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 -
I've gotten into some light twitter drama around Vibecamp, specifically whether it's appropriate to have a midnight nude pool party and a designated sex tent at an event where children are allowed, and even encouraged, to be brought by parents. Here's the full text of my tweet:
I've had this argument with the rat/post-rat scene before, and it always baffles me how strong the resistance is. I've had people directly say that no, having nudity and a sex tent LOWERS risks!
I've had multiple people saying that my evidence/argument are weak and burning man does it, so it's totally fine.
I'm genuinely trying to have reasonable discussions with people, but I just don't get this sort of thing. The inferential gap here is so large it's hard to fathom how to begin to bridge it. People arguing that it's actually good and healthy to have kids around nude adults they or their parents don't know seem extremely alien to me. Some of these people even have kids, apparently!
Either way, I love the rat/post-rat/EA/tpot scene, I've met many wonderful and awesome people there. Compared to the average normie they're generally intelligent, earnest, kind, and overall fun to hang with. But these sorts of fundamental moral disagreements are why I stopped running a local EA group, and why I just can't identify too strongly with the scene as a whole. I genuinely wish people in these groups had a more traditional sense of morality, a better understanding of boundaries, and generally just cared about Chesterton's fence and second order effects. I hope that these issues don't completely derail the movement (even more, after the FTX poly harem scandal) but I'm not holding my breath. It really is a shame.
Is exposing yourself to a minor not a crime in the location they are holding it?
If it is a crime then they are being very dumb. It would be an easy way for a DA that doesn't like them to basically round up all the nudists and event organizers and get them all labelled as sex offenders and put on the list. And being on the list will fuck up their lives so badly. But hey maybe if they have a sex tent at their event they just like getting bent over and having things rammed up their ass all the time.
I'd personally avoid this event like the plague.
In general I think people are allowed and encouraged to have some number of weirdness points. They can have weird beliefs, pets, sex lives, religion, activities, etc. Normal people are weird in one or a few ways, weird people are weird in many ways. If you want to be weird that's fine. But if you have ideological beliefs you want other people to adopt you must be a normal person. You basically use up your weirdness points on your ideology, and any weirdness beyond that is just doing harm to the cause of selling your ideology.
EA and rat sphere seems filled with people that want to be weird. Which makes the "effective" part seem like a lie. Lots of charity involves convincing normies to give you money, and they basically suck at that. They are claiming all the weird people though, so maybe that is them just serving a market niche that no one else was serving well. They don't seem to have the awareness that this is what they are doing.
I am a huge nerd compared to most people around me, but hearing about these people's antics always makes me feel like a bully jock that wants to humiliate the socially incompetent nerds for shits and giggles. I dislike that feeling, I wish they'd stop being weird people.
Obligatory source article on weirdness points: LW.
The EA criticism of traditional charity is not that they were ineffective at getting donations. They excel at it, actually.
Likewise, Eliezer might have recruited more people into the ratsphere if he had spent less time writing about quantum mechanics and more time pushing deepities at people.
But both actions would have sacrificed the main selling point. You can not both optimize for pulling people's heartstrings and for the actual impact of your interventions. Do the former and you will turn off the people who are interested in the latter.
Nor can you raise the sanity waterline by using cheap tricks to recruit people into your cult -- you might gain ten times as many members, but you would also turn off the people who you need the most to write on LW.
It's not that they are failing to start a cult, or run a charity MLM scheme. It's that they are turning off people like me who are fully sympathetic to the idea by being weirdos that I don't want to associate with. And if this makes you think something like "well do you even care that much about EA if you aren't willing to tolerate some weirdness" and the answer is no I don't really care about it that much. I have other ideologies I'd rather spend my weirdness points on.
When my main exposure to EA stuff was through Scott Alexander I was so on board I was basically calling myself an EA. And then I learn stuff like this and it has me noping backwards as fast as I can.
They aren't failing to trick normies who are against the values into being EAs. They are failing to convince normies who are lukewarm or even positively disposed into being EAs. And I totally fail to see how having a weird sex tent and nudist colony next to a playground is necessary for EA to be all the things that make it EA.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link