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 -
Moonshot Personal Growth Idea
There are a lot of smart, hyper-informed people on here (don't be bashful). Each probably have 1-5 topics they know A LOT about, who could deliver a knowledgable spiel over voice or text without much effort and intelligently field any number of follow-up questions. So it occurs to me there might be a big educational opportunity for me here if I can capture some of this low-hanging fruit.
I don't know much about American politics, health, business, etc., but eagerly want to know more, and I'm happy to talk over discord/phone/voice or text depending on your preferences. Some topics to jog your brain; if it strikes you that "hey, I actually got obsessed with topic 23 one time and learned everything you could possibly know about it over a 6 month period," please consider reaching out to me. I'll adopt a position indicated by either "pro" or "con" provisionally just to inspire engagement (my actual views here are very low-confidence and "pro/con" means something more like "I've heard interesting arguments for this side of the issue that I want an intelligent person who knows more than I do to explain the merits of to me" than "this is what I believe.")
“The current level of military spending is justified.” Pro
“The typical white male is utterly blameless for the circumstances of the African American community” Pro
"The growth of transgender identity and bisexuality have the character of a social contagion" Pro (Is bisexuality created or only revealed by the environment? Is anyone bisexual because of encouragement, or is the absence of discouragement the only environmental factor that does anything to affect rates of ID?) (Caplan)
“Asian romantic preferences are morally permissible.” Pro
“De facto interrogational torture by the US is justified.” Pro
"Extraterrestrial life is the best explanation of some UFO sightings" Con
“Any minimum wage fails a purely utilitarian cost benefit test due to disemployment effects.” Pro
"Joe Biden's Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Would Be Disastrous," (Or: Cost benefit analysis puts several other environmental causes ahead of climate change.)
"Feminism is bad for women." (a la Bryan Caplan)
"Conventional medicine barely makes us healthier" (as seen in Robin Hanson's case for radical medical skepticism, from the RAND Health insurance experiment to the replication crisis http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/feardie.pdf)
"Dietary research is of such poor quality that we know almost nothing about whether any given major diet fad is truly the ideal diet." (Pro) (I would be willing to take the even stronger position that we don't even know ANYTHING about the right diet just to see what a smart, informed person would say in response to better calibrate my reasoning on this issue)
"Most of life is a prestige-signaling game./Social status is the closest thing to a one-variable explanation for everything, and does far better than the traditional rival models like sex or money."
"Diversity is our strength." Pro
"Society does not clearly treat one sex more unfairly than the other." (Pro)
"IQ is real and a major determinant of social outcomes" Pro
"Racial groups differ in socially relevant ways for genetic reasons." Con
“Capitalists deserve their success.” Pro
"Money doesn't really buy happiness." Pro
“The solution to traffic is congestion pricing (tolls)” Pro
"Actions taken by the Biden Admin during the Covid pandemic were generally justified." Not enough info to sway either way
“We should deregulate construction completely.” Pro
“Workers are not underpaid in competitive business environments.” Pro
Question: How do taxes work, and how SHOULD they work?
