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 -
I bet you've heard the phrase "living well is the best revenge." I think it's also the best argument. There are so many ideas, or larger schemas, that are alluring in abstract. See: every teenager's politics. But far fewer paradigms are actually effective in practice. (Granted, which ones work does vary somewhat based on the local circumstances / environment.)
Living out one's ideals is a costly signal of sincerity, and achieving success and happiness by doing so is the least refutable argument. This is a big reason why religion is so persistent despite sounding batshit crazy from the outside — and I say this as a religious person. The philosophy makes sense once you fit yourself inside of it, but the incentive to attempt that in the first place, despite the context of a secular overculture, is that religious people are more likely to thrive.
Anyway, my question is, why don't more culture warriors pursue this path, of exemplifying why their chosen philosophy is good? Am I wrong that it's the most convincing way to advocate for one's ideals? Or maybe everyone is indeed trying to do this, and most just don't seem very effective from my particular vantage point / vis-a-vis my conception of the good life? Perhaps it's a selection effect where people who deeply care about what everyone else is doing are less likely to be happy, point blank, so anyone discernible as a culture warrior is already precluded from "living well is the best argument" unless they learn to give less of a shit in general.
Edit: Apologies for not responding individually, this ended up getting more responses than I expected. But I appreciate you all and am pondering your points!
I disagree. Because at the end of the day, your integrity is one of the few things you can actually control. You are proposing that you would give that up, for what? Some stupid grad school? Seriously, who the fuck cares? You aren't going to be actually worse off because of it, you aren't going to have opportunities denied because of it, it just plain and simple doesn't matter in the end.
Both you and @f3zinker appear to me to have gotten positive utility out of your integrity, namely a source of pride - otherwise you never would have employed it in the first place and you wouldn't feel so upset about it. The bitterness you feel is because you don't want to give up that source of pride, but feel it necessary in this fallen world. I get the impression Zinker's post is convincing himself as much as anyone else.
And are you economically struggling because of your integrity, or are you struggling because of envy? Do you need a 6 or 7 figure salary? Because the vast majority of people manage just fine on much less. Even with all these price hikes you can still live comfortably on a five figure salary, especially if you have cheap hobbies.
I'm sorry to say this but, abandoning integrity is the path of the mediocre narcissist. I don't think either of you are mediocre, I think you are venting - I have done it before too. It hurts to watch someone move forward without merit, which is why the idpol nepotists scream in fury at the idea of meritocracy. Giving up on integrity at this point is giving up on society, because without people with integrity everything will just be a race to the bottom. Maybe that's where you are at at the moment, but I think if you were going to be there permanently you would just do it instead of bemoaning (not meant derogatorily, just can't think of a better word for it) having to do it.
Fake edit: So a lot of this @SubstantialFrivolity already said more betterer, but I have been writing it all day in breaks at work so I am just going to post it. In pseudo-reply to @DaseIndustriesLtd my worldview is definitely non-materialist, or - if I can be a bit obnoxious - maybe better described as platonic materialist - things exist, and matter matters, but we filter it all through our mind, and so our perception of reality is idealist, it has to be. I never considered that that might be why I favour deontology though.
Real edit: nfi why it won't tag ilforte properly.
DaseindustriesLtd not DaseIndustriesLtd. Lowercase i
More options
Context Copy link
The only difference between you and me is that I already think we are well on the race to the bottom, not that it can be set off if the moral fabric is crimped any further.
To me the vast majority cheating is already a sign we are past the point of no return, its the moral fabric being anal raped with a broomstick all the way up to the intestines.
We aren't anywhere close to the bottom yet man, although I won't deny we are much much closer than we used to be and on a rapid descent at the moment. Although I think if people like you abandon integrity it would accelerate significantly. Admittedly this is a bit personal for me - I respect you a lot and I have learned a lot from your posts, and I don't want that to stop. But I think my reasoning is sound, and it's clear you haven't committed to this new path yet, so I remain optimistic.
Edit: grammar
It's been very amusing for me to see this collision of worlds.
I recommend you meditate on illustrations here to perhaps understand @f3zinker's perspective better.
There are different equilibria for these things. Most are inadequate. The «Hajnalbrain cooperatebot» one is abnormal and unstable, particularly under conditions of globalized post-Christian liberalism. What he is saying will become more universally correct in the future, except for domains rigidly controlled by some Social Credit Score variant.
Sorry man, what's a hajnalbrain cooperatebot? Someone raised in the European memeplex maybe?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I appreciate the words of kindness. It's surprising that my shitty posting has any impact at all, but well take that.
As for how far gone society is, I think I need to work towards a model of integrity and its utility. Given I am not a hard deontologist, I don't think integrity is infinitely valuable. I do think it is very valuable, purely from a game theoretic point of view at the very least. And of course there is some value in sleeping at night knowing you are not a fraud, or at least didn't actively work towards becoming one.
