site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34406 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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.

15
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

That you wrote six paragraphs to vent a simple emotion that you could have stated in one sentence does not lure me into thinking that you are making a rational argument. I am not that much of a Motteizen. Plenty of people disagree with your idea that the greatest current failure of American civilization are the violent homeless drug addicts. There are so many other options. For example, the endless foreign interventionism... the NSA domestic surveillance... the war on drugs...

You are a Singapore-style authoritarian but I am not. If you want to move to Singapore, I doubt that it would be difficult.

"Lock the addicts up, slaughter the dealers, forget about the problem."

Aha... but in this authoritarian utopia of yours somehow you think that The Motte would still exist? You think that a government that literally kills people for selling substances that people consensually want to consume is going to... let people post on a forum that allows free speech?

"Lock the addicts up, slaughter the dealers, forget about the problem."

...

"Lock the free-thinkers up, slaughter the spreaders of dissident thoughts, forget about the problem."

No, fuck you.

  • -10

Aha... but in this authoritarian utopia of yours somehow you think that The Motte would still exist?

Yes? The Motte is not banned in Singapore.

Through a relatively unimportant happenstance of contingency. The same kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from consensually putting substances in their own bodies is the kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from disagreeing with them.

The same kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from consensually putting substances in their own bodies is the kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from disagreeing with them.

If you consensually put a substance in your body that then causes you to try and shove someone under a train or attack them with an icepick, I think your rights end at the point where you're doing the shoving.

This is the entire chasm in understanding right there: I'm a nice guy who likes to consensually use fun substances and I don't shit on the street or try and shove people into traffic, therefore I should not be prosecuted (debatable up to that point but not incorrect to hold this view) and this kind of legislation or enforcement could be used against me (perhaps) and anyway it's wrong because it disapproves of fun stuff and thus condemns my choices and makes me feel sad about myself and therefore it is bad and wicked and Nazi Fascism! (okay, no).

The people talking to themselves, attacking other passengers, and pissing themselves in public are not the nice people like you who responsibly use fun stuff, and fuck 'consensually putting substances into their own bodies'; I think they've rotted their brains to the point where "consensual" is a very dim signpost in the past, and they certainly are not harmless by their 'choices' and when it comes to hurting other people, that's where the interest of the public good overrides "but it's my natural human right to get high!"

The same incentives which lead the police not to enforce other laws against the homeless people also results in them not enforcing drug laws against them, though. So you make more drug laws or increase their penalties and you still have a bunch of crazy homeless people but now you're putting the mostly-harmless pot-smoker in jail for longer. You can't solve anarcho-tyranny with new laws that will be enforced anarcho-tyrannically.

The same kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from consensually putting substances in their own bodies is the kind of mindset that would kill people to prevent them from disagreeing with them.

Except for that this is demonstrably untrue, because you have posters like @2rafa and myself who, say what you will about either of us, are obviously in favor of the existence of a forum such as The Motte, as evidenced by the fact that we are participating in precisely such a forum! Now, you might argue that the difference is the fact that neither she nor I have the power to implement our most extreme authoritarian visions, and that if Rafa or I became Supreme Dictator tomorrow, the temptation to go whole-hog and start banning pro-criminal online discourse would be too seductive to resist. I don’t have any way to falsify such a claim, but I feel like it’s fairly simple to just point out that the harms produced by a violent or filthy drug-addicted lunatic on public transit are qualitatively different in very important ways from the harms produced by speech I don’t agree with; the harms I wish to target are immediate, tangible, and have a single easily identifiable perpetrator, whereas the harms created by bad ideological memes are distributed and abstract, with difficult-to-demonstrate causal chains.

Some might argue we're already getting the latter in America, why not have the former while we're at it?

To be less glib, I'm not so sure this is actually proven. Yes, authoritarianism probably does track with social conservatism (even the Soviet Union disliked gays and Jews), but your argument is more an argument against tyranny in general, and one argument against tyranny is that the tyrant's rule is governed by his personality. The more concentrated power is, the more dangerous it is generally--so I suppose you are right, but not quite so directly.

prevent them from consensually putting substances in their own bodies

The west already prevents me from consuming whatever antibiotic whenever I want on threat of jail for both me and the people who supply the antibiotic to me.

Yeah, get back to me about legalizing smoking fentanyl on the train after I get to legally buy raw milk.

I sympathise with your position, as someone who supports legalised drugs and criminalised vagrancy. Most people seem to treat them as a package deal, so it's understandable that you'd defend one in order to protect infringements upon the other.

It's unfortunate that things have to be like this, though. We're left with a policy that accommodates the moral non-negotiables of liberals and conservatives, at the cost of screwing up everything else.

You can have legalised drugs and criminalised vagrancy, just how it's fine to shit in a toilet but doing it in public comes under public indecency laws (and for good reason). Drugs should be legal but their consequences being publicly displayed should get the whip broguht down on your back.

So you think TheMotte's DDOS provider and server would be shut down by government goons if it were registered in Singapore? Is that your argument?

You misunderstand. It's not about people "consensually putting substances in their own bodies", it's about the violence taking place on many subway systems in America such that people will stop taking the subway.

I personally do not care if someone does consensually put substances in their own bodies, provided that this is done in the privacy of their own home, apartment, or other private room. Under this condition, it simply does not affect other people. However, when this is done in public, it creates a risk for violent behavior. Then this violent behavior deters people from using the subway. People not using the subway is bad because they might drive instead, and driving is bad for things like climate change and whatnot. Hence, the argument for prosecuting drug usage in public.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats