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 -
Generally, a good philosophical rule of thumb estimate for your goodness of a person from a utilitarian perspective is: What is the net utility of all humans in the world other than yourself in the world where you exist, minus a counterfactual world in which you don't exist? If everyone is better off because you're here doing things, then you're doing a good job. If people would be better off if you never existed then you're a leech.
Obviously this is not computible in practice, and maybe needs a couple of epicycles to reduce random variation that isn't your fault (what if your mom dies in childbirth?), but is a good rule of thumb estimate.
"Productive" seems like the same sort of question just mostly restricted to economic utilities and leaving off emotional ones (a particularly saintly homeless man on welfare who goes around being kind to everyone and making their day brighter might increase net utility but be unproductive in economic terms).
If you could thanos snap Bill and Shelley out of existence then all the money they were going to extract from taxes and spend on things could be given to other people to spend, so everyone else would be better off. Assuming they vanish at conception, and if their government jobs were just pencil pushing then nothing is lost and we save money. If you could thanos snap the guy who invented GMO rice out of existence then GMO rice doesn't exist, or takes much longer for someone else to invent, and everyone is worse off.
If someone is a small cog in a machine and the company is paying them a salary for their work, then their productivity depends on whether the company is wisely paying their money or has been tricked into overpaying for an unnecessary managerial position or a slacker. If you thanos snapped them out of existence, would the company's profits go up or down? For the majority of cogs, it would go down, because the upper management is paying them less than it earns from their labor (otherwise, how else could it earn a profit). So they're productive. But this has exceptions, who sap money from the productivity of those around them and lower the average.
Thank you for putting my feelings into words better than I would have
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link