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.

If you believe that you have decent chances of going into severe depression from a billion dollars... then don't get a billion dollars?

Or, more likely, you take the billion dollars and donate it, because even if it would mess with you to have that much money available.. you can still get a lot out of it.

I don't understand your complaint for consequentialism. You take actions with respect to what you believe. An action can have bad consequences even if you think it will likely have good ones.. so what?

You take actions based on your beliefs about their consequences, which you try to make as accurate as you can given your time. For most people, I think that they would actually benefit from a billion dollars (despite the meme that rich people are somehow worse-off). This can end up badly, like it making you a target of scammers, but you try to model that when you make your decision. However, a sliver of rationality is also noticing when you're failing to get what you want: if a billion dollars was making you unhappy, then donate it or restrict yourself to more limited amounts of money (because you need some degree of a required job or something).

If you have reason to believe your traditional roles are very likely good methods for winning, then you likely follow those. I don't run up to the mountain lion, because I have knowledge from cultural background that mountain lions are dangerous. However, a modern american (especially a rationalist) is unlikely to actually want to do the 'tradwife' lifestyle. I imagine most people are like this, actually, but that we don't have enough slack or availability of options for them to reach for what they really-really-want.