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 credo is much stronger than that, it puts the Truth as ultimate value, not as just something aspiring or something one "tries" to adhere to but abandons for something else in presence of "dangerous" information. The credo is not "that which can be destroyed by the truth should be unless it is dangerous to do so". Of course you can argue what you do, but then there is no need for edgy sounding guru lines like the credo. You would then just have ordinary thing like "try to tell the truth whenever you can" - it almost sounds something people like Peterson could say actually.
Of course it does. I can say that I believe New York Times or Eliezer Yudkowsky or The Pope or I can trust the Science. If you pick up bundle of beliefs some of them are for sure going to be untrue. This is a common way how people get to believe untrue things. And this is also the way rationalists pick up their beliefs, unlike some scientific sounding first principles reasoning. So again, there is not that much of a difference between rationalists and just regular informed people, in fact from what I noticed rationalists are putting too much faith into their own thought leaders.
Slow down, we are talking about rationalists, I am not that sure how far the appeal to common sense can carry you here. Again, I am maybe too harsh as most rationalists are just normal people who actually have some common sense, except that the whole rationalist ethos is about overcoming commonsensical reasoning on many things and there really are some people over there that can take these things maybe too literally. That's my whole point.
Except if it is dangerous to tell the truth, we already covered that, right?
More options
Context Copy link