site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   12051 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.

People like you who think "some people are dumber than others" is equivalent with "dumb people don't deserve to be happy and safe"

I believe every person deserves to be as happy and safe as they can accomplish themselves. I don't understand why anybody should be charged with doing it for them, especially to their own detriment. That just inverts the roles. You want to make those incapable of taking care of themselves (or their families) my master.

And we're right back to what I was saying. Leftist clamor for a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Is a volunteer at an animal rescue center a slave to injured puppies? "Should" and "must" are different words, and you're somehow managing to miss the entire concept of morality - indeed, the entire concept of kindness and helpfulness - by confusing them. There are such things as supererogatory moral goods. There are, too, such things as moral duties which it is incumbent on every man to fulfill but which for various practical reasons always go wrong if you try to mandate them by law. Saying "all human beings deserve happiness" is not the same statement as "you have a duty to wear yourself down to the bone to make all human beings happy" and it is a completely different statement from "the state should be an unconstrained human-happiness-maximizer". "Charity is good" is not a call for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Is a volunteer at an animal rescue center a slave to injured puppies?

Is the taxpayer, whose earnings are confiscated to pay for it?

My concern is that WhiningCoil does not recognize that all else being equal it is always good, rather than neutral, for sentient beings to have nice things. What trade-offs one is prepared to countenance in the name of acquiring nice things to give to sentient beings is an entirely different question and not the topic of this thread. Many libertarians take the line of "yes, it is good to give to the poor, it's just that it's also wrong to steal, and one doesn't cancel out the other" and I have no beef with that.

Does heroin qualify as a nice thing? Most of the people addicted to it would probably say so.

One reason most people don't think the state should subsidise people's heroin addictions is because consistent heroin use will inevitably kill the user, or at the minimum destroy their life in every meaningful sense.

Once you accept that it's wrong to subsidise someone else's independent decision to destroy their own life with drugs (perhaps because they're too stupid, through no fault of their own, to know better), it follows that the specific drug they use to do so is almost beside the point. Why would paying someone to kill themselves with heroin not be acceptable, but paying them to kill themselves with alcohol would be A-OK? Why not alcohol, but fast food? Why not fast food, but gambling? Why not gambling, but prostitutes?

That giving poor people money so that they can feed, house and clothe themselves and be fruitful and multiply is the kind, decent thing to do sounds sensible enough on paper. The trouble is that it's remarkably difficult to ensure they will use the money to ensure those needs are met, rather than using it to satisfy base urges which will kill them or destroy their lives.

I can respect that line of argument! But I think you're giving WhiningCoil too much credit. What he said (in a mocking, ironic way) was "the moral thing to do is to feed, clothe and house them". I don't think there is any non-strained reading of his post that rounds out to "it would of course be good to actually feed, clothe and house them, the problem is that programs meant to achieve these things will instead have various unintended negative consequences".

I don't want to put words in @WhiningCoil's mouth. I, for one, would be more than happy to house, feed, clothe etc. poor people in the post-Singularity, post-scarcity gay luxury space communism future that surely awaits us. That society being, of course, the only society in which your policy proposal would actually work, and which wouldn't impose horrific externalities and create perverse incentives for every inhabitant therein.

If I had to parse @WhiningCoil's comment, he was scoffing at the idea that feeding, housing, clothing etc. poor people is the moral thing to do in our universe, with all of its attendant restrictions, limitations and trade-offs. I know that you think the correct approach is to imagine what the right thing to do would be if there were no constraints, and then try to get as close to that target as possible, given the constraints placed upon us. I know because you explicitly told me:

First figure out what we ought, ideally, to have; then carve out what's practical right now, keeping the rest on the back burner until the time is right. That's what it means for me to be a Progressive.

Fair enough. But the thing is: imagining what the right thing to do would be in a universe with no constraints really isn't that hard. Utopias are a dime a dozen, specifically because they skip over all those difficult problems that real life imposes upon us. In light of this, most people (myself included) prefer to just skip the imagining-what-to-do-in-a-universe-without-constraints step, and instead focus on trying to decide the best course of action in our universe, with the constraints we are operating under. But you seem convinced that unless we go through the motions of announcing "this is what the right thing to do would be [in the counterfactual universe with no constraints, limitations or trade-offs]... however, given that we live in a universe with constraints, limitations or trade-offs-"

Dude. We KNOW we live in a universe with constraints, limitations and trade-offs. That's why we're discussing optimal solutions in light of those constraints, rather than wasting our time with navel-gazing on what the right thing to do would be without them. I'm sure I can't be alone in thinking this insistence that we go through the motions of determining what the right thing to do would be in a counterfactual universe with no constraints seems sort of... performative? Do we have to say grace before eating our dinner? Must we do the land acknowledgement before we discuss optimal property tax rates? Do we have to listen to the elevator pitch for your fantasy novel before we can talk about whether or not performing a double mastectomy on a teenage girl is a good idea?*

I know, I know, I know: if we don't reflexively go through the motions of imagining a utopia, we won't notice when we've accidentally created a dystopia. Or as you put it:

it's the difference between "we recognize that it's a moral tragedy that thousands upon thousands of Africans starve to death, but America physically wouldn't have the resources to feed everyone while still caring for itself in the long term, so we should stop ruining ourselves by trying; we can only hope that someday we are secure enough to start the work anew", which is very sensible; and "thousands and thousands of black people dying is fine and none of our business, we should actively beat the urge to help them out of our children if possible, it's a disease holding them back from being Übermensch", which is fucking evil.

