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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   25274 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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Remember "learn to code"?

Years of being talked down to by someone who was smugly wrong has done a lot of damage.

Pretty much everyone is smugly wrong all the time, so it's not a strong explanation for anything in particular. Right-wing anti-environmentalism predates any sort of SE-related retraining push. Environmentalism is lib-coded in the US because libs are generally the ones worried about the commons and proposing trading off economic growth for QoL improvements, while red states are more likely to have a direct interest in the fossil fuel industry.

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Separately from that, the problem with "learn to code" was not that it was it was wrong, but that, like every other kind of bootstrap rhetoric, it wasn't actionable. It's one step up from "git good" in terms of life advice. If they were capable of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, they wouldn't be rotting in a central PA town. However, the underlying concept was correct: "The mine/paper mill/meat packing facility/whatever isn't coming back and you/your community is going to have to reinvent itself or (more realistically) die. Anyone telling you otherwise is scamming you."

Of course, telling a bunch of middle-aged rural conservatives "change or die" didn't go over great, no matter what positive gloss was put on it. But no one was quite willing to bite the bullet and tell them their options were to get pensioned off while their kids moved away and their way of life slowly died or to get none of that and have their way of life still slowly die off. Not that it would have made much difference. Nobody gracefully accepts extinction, so it was pretty much a given that they'd fall for any conman willing to promise to turn back the clock.

Environmentalism is lib-coded in the US because libs are generally the ones worried about the commons and proposing trading off economic growth for QoL improvements

Liberals have also never satisfactorily rooted out the watermelons in the movement, nor the plainly misanthropic. Maybe now that Ehrlich is finally dead they can move on from their human culling fantasies.

God that phrase chaps my ass.

I have coal miners in my family. There is no way that they would be able to learn to code with enough proficiency to find a job. Even if they could, they live in East god-damned Kentucky. After the return to office mania of the last 18 months, where the hell would they get a job doing it?

There is no way that they would be able to learn to code with enough proficiency to find a job.

Yeah one big problem we're facing especially now with AI potentially is "what do we do with the morons who can't or won't do something else that is needed/wanted when their job is no longer necessary". During the Great recession, the answer was put the old idiots on disability like it's early retirement as a band aid solution, but this has awful aesthetics and doesn't work when technology might soon be making larger and larger portions of the population into useless morons who can't compete with automation.

Like it makes sense to put them on disability to some degree. Like if you think of some mentally handicapped man who can only understand things at the level of "pick up bucket, go to river, fill bucket, come back" and has been doing that for 30 years, and then piping gets invented and he's no longer needed, he suddenly goes from able bodied to disabled. He could work, now he can't.

That it's a 59 year old former factory worker or coal miner or other laborer who can't meaningfully adjust to a new job after they got automated out doesn't change the underlying logic here. But still, bad aesthetic.

Years of being talked down to by someone who was smugly wrong has done a lot of damage.

For me, this touches on a big issue. I strongly suspect that the people who are pushing wind and solar are the same people who are wrong about George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse, Duke Lacrosse, Global Warming, gender ideology, HBD, third-world immigration, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Black Lives Matter, gay marriage, and probably a bunch of other stuff I can't think of at the moment.

What all these things have in common is that they are a magnet for people who are far more interested in following what's fashionable, i.e. virtue-signalling, than anything else.

This is interesting to me, because one of those is just a plain brute fact that is true, that can't be argued with, and yet you choose to deny it and package it up with all the other culture war shibboleths that are part of the culture.

I wonder to what extent everything someone believes is received from the air their breath with no reference to how the world actually is? Is it the same for every population, or do some groups actually have more of a connection to cause and effect?

It's global warming by the way. There is room for debate on some other yes/no propositions you have up there interspersed with the axiomatic statements, but that one is just a thing that is real, but some people don't want to be real so they close their eyes to it/believe the grifters and woowoo peddlers instead.

It's global warming by the way. There is room for debate on some other yes/no propositions you have up there interspersed with the axiomatic statements, but that one is just a thing that is real

Well when you assert that "global warming" is "real" and a "plain brute fact" what exactly do you mean by "global warming"?

That average temperatures across the globe taken over the course of year X, are higher than x-1, and x+1 will be higher than x.

Eg, the globe is warming.

Less snarkily, that the models popularised over the last 50 years or so have been mostly correct, and all show a warming trend. That is the thing that is a plain brute fact that can't be denied: that climatologists in the 70's said "Hey, it looks like it's getting hotter" and then it did.

That average temperatures across the globe taken over the course of year X, are higher than x-1, and x+1 will be higher than x.

Well, this one's just not true; e.g. 2021 was cooler than 2020. Even x to x+10 failed for 1998 vs 2008. I'm not sure if we'll ever see a decadal drop again without some major change, but the trend is still only something like 0.025C/year, and year-to-year variation of ~0.1C still regularly swamps that.

Less snarkily, that the models popularised over the last 50 years or so have been mostly correct, and all show a warming trend.

Remove "popularised" and this one's true. But the way we (well, the news media and the most salacious academics) popularize a model is to take whatever the most extreme possibility is at one p<0.01 end of the predictions, turn that into a "it will never snow in Britain again!!" headline, and so convert tomorrow's credibility into today's paycheck. Current measured warming since 1990 is pretty much right on the "Business-as-Usual"+"Best Estimate" line from the 1990 IPCC report, which puts it way above the "weather just changes, it'll probably revert to the mean again" null hypothesis, but "we're up nearly 1C and it's still accelerating" feels anticlimactic to people who vaguely think they remember that coastal cities were supposed to be flooding or something by now.

