site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   31103 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Violence is an inherently high-variance activity.

This does seem truly hard to grasp if you've only ever experienced physical violence in the abstract. i.e if you've never been punched in the face.

Even if you watch professional fights, the rulesets in those arenas are optimized to avoid the actions that can cause instant incapacitation or grievous harm/death, and the competitors are fighting with less than lethal intent.

Take away the refs, rules, and moral restraints... any given strike COULD be a life-changer or life-ender. Quadruple that if weapons are involved.

For me, and I think most 'right-thinking' humans, this means you avoid violence as long as possible because you mostly lose control of the outcomes once it comes to that.

And on the flipside, it means you don't let opponents implement violence unilaterally, both for the deterrent effect and to prevent your side from being the sole recipient of the the consequences.

But there is as you say a group of people who see this reluctance to get violent as an exploitable 'weakness'. Push the line to force some violent response and then hope for those fat-tailed outcomes to result. Then claim the fat-tailed outcome was SOLELY the fault of one side for acting out.

And it is a lot easier to implement this strategy if you can convince your low-agency ideological followers to become human fodder.

Even 'violence' against property carries this risk with it. One image that stuck with me from the BLM era is the protestor getting clobbered by a falling confederate statue.

Its a very, very stupid thing being done, on so many levels. This is fucking around with the laws of physics and finding out quite immediately. One second you're celebrating the fall of racism with your buddies... the next you're in a vegetative state.

But the human body is indeed resilient so he survived... for some definitions of that term.

Here's a terrifying line that I hope is never written about me:

Chris is blind in one eye and lost his hearing in one ear, but he’s making progress. He’s learning how to eat and walk again, and his speech is slowly coming back.

In some very similar timelines that guy is just straight up dead. In some he's grievously injured but not traumatically brain damaged. And in a few he dodges fate by a few scant inches. High variance indeed.

Incidentally, this is why I think the saying "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is an extraordinarily bad sentiment to believe in the context of physical violence.

This does seem truly hard to grasp if you've only ever experienced physical violence in the abstract. i.e if you've never been punched in the face.

I mean. I haven't been punched in the face, but I've seen the aftermath of violence - especially if you define it more broadly as blunt trauma.

It is a gigantic freaking crapshoot. I've seen a guy literally run over by a pickup truck survive, though at the cost of his right arm and chronic pain for life. I've seen a guy fall off a TWO FOOT bench onto concrete, hit his head, and wind up in a nursing home.

Yeah, I imagine paramedics have a clinical but unvarnished view of human fragility. Most of us are probably, in theory, only a few inches and a bad fall away from parapalegia at any given moment when we're not fast asleep.

Seeing what a short fall to concrete can do to a human, its sometimes amazing to think that we don't keep the whole world (or ourselves) ensconced in bubble wrap at all times.

I mean, the modal marching-band boy scout who passes out wakes up with a concussion, not in a nursing home or not at all. Head + concrete = crapshoot, with everything from minor injury to death on the board.

Humans can survive nearly anything, and die to nearly anything. But injury is fucking easy. People pretend that anything short of death isn't a big deal, but death isn't why violence is scary. Every violent situation contains a distinct possibility of major injury for someone, usually everyone involved. The sort of thing that changes your life forever.

Even without death, a simple fistfight will almost certainly require months of healing and rehab, if you win. More if you lose. It is rare that a real fight ends without both participants having broken bones. Fingers and toes the most common, of course. Add weapons/vehicles and this risk skyrockets. There are a world of outcomes from violent situations, but few of them are as good for either party as before the fight. Even winning without injury has its psychological and social costs.

Yeah. Its like, unless you're being paid pretty handsomely, or defending your life or a loved one against an unavoidable attacker... why do you ever want to fight?

Break a limb and now you've got a medical bill and lost work, and that's assuming no permanent complications. Concussions suck. Brain damage sucks worse. To not even talk about para or quadriplegia, which we aren't yet able to really treat.

I could curmudgeonly blame the movies that VASTLY understate how much damage it takes to incapacitate a human. But it really must come down to people RARELY encountering physical violence in their life unless they're in a profession or lifestyle that demands it.

Fewer people working in factories seeing dudes get dismembered by heavy machinery. Drunken bar brawls are rarer, I'd wager.

Cars are safer, too.

White collar/service jobs really insulate people from this particular facet of reality.

That said, some of us grew up with access to liveleak.

My mother and I recently visited a memorial to WWII submariners, and my mother looked at the list of lost ships and their crew numbers and said wow how on earth did you convince anyone to get on a submarine? And I pointed out that submarine service isn't SO bad, because for the most part you either sink or you don't.

You're much less likely to get grievously wounded, disfigured, crippled than you would be in the infantry. You aren't crouching in a trench in perpetual terror for months. Your moments of danger are intense but they last mere hours, and then generally you're dead or you aren't. Not a bad deal as war goes.

Though the WWI u-boats were pretty bad. But I guess so was the rest of WWI too. http://vlib.us/wwi/resources/archives/texts/uboatu9.html

Definitely pretty bad. In WWII, US Submarines were by far the worst deal in the US military for KIA. Worse than infantry, worse than bomber crews.

But in terms of the bravery required, it feels like it would be different and probably easier (for me) in nature. You get on the sub, and that's it, relatively little personal courage required after that. You'll have to act under pressure, of course, but no moreso than anywhere else in combat. Compared to sleeping in a foxhole under fire, day after day, seeing your friends wounded and killed and knowing you might be next. Jumping up to run into a bullet, over and over, seems much harder than "hope the ship doesn't sink."

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