site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don’t understand this. You seem to be saying that A) we have too few top-level posts; B) this one led to several “perfectly interesting discussions;” and C) this post should nevertheless have been deleted before those interesting discussions were allowed to happen.

If the OP led to an interesting discussion, who cares how insane it was? You’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

I wasn't intending that comment to push a specific view, just highlight a tension.

If the OP led to an interesting discussion, who cares how insane it was

(iirc) The mod team disagreed with that line of thought the last time it was brought up.

I sort of agree. On the other hand, I think we could have more posts that aren't huge effortposts but aren't 'insane', and since we don't we reply to the insane ones. IMO (maybe) there should be a general space (like the BLR) where it's within norms for people to post thoughts, links, etc about generic topics (as opposed to the weekly threads, which are scoped to questions / fun / etc) that can start discussions. I'm guessing there's a lot more supply of posts that are shorter and lighter, but still decent quality, than 20 paragraph effortposts, posts similar to the good replies to this post. But currently only people who for whatever reason ("I'm feeling rather insane right now so I'll post a screed") are willing to break the norms a bit end up making the toplevel posts.