching authoritarianism" argument advanced by many, including Handwaving Freakoutery, formerly of these parts)".
Why is this comment +10,-16 for merely making an argument? Or this one? +10,-12
Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Does not even get small meaningless negative reinforcement via stupid internet points.
FWIW I agree with you that certain arguments get much more downvoted than others. The commenters below aren't wrong, but they are applying very different standards to those for the pro-gun arguments. "Are the children wrong?" is not on par with "Listen up, you dumb motherfucker" in terms of rudeness. It can't be helped, people are just like that, including me. Minor imperfections or rhetorical flourishes in an argument disagreeing with you are much clearer than those from people on your side.
Broadly, I think we just have to accept that the bar is different for different posts. I'm reasonably proud (not that I care about dumb internet points hem hem) that my comment in that thread stayed above 0.
Broadly I would say:
Popular opinion, well written: 30-40
Popular opinion, badly written: 10-20
Unpopular opinion, well written: 0
Unpopular opinion, badly written: -10
Unpopular opinion, gratuitously insulting: -30.
Those are the numbers to try and beat.
Sure, but I was quoting a well-known 4chan copypasta, not actually calling the poster I was replying to that.
I’m quite happy to take the actual point of the copypasta and accept that the wrapping is for dramatic effect.
Mostly I’m responding to the idea that the prior posts weren’t downvoted for being on the wrong side of the debate but for being rude.
It seems to me there’s a charitable and an uncharitable way to read any of these posts and that the ‘wrong’ side gets less charity by and large. IMO the same copypasta would be downvoted to hell if it was an anti gun message in the same format.
Don’t have any actual action items I’m pushing for here, I just think the phenomenon is obvious and worth noting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And there go the goalposts. First the objection was that the comment was downvoted for "merely making an argument". Then, when it's pointed out the comment actually was doing something other than that, it's a complaint about different standards.
You're not the moderator of internet points. And the moderators here, so far as I know, don't moderate internet points. Further, they do moderate responses, so when someone posts some shit implying me and anyone who shares my views is as out-of-touch as Principal Skinner from the Simpsons, I can't just respond with "fuck off, you supercilious asshole" because that will get me modded; internet points are all I got.
The 'children' in this case are all the other countries in the First World. The point is that American disputes tend to act as if the rest of the world doesn't exist, hence cject's OP implying that nobody anywhere has any trust in their fellow citizens except in certain parts of the US and in the Third World, which I find frankly ridiculous.
And this is in fact my point. People, not just you but in general, immediately leap from 'I don't like this opinion' to forming the worst possible interpretation of the post and then downvote. Meanwhile they apply much more generous standards to people who agree with them. This is Confirmation Bias 101, everyone knows humans do this. These are such sensitive issues and the resultant standards are so strict that, in practice, (and, yes, in my opinion since as you point out I am not Tzar of internet points) there is no meaningful gap between "a complaint about different standards" and "downvoted for merely making an argument".
It wasn't you who posted it, unless you're a corvid as well as a corvos. But the offending bit is:
The straightforward interpretation is that either you accept the insulting characterization in the first part, or you're completely out of touch (note the URL). This absolutely deserves a downvote.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
For whatever it's worth, I think both your example comments are wrong and retarded (and I even replied to one of them with a 4chan copypasta effectively saying as much) but I didn't downvote either of them. The reason being that downvotes (and upvotes) are for narcissistic ninnies who care way too much about imaginary internet points.
More options
Context Copy link
Comment 1 is a combination of strawmanning and mocking. It also includes a reference to a meme that is arguably being applied incorrectly.
Overall a low-mid quality comment that, if you agree with you are likely to ignore, and if you disagree with you might throw a minus on it. That it has +10 at all is strong proof of anti-gun people voting on ideology.
