site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34395 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.

Lock the addicts up

No, locking up people takes a lot of money that can be better used elsewhere. The solution is to whip them mercilessly until they develop a Pavlovian aversion to their current way of life (yes, these people are dogs) and go do something else.

Ah come on, what solution do you propose? The whole deinstitutionalization movement is what contributed to these problems in the first place. Letting the visibly mentally ill wander around like dogs, because a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals had a "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" moment, is bad for everyone including the mentally ill themselves.

We need to spend money, is the unavoidable conclusion, but pouring money down the drain on programmes that do nothing isn't the answer. Yes, going back to mental hospitals and institutions for the criminally insane, and making sure they are funded sufficiently that they are not run as hellholes, is the via media here, that both sides will hate.

I'd prefer the Stalinist approach that was directed at the wrong target i.e. kulaks. Starvation, forced labor, deportation, killing.

Maybe that's all well and good for normal vices like indecent attire, but how well does it handle the stronger stuff? The CPVPV historically whipped people for drinking, commingling with the opposite sex, or taking it up the butt...but curiously, they kept finding offenders. The proposed solution has to be more vicious and less concerned with privacy than the omnipresent Saudi morality police.

Hard drugs are even more extreme. They are Pavlovian conditioning incarnate! I don't think any amount of corporal punishment is going to compete with however many orgasm-equivalents a user gets from one hit of crack.

I think you're comparing apples to oranges unnecessarily. Drugs are easier to control than sex. Why bring up Saudi rules against sex when we you can use the much more effective Saudi rules against drug use. In fact, there are dozens of countries where there is minimal drug use. The solution is quite simple: draconian laws against selling drugs. Once you stop the supply of drugs, you lower the number of addicts, which reduces the supply, etc...

As far as I know, there is very little drug use in Japan, Taiwan, China, Singapore, and most of the Islamic World. This isn't really that difficult. It's a solved problem.

We don't even have to go as far as they do. A small increase in prosecution would save tens of thousands of lives every year due to reduced overdose and save hundreds of thousands of people from a crippling addiction. It's curious that we value the rights of drug dealers so highly given the good that could be done.

A policy of ‘the police beat you up if you’re high on public transportation’ would probably cause a) riots for a while and b) drug users to move to back alleys without affecting the actual rate of drug use.

b) drug users to move to back alleys without affecting the actual rate of drug use.

That's the goal. The goal isn't to stop drug use. It's to make the subways acceptable

The point isn't to fully eliminate degenerate behaviour, it is to reduce it, same as any other crime. You argument is like saying that murder being illegal doesn't remove all murder so we shouldn't make it illegal. Plus the Saudi police might be finding more crime because they have more resources to investigate crime so their search pool is increasibg. I agree elimination is very very difficult but at the very least whipping swiftly following degeneracy should reduce the incidence of it (and then involuntarily committing repeat offenders will handle a lot of the rest of it). Plus with modern technology you can (and should) livestream all the punishments on public television, to hijack people's availability heuristic (otherwise there is a risk they think whipping is something that only happens to other people) and scare them away from bad behaviour before they even start.

at the very least whipping swiftly following degeneracy should reduce the incidence of it

I suspect that achieving "swiftly following" for any legal consequence in the US is incompatible with our existing legal system. I expect solving the "swiftly" problem alone, with no other changes, would significantly improve the situation.

No, I’m saying that Saudi morality police are clearly insufficient to suppress vanilla types of “degeneracy”—let alone superstimuli like hard drugs. Involuntary commitment, execution, etc. will still have to do most of the work, bringing us right back to locking them up.

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