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 -
Do you actually believe in anything? In the space of a couple posts we've gone from "trust Principled Conservative Erick Erickson" to "trust America First Joe Kent." The only common throughline in all your top-levels is that you want to pick an internet fight with themotte's Trump contingent, and are happy to dance between positions, arguments, and sets of facts in order to do so. Kudos to the guys who have the patience to fisk your posts, I guess.
If that's what he's doing, what's the problem? If anything I think it has been to the detriment of this place that arguments have come to be dominated by true believers of some cause, whose local feeling of success, identity and tribal interests are all tied up in "winning the argument" and not ceding any ground.
That's also the case with people who are arguing in purely negative bad-faith, except that their local sense of identity is even more purely tied up in winning the argument. Darwin2500 arguing with MAGApede2016 is a failure mode, certainly, but so is this - the non-failure mode is when people bring sincere theses to their top-levels, after exploring and considering the evidence on their own, and then debate things with other users as individuals. Some people are too tribal to be psychologically capable of doing that, and some just don't find it fun enough, but it's possible.
How do you define "bad faith"? If it's merely "doesn't truly believe the point he/she is arguing", then I think the term is loaded and the case that it's a bad thing has not been made, because trying to make the most convincing argument for something you don't actually believe is an interesting exercise, both for the person making the argument and for any bystanders. If it is more about the "bad-faith" arguer experiencing personal disdain for their interlocutors in the process of the exchange, I think it would capture a lot more posters here than just those who try on different positions for sport.
What part of magicalkitty's posting history makes you think they are trying to make the most convincing argument they can as an exercise, as opposed to the best arguments-as-soldiers for their latest culture war stand or poke at others, to be abandoned as irrelevant when the topic passes?
I love me a good jawboning and devil's advocacy, but there is a difference between treating debate as a sport and using debate to make sport of others. Faith is as good a distinction as others- after all, if the other person has no faith to believe you're interested in the sport as opposed to making sport of them, there's not going to be a sport with them because it takes two to debate in good faith.
One of the ways to demonstrate good faith, in turn, is to hold to present and maintain sincere positions. Sincerity in turn can be demonstrated not just by elaboration upon request- as in someone who sincerely wants to be understood as opposed to someone deliberately trying to instigate misunderstandings and conflict- but also by maintaining consistency across iterations. You can absolutely provide devil's advocate / steelman positions distinct from your own position, but only if you actually have a position of your own.
To my knowledge, magicalkitty has denied being darwin / guesswho/ whatever other alts that person had. But Darwin was a bad faith interlocuter par excellence, and he had his own history of defending or deflecting accusations of his bad faith arguments on the grounds of 'just trying to adopt a position he didn't believe.' That was the demonstration, not defense, of his sort of bad faith.
The counter to that Darwin-esque behavior, in turn, is pressing the person to make clear their sincere position, and seeing if / how they either directly answer it or try to wiggle out of that challenge.
You can make whatever vague accusations you want, they're practically unable to be disputed because they're vague and meaningless.
But if you're going to claim I'm unreasonably inconsistent in my values, maybe you can show it. Should be easy to provide obvious and nondebateable examples if you aren't just making things in your head. There's plenty of deep principles I've said I support that you could look for me being hypocritical on too!
I say I believe in free trade, laissez-faire capitalism, individualism > collectivism, that people who complain about the modern world are typically just historically illiterate, that government should generally be small and stay out of people's lives (and that government oppression differs significantly in severity from "social oppression" which I don't care about as much because government claims the monopoly on violence), and that people should generally have near maximal freedom including doing things to themselves that others think is bad or unhealthy like drugs. Or whatever else.
Your choice, should be easy after all.
Given the phrase "he had his own history", it seems you are implying that I also have some big history of "just trying to adopt a position I didn't believe". So again, a specific allegation against me that you should be easily able to show right?
Right??! It should super easy to show all the times I've said I don't have any belief in the things I've said and are just being a devil's advocate on things I don't think at all or see logic in.
Cause certainly I've done that, you wouldn't just make things up I hope. Would be really bad faith to just make shit up about someone like that.
There's nothing particularly vague about my view of you. I think you regularly exhibit many of the not-late Darwin's worse tropes in your posting style, regardless of whether you are another sockpuppet of his or not.
This includes his propensity to fight the culture war by fronting a position only to drop or even deny it when inconvenient for the current culture war. Darwin also had a habit to quibble that he never did such a change even when provided past evidence, invite people to engage on his framing of the issue, and then ignore their actual position (and, routinely, follow-up posts' positions).
Like, say, taking a post on ways to counter Darwin-esque evasiveness and demonstrating a difference from Darwin-esque tactics, and then claiming that it is a personal accusation. And then challenging that the reasonableness of such a personal accusation should be demonstrated reasonable through past history to be pulled and cited. A history review which has nothing to do with demonstrating the good faith in arguments provided as a way to distinguish good and bad.
That is very much the sort of implicit accusation and argument deflection Darwin liked to pull.
I'm not gonna lie dawg, I've read this entire exchange and I'm 1) incredibly confused and 2) completely unconvinced Magical is Darwin or adjacent to Darwin (also confused who that is, but assuming a troll)
You've accused them of being a bad faith argument shifter here to troll but produced 0 evidence of this despite claiming it exists...
Supposedly the evidence for this was uh, me asking for them to provide evidence of their accusations. Catch-22 eh?
This whole conversation is like
A: "You're like peter the shiteater, who ate shit like you"
B: "wtf I don't eat shit, don't make up things. Show one time I've eaten shit"
A: "Peter used to deny eating shit too, which is another way you're like Peter the shiteater. Also hah, the fact that you thought I was saying you ate shit just proves you eat shit although I'm not saying you do that".
Truly an insane convo.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link