The second one is perfectly mid, I would not have voted on it, and in fact did not. But it does invoke several anti-gun idiocies like appeals to other combat weapons, hunting, drivers licenses, etc. I can see a strong argument for giving it a downvote for being mealy-mouthed gish-gallop and I see no reason other than length and partisanship for an upvote.
More options
Context Copy link
Possibly for the false assertions in the arguments' premises; probably for the insulting phrasing and meme at the end.
This is a good example; thanks. Many of the counterarguments to it ended up looking better than the arguments, but the only thing asking for a downvote is the "just laughable" swipe at the top, and that's unrepresentative of the care taken in most of the rest of it.
For zero negative reinforcement, there's always
cat -v /dev/random. You'll get all the arguments, sooner or later.I'm fine with negative reinforcement for bad arguments. Good counterarguments, at least if there's a dogpile of them, are themselves something of a negative reinforcement, don't you think? I just don't like it being expressed via what's supposed to be a count of negative reinforcement for bad comments. The "karma" vs "agreement" vote counts on LessWrong and similar sites now are an interesting experiment in separating those. I don't know what the correlation coefficient between them is (or what I'd expect it should be, for that matter), but their distinction is respected enough that even infrequent readers like me often come across the "this is really interesting even though it's wrong" score combo. The "I agree with this but it's a bad comment" combo seems rarer, but that may just be an artifact of the crowd or the subject matter there; for culture war discussions I fear I'd want to assign it a hotkey.
More options
Context Copy link
Perhaps the rhetorical flourish at the end?
Perhaps the jeering paragraph objecting to "fun" being a reason for things to be legal, or the tiresome cars/guns comparison?
No, a downvote is not a bullet, and an argument against bullets is not an argument against "small meaningless negative reinforcement via stupid internet points".
I missed my chance at the time, so I'll put it here.
You want guns to be more like cars? Fine, let's do that. If the government wanted to spend a few billion on public gun ranges all across the country, mandated a gun safe in every new house, added firearm safety to the highschool curriculum, bailed out failing manufacturers, and also let people build/buy/use them freely outside of the new infrastructure they built, then I'd be pretty happy. Heck, I'd even compromise on that last point if they did the rest.
More options
Context Copy link
The same rhetorical flourishes that would go overlooked on posts in favour of the prevailing view? I don't buy it.
A downvote is not a bullet. It's more like a middle finger, or a scowl, or an eye-roll, but that's enough. It's enough to say "we don't want you here. go away", and that's my point. It's against the spirit of this forum. It is politics and tribalism above the pursuit of truth.
They'd likely be downvoted, just by different people.
All I'm seeing is crying about rhetorically dishing it out but not being willing to take even the most minor pushback.
A lot of the heavily downvoted comments in that thread are not rhetorically spicy. Must I? Fine..
I think the most likely explanation is that our readership is doing opinion war when it comes to an issue they really care about, and that's bad. I picture Motte-Jesus storming this temple, flipping tables screaming "Stop turning my Father's house into an echo chamber!"
What, you think people don't know when they are being sneered at?
I think the most likely explanation is that you're upset that you can't convince anyone at the object level, so you're resorting to shaming over meta-level concerns.
No, and if those posts had been left at +1,0 I would not have said a word.
This is solely about the negative reinforcement on unobjectionable comments that merely have an unpopular opinion. The people who downvote those are doing this forum wrong. I will die on this hill.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not a fan of the downvote brigade, and I didn't and wouldn't consider any of those downvote worthy, but I don't think they're particularly good comments, either.
(maybe excluding Corvos' last one? It's still an argument-by-definition, but at least it's trying to engage, where aldomilyar's ipse dixiting and wanderer's just kinda making counterfactual claims on pure vibes.)
Do the pro-gun comments in the thread meet your standard?
Like quoting 4-chan to say-but-not-say someone's argument is retarded? +30,-2 btw (charitably, just quoting it because it's the best explanation they could find, but like .. you could see how that would be massively downvoted if it were an anti-gun rant instead)
That comment is low effort, but conveys its points very well.
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