site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   34005 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm guessing it's harder to be biased with science reporting (save for global warming, climate change). An article about fusion cannot be viewed through a political lens like anything to do with race.

I wrote an advocatus diabolus back in The Old Place about how "hard science academia is mostly taxpayer funded adult daycare for Israelis and Chinese stealing bread from the mouths of black bodies on whom that money could have been better spent". Fusion power especially: the meme of "we'll have it in 5 years" for the last 50 years is not just funny, it also represents a tremendous quantity of spending without results - aka grift.

So the fact that journos don't leverage rhetoric against it is a failure of their imagination, not because there's no political hay to rake.

It is interesting that funding is almost always through government.

If fusion were developed, it would represent the single greatest achievement in human history and would create tens if not hundreds of trillion in value to the inventor. If there was a 1/10,000 then a 9 figure figure investment doesn’t seem unreasonable. Why don’t we see it in the private sector?

Why don't we see it in the private sector?

We do. There is even a trade association for private fusion companies. Of the ones on that list, Tokamak Energy, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and Helion are all serious operations that have raised nine-figure sums of money from private-sector investors. I suspect some of the others are as well - those are just the three I am familiar with.

Fusion power especially: the meme of "we'll have it in 5 years" for the last 50 years is not just funny, it also represents a tremendous quantity of spending without results - aka grift.

If only.

"Fusion funding is literally peanuts: In 2016, the US spent twice as much on peanut subsidies as on fusion research"

See http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ for sum total of this "tremendous quantity".

I'm guessing it's harder to be biased with science reporting

Science reporting is hilariously bad, falling for every pseudo-scientific scam you throw their way. The fact that it's easier to verify these stories only makes it worse.

The state of fusion power is one of the worse examples he could have picked.

An article about fusion cannot be viewed through a political lens like anything to do with race.

I mean, it can, but more importantly an article about fusion can be easily viewed through an “I have no idea what I’m talking about” lens. This usually manifests as asking and answering the wrong questions rather than providing flatly incorrect information.

Regarding fusion in particular, I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure that the prospects for fusion being much of an improvement on fission are very low with most current designs (because they'll still have similarly high capex costs), but this is almost never mentioned in articles about fusion power.

Perhaps one way to test this would be to check how the NYTs reports on non-political stuff compared to sources which are presumed to not have a political agenda, like science websites.

Perhaps one way to test this would be to check how the NYTs reports on non-political stuff

Non-political stuff? Hard to find something like this in the current year. If NYT decides to give space to something, it must have some political importance.

compared to sources which are presumed to not have a political agenda, like science websites.

As others in this thread said, mainstream science websites and magazines have the same agenda as NYT.

So, how can normie noobs check whether NYT coverage of, for example, Australian cockroaches, is accurate (without spending few years of their lives studying entomology)?

Well, they cannot.

Best hope is to find some world class cockroach experts (fortunately, in the age of twitter, you can find genuine experts on every conceivable topic here, broadcasting to few dozen followers) and ask.

Do not ask directly "Is NYT article about cockroaches scientifically accurate, or as accurate as usual?".

Just no not mention NYT at all, just write that you are interested in cockroaches and want to learn more, ask curious questions about their life, and among these questions send some about topics covered in NYT.

"Is it true that North Australian giant cockroach regularly changes gender?"

+1 Pop sci websites share both the biases and incompetency of the NYT.

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