site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32765 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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.

15
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'll be honest, I have almost no idea what a real death threat actually looks like.

99.9% of so-called death threats on the internet fall into one of two categories; faked or implausible.

Easy. Imagine mail arriving on your real name private address you never ever used to shitpost on the internets, originating from proxy server in Belize, that contains pics of your house and family taken through telescopic sight and polite request to cease meddling with stuff you shouldn't meddle with.

Is there a story behind this?

Not sure, but I've received a directionally similar warning.

Over what content? Do you think the warning was issued by the authorities of a certain large Eurasian state?

Not at all. Just a sneering comment on an anonymous board that proved convincingly that «they» have tied all my behind-seven-proxies identities together and see my real identity as well, and if I know what's good, I'll shut the fuck up. A pretty sobering moment.

Was there a particularly sensitive subject matter that you were then discussing before this happened?

I suppose it was, but much less sensitive a topic than usual; what gave me away was manner.

In any case, I believe (and know, to an extent) the other party was just a highly intelligent individual who's good at online sleuthing, differs politically, and likes to put overconfident folks in their place. Not so much a threat as a warning.

Succesfully finding someones identity requires a lot of luck.

I found the identity of a random on reddit by searching through the instagram followers of a restaurant they claimed to like, then deducting out the people who didnt match the details that did not match that persons profile. I lucked into the instagram, and the fact they didnt lie. This did take a lot of time even using some fairly complicated regex and python scripts to help me.

I also backtrackked a reddit account of a girl I knew in college because the personal details were easy to identify. That was on super easy mode.

On the other hand, ive had much difficulty finding online activity of people I know a whole lot about on a personal basis. Obviously it's harder the other way around.

My guess would be your doxxer was really smart and determined and/or lived in the same city as you. If you live geographically close you are usually 2 degrees of seperation away, and that makes things a lot easier. For example I would have an easier time doxxing you than @DaseindustriesLtd because I assume a lot of his output and identifying information would be in Russian (and you give away a lot of personal information, for eg. 5 minutes into scrolling your reddit I can guess you are a NYU graduate living in London, working in finance, among other details that would narrow the search space a lot)! He must have pissed off a thousand year old vampire.

Full disclousure: I tried to find both of you after reading this conversation (with no intention of finding but assessing the difficulty of doing so, 99.999% chance I wont be able to) and its going to be an order of magnitude or more difficult than a random normie on reddit. I really want to know what tricks your respective doxxers used (Doxxing you wouldn't be hard, maybe 1 weeks/around 20 hours total of work, doxxing Illforte will be quite the task though). Other than meticulous deduction. My go to tools are sherlock and Ghunt but they are bog standard.

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