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 -
The deadline set by the Covid Origin Act of 2023 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/619/text) to release names, symptoms, hospital visits, and roles of WIV researchers who had Covid-like symptoms in fall 2019 has come and gone. A Google News search for "Covid Origin Act" results in a single article released over the weekend:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/covid-was-not-developed-as-a-bioweapon-dni-finds/
This source is not mainstream. It suggests that the legally mandated report has been released, but puts a spin on the results of the report (Covid not likely an intentional bioweapon) without revealing the full text. Most importantly, it doesn't name any of the names that the Act required. So I went to the website of the Office of the Director for National Intelligence. Crickets. Twitter? There has been a post, but it is about Juneteenth.
Edit: I suppose it is possible that the DNI has made their mandated report to Congress, and that no congresspeople have leaked it yet. In which case one would expect articles in a few hours to days?
As an aside, when I mentioned I was excited about this disclosure to a deeply Blue family member, they suggested I've shifted right. I wonder how the disclosure of Covid origins information became right-coded.
The Left committed early to the "bat soup" theory and declared anybody who doubts it racist, and instituted a censorship blockade of any opposition (or even critical discussion) to this. While they were forced to roll it back a little because dissent went high and wide enough in scientific circles that it wasn't possible any more to block, the initial commitment still weights heavily on the topic, and was not acknowledged as wrong even at "mistakes were made" level, and this colors every critique of this position as attacking the Party Line.
I was always surprised and a little confused that the "bat soup" theory was labelled the non-racist theory.
It sounds weird to me too, how "they are dirty people that eat weird disgusting shit and live in anti-sanitary conditions, and that's where the diseases come from" is non-racist, but "they conducted a high-risk high-technology cutting edge research in collaboration with US government and made a mistake" is racist. But then, very little that the wokes say makes sense to me, so that's just one more thing...
While I agree it's not the mainstream narrative, I have definitely seen pushback on the framing of Chinese "wet markets" being the source of pandemics being racist with the clarification that
"Wet market" is defined by Wikipedia as being the Singapore government invented term for what in the US we would call a farmer's market or public market. By using the Asian term for it that we don't use, it artificially sounds more distant and exotic. And ignores the actually important part: live animal markets without proper health and safety protocols, letting us pretend we don't need to ask whether our handling of live animals carries pandemic risk.
Related, there's no particular reason to think that there's anything special about China here other than China being really big so an outbreak at a completely random market across the world has a good chance of being in China. That said, the specific animals and local viruses in the local ecosystem may also have more pandemic potential in that region (coronaviruses seem to come from bats in Asia... but maybe that's just where we've been looking for them post-SARS)... although currently scientists are keeping an eye on H5N1 avian flu and live animal sales of chickens happen everywhere and sound a lot less exotic to a US audience.
Monitoring live animal sales everywhere (and which probably extends to keeping up with surveillance of pandemic-potiential viruses in wild animals), and making sure they're conducted safely is a massive, expensive project. Which means there's a massive demand for thought-stopping narratives for why we don't need to do it.
I don't think that in American society and American public discourse the question of "whether we need better regulation of live animal markets" even exists, let alone has any prominent placement. Thus, I do not think there's any discernable demand to skew any existing discourse (such as one about Covid origins) to one or other side of the question. I'm sure there are people for whom these questions are of supreme importance, but they do not have any way to influence the Covid discourse in any form.
Statistical arguments have never worked as "get out of literally Hitler free" card when it concerns racism accusations. If drawing attention to China or Chinese wet markets as source of infection were declared racist, then it'd be racist regardless of any statistical justification you could provide.
Not markets specifically. But I do certainly hear people talk about the disease potential of cramming animals too close together and overusing antibiotics. Which was in the news recently due to the avian flu outbreak spiking egg prices, which has the potential to lead to an avian flu pandemic. To be fair, part of why egg prices went up is because the US was aggressive about culling birds suspected to be infected.
I'm not proposing some active conspiracy, just the natural tendency (along the lines of fundamental attribution error) to think of problems as only able to happen to other people.
I think you're agreeing with me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link