site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A 200-meter pyre for 1,200 sheep doesn't stand against the magical pyres at Treblinka that could cremate 7,000 people using a "few dry branches" or no fuel at all! So it goes.

It is a physical fact that a human body releases several times more heat when burned that is required to evaporate all the water it contains (the main heat sink, everything else is a rounding error). This means that the more bodies you burn at once, the less extra fuel you need per body, on the margin. You have not disputed this claim at all, except by asking GPT if a single body can be burned with minimal extra fuel.

And then there's the issue of comparing apples to oranges: how much more efficient the Germans became after tons of trial and error (as mentioned in your own sources) and how much lower were their standards for the acceptable result of cremation compared to the USDA (not to mention human crematoriums).

You are just speaking pure nonsense, but I'll point out that the standard of cremation for hiding the evidence of a crime requires a much higher state of destruction than cremating a carcass for sanitary or biohazard reasons.

You are just speaking pure nonsense

I'm speaking elementary school math.

but I'll point out that the standard of cremation for hiding the evidence of a crime

Why would the Nazis want to hide the evidence of something they did not consider a crime? You sound like you're brainwashed by the Jewish propaganda saying that WW2 was about the Holocaust. It was not, not at all whatsoever. I repeat, reading "The Holocaust: a Nazi Perspective" might do you some good. Or not, if you are genuinely not capable of doing elementary school math among other things.

Why would the Nazis want to hide the evidence of something they did not consider a crime?

According to official historiography, the discovery of the Katyn Forest mass graves by the Germans led Himmler to be concerned about the Holocaust mass graves being discovered in the same way. The story goes, he therefore ordered the extermination camps to exhume the corpses of the millions of murdered Jews and for them to be cremated.

Hiding the evidence is cited by mainstream historiography as the motive for the Germans exhuming the millions bodies they had just buried and burning them on open-air pyres.

There were even allegations that the Germans went further and mixed the cremated ashes of the gas chamber victims with concrete and used it to pave roads. The road that was constructed near Treblinka from around this time was forensically tested but no human remains were found in the material. There were also allegations that the cremains were manufactured into fertilizer and used for German crops. However, cremated remains are toxic to plant life largely due to the high concentration of sodium.

This is to say, hiding the evidence is the alleged motive motive for the gargantuan task of cremating 5,000-7,000 people every single day on open-air pyres in Treblinka. It therefore would have required cremation with a very high state of destruction.

Contrary to a layperson's perception of cremains, even state-of-the-art cremation furnaces do not reduce a body to pure ash. There are still many thousands of identifiable bone fragments and many large identifiable bone fragments. Needless to say, an open-air pyre is far less efficient than a state-of-the-art cremation furnace and would have extreme difficulty in reaching even this state of destruction.

There would be many hundreds of millions of identifiable teeth and bone fragments in the ground of Treblinka if the story were true, and it would be trivial to excavate huge masses of cremains at Treblinka and disprove Revisionism forever. But that is never going to happen, because the authorities know that those masses of remains are not there.

I repeat, reading "The Holocaust: a Nazi Perspective"

I've read it, it's typical Moldbug. Very provocative title, but makes no effort at a genuine Nazi perspective. He just cites a witness and says "good enough for me!"

good thing we're not talking about proper cremations! you do realize the nazis weren't exactly interested in giving the people they genocided a proper burial, right?

i seriously don't know what your trouble is when both @official_techsupport and @faul_sname gave you very good explanations, with faul_sname handholding you through the math while you regurgitate fucking chatgpt and present it as an actual argument

So that's now 3 people who have claimed it takes no fuel to cremate bodies, just for the record.

I have provided empirical evidence in the form of historical mass cremation, where massive amounts of fuel were used to cremate livestock:

According to a USDA veterinarian who helped during the U.K. outbreak, a 200-meter funeral pyre was used to incinerate 400 cows or 1,200 sheep or 1,600 pigs. Such a pyre required 1,000 railway ties, 8 tons of kindling, 400 wooden pallets, 4 tons of straw, 200 tons of coal, and 1,000 liters of diesel fuel.

I've also cited modern cremation practices, which are universally known and acknowledged to require huge amounts of energy.

Too bad the workers didn't know that the cremation could have been accomplished with only a match and a little kindling. Too bad modern crematoriums are operated by such stupid people that they don't understand how easy cremation is.

I literally can't believe that we now have 3 people who believe that the cremation of 5,000 to 7,000 people could be accomplished without fuel beyond a little kindling. Such a lack of critical thinking and devotion to a cult-like belief in absurd claims.

So that's now 3 people who have claimed it takes no fuel to cremate bodies, just for the record.

like to start the process? i don't think anyone claimed people were spontaneously combusting? if you think that was the argument then that's... a little weird.

To incinerate bodies, large cremation pits were constructed at Camp 3 within Treblinka II.[k] The burning pyres were used to cremate the new corpses along with the old ones, which had to be dug up as they had been buried during the first six months of the camp's operation. Built under the instructions of Herbert Floß, the camp's cremation expert, the pits consisted of railroad rails laid as grates on blocks of concrete. The bodies were placed on rails over wood, splashed with petrol, and burned.

from wikipedia ^

no one is claiming they just randomly burst into flames. but... as @faul_sname explained, it is a energy positive process, and you're not burning 1 body at a time.

there's the physics explanation of course and then there's also the experimental...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wick_effect

A larger scale experiment conducted for the BBC television programme Q.E.D. involved a dead pig's body being wrapped in a blanket and placed in a furnished room. The blanket was lit with the aid of a small amount of petrol. The body took some time to ignite and burned at a very high temperature with low flames. The heat collected at the top of the room and melted a television. However, the flames caused very little damage to the surroundings, and the body burned for a number of hours before it was extinguished and examined. On examination it was observed that the flesh and bones in the burnt portion had been destroyed

what explanation do you have against the physics of it?