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 -
On the contrary, from what I can gather the 250k figure seems like a perfectly reasonable estimate, and is probably actually lower than the real number as the Rape Gang Inquiry Report suggests.
Firstly, the report clearly says this figure is an estimate only and the countersignallers only trying to "debunk" this figure are by disingenuously portaying as a hard statistic with bad methodology.
Secondly, while the estimate is extrapolating from data from the Rotherham inquiry (and a couple of other smaller inquiries) and you can criticise how accurate such and extrapolation can be:
You can quibble about how specifically representative Rotherham is, but basically the argument comes down to whether you this Rotherham (and some of the other local inquiries) are broadly, if imprecisely, representative of Muslims in the UK, or you think Rotherham was just some weird fluke or exception.
I have no reason to believe it isn't or wouldn't be representative, and on balance the evidence that does exist seems to suggest the opposite.
It seems grossly unjust for the entire British state apparatus to cover up, refuse to record or report statistics on this matter, and then at the same time supportors of this apparatus turn around and reject any estimate based on the infomation that is available. We all know why there isn't more information and stats being reported. The criticism is all being made in bad faith. I am yet to see a single person make a reasonable counter-estimate. I have not seen someone say, "actually 250k is maybe too high, actually 200k/100k is more reasonable for these reasons."
The approach is basically to assume that 250k is an absurd number to begin with, and then work backwards to "prove" it's false with no real counter-estimate or one that's ironically absurdly low. It's apparently not absurd to believe the official British Government estimate that 3.1 million people in the UK have experienced some kind of child sexual abuse, but it is absurd to believe that 250k is a generally reasonable estimate of those raped and abused by Muslims specifically.
The Rape Gang Inquiry Report is sloppy in some respects, I don't deny but its general thesis and reporting is correct.
More options
Context Copy link