It’s been pointed out recently that the topics discussed in the Culture War thread have gotten a bit repetitive. While I do think the Motte has a good spread on intellectual discussion, I’m always pushing for a wider range (dare I say diversity?) of viewpoints and topics in the CW thread.
I was a lurker for years, and I know that the barrier between having a thought and writing a top level comment in the CW thread can loom large indeed. Luckily I’m fresh out of inspiration, and would love to hear thoughts from folks about effortposts they want to write but haven’t gotten around to.
This of course applies to regulars who post frequently as well - share any and all topics you wish were discussed in the CW thread!
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Notes -
I've got a number of ideas bouncing around in my head that I just never have the time to try and make the case for convincingly. Headline followed by tl;dr.
A) Oryx and Crake was an instruction manual for biological research - not the cyperpunk zaibatsu dystopia species-level cuckoldry, but the bioengineering. We'll never understand biological systems until we start trying to build them. Preferably with the help of AI.
B) The Bayh-Dole act gave us a sugar high but led to us eating our seed corn. The startup ecosystem and private industry are dependent on uncommercialized, foundational basic research carried out by underpaid and overworked scientists motivated by furthering humanity and/or ego, not profit.
C) Are we witnessing the birth of two transnational ethnicities? Also, the case for globalization.
D) What I tentatively call 'pregnancy autism,' or maybe an autistic attempt to analyze relationships and relationship conflict. Hard to do a tl;dr, but maybe it's an existential crisis inspired by this quote from 'What to expect when you're expecting':
E) Whatever the fuck this bullshit spam is from Nancy Pelosi/DNC that I get daily:
Complete with 2005 html-era formatting highlighting text in red and blue.
F) Healthy at more weights than you thought. IMO, people overstate the health risks of being overweight and don't sufficiently differentiate between overweight/obese and active/inactive.
G) Criticism is valuable, but easy - standing for something is hard but much more valuable. Tied to my distaste for reactionary thought and experience with pitching scientific ideas.
Numbered lists apparently reset after quotes, unfortunately. Apologies for having to use letters instead.
edit: for my own records, the consciousness blackpill.
Numbered lists in HTML are an interesting feature. They were added very early. They've been in a state of "clearly done wrong but not so wrong to be worth fixing" for decades.
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