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 -
@SubstantialFrivolity has blocked me for suggesting that his worldview is rigidly deontological because it is essentially non-materialist. He has denied my conjecture but did not elaborate. I maintain that under the assumption that the material reality is merely testing grounds for «character», his model is optimal and rational.
…under materialist(ic) assumptions I provisionally share, not so much.
Does not conclude. You can logically accept all the following:
1/ There are no gods and no devils, there is no judgement, no heaven, no hell, no reincarnation and no nirvana, when you are dead you will decompose and be forgotten (at least until AI reconstructs your brain in order to torture it forever).
This world is all what there is.
2/ This world is dirty, muddy and bloody rat cage, always had been and always will be. To live long and prosper you need to learn how to lie, cheat, steal and scam, how to snoop, snitch and denounce, how to plot, intrique and backstab. You have to be total and complete rat to get ahead.
3/Regardless, I do not want to live like this, I do not want to be a rat.
Grim and hopeless mindset that would appeal to few people, but 100% scientific and materialist.
I do not believe behavior that is incentivized by no plausible promise and not even an intuitive expectation of payback is a major part of human behavioral repertoire. People expect good to come from good, else they do not do it at a noteworthy scale.
More importantly, endorsing it is an irresponsible advice to give. There are costs to integrity, as this subthread shows well enough. Costs have to be justified. When Neoreactionaries cheerfully try to sell people on the Eternal Social Darwinist Hell, they say that the other option is worse in any way that could matter – more suffused with impotence and suffering, more tyrannical, more derivative and limited and ugly. How, specifically, is lacking integrity worse? SubstantialFrivolity speaks of the value of integrity trumping material benefits:
The argument, inasmuch as he makes one, is that integrity is all-important because the character is «the one thing you can control». This, at least, is an ethos. But one can ask then: why optimize for «good» character? Why not express your self-control in building a prideful, cunning, power-seeking character? A character befitting a king or a Khan, rather than a law-abiding serf who rationalizes his self-denial! Possessions come and go, sure, but so does the fruit of good deeds. The argument seems to hold inasmuch as you rein in your urges and act in accordance with a set of abstract principles. Objectivism, Laveyian Satanism, Thelema, weird personal religions, anything goes. Yet it's not the case that anything goes, is it.
So it's clear he does not believe integrity is valuable because of the arbitrary rule that only things an agent controls are truly valuable. And if your logic is applied, neither is it due to any supernatural metaphysical returns to integrity. We are thus left with the claim that integrity is valuable because it is valuable period, it being the only way in which control over oneself is meaningful. This is not an argument but an assertion, a personal moral deontological axiom, a Categorical Imperative that cannot be proven as true to anyone who doesn't feel the charm of having integrity to begin with. I posit that the insistence on this opinion as a somehow true measure of value makes him an archetypal Hajnalbrain Cooperatebot, a member of a neurotype to which @f3zinker or @SaruchBinoza apparently do not belong.
For the record, I understand the allure of of justice, and the tears of tiger in this picture. It's just obvious that myopic self-satisfied Integrity Play is insufficient to actually make the world a more just place. So I can't help but look down on people extolling the virtue of cooperation even with defectors.
/images/16786512482051687.webp
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Good for him that he can afford (financially and psychologically) to be a deontologist to a fault. Reminds me of that old meme
Unfortunately my ancestors left behind a slightly more cutthroat enviorment.
And cutting others throats literally or otherwise is not virtous but it does make certain things easier in this godless material world
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link