site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   26819 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Consider rent control: (some) leftists think it improves affordable housing availability. (Most) rightists think it does the opposite. Leftists and rightists may place different amounts of value on the availability of affordable housing (and do, to a limited extent, though I don't most rightists are actually opposed in principle), but is that core to the disagreement? If a leftist could be convinced that rent control actually harms their terminal goals (as a good chunk have), then the question is resolved with no value shift.

The core of the disagreement is that those on the right believe the landlord owns the property and the tenant rents it, whereas those on the left basically feel the tenants own the property and the landlord is an employee who maintains it for them. This is typically covered up by a lot of verbiage, but the rhetoric from the left is sometimes quite clear on this point.

There's a lot more: rightists think that housing-first homeless assistance programs don't work, that safe injection sites increase overdose deaths, that gay couples are much more likely to abuse their (adopted) kids, that racial achievement gaps in education can't be solved by shoveling money at inner city schools.

And leftists don't care if any of that is true, they want them anyway. That's the conflict-theory explanation, anyway.

I think a reasonable person on either side of the isle, were they convinced of the other side's claims of fact, might switch sides on any of these issues.

The conflict theorist would say no, would point to evidence, and would point to faked evidence of the opposite from the other side. If the other side is willing to falsify their claims of fact, those claims of fact are not the reason for the belief. In fact, I (a conflict theorist) suggest that a good deal of the reproducibility crisis is caused by researchers using their scientific know-how not to find the truth, but to produce "evidence" for political reasons.

There are committed conflict theorists on both sides, yeah. And they're the loudest voices. But why would they bother with arguments-as-soldiers if no one could be convinced by arguments? I think there are reasonable people whose opinions can be swayed by fact -- I'd like to think I'm one of them -- and, while the information environment for any politically contentious topic tends to be bad, it's not completely intractable.

How large that population is is an open question, and, I imagine, membership is rather fuzzy: there's a wide range of cognitive biases towards preserving one's existing beliefs that mistake theorists can fall prey to, and extreme conflict theory -- on the level of fabricating evidence to support policies you know don't help your cause -- might just be the endpoint of that spectrum. But I can't think of an easy way to determine the shape of that distribution, so maybe it really is mostly conflict theorists. But I don't think so.

But why would they bother with arguments-as-soldiers if no one could be convinced by arguments?

Orwell explains this with the word "duckspeak":

duckspeak - automatic vocal support of political orthodoxies; this usually indicates one's delivery of speech dealing with political matters, delivered without any active thought and sounding very much like noise ("to quack like a duck"), but very clearly fully in line with Party ideology.

The arguments are source material for the duckspeak.

The main arguments which actually work are the the argument from personal benefit, argument from authority, and the argument from force. Including social approval and disapproval for those last two.

the right believe the landlord owns the property and the tenant rents it, whereas those on the left basically feel the tenants own the property and the landlord is an employee who maintains it for them.

But they both agree on the most important thing: 👏no 👏new👏 housing 👏

One of my favorite memes I saw this month:

THE LEFT: "don't build new units/homes, it won't even lower the cost of housing"

THE RIGHT: "yes it will, and that's why it's bad"

NIMBYs and the right aren't the same -- in suburban area, lots of NIMBYs are on the left. And the left doesn't say "don't build new units/homes", they say "build only affordable multi-family housing with no parking". The right (even most NIMBYs) would be fine with greenfield development of market-rate single family homes, but the left has been smart-growth, anti-sprawl, New Urban for a long time and has completely taken over planning decisions, so we get this. Slow recovery from the 2008 crash, some excitement from COVID, and but then capped at a historically low level. The right opposes subsidized housing, though they can't do anything about it, but subsidized housing doesn't help the people who are complaining.

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