site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32146 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.

Project Veritas published another video that has gone on to have millions of views, but no media is willing to touch it - even Daily Mail deleted its article about it within hours.

I thought there'd be some coverage here, but apparently... ? It's a very CW event I believe.

Gist of it is, some affirmative action double minority hire (both gay and black) MD working for Pfizer under the lofty sounding but probably not that important position of "Pfizer Director, Research & Development Strategic Operations for mRNA scientific planning"

got slightlyy drunk with his Grindr date and said a good bunch of plausible seeming stuff, ranging from gosh, the revolving door between regulators and Pfizer is kinda unethical, but good for us to saying Pfizer is considering doing its own gain-of-function research to come up with better vaccines via either serial passage or something else. Give it a watch if you're interested, I think he wasn't making it up.

Then PV met up with him again, and showed him a tablet with the captured video. He said he had made all of that up to impress his date. (doubtful).

The second video is probably more interested for people who like "public freakouts" as the guy first acts like a bad gay stereotype, and later as a black one, at one point trying to destroy PV's tablet.

Interesting is that people like Majid Nawaaz were seen coming up with 12d chess theories about how this is an op to discredit Veritas and that the guy was a plant.

People have saved his Linked in before it got deleted and videos of him from schools he had attended according to his linked in, so if it's an op, it's an improbably good one.

EDIT: youtube took down the videos, still up on twitter.

1st vid: https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1618420826986123265 (the date one)

2nd vid: https://twitter.com/Project_Veritas/status/1618748408982040576 (confrontation in someone's restaurant and the freakout)

EDIT:

pfizer responds: https://www.pfizer.com/news/announcements/pfizer-responds-research-claims

They say they aren't doing serial passage / gain of function but are merely putting new spikes on the original virus in vitro, in an effort to see whether the vaccine still does something against new variants. I feel normies won't like this one bit.

They also say that they're doing "in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory".

So, it does seem like the guy is an idiot who talked about stuff they admit they were doing, of which he doesn't know enough about and which seems mostly reasonable, and then completely fucked up by adding in his own speculation about what they could do.

I'd say the video is most notable for seeing how absolutely blasé insiders can be about corruption and conflicts of interest. I guess if you have med school debts to pay off, chortling about how 'covid and covid vaccines are going to be great for the company' comes naturally ?

This seems like a stretch.

This is like some lefty organization finding the secretary of Blackrocks's marketing division's cto and videotaping them saying "We plan to put all the non straight white men in concentration camps by 2024"; and all the outgroup saying "See! We knew it all along!"

That's far more ridiculous, because there's no money in it.

Doing risky stuff with viruses so you can sell better vaccines is much more of a plausible plan, especially for a pharma company.

Wanna bet?

Stakes are any amount of money you choose that this isn't happening, 1:1.

The allegations pertain to activities which are within the domain of the person claiming to posses the internal information and within the domain of the company itself. It is also doesn't explicitly contradict any moral claim the company made in the past as Blackrock famously promotes ESG.

None of which apply to your Blackrock example.

You have proof he’s a secretary or just preferred narrative? I’m leaving my view up to how high he is. Veritas gave him a nice title.

He is apparently a MD so not a secretary. How high and knowledgeable who knows.

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