site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34531 thread views

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I cannot say I'm surprised that you came back from your most recent ban, in which you were explicitly told to stop dropping flaming paper bags full of shit on the doorstep, to immediately do the exact same thing. But you cannot say you weren't fairly warned.

Banned. Most likely permanently, pending mod discussion.

How is this a flaming paper bag full of shit on our doorstep? The engagement I’m seeing is rather polite - no one is stomping on the bag, so to say.

I think there's a wider point that can be discussed here, because we're already speaking elsewhere of the possibilities in embryonic selection. Mostly this has been in the context of increasing IQ, but as pregnancy becomes something that is planned rather than "well that's what happens when you get married and start having sex", when - to quote this report - "motherhood is an aspiration and not an inevitability", and when people having their own genomes sequenced, genetic engineering, embryo selection, surrogate pregnancy and who knows, even artificial wombs are more and more the norm and more acceptable and accessible, we're moving into the realm of a whole slate of choices potential parents can make.

Previously there was already one fertility clinic offering the option of "what eye colour do you want the baby to have?" But maybe there will be decisions about "do you want the baby to be gay or straight? cis or trans?" As gay couples use fertility and surrogacy clinics to have their own biological children, maybe there will be "We want our baby to be gay like us" requests. Why not, if it's as normal as being hetero? Why object to it? In the future that might be seen as being as bigoted and discriminatory as trying to force mixed-race couples to only have white children.

force mixed-race couples to only have white children.

Wait what? How does that even work?

I think I see some of what it was modded for—it's a pretty partisan, Outgroup Bad, take, especially the end there, not really aiming at courtesy. But I don't know that it's entirely without value either, since it is a good thought experiment.

It would be nice if we didn't have to guess at exactly what it was modded for.

Agreed, our guessing indicates poor moderation.

That is more to the credit of the people engaging than the OP.

I totally reject the idea that the mods can detect and enforce bad (rules-breaking/bad faith/problematic etc) comments or topics in spite of other commentators engaging with it fruitfully. Dialogue is a two+ way street, if a comment hasn't led to mass rule-breaking or other problems then I don't see how you can pin the good-discourse on other people, and the bad discourse on the OP. That isn't how forums or discussions work. This is terrible.

Well, that's not how it works. First of all, very few comments lead to "mass rule-breaking or other problems." If someone posts flaming hot bait that violates multiple rules, and it happens to spawn an interesting thread, that's nice, but you don't get amnesty for breaking the rules because it started a decent discussion, and this poster in particular has a very bad track record and was explicitly told that if he did what he just did again he'd be banned.

Can you articulate what rules this broke?

Everything about the way his "thought experiment" (which in itself would have been fine) was presented was culture warring. "Leftists want more gays, they favor homosexuals in every arena, and will happily wipe out civilization in order to get more of them" is, as I said, a continuation of his past pattern in which everything is written as a maximally uncharitable boo outgroup. As is usually the case with such strawmanning, the core of his argument ("This is how I think leftists and rightists would react to a 'homosexual pill'") could have been made in a thoughtful manner that doesn't project purely evil and bad faith motivations onto his outgroup, but he made it clear that projecting purely evil and bad faith motivations onto his outgroup was the point of the post. This is what he has done for a long time. It describes pretty much everything he has ever posted, and he was told to stop it, and rather than showing the slightest willingness to adjust to the environment we're trying to create here, he made it clear he's just here to culture war and only to culture war. (I will further note he had other very bad posts in the thread, which were also reported, but we only responded to this one.)

It's no different than the drive-bys we get fairly frequently by a "new" poster with a flaming hot take on HBD: "Hey, since HBD is true, why do you think leftists pretend it isn't?" We do not prohibit HBD discussions; we don't even prohibit spicy HBD takes. We do prohibit people using HBD, or trans issues, or Holocaust denial, just to start threads about how malicious and dishonest their enemies are.

Some people can actually discuss the topic, even if they do actually believe their enemies are malicious and dishonest. @pointsandcorsi has never shown any interest in doing anything but starting a circlejerk about how malicious and dishonest his enemies are, and he was given repeated warnings to stop trying to do that.

Everything about the way his "thought experiment" (which in itself would have been fine)

This is the most annoying part and why I would support a ban. It poisons what would otherwise have been an interesting hypothetical with some promise to shed actual light on things. Worse, it poisons coming up with even more interesting hypotheticals that even lightly pattern match this sort of thing.

This person proposed a pretty interesting thought experiment which has spurred interesting discussion. It seems foolish to ban them for this.

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