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.

My brother in Christ, did you read the article you linked? Read the study it was centrally based on? I don't even like bed nets that much but lets actually discuss the facts of it here, in one of the places we can, rather than low effort sniping or whatever that was.

Firstly, and most confusingly, the article you link to is pro bed net use for malaria prevention, while also presenting some concerns about them being used for fishing, highlighting the need for mitigation - it's right there:

“Whilst we are wholly supportive of the efforts of the healthcare community to tackle [malaria], which is so damaging to people’s lives, we would strongly advocate further research into the potential impacts of this unintended consequence,” said Rebecca Short of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), who led the new research.

Bednets definitely save lives, many lives, even allowing for uses in fishing, that's a trivially dumb thing to argue. Furthermore EAs as whole totally have saved lives (as well as messed around with shrimps or whatever, lets critique bits for sure), and things like the Lead Elimination Project and many others have had crazy outsized impacts. Are you arguing they have saved none? No one? By what criteria?

Also, I'm a bit confused about your model of EAs. Do you think any of the above article is a surprise to Givewell? Given this from cursory googling? I mean, thats huge, and I'm sure you could critique a lot in there, but the fact you didn't try suggests to me you're not modelling your opponent very well, or even at all. I bet we have EAs here, have you tried asking them?