“Affirmative action is immoral/harmful.” Pro
“State-mandated wealth redistribution is immoral./Wealth inequality is not a serious social problem” Pro
“Abortion is morally permissible.” Pro
“We should put America First” pro
“It is not possible to be a good criminal defense lawyer AND a good person.” Pro
“We should privatize everything.” Pro
“The poor generally deserve to be poor.” “American wealth inequality is generally fair.” (as seen in remarks made by Caplan re: the so-called "success sequence")
“Gender is essentially biological.” Pro (Tomas Bogardus, Alex Byrne)
“We should remove confederate monuments.” Con
“We should not provide trigger warnings/safety culture actually harms mental health.” Pro (Jonathan Haidt)
“We Should Stop Talking about Privilege” pro
“Immigration is Not a Human Right.” Con
“The Death Penalty is Immoral” pro
“The typical meat eater does nothing wrong.” Pro
“Political correctness is just politeness.” Con
“There are no positive rights; There is no right to healthcare or education.” Pro
“Utilitarianism is a bad moral theory.” Pro
“It isn’t morally wrong to misgender a trans person.” Pro
“Artificial intelligence is not an existential risk.” Pro
“We should not have gun control.” Pro
“We should segregate intimate public spaces by biological sex.” Or: “it is not morally wrong to do so.” Pro
“It’s morally wrong for the average voter to vote; we should try to decrease voter turnout.” Pro
“It’s morally permissible to racially profile.” Pro
“Psychological egoism is false.” Pro or con
“Ethical egoism is false.” Pro
“Racial discrimination is not inherently immoral.” Pro
“Businesses may racially select their customers.” Pro
“Equality of opportunity is morally undesirable.” Pro
“Mixed martial arts don’t violate anyone’s rights.” Pro
“We are morally obligated to tip servers.” Pro
“Hazing should be permitted on college campuses.” Pro
“It is just to punish criminals for the sake of causing suffering to people who deserve it.” Pro or con, preferably con
“If we ought to be taxed more, we ought to donate our excess income.” (“Rich socialists/distributive egalitarians are hypocrites.”) pro
“It’s morally permissible to sell oneself into permanent slavery.” Pro
“There is no duty to hire the most qualified applicant.” Pro
“We should completely deregulate the provision of healthcare services.” Pro
“We should not require occupational licensing by law (for doctors, plumbers, or lawyers).” Pro
“Workplace quality and safety regulations are bad for workers.” Pro
“We should not dispense racial reparations to the black community.” Pro
Con “alcoholics (and drug addicts in general) are nonresponsible victims”
Pro: “Race is biologically real”
Pro:“The rich pay their fair share”
“Exploitation isn’t wrong.” Pro
“Free market pricing is a better distributor than queuing” Pro
“Price gouging is fine.” Pro
“The casting couch is just prostitution” Pro
“Affirmative Action is systemically racist” Pro
“Colleges are guilty of negligent advertising” pro
"We should we abolish civil rights law" (Richard Hanania)
“Gender is essentially biological” pro
TL;DR Looking for someone to explain American politics to me, preferably over discord voice. Especially interested in topics like happiness, relationship success, American public policy (esp. healthcare and the budget)
Depends if you're for the US dominating the world or for a more multipolar world. If the former, then the answer is largely yes. If the latter, then no. The US could easily defend itself almost just as well as now with much lower defense spending.
Not utterly blameless but almost utterly blameless.
Yes.
Yes. Sexual preferences are inherently amoral. Asian romantic preferences are the same as preferring skinny women or whatever.
Maybe in extreme "save a million lives when the bomb is ticking" type of situations but generally no, torture is vile and abhorrent.
Probably not but I'm not 100% against the idea.
Not sure. Actual economics are more complex than any abstract models.
They might be, but I'm not convinced that they would be.
Absolutely and obviously no. The typical argument that "Women in non-feminist societies are happier than women in feminist societies" is contradicted by the argument that so many of the guys who make the argument also make, which is that "It is not enough for men to be happy, men must be virtuous and strive blah blah blah". Same for women. Feminism making women happier or unhappier is orthogonal to whether feminism is good or bad for women. And outside of the happiness argument, there is no good argument for why feminism would be bad for women.
Obviously false given historical statistics.
True. If there was an actual ideal diet, it would be widely known and relatively uncontroversial by now.
Not sure, might be true. Some people really do want sex for sex's sake. On the other hand, I imagine that almost no-one wants money for money's sake, since that would be rather absurd given that the point of having money is to use it to get other things.
Depends on what kind of diversity. Also, who is "us" in this case? For example, I do not care about my country or my race as groups, so who is "us" for me?
Yes, it treats both fairly and unfairly in different ways.
Intelligence is real and obviously a major determinant of social outcomes. IQ is correlated with intelligence but not as much as some think. For example, it is obviously possible to get better at IQ tests through practice without having actually become more intelligent in any significant sense.
Almost certainly true.
Depends on how they came by their success.
It does to some extent.
Not sure.
Not sure.
Probably not. I cannot think of any example of completely deregulated construction that is better than the US model.
Depends what you mean by "underpaid".
Too much for me to think about right now.
Not sure about immoral. "harmful" depends on what group you belong to.
Maybe but all complex society depends on some degree of state-mandated wealth redistribution/No, obviously not, but that does not mean socialism/communism would be better.
Not sure, but personally I am pro choice because I value the comfort and independence of adult women over the lives of fetuses.
No, America is great in many ways but not in all ways.
No, without defense lawyers we would have no fair justice system.
This is not possible without society regressing to anarchy and a collapse of modern technological civilization. At minimum, there must be some non-private authority that regulates disputes, otherwise you would just have 100 small warlord states that don't privatize everything instead of what we have now, which is 1 big state that doesn't privatize everything.
Depends on what you mean by "deserve".
To some degree yes, but nonetheless there are masculine women and feminine men so definitely not entirely.
It should be up to a vote of the local community, but there should be no law that enforces removing them.
Yes / mostly yes.
No, privilege is a real thing but in many ways not what wokes think it is.
There is no such thing as a human right.
Yes, at the very least it is immoral because it kills innocent people sometimes.
No. I eat meat but I do not pretend that there is nothing wrong with it.
No, it is too totalitarian and anti-truth to be just politeness.
Yes but at the same time, to have a successful society we must sometimes act as if there were.
Not sure. My big argument against utilitarianism is that it is not possible to predict the future well enough to really know what actions are more utilitarian than others.
Yes, especially given that if I call for example a transwoman "he", it is almost certainly not because I have any ill intent against him.
It is, but I think that the Yudkowsky types have gone off the deep end when it comes to this matter.
Mixed. We need some level of gun control, but I do not support total gun control because I value publicly owned guns as a way to deter powerful groups from becoming too dominant.
It should be up to the users of each space, as defined by their biological sex.
Not sure.
Yes in an immediate "get rid of crime sense" but no in a "create a long-lasting classical liberal society" sense.
Probably true. I have experienced mental states that seemed genuinely altruistic to me.
Yes, it begs the question.
Yes, but it is often immoral in particular cases and is not a good way to build a classical liberal society, which I value.
I support it in cases where that will significantly prevent physical harm from coming to people. For example, Uber drivers going to dangerous neighborhoods. Otherwise, not sure.
Hard to say, because we have never seen it in any society.
Yes.
Not sure, but probably yes. They take the jobs on the premise that they will be tipped at roughly a certain rate.
Probably yes, but only if it is clearly and explicitly spelled out for people wondering about joining the frats (or whatever) what the hazing will consist of, or if at least it is explicitly spelled out that "we reserve the right to surprise you so be warned!".
No, that is just revenge.
Largely yes.
Yes, but it is also morally permissible to renege on the contract and run away afterwards.
Depends on whether you are working for a vulnerable mom and pop shop or some giant corporation.
No, we should maintain a tightly regulated healthcare sector but also have a separate unregulated sector so that people can choose between the two.
See above.
See above.
Yes except in cases where there is a clear trail of harm that can be objectively established.
No, but that does not mean they should be cast out into the street.
Yes, though it is a spectrum and more complicated than the stereotypical 19th century "caucasian/mongol/black" sort of distinctions.
Not sure.
I am not a utilitarian, so I lean in favor of thinking that it is.
Seems that way based on historical experience.
Not sure. One man's price gouging is another man's "what I have to do to keep my business afloat". Depends on the context.
Pornography is essentially prostitution but I support both being legal.
Yes.
Yes.
Depends on which laws.
This is a repeat question.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link