site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 30, 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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So? We can't go our whole lives avoiding doing anything that causes people trivial amounts of "psychological harm". That kind of mental safetyism is abhorrent and would have us all walking on eggshells for our entire lives, and having our behaviour dictated by utility monsters. Or empathy monsters, I suppose.

The value gained from porn obviously isn't zero, as people pay for it, and people enjoy it.

So? We can't go our whole lives avoiding doing anything that causes people trivial amounts of "psychological harm". That kind of mental safetyism is abhorrent and would have us all walking on eggshells for our entire lives, and having our behaviour dictated by utility monsters. Or empathy monsters, I suppose.

This kind of distress is felt by a vast majority of the human race, at least that portion who even understands what the Internet and photos are. Unless you're claiming that most of humanity are utility monsters, I'd suggest that if you don't feel such distress, you are extremely weird and you should avoid typical-minding on this subject.

This kind of distress is contingent on societal values though. It'd be incredibly weird in $X_BC to not care about the virginity of your daughter or future wife, less so now. "There are deepfakes of me" seems like something people would adapt to and stop being distressed about if it became commonplace (and there's a good chance it will, the interest is there and a stable-diffusion sized deepfake model you can torrent and run on your pc is technically doable). Is 'psychological distress' even bad, absent something worth being distressed over? Compare to ... confusion and doubt in a tough intellectual problem, it isn't comfortable or pleasant, but it isn't bad.

Distress is over-egging it a lot. Mild discomfort seems like it should be more appropriate, at best. Literally what is there to be upset over?

Woe is me, someone finds me attractive enough to go to the effort of faking a video of me having sex so they can watch it and pretend it's real. And people are paying for it! Oh no how awful I must feel, being in such demand.

If there's one thing we know about humans, it's that they absolutely hate feeling sexually desirable.

You are extremely weird and you should avoid typical-minding here.

You are extremely weird

Unnecessary. You already made this point, less antagonistically.