site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12783 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 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.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Truly unbelievable set of court opinions from Philadelphia, providing lots of support for accusations of anarcho-tyranny:

  • A person is charged with two murders, one in January 2003 and another in December 2003. In 2004, he is convicted of the first murder, and is sentenced to life in prison. In 2005, he is convicted of the second murder, and is sentenced to death, partially because the first conviction is an aggravating factor.

  • In 2018, the person files for habeas corpus in the second sentencing (not conviction). The county prosecutor (Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, elected as a Democrat) concedes error and agrees that the death sentence should be reduced to life imprisonment. The habeas judge rejects the petition, and the state supreme court affirms (five to two), keeping the death sentence in place, because there was no actual basis for the prosecutor to concede error!

  • In 2020, the person files for habeas corpus in the first conviction (not sentencing). The prosecutor concedes error and agrees that the conviction should be overturned, and the habeas judge grants the petition and vacates the conviction. But the family of the murder victim intervenes and appeals, and the state supreme court reverses (by a bare vote of four to three), finding that the prosecutor not only had no basis to concede error, but actively lied to the habeas judge in order to get this murder conviction overturned! And this particular prosecutor has been engaging in similar shenanigans in over one hundred other murder habeas petitions! (Specifically: He has conceded error in 120 cases, including 110 murder cases and 35 death-sentence cases (75 percent of all the death-sentence cases in the county). 45 of the 120 concessions have not resulted in new trials; rather, the "exonerated" former convicts have merely been freed. 10 of the 120 concessions, including 9 in murder cases, have already been rejected as baseless by the state supreme court or by the federal appeals court.)

  • Remedy: Whenever the Philadelphia prosecutor concedes error in a habeas petition, the state prosecutor (Attorney General) must receive an opportunity to intervene against the Philadelphia prosecutor. (The three dissenters think (1 2) that this remedy goes too far beyond the limits of the case. One concurring justice thinks that it doesn't go far enough, and state law obligates the state prosecutor to intervene in county proceedings that become non-adversarial due to the county prosecutor's admission of error.)

The DAO insists its many concessions over the past eight years in mostly murder cases “simply demonstrate that the DAO has embraced its responsibility as a minister of justice”. We endorse in the strongest possible terms a prosecutor’s duty to minister justice. Lest there be any uncertainty on this score, we reiterate that a prosecutor is ethically obliged to concede relief on PCRA review when (but only when) the facts and law support it. We also emphasize that our decision is not intended to “counteract the policy choices” of the DAO. DA Krasner remains free “to exercise his discretion on behalf of the Commonwealth in Philadelphia’s criminal and PCRA cases”. But the means for achieving those ends cannot transgress the bounds of the law, and what we have seen in this case and too many others is the opposite of justice. Again and again, the DAO has made unreliable concessions unsupported by the facts and law. And when conceding relief, the DAO has repeatedly lacked candor to the court, misrepresented facts, failed to conduct adequate investigations, and inexplicably dodged necessary evidentiary hearings. This Court too has a “duty… to minister justice”. Indeed, our “principal obligations are to conscientiously guard the fairness and probity of the judicial process and the dignity, integrity, and authority of the judicial system, all for the protection of the citizens of this Commonwealth”. Our duty to safeguard justice compels us to order that in all PCRA cases in which the DAO concedes relief, the PCRA court shall afford the OAG notice and the opportunity to intervene before ruling on the concession.

Digging into this is truly an eye glazing endeavor. How the fuck did lawyers do this before AI?

Anyways, it seems to be based on whether there was prosecutorial misconduct in the first trial, specifically if they committed a Brady violation by not turning over information from witness interviews that could be used to impugn their credibility. The specific details are really boring and technical.

It's not really surprising that the Philadelphia DA office, historically, did not keep its hands perfectly clean. And it is abstractly a good thing to check the work of one's predecessors. But this probably isn't the best use of their resources.

It's... uh, a bit worse than that. The PA Supreme Court brings up 11 people where the DA Office seems to knowingly provided false information to the courts in order to free serious criminals, mostly murderers and one armed robber, ranging from trying to bind the court to incorrect concessions (another case involving this very same guy) to concealing parallel state-federal operations (Antonio Martinez, this case again) or concealing or failing to recognize important facts of the case (Robert Wharton, Kevin Johnson), to just straight-up lying about the basic facts of the case (Dontia Patterson).

Given that the supposed 120 concessions of error, that the DAO has been caught trying to illegitimately free convicted criminals in at least 9% of concessions. Dissent quibbles that those cases had some overlap, so it's probably worse than that.

Remedy: Tie conviction rates less conceded errors to personal advancement in a prosecutor's career. Prosecutors cannot be an elected position in this remedy. A prosecutor should be deincentivized from having losing cases on their professional record.

If anyone is arrested for any crime after they have been released after a prosecutor conceded an error within the shortest term of the charges which were conceded the prosecutor, relevant staff, and largest donor to the prosecutors reflection serve the minimum sentence of the arrested offense.

This is a major plot driver of Law Abiding Citizen, the prosecutor accepts a plea deal to protect his conviction rate.

Tie conviction rates less conceded errors to personal advancement in a prosecutor's career.

Choo Choo! Here comes the train because people are going to be rail roaded under this system.

No justice system is perfect, sometimes innocent people are convicted and sometimes the criminal murderers go free.

