site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

MIRI Researcher Don’t be a Quokka Challenge (IMPOSSIBLE).

Katja Grace posts “date me” document. Asks everyone to share.

I originally posted a similar link in the small-scale-questions thread in response to Tyler Cowen linking to the doc on MarginalRevolution. What I didn’t know at the time is that Katja apparently wants this to be spread everywhere?!?!?

Object-level thoughts: I quite liked it. The document makes a compelling case that will appeal strongly to a certain demographic of men. It’s pretty much exactly what you would expect from “mid-30s Bay Area rationalist woman ready to settle down and have kids,” expanded out into a full dating profile. It certainly caught my attention.

Meta-level thoughts: OH NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING? You can send out something like this to your blog readers. They’ll know how to interpret it, and they’re the kind of people you’d be interested in anyways. You can’t toss it out into the black void that is Twitter and expect to come out unscathed. She even dropped her personal email address at the end. Guess who’s going to need a new Gmail account next week?

”If you don’t hear back in two weeks, feel free to try again, or try other means.”

Protip: If you are a woman, do not ever put something like this in your dating profile. This will be used as an excuse for some weirdo on the edge of sanity to stalk you.

I feel bad for her getting dragged in the quote tweets, but like, what did she expect? Why, in response to getting a negative reaction, is she intent on spreading it even further? That’s the opposite of what she should be doing. Everyone who would be compatible with her has already seen it.

Yeah, she's going to reject all comers. I sincerely doubt this aging, mentally ill, town bike is going to net the sort of man she envisions thawing out her eggs for. Especially from how much she clearly thinks she's amazing, interspersed with all the giant red flags, in her open letter. If anyone I knew saw this and thought about emailing her, I'd pay for them to wrung out by a hooker first to clear their head. I don't know how thirsty and lonely you'd need to be to not see the red flags from orbit on this one.

Unkind.

Reality is unkind. I won't be wrong.

Ever heard of decorum? 'I won't be wrong' is the lamest possible defence to rudeness, we lie all the time for the sake of common courtesy and that's just as it should be.

The entire rest of the internet is top down enforced "polite lies". This place was supposed to be different. Alas. It's become "rationalism, unless it hurts another self described rationalist feelings."

I dunno, the Internet at large used to be "mean as hell, with optional grounding to Truth." Still kinda is, in a way.

The entire rest of the internet is top down enforced "polite lies". This place was supposed to be different. Alas. It's become "rationalism, unless it hurts another self described rationalist feelings."

Stop prevaricating. You didn't get modded because the woman who triggered your Dave Sim outburst this time happens to be a rationalist, or because it might (hypothetically, in the unlikely event that she reads this thread) hurt her feelings.

I second @HaroldWilson. Your statements about how this woman is a "town bike", a "whore", and so on are not some virtuous demonstrations of honesty and reason, they are angry emotional outbursts. If they were not, you would have chosen more neutral language.

Your comment about how "There is no polite way to point out to an old barren whore..." is deflection. You are obviously not writing all this here on The Motte in order to be helpful to this woman who, as far as you know, will never read anything that you write.

There a difference between not shying away from important truths and pointless, mean-spirited personal rudeness.

Calling someone an 'old barren whore' is just obnoxious shit-slinging that serves no purpose that could not be otherwise easily achieved with much less inflammatory and loaded language.

No, this place was always "you can talk about any idea, as long as you're civil". The "hurt feelings" things was only a criticism of people who felt hurt by ideas, not by actual insults.

There is no polite way to point out to an old barren whore that the kind of guy she wants to have geriatric pregnancies with isn't interested in an old barren whore or the risks of geriatric pregnancies. He has better options. Those things are just true. There is no conceivable way you can explain this to a woman who is in that situation, and not have them take offense. You're fighting an uphill battle against decades of lies they've been told about how they can have it all. They wouldn't have been in that situation otherwise.

Unless you want to just pretend whores aren't a real thing, or barrenness isn't a real thing, or male preferences aren't a real thing, and join that chorus of liars that got her into that situation in the first place. As though lies have no consequences.

There is no polite way to point out to an old barren whore that the kind of guy she wants to have geriatric pregnancies with isn't interested in an old barren whore or the risks of geriatric pregnancies. He has better options.

"A woman who is so advanced in age, and had so many sexual partners, will have a lot of issues attracting the kind of mate she wants because having had so many sexual partners tends to be unattractive to most men, and because a pregnancy at such a late age comes with a lot of risks. The hypothetical man simply has too many better options"

Amateur.

More comments

No reason to insult her. Whole thing’s rat gossip anyway, our People Magazine. And while we’re playing the personal trivia game, you’re not exactly kindly disposed towards women, are you Coil? I doubt her male counterpart would encounter so much hostility from you. She didn’t do anything, she’s even adjacent to our tribe. If she doesn’t get kindness, who does? When they smashed your last hobby, did you swear to deny all womankind kindness?

This is silly. Men are going to have a different reaction to female dating strategies compared to males because men have spent a lot of time thinking about the former and much less about the latter (unless you are gay).

It's not about your opinion on dating strategies, or mine. A woman expressing the same level of hostility would get the same response from me. It wouldn't be strictly necessary, because the same guys would be smashing the report button and screaming incoherently at the witch.

Let's check! @WhiningCoil do you have similar feelings regarding Jacob Falkovitch

It's not good. But I also don't see the same "I HAVE A PERSONALITY DISORDER" red flags. Three short, afraid to offend, needy paragraphs. Clicking through to the form... yikes. The photo at the time couldn't be more "M'lady" and I wouldn't want to admit I wrote those questions. I'd blame some matchmaker to try to distance myself from any medical liability for cringe induced sterility.

or Chris Olah?

Well lets see here

We're sorry. You can't access this item because it is in violation of our Terms of Service.

Based and red pilled.