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 -
New epstein files stash released - search here: https://www.justice.gov/epstein
Trump is mentioned lots of times though some of the more lurid accusations (I was gangbanged by Trump and a bunch of other rich dudes) seem to be non credible. Epstein emailed himself about how he was annoyed that Bill Gates needed medicine from banging underage russian girls - probably fake blackmail. He also got banned from Xbox Live, shared coomer FNAF 4chan threads, talked with Chomsky about racial intelligence differences, getting advice on silencing a girl trying to expose his friends. For our global-intelligence-conspiracy friends, there are some connections to intelligence agencies.
Mods, remove this if it's a crappy post. It's hard to come up with a through line for this, other than "WOW he knew a lot of people".
SCOTT IS IN THE EPSTEIN FILES
Literally in an email chain named, “Forbidden Research” LMAO
EDIT: Did Epstein fund MIRI? Eliezer Yudkowsky had a Skype with Epstein during a MIRI fundraiser.
...why does that guy think CRISPR is dangerous and forbidden ?
I mean, I'm fairly certain germline-engineering humans with CRISPR is indeed forbidden.
As for "dangerous", well, two reasons.
CRISPR has a tendency to sometimes misfire and fuck up other stuff than what you intended. When tampering with plants or animals, no big deal, do more than necessary and dispose of the defectives. With humans, more of a big deal.
CRISPR itself can be encoded into inserted genes. This allows for gene drives - super-heritable traits that are always passed on to offspring (because you inherit one allele for the trait, and then that allele itself overwrites its counterpart from the other parent so you now have two copies and will always pass one of them to any child). One of the more obvious uses of this is in pest control: you introduce engineered versions of the pest species that are super-heritably of one sex, causing extinction when it wipes out the other sex. If such a gene drive were introduced to humans, genocide would be necessary to save the species. More generally, attempts to unilaterally alter the human gene pool this way open up a giant squirming can of worms that we'd all rather remain closed.
How would you even introduce it in sufficient numbers? Also given that it only spreads during reproduction, it's really not that dangerous.
He's not talking about CRISPR in human context, but in general, no? And there it's a widely used tool.
Well, I mean, it does double every generation relative to population growth (because it's passed on to all children, always), so you only need one to kick it off (or a few, to avoid teething problems with the first affected person happening to die childless). Not an imminent threat of extinction, but of course the longer it goes the bigger headache you're going to have uprooting the entire family tree, and you always have the twin problems of "lots of people will object to genocide"/"the necessary social changes to do it anyway over their objection are not especially pleasant and won't necessarily go away".
More imminently, I suppose there are faster-breeding species that we need that could be targetted, although I can't think of a gotcha off-hand (and likely wouldn't share it if I could; while my innate tendency is to be the Oracle, I make some attempt to be the Sage and not dump all my infohazards into public circulation).
I don't know.
Even today you could probably take the cells of the affected individuals, excise the gene drive and do IVF.
It doesn't have to be a hard genocide, but you're still talking about quite a serious invasion of liberty.
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