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 -
The jury of one’s peers in our system does not decide the rules. The judge gives juries instructions on the rules. And I don’t believe the judge either gets to “make up the rules” or atleast they shouldn’t. The rules come from the legislator. The question is how interpretive do judges get to be on the “rules” and who actually gets to be the rule maker.
The jury makes deterministic decisions on the the evidence in the case and whether the “rules” given to them were broken. When juries make up the “rules” we call that jury nullification which happens but I am not sure we consider that allowed.
It varies for different definitions of "we", "that", and "allowed".
Perhaps the strongest case for "not allowed" is that juries are given explicit contrary instructions. Perhaps the strongest case for "allowed" is that there's very few other good reasons to conscript a bunch of random unqualified jackasses off the street to make judgement calls about a trial when there's already a highly trained person, literally titled "judge", right there. The "of their peers" bit isn't added to "jury" because legal types hate concision, it's because that part is critical to nullification protecting against laws that seem good to upper class judges but not to the class of people affected.
(Of course, the strongest case for "shouldn't be allowed" is that often upper class people are just more correct about what's good. E.g. it's much harder to protect unpopular rights if anyone criminally retaliating against their exercise might get let off by a jury nullifying the crime, or at least might be impossible to prosecute in the face of hung juries with some members nullifying the crime.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link