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 -
That part is describing his young self's thoughts and a naive somewhat autistic nerd would indeed find that a much more understandable and good world, where things worked that way. A human has certain sense inputs, like vision, which is like pixels in some arrangement, and hearing, and taste, and these combine in the brain and they give pleasure or sometimes pain if it's like a sharp object poking at your skin. You want the inputs that create the pleasure type of sensation, and the goal of humanity is to bring about such sensations. So we have to experimentally ascertain which kinds of inputs give which kinds of sensations and then do more of the good type. For this, we have to isolate the effect of the thing itself, so we don't have noise from other aspects, so we can purely classify and score each individual type of input and then we know what is good and what is bad. It's an impulse to catalog things, like understanding all the herbs and mushrooms and fruits of the forest to know which one is good and which ones is bad. Experiences and tastes and visual qualities are similarly somehow out there, for us to pluck and test, and to use to bring about more pleasure.
If your brain doesn't tick this way, this may sound totally alien, but the more extreme thing-oriented engineer type nerd would find this more comfortable and clean for answering the question "what do people want? what makes them tick?", than the mess that humanity actually works like, the mess and mystery and contradictions that are appreciated and enjoyed by people-oriented people. But obviously the above is exaggerated for effect, I'm not saying that such people are incapable of understanding social realities, and indeed Scott also has grown out that view. Grappling with these things has brought about the concept of "type 2 fun" in this community, but it's still grappling with these ideas of "do you truly like X, or do you just pretend for status reasons", when these are much more inseparably blended in the socially attuned, normal person's mind. Because the type of "input" that humans really crave is the one that validates their status/identity/value within the community/society, a combination of being liked/loved/respected/feared or even just stably attached to such people.
More options
Context Copy link