site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It is not the continuation of personality and experience of the biological you, as there is continuity between the sleeping you of last night and the waking you of today and the you of tomorrow.

This is begging the question. I mean, I'll grant that once the copy is made, the digital version and the biological version are not the same person, but that doesn't mean they can't have been the same person. From the perspective of the a-week-before-the-procedure SMH, he anticipates waking up to both sets of experiences.

Counter-thought-experiment: the aliens need to actually open up the skull, remove the brain, and do some very detailed but non-destructive inspections to make aforesaid digital copy, but they don't quite have enough mastery of human biological processes to put it back in. Instead they keep the brain in a life-support tank, feeding it exactly the sense data the digital copy would have received and treating the output the same way the digital copy's output would be. They also put the digital copy in a small computer that they put in the vacant brainspace, hook up to the body's nervous system, and seal the skull back up before waking the person. They don't tell people that they do this because they expect humans to act weird about it and don't think the distinction is relevant.

Which is the real person, the brain-in-a-jar that thinks it's a digital copy, or the computer-piloting-a-meat-body that thinks it's been scanned but otherwise unaffected?

If they can remove the brain, stick it in a tank, and keep it alive (hello, Mi-Go brain cylinders!) then they can probably transplant the brain into an android body, which gets around the problem of "which is the real person and which is the copy?"

I don't see how it does; "placed in android body" vs. "hooked up to cyberspace" does not seem to be a relevant distinction in this case, not to me at least. There was never any specification about where the "digital copy" would be instantiated, so that can just be the situation that was planned for it.

I see you have watched the famous anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

(Not quite! But surprisingly close.)