site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

That's fine, but you shouldn't expect the market to produce outcomes as if it valued something else!

I think that's the point. There is a gap between what people think is a valuable use of their time and what their boss / the market thinks is a valuable use of their time. For example, if some guy is being ordered to dig holes all over the place then being paid to fill them in is providing a marketable service to your employer, but nevertheless the overall work is going to feel stupid and pointless.

Sure, but what fraction of jobs does that describe? The examples in the wikipedia article are things like store greeters, lobbyists, academic administrators, and managers. I think it would be pretty hard to characterize those jobs, depending on the specifics, as being like digging a hole and filling it back in!

It is often argued that management is, by and large, a bullshit job because it has expanded so hugely and yet the same organisations (eg universities and hospitals) used to run perfectly well with smaller numbers.

Management seems to have grown with the ability of people to generate, communicate and store paperwork. If Person A is spending all of their time sending emails to other departments and then Person B is filtering a department’s incoming mail to sort out the dross, we can be back at digging a hole territory.

Previously, if someone took the time out of their day to physically travel to you and tell you something, you could reasonably expect it to be important.