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 -
I wish this was driven by a fear of aristocracy, but I don't think it is. Many of these same people scream for a dictator of the proletariat. They imagine themselves as the rightful aristocracy because they are just heckin' good people, you know? And if they had absolute power they'd show it to you.
No, the fear of noticing is driven by a paranoia of Eugenics. If we abandon people to the consequences of their choices, or heaven forbid their children, then that's nearly the same as putting them on a train to the nearest extermination camp. No, instead the moral thing to do is to feed, clothe and house them and allow them to have as many kids as they want, and just keep giving them more and more and more forever because resources aren't finite. LBJ won a Nobel Prize for inventing the free lunch.
Yes, it is. This is true regardless of whether you have an IQ-aware society. "No human should ever go hungry, cold and homeless, nor be barred from the joy of raising a family; all else being equal it is always more ethical to help a sentient being get these things if it wants them than not to" should be the common-sense baseline of human kindness, and has nothing to do with true meritocratic hiring vs obfuscating credentialism. People like you who think "some people are dumber than others" is equivalent with "dumb people don't deserve to be happy and safe" is precisely what leftists are afraid of when they try to bury any discourse about the biological basis of IQ and you are making their point for them with this kind of cartoonish psychopathy.
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 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:
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:
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.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link