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 -
There's an additional, horrible oncoming problem which, even without the war, Iran would have real trouble fixing - water. Apparently they're overdrafting their aquifers so badly that there's ground subsidence of up to appx 30cm/yr at the worst, which not only causes infrastructure damage, but also
permanently andirretrievably diminishes the ability of the aquifer to be recharged even if the iranians stopped overdrafting on them. There's been estimates that they've suffered up to 70% depletion in groundwater reserve capacity, and they're in a half-decade long drought. Large numbers of dams are at critically low levels, and there's massive illegal pumping in the agriculture sector because, like California, Iranian agriculture focuses on very water-intensive commercial export crops (in CA, almonds, grapes, strawberries, and stonefruits; in Iran pistachios and melons). Further, insofar as Iran wants to rebuild its heavy industries, a lot of those plants will require a lot of water as well...there just isn't enough of it to go around, particularly for a megacity like Tehran (near 17 million in the metropolitan area). Some of the more alarmist reports indicate that there's already been dry-tap episodes in some neighborhoods.More options
Context Copy link