site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Are you ok?

Like, literally. I'm worried I'll get modded for asking this, but I have a background in psychology and the writing style here feels pretty schizotypal, it sounds like you're at the age where that commonly pops up, you might want to look up symptoms and decide whether you want to get checked out.

Even assuming your comment is a sincere expression of concern (* doubt *), it is hard to imagine that he's going to go see a psychiatrist because a rando on the Internet suggests he has schizophrenia.

Or schizotypal personality disorder, and I agree, that's why I said 'look up symptoms and see if you want to see someone' rather than 'go see someone'.

Anyway, yes, I knew I would probably be doubted, but it's a sincere sentiment.

Is that sentiment downstream of the fact that they appear to be far far into my outgroup and maybe their writing is actually sensible and full of references and context and assumptions I don't understand, rather than actually being disjointed and telegraphic as it appears to me? That's very possible, which is why I told them to use their own judgement.

Schizophrenia is a psychotic mental illness with a reasonably well understood malfunction of neurotransmitters that requires treatment with medication and has a well understood natural history in patients and an increasingly well understood etiology which includes genetic components. Psychosis in the context of medicine and psychology refers to an inability to understood what is real and what isn't. This is a disease that is notorious for people often developing this condition in young adulthood.

Schizotypal Personality Disorder is a Personality Disorder, which (loosely) means a persistent and pervasive pattern of maladaptive personality traits that deviate from societal norms. These symptoms and experiences are present throughout a persons lifespan and may improve with therapy and age and while an individual might not meet diagnostic criteria prior to age 18, you'd expect said features to be present in teenage years and potentially earlier. These people can be generally expected to have intact reality testing and are also unlikely to present for and/or need psychiatric or psychological care. It is not schizophrenia, despite the similar sounding name.

Neither can be reasonably inferred from a highly limited section of posts an online forum due to other key diagnostic features. It's far more likely to be someone who is just weird (not an illness!), passionate about a hobby-horse or bugaboo, or just plain young... or drunk...or with an atypical writing style...etc.

Depending on the content of the post you might find evidence for a (solitary) delusional disorder but that's not the claim here (and of course as modhat says...).

I disagree with you; delusion isn't actually the only thing that can be inferred. There's also a specific style that I've basically got pegged as "badly psychotic"; the Capitalised Important Concept Rant.

The example I have to hand is the Female Void essay (which I can't actually find without some sort of well-poisoning at the start, so skip down to "Writings from 'Reads'"). I actually agree with a substantial chunk of the content of that essay, but there is very obviously a layer of crazy paint over it all; my understanding is that this is "thought disorder". Not every psychotic writes that way, but I'm not aware of sane people writing that way.

And, for what it's worth, FR doesn't come off to me as having written a CICR, and the content doesn't strike me as obviously delusional.