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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25767 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026

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Adding "inevitable" only worsens the problem,

I disagree, I would argue that by adding the word inevitable and positing a specific mechanism @FCfromSSC is both narrowing the scope of the original thesis and providing a valuable clarification as to the shape of the disagreement.

Likewise I have read your response to FC and reiterate my opinion that you are not engaging seriously with his points.

FC calls out Devereaux's rhetorical slight-of-hand conflating "literacy" with "decadence" and your reply was essentially to point out that Devereaux's slight-of-hand is in service of the desired conclusion. My reply to your reply is "yes, clearly". That doesn't invalidate FC's objection, nor does it absolve Devereaux of responsibility.

I feel like the rest of your reply follows a similar pattern. You either set up a straw/weakman to knock down. For instance you say things like "A claim being "inspiring" is very different from it being true." but if FC made the claim that something being "inspiring" was the same as it being "true" I must have missed it. Or (much like Devereaux) you try to redirect the objection by making it about something else as you did just now.

Instead, both you and Devereaux seem to be using "macroscopic factors matter" (has anyone here seriously argued that they don't?) as an excuse to dismiss your opponents arguments and observations out of hand.

It seems that FC dislikes it when Devereaux says so:

Of course the superb irony in all this is that not only is Devereaux's whole thesis predicated on an image of the Fremen that bears little resemblance to Frank Herbert's, but that a major theme of the book is the dissonance between what people know, what people think they know, and the ground-level truth. The Great Houses of the Landsraad know that the Fremen are a bunch of primitive screwheads because that's what all the reports say, but "knowing" something does not make it so.

I disagree, I would argue that by adding the word inevitable and positing a specific mechanism @FCfromSSC is both narrowing the scope of the original thesis and providing a valuable clarification as to the shape of the disagreement.

Huh? "Good times make weak men, weak men make hard times, hard times make strong men, strong men make good times" can't be made stronger as a claim by virtue of adding "inevitable" as a qualifier. It weakens it, because inevitable quite literally means it'll happen at some point. When? Idk, presumably by at least the Heat Death of the universe.

It's the difference between "don't run with scissors (because you might hurt yourself" and "running with scissors will inevitably hurt you".

The real problem with "inevitable" in the original context is that it drains the claim of predictive content by removing any time horizon. A claim that something will definitely happen eventually is weaker than a claim that it tends to happen, because the latter can actually be falsified on a human timescale.

"Inevitable" is the word you add when you want to sound certain while committing to nothing. It's the rhetorical equivalent of predicting rain "eventually." The original aphorism at least implies a cycle with some regularity. "Inevitable" just means "sometime before the sun explodes."

It doesn't clarify mechanisms, it obscures them, by letting the speaker off the hook for when and how often the cycle actually turns.

FC calls out Devereaux's rhetorical slight-of-hand conflating "literacy" with "decadence" and your reply was essentially to point out that Devereaux's slight-of-hand is in service of the desired conclusion. My reply to your reply is "yes, clearly". That doesn't invalidate FC's objection, nor does it absolve Devereaux of responsibility.

You know what? On re-reading the ACOUP article, it's more clear to me that Devereaux doesn't even do what FC accuses him of doing.

Devereaux doesn't offer a single definition of "decadence". Rather, his argument is precisely that the concept lacks a coherent definition, which is part of what he's critiquing. He treats decadence as the structural opposite of "Fremeness" in the Fremen Mirage: the idea that wealthy, complex, settled societies become soft, morally corrupt, and militarily weak as a result of their comfort and prosperity ("good times create soft men"). This is the popular notion (associated especially with Gibbon's account of Rome) that moral decay leads to military decline.

But Devereaux's whole point is that "decadence" as used in this framework is intellectually bankrupt. It's defined essentially as losing, making the argument circular and unfalsifiable: Fremen win because they're not decadent, and we know they're not decadent because they win. He's less interested in defining decadence than in showing that the concept, however loosely understood as "moral/cultural softness resulting from wealth and complexity," doesn't actually explain Roman military history when you look at the evidence carefully.

I feel like the rest of your reply follows a similar pattern. You either set up a straw/weakman to knock down. For instance you say things like "A claim being "inspiring" is very different from it being true." but if FC made the claim that something being "inspiring" was the same as it being "true" I must have missed it. Or (much like Devereaux) you try to redirect the objection by making it about something else as you did just now.

