site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Others have admitted to inserting themselves as pseudo medical experts on the jury (the nurses of course). That is not proper during deliberation.

In a technical sense, no, but it's inevitable, and difficult to prevent. Either of us would make terrible jurors because our training and experience would mean that the jury would be looking to us for clarification and interpretation. If I say that the burden of proof isn't met it means more than if some rando says it, because it's presumed that I would know more about the burden of proof than the average bear. Suppose a case involves a trucking accident, and a prospective juror used to be a trucker. You can voir dire him all you want but unless he says something like he quit because trucking companies never follow safety protocols or that normies don't know how hard it is to drive a truck and if a passenger car got hit by one it's because they were probably doing something stupid, you're not getting the juror disqualified for cause. If he merely says something to the effect of some trucking companies don't care about safety and some truckers don't care about safety but some do, and he can't make a determination on the case until hearing the facts, then he's on the jury unless you use a peremptory, and you might not want to do that; the guy is a wild card, but you may need to save your challenges for ones who are obviously bad. So the guy gets on, and when it comes time to deliberate he's going to tell the jury what the standard of care is, that the plaintiff's/defendant's expert is full of shit, and the jury is going to give him more weight than the expert.

And I'm not going to blame the trucker for this. If he knows from 20 years of experience that you're never supposed to do something, I can't expect him to forget that and give my expert who says it's okay to do that sometimes as much credence as someone who knows nothing about trucking. And if I'm a juror who knows nothing about trucking then I'm going to give the guy in the room with me who has 20 years of trucking experience more credence than some expert who was bought and paid for.

Sure. I think the big problem is claimed expertise when there is none. Not sure for example that a nurse is an expert in the pharmacology of different drugs depending on their dosage.