site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 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.

9
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In what is my new favorite excuse, ChatGPT told me wrongly, my apologies. Checking Wikipedia (ironically, given how often we were told not to do that at first), per capita peaked in ~2008 (including local jails).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate#Growth_and_Subsequent_Decline


year  total         per-100k

1940	0,264,834	201

1950	0,264,620	176

1960	0,346,015	193

1970	0,503,586	161

1980	0,503,586	220

1985	0,744,208	311

1990	1,148,702	457

1995	1,585,586	592

2000	1,937,482	683

2002	2,033,022	703

2004	2,135,335	725

2006	2,258,792	752

2008	2,307,504	755

2010	2,270,142	731

2012	2,228,424	707

2014	2,217,947	693

2016	2,157,800	666

2018	2,102,400	642

2020	1,675,400	505

Wikipedia is almost always a better source - in the sense of usefulness and accuracy of the information - than something like (not implying these are the same) nyt/cnn/nypost/local news, or even worse a popular random website, even if that random website is from "harvard" or something. It's a worse source than a paper / dataset / article in a trade publication / review article in the field, but those are hard to interpret if you're not familiar with them.