However, I think in modern society we run into some failure modes of assigning it far too much weight. Integrity is something that can be accumulated, this is great because you can leverage it in the long term and incentivizes good citizenry. In modern society, there are just so many people that you might be able to live like a "psychopath" without ever needing to play enough iterated games where people can catch up to your tricks. Think of this thought experiment, why even drive politely at all? These are all strangers and you defecting only yields you benefits at their cost, the mechanism to punish you by tarnishing your trust lever is nonexistent, you will always get to your destination faster, given so many people exist it effectively just resets all the time. It's straightforwardly Molochian, but with a prolonged early adopter advantage. (Which is why I think given enough time large sufficiently large cities will always converge to being terrible places to live if you are not psychopathic)
Similarly, imagine I studied for the exam AND cheated. This is the nash equilibrium. Because everyone is defecting. At one point post-critical mass, you just need to defect to survive. Personally, I don't need to defect to survive, but I do think I need to defect to thrive, in the short term. So why wouldn't be defecting your way and securing a future trajectory and then stopping the defecting once you enter iterated game territory not the best option?
I think the meme of integrity is a beautiful meme, it's literally convincing people to not fall for multi-polar traps to people who can't even comprehend what a payoff matrix is without breaking their head. But being a lagged copycat is the universal optimal game theoretic strategy, I just don't need the need to cooperate when everyone is choosing defect against me. I get cut off in roads repeatedly, I lose my line in the grocery checkout if I move 6 feet to the left, I have to compete with people who cheated for graduate school spots, I have to compete with people who lie on their CV's or list programming languages they know how to say hello word in their CV or claim credit for group projects where they contributed nothing; Why should I have any sympathy for these bastards? Why should I make society good for them?
Literally, not a single person I know told me my insistence to not cheat online was a good call, and these are "good people", maybe if I go to a temple and ask the priest he might say otherwise, but priests don't drive BMW's. I'm here for a good time there is no afterlife, and I don't see why I shouldn't get that BMW. Should I feel bad for wanting to take a potential girlfriend to a high-end restaurant, to buy my mom vacations, to one day buy my dad his dream car? To not have to split the bill when eating out with my younger bro and just cover his bill because that's what big bro does? And all of these without thinking twice about it? All those things would be possible 10 years sooner with a little bit of lying. Why do the lairs and cheaters get to experience those beautiful things earlier than me? What's my reward or not doing it? Peace at the deathbed? I can't sleep peacefully at night anyways.
It's a value divergence at its core. But I think post knowing what I know, I really wouldn't lose any sleep at all for having lied or cheated, the job of society is to do everything it can to make sure no one ever finds out that you can actually lie and cheat to win, it's the entire point of religion. But once God is dead, I don't see any reason to pretend he is still alive when no one else is.
In my estimation, once society has failed at that task, it has sealed its fate, now its time to make right with might and eat the cake before it runs out.
It is, 100% the most rational option. And I don't think it's always unprincipled to cheat - tit for tat is also sensible strategy. The caveat is that I'm coming at it from the other direction - knowing what I now know, I lost way too much sleep for little real gain.
I ditched integrity as a young adult for my job, and I only started reading Scott after rediscovering my principles, having abandoned them on the basis of game theory, my belief that we had hit bottom and the idea that I could do a lot more good from a position of power.
But when I fell (got metooed, although it wasn't called that back then), I fell hard. On one hand, it either triggered or was accompanied by the onset of hereditary mental illness (which is to say not depression, although I got that too naturally) so it probably wouldn't be as hard on you as it was on me. But on the other hand, you are smarter than me, and the smarter you are the stronger your conscience. Note that all of our current "elites" seem to have clinical depression and imposter syndrome, if not n/bpd - none of them can live with themselves. And most of them aren't even particularly bright.
However, even though I have only gotten more pessimistic about the world over the past two years, I am nothing but optimistic about my life now. It took a while, but I have bounced back, and because I did it without compromising my principles I don't feel imposter syndrome, I am proud of my achievements (and wish I could brag about them without revealing too much of my identity, because I have a feeling some people interpreted my previous post about envy as saying give up on ambition) and I am surrounded by people I would trust with my life. For example I was very concerned for society when the covid vax mandates were gaining momentum (I live in Australia these days), but I was never afraid for my own livelihood, my job was always secure even though it requires interaction with the public and I made it clear I wouldn't get the vaccine. If I didn't have any friends or family I would be uncancellable.
Then again, maybe I just didn't have what it takes to succeed at it and you'll be alright. Just whatever you do, don't forget that it's temporary.
More options
Context Copy link
Doesn’t look to me like you think integrity is valuable, most of your examples provide trivial advantages, like driving aggressively (and that increases the chance of an incident, too). Even the test, the real dilemma is not terrible grade vs cheating, it’s a few hours to learn the material vs cheating. So we’re talking 200 dollars here. Or the classic wallet test, how often does that happen.
So by my calculations total lifetime earnings from having no small-i integrity has a present value of about 1000 dollars. Of course if you go work for the mob, we're talking about something else.
And for that measly sum, you break the covenant and lose the friendship of the good. You can never again say ‘when no one’s looking, I do the right thing’. Which is not only nice, but saves time you would have spent asking yourself what the correct course is, in trivial matters.
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