site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14149 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 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.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Orwell once described fascism as "socialism shorn of all its virtues".

My immediate reaction was "what virtues?"

Orwell was a socialist, albeit a cynical and disillusioned one, and he had trouble publishing Animal Farm because the only publishers willing to publish anti-communist parables were anti-communist. Might be worth bearing in mind.

Oh, I'm aware.

For many people, "meaning well" and being nice is very important, sometimes even more than actually accomplishing anything. There is in particular a stark divide between left and right (and also men vs women) on this issue. Plenty of my friends and acquaintances, when confronted with the dysfunction of some left-wing regulations, will nevertheless defend them and not want them abolished, mostly on account that they were originally meant well and should at most be reformed (which nobody ever kicks off and thus never actually happens). Aristocrats who never actually accomplished anything and certainly don't deserve their wealth will often be more popular on account of modest charitable spending and a public image carefully designed to be maximally inoffensive (which is much easier if you're not constrained by trying to accomplish something) than a revolutionary entrepreneur.

Their view, as I understand it, is that communism at least sounds nice in theory and means well originally, and the same goes for communist activist, whereas fascist activist are just irredeemable monsters. Which I even partially agree with, the problem is just that the people they call fascists pretty much never identify as such and have only little commonalities with the historic concept. It's always Adorno-style sophistry where you use a definition of fascism that is 50% totalitarism and 50% being right-wing and then, upon showing that the right-wingers are indeed right-wing, claim that there are large parallels between fascism and whatever right-winger you choose. Not to mention that irrespective of the good intention of the communist, I don't want to end up in the gulag anyway.

For many people, "meaning well" and being nice is very important, sometimes even more than actually accomplishing anything. There is in particular a stark divide between left and right (and also men vs women) on this issue. Plenty of my friends and acquaintances, when confronted with the dysfunction of some left-wing regulations, will nevertheless defend them and not want them abolished, mostly on account that they were originally meant well and should at most be reformed (which nobody ever kicks off and thus never actually happens).

I can't help but notice how well this parallels the discourse around generative AI and whether or not it has a "soul" in the sense of the author's intentions. To some people, this intent of the author exists in an image (or video or song or a block of text or etc.) only insofar as the actual final pixels represent such an intent; the actual thoughts that went through the author's head in the moment don't matter. To others, it's the actual thoughts that matter, and how well the pixels convey those thoughts are merely a curiosity.

Right now, the culture war lines drawn in the world of generative AI doesn't seem to neatly match other lines of older culture wars, but I wonder if this aspect will mean we'll see support/opposition to treating media generated by AI as having exactly as much meaning as those generated by humans without AI getting split up in right/left or male/female. It's possible we're seeing it happen already (it's hard to get a sense of the latter, especially, since new tech is almost always heavily male-dominated by default).

That issue is somewhat confused by postmodernism and death-of-the-author being associated with left-wing intellectual discourse, even though it's also left-wing to hate on AI for lacking soul. It's not quite irreconcilable - you can say, for example, that the fun thing about experiencing art is trying to guess what the author meant, so that the game is equally spoiled by rigid adherence to factually documented authorial intent or by the knowledge that the content was spat out by a machine and there is no 'there' there to guess at. But it's an interesting paradox.

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