site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36365 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 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.

14
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I caught this exchange after the previous thread had mostly closed, and I'd like to push back on the claim a little.

BinaryHobo:

I remember talk about just using the excess power to pump water up hill during the day and running it through turbines coming down at night.

Did anything ever come of that?

The_Nybbler:

The physical conditions necessary to make hydro storage practical aren't common.

(How do we do the fancy quotes with user, timestamp, and maybe a link? It'd be useful here.)

It's true that hydroelectric power sources, as in dams, have saturated the supply of naturally-occurring American sites. You need a river in a rocky valley, and there are only so many of those to go around, and once they're used up, it's very hard to create more of them.

What haven't been exhausted, and in fact what can be readily found or exploited, are height differentials in general. Hills, mountains, exhausted mines, deep valleys with no water supply, all offer significant height differentials, are naturally occurring, and can be readily built out into large-scale closed-loop pumped-hydro storage, with a closed reservoir at one extreme and a closed reservoir at the other, and a reversible turbine to generate potential energy in times of excess and power in times of deficit. Should those be exhausted, off-shore dropoffs are an enormous resource of the same, at the cost of more difficult installation and operation in every regard. And if we exhaust THOSE, water towers at sea or underground reservoirs on land can be constructed as well.

All of this, of course, is dumb and America should just take the leash off nuclear, as argued here. (I've not read it yet, but I expect it to make the points I would inline here.) That we haven't yet is a shame and a testament to our collective idiocy and Puritan hangover.

It makes no sense to pump excess power uphill and then run it it downhill because the act of elevating water also consumes energy.

  • -18

Pumped storage has been a thing for almost a century now. I leaned about it in science class as a child.

good for you

  • -24

You do understand that energy demands fluctuate throughout the day and spending energy when it's available and cheap to have it when it is in demand and expensive is important? I was taught that as a child.

I learned algebra as a child. so what. people learn different things at different ages.

  • -10

Grid load balancing is pretty fundamental to energy policy. Even ordinary people are bombarded by messaging telling them not to run appliances in the middle of the day.

?

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