Hardly. FC posits that it's an inspiring claim. Telling a child that he's Spiderman is inspiring, but it might lead to him jumping off a building (a friend of mine did exactly that as a kid, thankfully he landed in a bush).

Of course the superb irony in all this is that not only is Devereaux's whole thesis predicated on an image of the Fremen that bears little resemblance to Frank Herbert's, but that a major theme of the book is the dissonance between what people know, what people think they know, and the ground-level truth. The Great Houses of the Landsraad know that the Fremen are a bunch of primitive screwheads because that's what all the reports say, but "knowing" something does not make it so.

In the main series, Devereaux is pretty explicit that “Fremen” is a label for a trope and for outsiders’ perceptions, not a claim that the referenced societies really are “barbarian primitives.” He even repeats the point that when he calls a culture “Fremen,” he’s talking about how it’s perceived within the trope, not “tagging them” as uncivilized.

He also leans hard into the exact “Irulan problem” you’re gesturing at: the story of the Fremen (in-universe and in real-world reception) is largely told by settled elites, and those portrayals are often about the elites themselves rather than accurate ethnography of the “Fremen.”

Are you familiar with the old motorcycle line about there being two types of riders, those who have gone down, and those who will.

The meaning and value of such a statement isn't so much in it's literal semantic content so much as what follows from it. You may have never had a wreck, but that just means that you're due. Every time you ride you are rolling the dice, and if you keep rolling dice eventually you are going to roll snake-eyes. To dismiss it as offering no predictive value on a given dice-roll is to completely miss the point.

In their addendum @FCfromSSC posits a specific mechanism by which "Good times make weak men, and weak men make hard times", that being the unmooring of status and rewards from performance. In doing so they provide a valuable insight into precisely what it is they mean by "good times" and "bad times", and by "strong" and "weak". Through FC's addendum we can even derive a possible working definition of the term "Decadence" IE the degree to which status is no longer reflective of performance. This greatly narrows the scope of the debate, and presents us with possible examples both fictional and historical to play with.

Of course this addendum is problematic for Devereaux and his supporters as by offering a mechanism and the merest hint of a definition FC has shot the whole "Decadence lacks a coherent definition" argument to pieces.

FC posits that it's an inspiring claim. Telling a child that he's Spiderman is inspiring, but it might lead to him jumping off a building (a friend of mine did exactly that as a kid, thankfully he landed in a bush).

Please point to the specific place where @FCfromSSC stated anything to the effect that something being "inspiring" was the same as it being "true".

In the main series, Devereaux is pretty explicit that “Fremen” is a label for a trope and for outsiders’ perceptions, not a claim that the referenced societies really are “barbarian primitives.”

I assume you included the qualifier "In the main series" because you were aware that Devereaux had devoted an entire interlude to how poor and unsophisticated the Fremen are, and wanted to cover your ass in case I brought it up.

I reiterate my position that Devereaux is attacking a strawman, and by extension I believe that you, @self_made_human, are attacking a strawman. I don't really see what else there is to say.

Are you familiar with the old motorcycle line about there being two types of riders, those who have gone down, and those who will.

The meaning and value of such a statement isn't so much in it's literal semantic content so much as what follows from it. You may have never had a wreck, but that just means that you're due. Every time you ride you are rolling the dice, and if you keep rolling dice eventually you are going to roll snake-eyes. To dismiss it as offering no predictive value on a given dice-roll is to completely miss the point.

The leading cause of death was being alive in the first place. Cautioning against the risk of motorcycle accidents is based on decades of actuarial information and comparisons to the relative and absolute risk from other forms of transport. If FC was able to muster up that kind of information, I would not be making this argument.

Please point to the specific place where @FCfromSSC stated anything to the effect that something being "inspiring" was the same as it being "true".

Please note that I am making an additional claim. I do not dispute that it is inspirational, many things are inspirational. I dispute that it is true or helpful. You can inspire people to do stupid things.

I assume you included the qualifier "In the main series" because you were aware that Devereaux had devoted an entire interlude to how poor and unsophisticated the Fremen are, and wanted to cover your ass in case I brought it up.

I am flattered that you think I care about arguing about Dune that much, or covering my ass beyond the pants I wear with regularity. Devereaux points out the poverty of Fremen, in comparison to the other powers in the setting. Them being stronger than outsiders believe is mildly interesting in-universe, but it adds fuck all to the Hard Times thesis.

I notice you edited out your reference to being a patent lawyer. I never could have guessed.

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