site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32901 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There’s frustratingly little information available about what’s going on in Venezuela or Iran right now which dampens in depth discussion outside of speculation. There’s a lot of information about Ukraine but that’s been going for four years so everyone other than me is bored with it.

There is a cool story on this:

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/white-house-amplified-shocking-claims-us-super-soldiers-deployed-maduro-raid

Big if true. If not it’s good propaganda. Scares China on our capabilities.

If not it’s good propaganda

It definitely sounds somewhere between "it's not that we're incompetent, they were just too advanced" defensiveness and "this'll make a great story to sell to the media" opportunism, but yeah: why would the US government try to correct stories about "their troops were super-humanly accurate and their equipment was space-age advanced"? 😁 You really expect the DoD to come out with a correction "No, that's not the case at all! Our guys are just regular, some of 'em barely competent, and our kit is standard average like every other country's military!"

Venezuela may be incompetent. But I still expect country with 30 million people and some legacy wealth has a bunker or secure facility for their President to sleep in. And that he sleeps in said place when the USA is threatening to kidnap him. The men with guns protecting him have good places to shoot from versus guys landing in helicopters.

I am thinking about my condo building I sleep in. It’s a large building with 2 stairwells and 2 elevator shafts. It does have a 40th floor balcony. In order to get to me you either need to:

  1. Go up 40 flights of stairs. My armed men with guns can drop grenades on you and shoot you coming up.
  2. Take an elevator. My men with guns can light up the elevator even before the door opens.
  3. Come in thru the balcony. Which sounds like a very exposed entrance for a helicopter. My men with guns can shoot the helicopter from a few hundred balconies or the roof.

Of course you could fairly easily kill me. Just drop a bomb on my condo building. But we didn’t do that.

It does appear to me the US either bribed a lot of people or we have some technology that knocked guys out guarding choke points.

I think people overrate the testimony of that guy.

Venezuela can't even maintain their own oil industry, the core basis of their national wealth, why would they be any good at fighting? They probably didn't know how to use their equipment and certainly couldn't maintain it. The Russians quit giving Venezuela loans to buy military equipment a few years ago, I think that even they had written Venezuela off.

Security Guard: Without a doubt. I'm sending a warning to anyone who thinks they can fight the United States. They have no idea what they're capable of. After what I saw, I never want to be on the other side of that again. They're not to be messed with.

I think this indicates he was paid to say this as part of the propaganda campaign. He was probably paid much more than he was making as a soldier. The real superpower is just having a certain level of organization and discipline.

That, or a dude had a panic attack from the bombs and lack of comms and the physical intensity of the situation. Then he shit himself, and wondered what the fuck happened.

If the dude even existed.

Zerohedge is best characterized as a one-mind kiwifarms operation with less discipline. Its great fun, but the world it presents is a bit too lizard-pilled for my liking. This particular 'sonic weapon' thing sounds like Havana syndrome again, a malattribution to genericized discomforts that acutely present in stressful circumstances. LRAD is mitigated really easily because it suffers the standard problem of any beam weapon: it gets blocked by everything including atmospheric pressure, and just falling out of the cone makes the effect stop immediately. We aren't getting Atreides sonic tanks anytime soon guys, life just isnt that cool.

I’ve often pondered whether zerohedge might have the highest IQ readership on any newsite. It basically grew out trading desks communities which have a floor of about 120 IQ. I’m not sure how widely read they are outside of those communities. Traders also read news differently than other people.

Zerohedge posts conspiracy slop on the free page to attract the crazies and keeps the good shit hidden behind the paywall. Analyst reports out of Seekingalpha or Morningstar were obligate maximizers of whatever slop pushed by the funds, so there was too much noise within the signal. Zerohedge econs stuff is still crazy doomer but itll reveal good underlying points. Stuff like "the lizard globohomo are unwinding all their longs! watch for the metal inflection!"

Trading desks speak a different language than the rest of society. I guess every industry has their own language. You are always asking yourself why your wrong. Or a cottage industry has grown analyzing a CEOs body language and tone versus what he’s directly saying. Which I guess develops a natural bit of conspiracy thinking. It doesn’t apply to the automated shops which is basically more engineering.

I think trading desks develop an instinct for aggressive first mover advantage, and they get almost immediate feedback. Makes their radars very sensitive, and they get very good at filtering for what is bullshit, but they also pick up bullshit really easily. The bullshit doesn't really matter because it doesn't need to be acted upon, but it still gets thrown into the wild in case some smartdick senses gold inside. Its not like WSB where its retards pretending they know whats up.

Quite possibly. That or HackerNews, I'm not on there but even the stupidity that gets crossposted seems fairly erudite. I know a bunch of extraordinarily successful guys who read ZeroHedge, generally with a "this is silly but some of it might just be true" vibe.

HackerNews was the other one that I thought of that on average probably has a reader 1 standard deviation above the NYT average.

Scott’s readership is high IQ, but he writes in a smart person way.

RW Twitter has been having fun comparing this to how the Central Americans might have felt when Spaniards showed up with ships, steel, horses and guns.

I’ve seen that. I wouldn’t be surprised, I heard a lot of stuff about sonic weapons and pain rays 10-15 years ago and then it suddenly went quiet which means they are probably actually deployable now.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats