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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
But it doesn't work. There are indeed such traits, and any exceptions are so rare you can safely ignore them. All categories related to things existing on the physical world will work this way, only Mathematics offers perfect definitions.
Further the intersex edge case is useless for trans people, unless you wish to claim only intersex people can be trans.
Surely you can recognize the contradiction in this sentence. "Yes there are traits that perfectly sort humans into binaries, with exceptions."
I don't think this is true? I'm pretty sure our categorization of the elements requires that they have only a specific number of protons, for example. If an atom has eight protons it is Oxygen and if it has nine it's Fluorine. There's no such thing as "Oxygen with nine protons" or "Fluorine with eight protons."
I would recognize the contradiction, if that was the sentence, but if you scroll up, you will see you used the word "neatly" not "perfectly".
Chemistry or quantum physics isn't my domain, but knowing life I'm pretty sure a sufficiently motivated post modernist could deconstruct the category with some " what even is a proton" gambit.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link