site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33870 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 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.

I applaud your deep reading of the article, because it shows how bureaucratic thinking can infiltrate any job.

Notice the language of Bell - "everyone did it this way", "I was just doing what I had been told" - It's the "I followed orders and The Process" defense. I'd be much happier if a technician or supervisory one at that actually had a technician's mindset and pride in his/her work that would lead them to think "You know, if these rails are always a little off, that's probably a bad thing, even if 1/8th of an inch isn't Big Bad on its own." No, instead, there's citing of reports and approvals and procedure.

This is your brain on PMC+Bureaucracy. This is how they want you to think because then capital-C Compliance is the way to a "respectable" job.

Even if that job is making sure everyone is in alphabetical order before going into the culling machine.

I am not an expert on railway safety but presumably there is some tolerance for these gaps, below which changes are not concerning. I am not sure 1/8 of an inch is the correct number but there is some correct number. It makes sense to me that the process for inspection incorporates these tolerances. In this specific context Bell is contesting his being fired. In which case whether he was doing the thing he was trained to do is relevant. "I was following the procedure my employer trained me to do" is, to my mind, a pretty good defense against "this employee acted negligently in their role." Or, at least, it shifts any negligence off the employee to the employer.

"You know, if these rails are always a little off, that's probably a bad thing, even if 1/8th of an inch isn't Big Bad on its own."

Is it a bad thing, though? How much are these gaps expected to change naturally? What is the inter-inspector accuracy? I do not have the domain knowledge to answer these questions but it seems plausible to me the mentioned 1/8 inch is a tolerance below which variation is not worth worrying about.

Relevantly, 1/8 inch is the threshold below which it becomes very difficult to measure without specialized equipment. If these guys are measuring stuff with tape measures ordinary human error would make a ridiculous number of changes to the logs.

I am not an expert on railway safety but presumably there is some tolerance for these gaps, below which changes are not concerning.

Changes are essentially summed vectors. 1/8" or less of a change from month to month is almost never going to be a problem. 10 of those negligible movements in a row, in the same direction, is a massive problem! But if you didn't update the documented measurement, because each time you checked, it had changed 1/8" or less, you would never even know that your position had drifted by an entire inch from your documentation. The only non-negligent way I can think of to track the sum of many small vectors is to record the actual measurement every time.

But ten of those movements would be noted, because they weren't updating the logs when it moved 1/16 inch.

I am making some assumptions about the procedure I suppose. I'm imagining they measure a gap of some size, 1" say, and that's what they record. Then, on subsequent inspections, if the gap measures less than 1-1/8" they just leave the measurement at 1". So not updating the measurement over months and years implies a net change less than 1/8". If they reset the baseline they are measuring the gap against on subsequent measurements then I agree that is a huge problem.

If the measurement is supposed to be 56 1/2", and you measure it and it turns out to be 56 17/32", and then the next time you measure it it's 56 19/32", and then 56 21/32", then you'll now note that 56 21/32" is more than 1/8" from the nominal 56 1/2", and you'll record that. It's only if

  1. You DO record the measurement each time and

  2. You compare against the previous measurement, not the nominal correct value

that creep will get you.

True - I was assuming for some reason they were only recording deltas but it's hard to imagine there wouldn't be some measurement against a baseline. ETA: I guess if that's the case, then I don't understand how it would be possible to disregard measurements under the "less than 1/8 inch" policy and have them end up moving to the point of failure, unless through complete dereliction.

What makes you think the procedure was bad?

(And no, "obviously the technicians should care about 1/8 inch" is not enough to show that the procedure is bad. Especially since the problem had in fact been repeatedly reported! That's a management problem; the technicians were just being used as patsies for the management problem.)

had a technician's mindset and pride in his/her work that would lead them to think "You know, if these rails are always a little off, that's probably a bad thing, even if 1/8th of an inch isn't Big Bad on its own."

Technicians are all about tolerances and making things work. That’s bureaucrats demanding measurements.

Better phrasing than mine, for sure.

Maybe it's more the tyranny of metrics as product. If the point of measurements, and tolerances is to "make things work" that's fine. It seems to me that, in this case, the point of measurements was to point at the measurements.

The measurements were almost certainly intended to make sure that technicians caught stuff proactively rather than reactively; that technicians just photocopied it for decades because eh good enough is what the bureaucrats were trying to prevent.

This seems more a human factors problem than a technical one: "within tolerance from install time" is probably fine from an engineering perspective: many complex systems manage by just painting alignment marks on bolts to spot movement. That lazy technicians might just photocopy it is a QA issue: even if they had to write it, they could just rewrite the values without actually taking measurements.

Setting up systems like this is its own art. There are plenty of watch clock systems to make sure your security guards actually patrol your facility and don't just nap at the desk and sign the forms. Otherwise "establish a high trust culture" doesn't seem scalable, but maybe works in a few life-critical industries (airplane mechanics). There are probably some modern computer-driven solutions (see electronic charts in medicine?), but even then those are pretty modern takes on a process they've been doing for decades.

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