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 am a scientist. Newspaper articles have been written on my work, albeit ones over which I had little control; I have read them and I have sighed over their inaccuracies. I am well aware of what you meant, as I suspect is @RenOS.
I am telling you as a scientist that it’s really easy to use this reasoning to work yourself into some very shady places. Reaching its nadir when you start musing happily about how all the lay people don’t really understand how these things are done…
It’s precisely because it’s partly true that it’s so fucking seductive.
Well, same(ish) - I have not been featured in the news (nor is it likely to happen anytime soon given that I am in unfashionable theoretical CS), but then on the other hand I count some actual historians among my relatives so I have some inside view of that sausage factory. I think the main difference to me is that the thing you describe as a nadir does not feel particularly bad to me, on its own. The educator part of the job has always felt fundamentally adversarial to me - even well-selected students will at any point in time use 95% of their galaxy brains (or, well, of whatever fraction of those they are willing to invest in your course at all) only to engage in mental gymnastics to convince themselves that they are perfect just as they are, and to convince you that they learned and applied what you wanted them to without them actually having done those things. (The sheer inventiveness I've seen in schemes to circumvent automated plagiarism detectors in programming assignments that could be done with a fraction of the effort, or to hide transparently false lemmas in the bowels of a Rube Goldberg proof of a three-liner that was covered in class!)
To teach these students - not an anonymous public, and not on a topic of any political valence, but people you know and a subset of whom you hope to elevate to colleagues some day! - requires constant subterfuge and deception to get past the ego defenses of their monkey brains. That you would do all that and more when actually just talking to normies seems absolutely par for the course for me. It's not like I'm not bothered by the politically motivated deception cases @RenOS was hinting at, but there I see the problem somewhere else. It is only really bad if, before deciding to deceive the public, these scientists have already deceived themselves, or otherwise transgressed against the mental discipline that a scientist needs for science as a whole to function in the long run. (Many cases of this don't even involve politics, cf. every case of trash stats replication crisis just-so story zingers. I blame the general culture in US academia where idealism about science qua science is seen as cringe and unbefitting of a successful working adult.) If it were as he says, and these people indeed merely advanced their agenda when talking to the general public but treated evidence fairly while engaging in the scientific process, I would perhaps find them tasteless as politicians, but not compromised as scientists.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link