site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 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.

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

my only response is going to be to look at them and say, “Who the fuck are you dude?”

My response to that is slightly different and delivered slightly under the speed of sound.

Obviously outright murdering people or forcibly sterilizing them is just out of the question

Well, let's assume you're out of room for all of your population to be economically viable, so you go across the border and kill the people currently occupying that space who don't decide to answer the eugenics question the way I would. That's still outright murdering people, it's just that it's not your people you're murdering.

I also take the slightly more aggressive view that 'forcibly sterilizing' can also be accomplished by intentionally destroying the social systems/commons that made reproduction possible in the first place, especially if the people doing that are past breeding age and just want to prop up their retirement (or avoid having to ever engage productively with the opposite sex if not) at the expense of others being able to afford families. So yeah, I legitimately do think we've forcibly sterilized more than a few people, and it's kind of a small wonder that they don't answer the eugenics question in the above way given that's the norm for humanity.


but I don’t know how to clear the board mentally with those people to have a level headed discussion about it.

Well, that's kind of why you have the kind of secret society bullshit that tends to go along with discussion of eugenics. My answer tends to be "don't- if population control has to happen, then it'll happen naturally at a socioeconomic inflection point no matter what anyone else does; we can and arguably should sort it out then, and not before or after". (Of course, that also tends to mean that any martial virtue is selected out of your society, like what happened in Europe in the two Great Mass Suicides around 1915 and 1940.)