I think people should be incentivized to do their job, and disincentivized from doing the opposite of their job. I want the tax auditor disincentivized from giving tax breaks. I want the firemen disincentivized from allowing fires to burn buildings. I want the doctor disincentivized from selling me unproven medical treatments. I want people to not do the opposite of their job description, even if there are occasional errors and mistakes.

The prosector who railroads and convicts an innocent person can have their salary cut and retirement benefits reduced, and the threat of demotion and the loss of their job if their mistake is serious enough. Like any other job, there should be consequences for serious mistakes or abuses of power.

sometimes innocent people are convicted and sometimes the criminal murderers go free

And it is a fundamental principle of English Law, that one instance of the former ought to be prevented even at the cost of allowing ten of the latter.

Absent other factors, and assuming murderous criminality has a strong genetic basis, Blackstone's ratio might result in a high level of murderous criminality in the general population as the innocent are butchered faster than they can reproduce.

From this perspective, a 1:1 ratio or even a 10:1 ratio allowing for many innocent convictions will reduce the genetic propensity for murderous violence.

Aka "kill everyone and let God sort them out".

If you hang a man at p(murderer)=0.5, you are not increasing justice at all.

Of course, the threshold on p(murderer) must be low enough that you can achieve general deterrence. If you require ten upstanding citizens giving eyewitness reports under oath to convict a murderer, this will make it very easy to commit murder without facing consequences.

I think that murders by private citizens are only a small fraction of the homicides committed in the last few hundred years or so. They happen, but the median homicide victim was probably killed in state-sponsored violence.

You would certainly cut down on private murders if you allowed cops to shoot whomever they feel are up to no good. But this will reliably lead to the "up to no good" designation being applied to political enemies, entrenching whomever is in power, which is generally a terrible idea.

I can make assumptions too! Assuming that a large portion of the population has a genetic propensity not to commit violent crime if not committing such guarantees that they will not be convicted of it, and also a genetic propensity, if they are likely to be convicted of horrifying crimes whether or not they committed them, to lash out against the system that put them in such an impossible position out of spite (defecting against those who defected against them in the previous round), rejecting Blackstone might result in more violence than a few 'orrible murderers getting away with their deeds.

Thou call'dst me dog before thou hadst a cause, But since I am a dog, beware my fangs.

--William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

[I]f you are maximally mean to innocent people, then eventually bad things will happen to you. First, because you have no room to punish people any more for actually hurting you. Second, because people will figure if they’re doomed anyway, they can at least get the consolation of feeling like they’re doing you some damage on their way down.

--Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex, August 2014

If all you were concerned about was long term genetic propensity to violence, couldn't you just introduce castration as a "lower tier" punishment that you dish out more readily?

Castration would probably be a good two-for: it would probably lower the propensity to violence directly (see steers vs bulls), and stop them from reproducing. You probably wouldn't even need to imprison most of them. I would actually argue it would be more humane than locking people up for decades, as we do in the US.

(Although, as an aside, I think murder numbers among any demographic would need to be significantly higher than they are for Blackstone's ratio to actually result in murderers killing faster than the birth rate. The United States may have higher violent crime rates than Europe, but even with Blackstone's ratio as an inherited principle of our common law legal system, we're still far from that fate.)

Krasner was not elected until 2018, long after the errors that he is conceding allegedly were made. It makes no sense to punish one prosecutor for conceding errors made by his predecessors (assuming that those errors actually exist).

He's lying about the errors in order to let people free.

I was talking about a hypothetical situation where he wasn't lying, which is what the incentive system would be aimed at.

Seems like a better solution would be to have much stricter requirements for conceding errors on behalf of someone other than yourself, requiring actual proof and not just a concession.

Except it's a binary decision. The alternative is to argue a position that his office thinks doesn't have any support.

The problem here isn’t this his office doesn’t think a position lacks support. The problem is that his office is prejudiced against certain outcomes and is using “error” as a backdoor to change those outcomes.

The problem is that his office is prejudiced against certain outcomes and is using “error” as a backdoor to change those outcomes.

Ultimately, that's a big part of the reason this situation is so disturbing. What do you do about an adversary who is willing to aggressively abuse the legal system for the sake of his own agenda? If you don't respond in kind, you're at a significant disadvantage. If you do respond in kind, it threatens to destroy the whole system.

In this situation, the bad guys fortunately lost due to the judiciary stopping them. But you can bet your bottom dollar that Soros and his crew are trying to figure out ways to capture the judiciary. I wouldn't be surprised if that were a top priority for them.

If the system allows this stuff, it deserves to be destroyed.

Failure to do so is cowardice.

What do you do about an adversary who is willing to aggressively abuse the legal system for the sake of his own agenda?

In the past, the entire federal civil rights infrastructure was in part constructed because local law enforcement couldn't be trusted to fairly apply the law, through some combination of local law enforcement looking the other way, jury nullification of certain outcomes, and so forth. This isn't a new problem, but this particular avenue seems to be so. I can't speak to whether Section 1983, for example, could be applied to this case.

Yeah, the election of certain positions like prosecutors invites trouble, as demonstrated in this situation.

Remedy: Execute the prosecutor.

Sadly that strikes me as a "coup complete" solution. Or at a minimum, a "coup already well underway" solution.

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