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 -
I think epistemics isn't really that useful in day to day life. For the vast majority of people in the vast majority of situations, just going off intuition is more effective. I think an elective of epistemics would definitely be good, and maybe it'd be better than one of the lower priority courses like science, but it's much lower priority than literacy or physical fitness.
Explicit reasoning, especially on Bayesian lines, isn't necessary 99% of the time, in the sense that crunching the numbers will provide an increase in value greater than the time/opportunity cost spent doing it. This is because humans are probably fundamentally Bayesian in their reasoning, according to the predictive processing theory of cognition.
This ceases to be true in certain important edge cases, where people devote far too little thought or rigor to important decisions like say, buying or renting a house, or what insurance to get and so on. Hard numbers and research will almost certainly beat going off vibes, at least in terms of dollars per hour of effort.
More options
Context Copy link
I think this absolutely ceased to be true (if it ever was) in the current era where the average person is exposed to dozens of possible scams every day, many of which were devised by extremely sophisticated actors and have been refined over years or decades to be almost imperceptible from honest business opportunities.
Maybe if you still live in a small town where you know your neighbors (i.e. you're unlikely to exceed Dunbar's number) and you've got friends and family nearby looking out for you your intuitions will still suffice to navigate life without too many pitfalls.
But even merely browsing the internet can have you stumbling into places that are designed to suck you in and extract resources or spur you to action or instill some false but alluring belief which will in turn be exploited by other malicious actors.
Most of Crypto-space, for example. Blows my mind how billions of dollars have been thrown at rugpull scams and pyramid schemes just by making people believe it was possible to 10x their money for zero actual effort. Get-rich-quick schemes have existed forever, but the sheer ubiquity of them is what makes it more risky for the average person these days.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link