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 -
There's a pretty huge difference between a tape of someone running their mouth and a tape of someone raping a minor. Again, if your model of the world doesn't account for this sort of massive difference, then you might want to reconsider your model. Different models may have different predictions for a tape of someone running their mouth, and one might evaluate said models on what actually happened, but there is obviously no constraint on the set of models forcing them to produce the same output on such extremely different cases.
This is plausible today, which is why I mentioned it.
None of these are plausible for the example given of a tape of him "violently raping a 14-year-old girl".
Testing one's model as parameters go to infinity is, indeed, a good sanity check. I do this in my daily work. If your model has truly absurd results as the parameters go to infinity, it's more likely that there's a problem with your model than that the world will actually match the model outputs.
I am just saying I think people would crowd-source every way it mighty possibly be fake or not as bad as it looks, until a response emerges that works well enough for enough of his supporters.
I do acknowledge that if we take this example 'to infinity' and keep stipulating a bunch of extra facts such as:
-the girl is very obviously underage -she comes forward and testifies -other evidence comes out making it highly likely Trump is guilty -he cannot make a refutation stick
Then yeah, he would lose support, and this could snowball to the point where the original video qualifies as a 'kill shot'. I don't think he is literally bullet proof (any more than a bullet proof vest is, when tested to infinity).
Sure, some people will want to think that it's fake in some way. I mean, I guess something like that could be fake? If you asked me a prior probability for a video coming out of any prominent politician committing a violent rape of a 14-year-old, especially in the AI age, I'd have a pretty non-zero chance of it being fake. And these days, normies have had their probability estimates for foreign government disinformation along lines like these jacked up, too.
...but that's basically the only thing that could plausibly have any play for the example given. People might think it's fake, but if there is enough other evidence to support that it's not a total fabrication, nothing else would save him.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link