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 is stereotypically the response of someone who knows absolutely nothing about firearms, violent encounters, the law around use of force or really anything at all relevant to a police shooting. It is so perfectly wrong that it delegitimizes anything else a person might say about the subject. It misunderstands the law, the morality around use of force, the physical capabilities of small arms and the reasonable limits of police training.
See my reply here. I am aware that this would be harder, and by no means guarantee the target's survival. It would, however, be more ethical, because human life is the most precious thing in the universe, and in my book you need a very high level of confidence that your own life in immediate peril before you are morally justified in taking someone else's. If he wasn't certain that Good was trying to run him over (and he couldn't be) then it would in some important sense have been fairer for him to resort to a means of incapacitating her that had less than 100% chances of being fatal if successfully executed. (Endangering her life to protect his own, i.e. shooting her in such a way that she may very well die, but which is not intended to kill her, comes with a much lower threshold.) The moral thing to do is not necessarily the easiest, fastest, nor most conducive to one's own safety.
I say again, though, that I'm talking about what a perfect actor "should" have done in an ideal frictionless-spherical-cows world, a world in which things like "the reasonable limits of police training" (and human fallibility in general) have no purchase. In the real world, as I said in the post you're replying to, I in no way blame the cop for having acted the way he did.
The stereotypes were correct.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link