site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

To me, the two first sentences are somewhat at odds, especially together with the last sentence. Using your definition, can't you gain their trust and then change their opinion?

The trusted people are often authority figures such as politicians, news anchors, or celebrities that they don't actually know in real life, and you are not and could never become. Though they can also be influenced by more close trusted people such as friends and family. Thus, if you befriend an NPC you can potentially change their mind on issues, but this is a package deal, you grind reputation which allows influence on all beliefs simultaneously, and requires an awful lot of effort if your goal was one particular idea. They aren't deciding on their beliefs based on the object level ideas of those beliefs, but on their relationships of the people espousing them.

I don't know that reputation copying is the only way an NPC can treat beliefs, The core characterization of the NPC is the ignoring of logic and object level facts about the beliefs because they're formed for completely unrelated reasons, so you could have different subclasses. And obviously pretty much no one in real life is literally a pure NPC to this extreme of a level, but the more similar someone comes to this archetype the more appropriate the label becomes.