site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32975 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 27, 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.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It didn't make sense to me, but he never said how much he was actually drinking. If I buy a .7l bottle of slivovitz, it lasts me 2 weeks at least, usually. Is that sort of drinking actually harmful ?

Unfortunately, yes, small amounts of alcohol have a detectable effect on brain white and gray matter volume:

Specifically, alcohol intake is negatively associated with global brain volume measures, regional gray matter volumes, and white matter microstructure. Here, we show that the negative associations between alcohol intake and brain macrostructure and microstructure are already apparent in individuals consuming an average of only one to two daily alcohol units, and become stronger as alcohol intake increases.

Here "one unit" means 10ml of ethanol, slivovitz has 50% abv, so you're drinking 350ml ethanol per 14 days = 2.5 alcohol units per day. The paper I linked has a bunch of interesting figures (fig 3 in particular is nice), and they provide this useful comparison:

For illustration, the effect associated with a change from one to two daily alcohol units is equivalent to the effect of aging 2 years (or 1.7 years in the model that excludes individuals who consume a high level of alcohol), where the increase from two to three daily units is equivalent to aging 3.5 years (or 2.9 years in the model that excludes individuals who consume a high level of alcohol).

Going from 0 to 1 daily units doesn't have any measurable effect in that study, but going from 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 does. So with your 2.5 units/day, it's equivalent to an aging-related decrease in brain volume of around 3.75 years. Not world-ending in any sense, but still not nothing.

(I'm slightly confused by the study, since presumably the effects should depend on how long you've been drinking alcohol, and not just provide a flat decrease in brain matter, but I'm not seeing any such effect reported in the paper)

Additional analyses excluding abstainers (N = 33,733) or excluding individuals who consume a high level of alcohol (i.e., females who report consuming more than 18 units/week and males who report consuming more than 24 units/week) (N = 34,383) and models using an extended set of covariates (including BMI, educational attainment, and weight; N = 36,678) yield similar findings, though the variance explained by alcohol intake beyond other control variables is reduced to 0.4% for GMV and 0.1% for WMV when individuals who consume a high level of alcohol are excluded (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2).

I mean, alcohol accounting for 0.4% of variance doesn't seem very important.

(I'm slightly confused by the study, since presumably the effects should depend on how long you've been drinking alcohol, and not just provide a flat decrease in brain matter, but I'm not seeing any such effect reported in the paper)

My first thought is that this implies reverse causality. If a snapshot shows the result without expect to duration, a parsimonious explanation would be that people with diminished brain matter tend to drink more rather than that drinking causes diminished brain matter. Feedback loops would be unsurprising as well.

Yeah that's what I thought too, but they super-duper promise they accounted for confounders:

We perform a preregistered analysis of multimodal imaging data from the UK Biobank (UKB)42,43,44, which controls for numerous potential confounds.

I probably have ten to fifteen bottles of scotch. If I don’t replace them, that will probably last me two years. Every once in a while, I’ll pour a drink (never more) if I’m in the mood. Or I’ll pour a drink or two if a friend comes over. I enjoy scotch but don’t understand the idea of binge drinking it.

I think some people enjoy the feeling of being tipsy (I know I do). However once you reach that stage your inhibitions are lowered and it's much harder to stop at the pleasant tipsy stage.

Also your body adapts to drinking by changing what BAC is tipsy and how much alcohol is required to reach that BAC as one drinks more.

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