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 -
Consider the following thought experiment, courtesy of Scott Summer
I think this is a good counterpart to the AGI questions below. There is a massive conceptual gap in defining welfare across vastly different levels of technological mastery.
It also highlights that some of the analysis misses the largest factor here -- that AGI (if it happens, sadly not if it doesn't pan out) will greatly increase the quality and personalization of a large set of goods & services. If that does happen, it will dwarf the distributional aspects.
That's not how inflation works. Inflation has already taken that into consideration. $100k in 1959 would be the equivalent of $1.1 M today. If that's your annual salary, you could be hiring maids to drive to the grocery story and do your shopping for you, personal chefs to make whatever you want out of whatever recipe cookbooks you got for them, foreign or domestic, and delivery drivers to do your shopping while you sit in your home cinema.
Yes, you wouldn't have smartphones or modern medicine, but you'd have the best things available to anyone at the time. This is a bad thought experiment comparing middle class now to middle class 1950s. The entire point is that you would not be middle class, you would be rich. Why would a rich person have a little TV set with a fuzzy picture?
Yes, I would rather be rich now than rich then, if I could choose between $1.1 M now or $100k in 1959. But that's not what he said.
Not it does not. Inflation measures so called "basket of goods" and their price. The problem is, that goods and services inside the basket change a little bit from year to year, plus there are qualitative changes from decade to decade. For instance as of 2025, the price of internet access plan is part of basket of goods and services incorporated into inflation. There was nothing like that in let's say 1950. How could you possibly account for this? The same goes for qualitative change - TVs in 1950 are different from TV in 2025, just measuring the dollar price of TV does not provide the full account of change in quality baked in the price, these are not the same things.
By the way, there is a theoretical framework in economics around this, called Arrow-Debreou model specifically the subsect raleted to time, space, and uncertainty. To simplify - the "same" goods in different time and place are not the same goods. A bottle of oxygen in your local hardware store is completely different good from a bottle of oxygen near the peak of Mount Everest. The difference is so stark, that you cannot just average the price or something like that. This is a long known issue in econometrics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link