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 -
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.
"Emotions" aren't fundamental, independent causes of human action, they're contingent, useful adaptations that coexist with the rest of thought. If I see homeless and drug addicts on a subway, and "feel scared and vulnerable", and then stop using the subway, am I being irrational? What if instead, I see homeless and drug addicts on the subway, know from personal experience that homeless drug addicts have a significantly increased risk of violence, theft, and unsanitary conditions, and rationally decide to stop taking the subway? Yet the 'feeling scared and vulnerable' from the first example is entirely informed by the judgements in the second example - the reason you're "afraid" of homeless and not normal people is observations of the way homeless act that indicate they're a risk to life or health, for the same reason your fear of 'a gun being pointed at you' comes from knowledge that 'guns shoot bullets, which can hurt you'. But aren't all 'emotions' like this, being evolutionary adaptations to survival?
The same thing applies to large-scale policy. If a small group of people causes significant harm to everyone else in a nation, and I emotionally feel for the plight of my countrymen, and advocate for policy to restrain the small group ... or I rationally observe that my countrymen are being harmed, and add up all the expected utilities, and advocate for policy to restrain the small group ... what's different here?
Also, consider "lock the murderers up,
slaughterpermanently imprison mass murderers, forget about the problem" or "lock the fraudsters up, forget about the problem". We already do this to large groups of malign or harmful people, and it works! It's bad for 'free thinkers' because free thinkers are (sometimes) good/useful, not because hurting people is, in every context, bad.The government uses force to prevent all sorts of consensual activity. You want to buy food from a restaurant with poor hygiene? Want to do unlicensed, shoddy maintenance on other peoples' cars? Sell unlicensed pharmaceuticals? Take out large, predatory loans? These aren't edge cases, these are large potential areas of economic activity that are prevented.
I'll spare everyone my libertarian rant about the extreme licensing requirements to cut hair in a number of states.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link