site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32153 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 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.

TikTok is a Chinese Superweapon

Basic argument of the article is simple:

  1. Social media addiction has clear psychological and societal downsides. It can shrink and monopolize our attention, make us more anxious and lead to damaging fads like stupid "challenges" that kids do.

  2. TikTok is very good at this due to its ability to adapt to the user and the short attention span videos require.

  3. China is aware of this and has demanded that Bytedance moderate TikTok moderate TikTok for China (so as to encourage people to wish to be things like engineers instead of influencers) and banning it for Chinese kids, while allowing it to run rampant in the West.

  4. This is sort of a practical proof of the degeneracy and internal contradictions of Western capitalism and a deliberate attack.

An interesting look at how the Chinese view the West through the eyes of a powerful Chinese policy-maker:

Wang writes:

“Human flesh, sex, knowledge, politics, power, and law can all become the target of commodification… Commodification, in many ways, corrupts society and leads to a number of serious social problems. These problems, in turn, can increase the pressure on the political and administrative system.”

Thus, by turning everything into a product, Western capitalism devours every aspect of American culture, including the traditions that bind it together as a nation, leading to atomization and polarization. The commodification also devours meaning and purpose, and to plug the expanding spiritual hole that this leaves, Americans turn to momentary pleasures—drugs, fast food, and amusements—driving the nation further into decadence and decay.

For Wang, then, the US’s unprecedented technological progress is leading it into a chasm. Every new microchip, TV, and automobile only distracts and sedates Americans further. As Wang writes in his book, “it is not the people who master the technology, but the technology that masters the people.” Though these words are 30 years old, they could easily have been talking about social media addiction.

Wang theorized that the conflict between the US’s economic system and its value system made it fundamentally unstable and destined for ever more commodification, nihilism, and decadence, until it finally collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. To prevent China’s own technological advancement leading it down the same perilous path, Wang proposed an extreme solution: neo-authoritarianism. In his 1988 essay, “The Structure of China’s Changing Political Culture,” Wang wrote that the only way a nation can avoid the US’s problems is by instilling “core values”—a national consensus of beliefs and principles rooted in the traditions of the past and directed toward a clear goal in the future

The bolded is especially relevant to the final solution to what the author (speculatively) considers an attack by a civilizational competitor:

That leaves only one solution: the democratic one. In a democracy responsibility is also democratized, so parents must look out for their own kids. There’s a market for this, too: various brands of parental controls can be set on devices to limit kids’ access (though many of these, including TikTok’s own controls, can be easily bypassed.)

The article first concedes that China is right that the market will drive us to the bottom of short-attention-span content and degeneracy, but then its solution is the platitude of "parental responsibility" in the face of an unprecedented technological challenge.

We've never dealt with this problem before. The idea that individual parents are going to figure this out when they're in competition with some of the most sophisticated companies in the world who've totally saturated the web with their influence seems patently absurd to me.

Especially in a system where the state is usurping more and more responsibility for child welfare. But, when it comes time to regulate tech companies, the state is powerless?

This sort of learned helplessness is common in the West, even when China is providing a counter-example of what can be done (i.e. regulation, which the author writes off because people will just make a new site*). But the argument is: in an ideologically fractured world the state has no right to impose its preferences in terms of the good life on citizens who may disagree. Now, it may be that the West is too far down the anomie and moral anarchy road to change course. But then the question is whether this is palatable to anyone else who is shopping for a civilizational model?

Especially since there's a strong argument that it is precisely this sort of liberal-influenced learned helplessness that leads to the very fracture of core values that could help mitigate such crises. I would bet that a 1950s America would have more social cohesion to push back against some of these things, but that's due to a shared culture that has been destroyed by...well, take your pick: neoliberalism, secularization, individualism, mass immigration, therapy and the breakdown of homogeneity, racial animus.

So it may be true that liberals - once their culture has become sufficiently fractured - cannot solve this problem (due to the ideology's resistance to compelling certain choices). But that may be an argument to never become liberal in the first place.

* If only someone had applied this insight to the drug war.

I just find it funny that voices are now being raised about "protecting our culture" solely against a Chinese tech firm. If you take this argument to its logical conclusion, you'd start censoring films, banning pornography etc. But of course this moral crusade is conveniently deployed against a single firm and the argument that TikTok is somehow uniquely bad compared to other social vices is unpersuasive to the point of being laughable. Either be consistent with the principle or admit the hypocrisy.

Agree. Facebook + Instagram are equally bad in this regard as far of teenage anxiety and other social ills..

Hell, Xanga and Myspace were destroying friendships and lives back when I was in high school in the early oughts.

It is fundamentally incorrect reasoning to conclude that a person ought not criticize a bad thing because lesser bad things in the same category occurred before. “All these people caring about the Iroquois Theatre fire didn’t care when houses burnt the year before!” But an especially bad event can prove to us the true risk of a thing. In the case of Tik Tok it is worse for obvious reasons: the format is worse than its predecessors, its popularity is greater than its predecessors, and it can plausibly be weaponized by a geopolitical enemy whose ascent has only recently started to be dealt with. It is clearly worse for a vice to be weaponized by an adversary you are in competition with than not. Because geopolitical dominance is zero-sun.

