site banner
ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35239 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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.

33
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Isn’t the “imprecision” of that rectangle definition meant to generalize to other geometries? My theory is pretty rusty, but I’d think you could have a space where two sets of parallel lines don’t have symmetrical angles. Maybe one pair right angles, one pair not?

this relation cannot be expressed with mere definitions

I’m quite confident that it can. Geometry has a lot of mere definitions, and stringing a few of them gets you from any of the other rectangles definitions to the four-angles one. In the case of the single-right-angle version, adding Euclid’s fifth axiom confirms that the opposite angles must be identical, and either the 360° definition of a quadrilateral or the rules of supplementary angles should give us the final proof.

This is really important because theoretical math is all about reducing definitions.

My theory is pretty rusty, but I’d think you could have a space where two sets of parallel lines don’t have symmetrical angles. Maybe one pair right angles, one pair not?

What do you mean by "a space"? I'm in an ambivalent state where I can't tell if you're missing an obvious point, or talking theory at a level I'm entirely missing. Leaning towards the latter.

A space in the mathematical sense: a set of locations plus some rules which describe their relations. Our vanilla geometry is defined over Euclidean spaces, but by screwing around with one or more of the relation rules, we get other ones. The classic example is swapping out the parallel postulate to get "elliptic" and "hyperbolic" geometries. The former includes geometry on the surface of a sphere, which gives us triangles with two right angles and other shenanigans. I looked to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(mathematics)) for a better definition but only left more confused.

This was on my mind from trying to grasp quaternion basics for work. They're 4-dimensional, which I'm pretty sure is still handled by a Euclidean space, but also have some nice properties regarding spatial rotations.

In a space that has more than two dimensions, skew lines never meet but also are not parallel.

Actually you might be right the "at least" is basically there to apply to hyperbolic space or something like that. Of course, high schooler me had no idea about that stuff.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats