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 -
This got nuked when it became illegal to deny people for preexisting conditions. It's doubly fucked when something like half all all chronic conditions can be traced to poor lifestyle management; diet, exercise, and substance misuse/abuse both legal and otherwise.
To extend the "most ships don't sink, most mail doesn't get lost" metaphor; most people want to drive their cars forever without hitting anyone or being hit by anyone. People who drink too much, smoke, don't exercise, and eat pseudo-food might not desire to see the doctor in a philosophical sense, but they're loudly ignoring the reality that they will need to in short order. It's the equivalent of driving blindfolded with your feet and, after hitting a lightpost, proclaiming, "_of course I didn't want to do that!"
In the west, we're actually pretty good at solving the big problems of actual healthcare (not health insurance) through good old fashioned innovation and market incentives. Diabetes used to mean losing a foot, and insulin changed that. Antibiotics going back to penicillin mean that you can literally get your can now body cavity opened up in ways that, in yesteryear, would've been a slow and agonizing death by infection. I contend that the greatest medicinal invention ever was functional public sewage and waste disposal paired with ubiquitous flush toilets and showers.
We're very bad at dealing with repeated objectively horrible decision making at the individual level. This is the thread that ties together not only healthcare but also welfare, criminal punishment, and abortion (to name the a few off the top of my head). If a given person wants to keep making awful decision, a free society has to tolerate that to some extent. The alternative is tyranny. What a free society should not do, in my opinion, and cannot do perpetually, is actively subsidize these bad decisions and/or the consequences arising from them.
There's a mechanism that's good at that; call it the "invisible iron fist". But we do our best to prevent it from operating.
Exactly. But the cost of that prevention is passed on to people who make good decisions. That's the whole perversion of it. "Suicidal empathy" is one of the great bon mots of culture war discourse. It is possible to love-your-neighbor-to-(mutual)-death
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link