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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Yeah, close enough.

I actually don't think exploitation is the main reason porn is unethical - it's that it subverts the productive instinct towards reproduction in favor of something meaningless. But I don't think the puritan moral rage you generally see from reactionaries at this is a well-calibrated way to fight it.

They both make money stirring up controversy, not discovering truth, and in that they're both experts regardless of their skill at debate

Destiny's been a lot better in the past few years at attempting to discover truth instead of stirring up controversy, and most of his conversations aren't heated or adversarial like this one was (whereas in the past he was a lot more debate bro-ish). Imo ideally, heat/conflict and accuracy don't have to be incompatible, but a lot of social incentives make them so in practice.

I actually don't think exploitation is the main reason porn is unethical - it's that it subverts the productive instinct towards reproduction in favor of something meaningless. But I don't think the puritan moral rage you generally see from reactionaries at this is a well-calibrated way to fight it.

Yep, agreed. I meant to imply that Meghan's view was that exploitation is the main issue, not that that was my own view.

Do you have any good examples of Destiny being more fair? I'd love to see one. Ideally he'd be interviewing / debating someone across the aisle (rather than just someone who is a Marxist rather than a socialist for example).

here he's talking to right-wingers - https://youtube.com/watch?v=AOcbaUaxHSA

He reads excerpts from studies from his phone! The discussions stays almost entirely at the object-level with details.

(edit: in the interest of not misrepresenting, this is more science-heavy than his usual debates, but it's the first one i clicked on)

It's not perfect, but in terms of 'being fair', given the circumstances it's pretty good imo.