That’s the logical reason, and here’s the pragmatic: the China element of the story reminds the Public that our everyday habits have maximal consequences, including the risk of geopolitical ruin and worsening quality of life. It reminds them that dominance whether socially or geopolitically is zero-sum. At the same time, it shows the Public that there are alternatives with clearly better results in the young (China’s policies). Lastly, human males have a built-in instinct to fight against an enemy intentionally harming us.

start censoring films and banning pornography

We already do this for the young, let’s hope we expand it.

Bingo.

IF the argument is solely about deleterious psychological/cultural effects it should not matter whether the app is Chinese, European, or simply homegrown American. The platform is designed for maximum addiction, this isn't something that is specific to Chinese design.

If it were an American app the Chinese would restrict it because of these effects anyway.

For my part, I think the problems about it being a Chinese app are more along the lines of it opening important institutions up to hacking, social engineering, and other more direct attacks on American interests by China.

One could model it as a disease which infects massive amounts of the population and lies dormant except under certain conditions which can target 'vulnerable' individuals. The mass infection is the vector which enables it to ensure it penetrates the valuable targets, but focusing on the symptoms/methods of spread is kind of missing that point.

IF the argument is solely about deleterious psychological/cultural effects

Who said it was? Who said it ever was?

Debates about TikTok have always involved fear of China's role AFAIK.

That's what the OP is saying the "Chinese Superweapon" is.

Killing people's attention spans and otherwise causes mental degradation.

Rather than, say, giving China access to persons who have influential positions or access to sensitive information.

That's what the OP is saying the "Chinese Superweapon" is.

Killing people's attention spans and otherwise causes mental degradation.

No, it's a Chinese superweapon because it's doing that selectively to the West while trying to push the exact opposite stuff to its own public. That's why it's a weapon and not just a creator of externalities.

MacDonald's may or may not be more damaging but it's not a weapon in the sense of being a tool to harm foreign consumers specifically while making US consumers eat healthy food.

Rather than, say, giving China access to persons who have influential positions or access to sensitive information.

Except even the article points out that this is likely why TikTok is/will be banned in a way that the other sites (including hypothetical clones) that also harm us won't be because of the China factor.

Personally, when I first started hearing concerns about TikTok, it was almost always about China's possibly-not-passive role and its spying on you. The attention span stuff is relatively recent.

If China were doing this to their own population as well would it not be considered a super weapon against the US?

No, it's a Chinese superweapon because it's doing that selectively to the West while trying to push the exact opposite stuff to its own public. That's why it's a weapon and not just a creator of externalities.

Would the situation be different in the slightest if it were an American company?

Would China permit said app to operate in their country? Would the content it presents in the West be any different?

Because Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, at least, all pretty much mimic Tiktok in multiple ways.

I'm failing to see why the alleged damage being done is specific to the "Chinese Superweapon."

@MelodicBerries is making the broader point that if we are worried about the impact Tiktok is having our our psyches, then banning TikTok solves nothing. We'd have to ban most internet porn, heavily regulate social media, and try to restrict various other superstimuli that the modern world presents. Tiktok isn't the root cause here.

If the complaint is that China is somehow causing massive psychic damage to the West, then one notices that we're also causing a lot of the damage TO OURSELVES.

Would the situation be different in the slightest if it were an American company?

If the American company is showing the same general material to all parties (at least where it's allowed) then yes, obviously. It would not be asymmetrical where one group of people are apparently being made marginally worse as a matter of government policy in a way that demonstrates that they know this harm is being done and they can apparently easily avoid doing said harm (i.e. they don't do it to their own people)

It would also mean that the company is - like TikTok is in China - more likely to be subject to the pressure of the American government, which gives Americans some leverage (well...insofar as you think Americans determine government policy).

If the complaint is that China is somehow causing massive psychic damage to the West, then one notices that we're also causing a lot of the damage TO OURSELVES.

This doesn't seem to challenge the original point. The bone of contention that kicked off this thread was:

IF the argument is solely about deleterious psychological/cultural effects

There's no reason to grant this; IME the concern about TikTok has never, ever been solely about psychological effects so the argument falls flat.

This also presumes that I'm not worried about things like porn. I'm not sure why: my criticism of liberal learned helplessness applies even more to US-produced porn and social media sites (since I've already argued that the US has more agency there)

So I'm unmoved that US media is bad too (I simply bite the bullet on that)

So it seems like we're agreeing that Tiktok poses more danger than just being psychologically poisonous.

I'm just not sure that banning Tiktok is an 'antidote,' especially with the difficulty inherent in enforcing a ban/preventing some CCP-controlled replacements from arising.

To be clear, my position is basically that it's way easier to justify a ban on Tiktok if it is based on the concept of removing an attack surface that is controlled by a (potentially) hostile party.

It's about who controls it. American elites know the shenanigans they've been pulling with their social media, and are afraid a foreign power can do the same to their citizens.

It's a completely valid fear, to it cannot be stated so bluntly.

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