site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In spite of Trump's pigheadedness, electric cars and renewables are still going to win.

Maybe. But if they were the clear win you're making them out to be, there'd be no need for the subsidies and bans.

Humanity is undergoing an energy transition from turning heat into electricity or movement (fossil fuel electricity generation and petrol cars) to one where we generate and use the energy directly.

That doesn't even make sense. Using energy directly would be something like sailing; we're certainly not doing that with cars. With electric cars and renewables we're capturing solar energy, turning it to electricity, turning it into chemical energy, then back to electricity, and then to movement. Or we're doing the same thing only turning wind to movement, then movement to electricity, then the rest.

Solar power is already the cheapest form of energy globally, followed by wind

As long as you ignore the costs of intermittency.

easier to fill up (you do it at home overnight)

So I have to upgrade my electric service (and the power company upgrade their grid) to provide myself with sufficient charging capacity for 2 cars... and even then it takes hours? I can fill up a gasoline car in minutes. Gas still wins this one. Charging at home is convenient, but the slowness of fill will cause scaling problems. Further, if most people charge at home, charging stations away from home will have less reason to exist, making them far less available than gas stations are today, thus making long-distance travel less practical.