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 -
Are gun cases obsolete at this point?
They can protect you against common criminals but they can’t do nation state war at all anymore. It seems like two new technologies are game changers.
Drones defeat guns. You can have a human operated machine gun and you will lose to a drone. But we probably? can not let people own fleets of AI controlled drones.
Government will control your access to mobility going forward. Autonomous cars are awesome. But mobility is key if there is going to be any check on federal power because a free people with guns will resist. The backdoor they have on your electric car will get turned off when you resist.
Technology and the ability to have industrial and post-industrial society has always been an issue the American Democracy and Freedom project.
They're already coming out with dedicated 556 anti-drone rounds.
To indulge in some intellectual masturbation, I'm just going to quote an essay I slapped together one day on the evolution of warfare;
But hey, I'm just a dabbler when it comes to such things, at best. What do I know?
You really think medium term with AI improvements that a human can compete with a drone? And that’s besides in America training a soldier from birth to death on the battle field at 25 has to costs around $1-1.5m and drone tech probably improves to be a fraction of that.
You asked whether guns were obsolete at this point. At this point, no.
Drones will continue to improve. Drone defenses will likewise continue to improve, but I'm pretty sure there are going to continue to be ground units, and I'm pretty sure those ground units are going to want to be able to shoot things rather than just drone them; it's much, much cheaper. Also, those ground units are going to want to shoot at drones attacking them, which again is much cheaper than using your own drones. Almost certainly, they'll want to automate this into something like a mini-CIWS turret, but that turret will probably be using a gun.
Fair perhaps I should have said “becoming” obsolete. If your place the court game today and it takes years to judicate then in 5-10 years it does seem like guns are less relevant.
The main reason will be to fight urban crime if the state isn’t willing to put people in jail. My main comprehension of the 2A purpose was to either war Britain invading the US or to go to war with US government. Guns don’t seem to have any relevance for that in 10-15 years.
If there is still a government comprised of humans in 10-15 years, guns will still be quite useful if it becomes necessary to fight it. My guess is that you think otherwise because you have a very narrow model of what it means to use a gun to fight the government. You aren't entirely wrong within that narrow frame, but outside it you are very wrong.
There is no plausible future where I would be better off without guns than with them.
Can you expound on the narrowness of my argument? How else can you fight the government with guns?
You’re not doing anything against 300k autistic trannies control US drones under the Biden clone Presidency. They will win.
I would guess your model of "using guns against the government" involves something like a human-wave assault on a federal building by guys on foot armed with ar15s. This is about the worst possible mismatch, and it's still a threat drones cannot obviate now and may not be able to obviate in the future, given the continuous development of cheap, effective, man-portable anti-drone countermeasures.
Here is a scenario a single small step outside that frame. Leave aside the tribal shibboleths and focus on the material specifics: how would 300,000 autistic trannies and their drones under the Biden clone presidency effectively forestall this scenario?
In any case, that's all the illumination I'm comfortable providing on this topic.
High-value targets will have much better security (CCTV, gated communities, armored cars, armed security, etc), especially if that sort of thing takes off. For this scenario, I'd deploy the 300,000 autistic trannies as a pre-crime unit. Even European governments will semi-openly tell you they're working on AI that can clock terrorists from a picture of their face (as in: predicatively, not just matching them to a known terrorist), and apparently they got pretty good results.
Hard to tell how the game would play out after that, I could imagine the insurgents still pulling it off, if there's enough of them, they're organized well enough, and have impeccable op-sec, but it's a tall order, and the regime doesn't look all that defenseless to me.
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