The models are not mostly correct. The IPCC report includes out a whole bunch of estimates... which have on some occasions ALL been high, but just the fact that there are a lot of them suggests chicanery. Unless the same model consistently hits, which is not the case.

That average temperatures across the globe taken over the course of year X, are higher than x-1, and x+1 will be higher than x.

Eg, the globe is warming.

This is what I would call "motte global warming." And yes, there is little room to doubt that motte global warming is "real" and a "plain brute fact."

But when I said that a certain group of people was wrong about global warming, that's not what I meant. Because they push what could be called "bailey global warming." The idea that (1) if unchecked, mankind's CO2 emissions will cause significant warming; AND (2) that warming will be magnified by water vapor feedback; AND (3) that this magnified warming will have a devastating impact on the climate, i.e. it will cause major harm.

To be sure, when these people are on the defensive, they do what all motte & bailey types do: They pivot to the motte. "It's indisputable that global surface temperatures have risen measurably over the last 100 years" or "basic mathematical calculations show that an increase in CO2 levels will lead to measurable increases in global surface temperatures" All true, but later they pivot to the bailey: "We must substantially reduce CO2 emissions or else there will be a disaster!!"

Less snarkily, that the models popularised over the last 50 years or so have been mostly correct, and all show a warming trend.

I can't really comment on this since I don't know what specific models you are referring to. That being said, I would challenge you to find a prominent climate model which (1) made bona fide predictions which were interesting, correct, and were actual (i.e. not retroactive) predictions; and (2) also predicts dangerous warming for the Earth.

There is no bailey, it’s all motte. There’s an extremely strong scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to global warming and there’s no credible alternative explanation for the rise in temperature. The only thing that tracks the rapid temperature rise is human causes.

There is no bailey, it’s all motte. There’s an extremely strong scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to global warming and there’s no credible alternative explanation for the rise in temperature. The only thing that tracks the rapid temperature rise is human causes.

Let's cut to the chase:

  1. Please summarize the evidence that mankind's greenhouse gas emissions, if unchecked, will lead to DANGEROUS warming, i.e. warming sufficient to cause substantial harm to human life and property.

  2. Do you believe that this position represents scientific consensus?

  3. If, so what's your evidence that this position represents scientific consensus?

This seems to paint a good summary but I’m not an expert in the subject.

Your position is that climate change is happening, but that it’s not caused by humans and not a cause for concern? What lead you to this belief?

Especially the latter one. Natural rapid global warming, whatever the cause, still leads to rising sea levels, flooding of coastal areas, warming of the oceans, extreme weather events (hurricanes, droughts, etc. which can be devastating especially to less prosperous nations).

And do you think greenhouse gases don’t influence the climate at all, or that we’re not emitting enough to cause an impact?

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Scientific consensus? Nah, solid 19th century math and physics.

If you doubt it, you can at home repeat the experiments and redo the calculations of Joseph Fourier , Eunice Newton Foote, John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius.

Or you can go reject all of it, spit at life work of the finest European scientists and go full flat earther, your life your choice.

None of this matter at this time, the train is not stopping, it is going straigth to Paleocene and speeding up. Get on higher ground and enjoy the ride.

Scientific consensus? Nah, solid 19th century math and physics.

According to "solid 19th century math and physics," how much warming can one expect as a result of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions?

How can you be “wrong” about gay marriage? You can be for or against gay marriage, but it’s not a fact that you can be empirically right or wrong about, unlike global warming.

You’re committing the exact same sin of picking your worldview based on what’s fashionable to the red tribe. Why can’t you accept global warming and HBD at the same time? Be against third world immigration and for trans rights?

How can you be “wrong” about gay marriage? You can be for or against gay marriage, but it’s not a fact that you can be empirically right or wrong about, unlike global warming.

Briefly, gay marriage is a policy. Proposed policies have predicted positive and negative consequences, and supporters of proposed policies are staking a position that the positive consequences will outweigh the negative consequences. People are wrong on a policy if, when the policy is enacted, their prediction is falsified because the positive effects end up being outweighed by the negative effects. You can be empirically right or wrong about the consequences of a policy, including gay marriage.

How can you be “wrong” about gay marriage?

That's a good question, because yeah, it's largely a question of values. To me, it's somewhat clear -- but not indisputably clear -- that the costs of gay marriage significantly outweigh the benefits. That being said, if the people supporting wind and solar were supporting gay marriage but none of the other nonsense, I would be less skeptical.

Because that alienates my potential allies and prevents me from forming strong in-group bonds, which is what all humans aspire to accomplish?

This mindset is what put us in this mess in the first place. Do you not think perhaps many on the other side are the same?

Personally, I believe rightwing populist movement started off with valid grievances. But this mentality of refusing to contradict your allies empowers extremists, grifters and manipulative sociopaths that distort your movement, make you deny reality more and more, until one day you’re fighting in the service of a monster that bears no resemblance to your original beliefs.

To me this is what’s happening to the right in America and the West in general. There is no rightwing ideology anymore. The “leaders” of the movement are abandoning all of its core principles and the only thing you’re left with is vibes, bonding with your allies in saying more and more grotesque untruths, and needing to beat the “other side” at all costs.

This mindset is what put us in this mess in the first place. Do you not think perhaps many on the other side are the same?

Of course I think that. I even said so! See:

which is what all humans aspire to accomplish?

Although I admit it isn't rare to see dehumanization of political opponents, so I guess I wasn't explicit enough.

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