But frankly, I don't think anyone here is at risk for advocating the latter position; some of the most moral and decent people I've ever met have been those most acutely aware of the very real trade-offs and constraints life places upon us (while some of the most selfish and inconsiderate were those who spent much of their waking life in hypothetical utopias); and I think your belief that imagining hypothetical utopias is the thing that prevents you from endorsing the democide of starving Ethiopians is both untrue from a psychological perspective and tremendously self-serving.

*My God, imagine if every profession was like this:

Oncologist: In an ideal world, your husband would never have developed prostate cancer. But in our world, he has, and here are your treatment options.

Police officer: In an ideal world, your wife would never have been murdered. But in our world, she has been, and we have a good idea of who did it.

Engineer: In an ideal world, this bridge would never have collapsed. But in our world, it has, and forty-six people are believed to have been killed.

First of all, I do want thank you for the elaborate reply, and especially for quoting past posts of mine. Maybe it's strange to thank someone for remembering past points you made just so that they can continue to disagree with them but I do find it earnestly validating, and a credit to this forum as a discussion space, to be able to have a debate with that level of engagement, without having to start every argument from scratch.

I don't think anyone here is at risk for advocating the latter position

Well, what can I say? This started with WhiningCoil deriding the very idea of clothing, feeding and housing the disadvantaged, with no caveats. For all your attempts to justify and soften his statement, that fact does not fill me with the same confidence. By no means do I think such people - "ghouls" in my fanciful terminology above - are a majority here, even among the more far-right posters. But they do exist. I know this because they frequently boast about their ghoulishness, sneering about universalist altruism being a pathological, contemptible, or just literally incomprehensible impulse whenever the opportunity arises. I'm not trying to start a witch-hunt - when you say that's not where you stand I'm happy to believe you! I'm just gesturing at all the people wearing big conspicuous pointy hats and handing out entry vouchers for the next satanic mass.

I'm sure I can't be alone in thinking this insistence that we go through the motions (…) I think your belief that imagining hypothetical utopias is the thing that prevents you from endorsing the democide of starving Ethiopians is both untrue from a psychological perspective and tremendously self-serving.

I think perhaps you've slightly misunderstood what I was advocating. I didn't mean that in any given dilemma you should literally stop and ask yourself "what would Jesusmy omnipotent transhuman future self with infinite resources do?". I think the Utopia-designing is a useful implementation of the kind of abstract thinking you have to do to formulate principles - to create a framework of moral philosophy, coin a system of values, whatever you want to call it. Indeed, the post you linked clarifies that I think this is something you should do when engaged in formulating principles, not what you should do every time you want to solve a specific policy question. Arguments I participate in on this forum just keep coming back to this kind of thought experiment partly because I don't have the benefit of an already-established share moral framework with the people I argue with even when we're talking about policy; and partly because a lot of those arguments are questions of moral philosophy where we fight about principles, not pragmatic policy debates, owing to us all being a bunch of geeks who enjoy abstract thinking in our off-time, not policy wonks with actual object-level debates to really sink our teeth into in a systematic way.

I would also object strongly to the claim that it's "self-serving". I have found this kind of thinking a useful steering mechanism for my conscience, and it has driven me on many occasions to do good in the world in material ways that cost me, but which, looking back, I'm proud of. That doesn't preclude you thinking that I'm an anomaly and the average person shouldn't do it because they'll get lost in their pie-in-the-sky utopias at the expense of actually doing good - but (for what it's worth to say it on an anonymous forum with no verifiability) I am not a champagne socialist cooped up in my ivory tower.

and just keep giving them more and more and more forever because resources aren't finite.

Finish the sentence.

Well, do you think that giving them as much as actually possible in our world with finite resources would be all fine and dandy? Somehow I didn't get that impression, and that makes the hyperbole a petty snipe irrelevant to the argument.

Actually possible still just rounds off to everything. Give me a limiting principle besides "Gosh, I'm a heckin' nice person and I don't understand why you are being so cruel."

More comments

My concern is that WhiningCoil does not recognize that all else being equal it is always good, rather than neutral, for sentient beings to have nice things.

It seems to me more likely that they recognize that all else is, in fact, never equal, never has been, and likely never will be.

Solzhenitsyn figured out how to be happy in a death camp. Some Ukrainians in the Holodomor figured out how to be happy while they and their families were intentionally starved to death. These apparent historical facts appear to me to support @WhiningCoil's model of happiness, and undermine the one you are presenting.

Manic people are often happy as they're starving to death too. But being happy while being subject to genocide isn't the default state, that isn't just postulating a hedonic treadmill, it's setting it to overdrive mode in reverse.

Naming a few intellectuals isn't a very strong argument.

The point is that happiness does not derive from material circumstances, in opposition to the underpinnings of the argument that all people "deserve to be happy", contrasted with "every person deserves to be as happy and safe as they can accomplish themselves". I'm not sure the latter is the precise wording I'd nail my flag to, but the former seems profoundly untrustworthy and dangerous.

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