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 -
Where did the guy above say that they're sending compute in space to cool it? My impression was that he said they're sending compute in space so it can be independent of Earth's electrical grid. Whether it can be sufficiently cooled by radiation or not is, I think, sufficiently beyond "basic" physics that your borderline-bait response was unwarranted.
"You moron, you absolute retard, the Earth isn't round.It's a geoid ."
My thoughts on hearing all this talk about putting compute nodes in space is that they're more likely to be sufficiently cooked by radiation -- the cosmic ray sort, that is. I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, but I'd guess that a top-line NVIDIA GPU with its as-small-as-modern-technology-can-create transistors is about as far as one can get on the silicon-design spectrum from the concept of "radiation-hard design".
More options
Context Copy link
Bait in the sense that you confidently state something that looks obviously incorrect on face, whereupon an average Mottizen might be tempted to point that out and get hit by some obscure counter. Hence my "Earth isn't round" quip.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link