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 -
That was a good review.
It's plausible that more city region autonomy could help both Jacob's problem, and Turchin's, since part of the problem of elite overproduction is that influential positions don't scale with population. When the US population increases by 100 million people, we don't automatically get more Ivy League universities, legislators, states, or even newspapers. He likens this to a game of musical chairs, where instead of removing a chair each round, you keep the same number of chairs, but add more contestants and higher stakes.
If a region grows a mid-sided city like Phoenix, maybe some power should be encouraged to build there, even if it's kind of an ugly city in the middle of a desert, and not a cool, hip, popular coastal city. Maybe it wouldn't be so ugly if there were a mechanism for people to gain status from improving it. Perhaps there should be things for aspiring elites to do there, and a currency to keep track of how well they're doing at it, so that there's some status to be had out of managing it well. Maybe it was a bad idea to concentrate all the most capable young people at a few colleges on the East Coast and perhaps a couple in California. It's not so bad even now. Sure, Phoenix isn't cool, but it's sort of competently run, and its university is sort of acceptable, with a few good programs, its state legislature occasionally makes useful decisions, so things aren't completely failing to work, but it does seem like there's a lot of room to improve without millions of people dying as in most of the examples. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be too many cases of this happening without societal breakdown.
More options
Context Copy link