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 -
Interesting. My upbringing was basically the opposite. I was told by my parents (and culture more generally), that if I saw someone doing X to achieve goal Y and I really truly believed that instead of X it would be better to do Y it was my duty to let them know this and the fact that this was unsolicited means nothing.
Imagine you see someone trying to open one of those child lock medicine bottles where you have to push them in first, wrangle the cap around a bit and then twist to open them. However they don't seem to know this and you've noticed them for a while trying to twist the cap and open it and it keeps on failing, and they don't know why. They haven't asked you for help but anyone can see they are clearly frustrated. Pretty much nobody would say it's a bad thing to go and tell them how to open the cap, even though technically it is unsolicited advice. We just take this concept and scale it up to apply to many more things.
Now whether they choose to follow my advice or not is completely up to them, and I shouldn't try to change what they do, but my duty is to let them know and what they do with this knowledge later is purely for themselves to decide. On the Day of Judgement I will be able to say before God that I did what was required of me at that point in my life to help my fellow man and thus I was indemnified from whatever happened to that person afterwards, e.g. if they were swimming in waters I knew to be shark infested I have a duty to tell them they should get out ASAP, if they don't and then get eaten I am not morally responsible for what happened in a way I would be if I saw them swimming there and just went on with my day giving them no warning.
I guess this is yet another example of the cultural differences between the west and my homeland. It's pretty small on its own but when you have many dozens of such things they add up very quickly.
You say: Don't give unsolicited advice.
We say: It's your duty to give unsolicited advice.
Overstepping definitely exists and there are lots of ways in which it happens, one way I mentioned above was e.g. trying to get people to actually follow the advice you gave them, thiis is looked down upon quite hard.
Using an example from your own culture (Machiavelli's The Prince):
It's more that the advisors aren't seen by the advisee as knowing their personal situation better than they do, the advisor is just saying what they feel is best for you (the fact that they give up their own time to even give you the advice in the first place is a small act showing they care, it's cheaper for them to save their own time and say nothing) from what they are able to see. Like the artist in the valley looking at the mountain, they may be able to see something about you that you have overlooked, even though you have a far better idea of the exact details of the situation.
There is minimal expectation for the person being given the advice to follow it, and people often freely ignore the advice they have been given by randoms (because of course, the random doesn't know much about you, you might be doing X because X' is unfeasible for some other reason they don't know but you do, so when they tell you to try X' you thank them for their advice and continue doing X),
Equally this isn't seen as insulting towards the random person who's advice you just decided to ignore because everyone knows and acknowledges that you have more information about the situation at hand than the person giving you advice. Note that this is often even true in the case of solicited advice, that too is often freely ignored by the person who asked for the advice in the first place because it doesn't work for them and isn't seen as something particularly bad by the culture beyond a slightly higher expectation that you will follow the advice because you were the one asking for it in the first place.
Going to 50 different people, asking for and getting their advice and then ignoring everyone's suggestions is definitely looked down upon, it's perfectly possible for the first 3 people that they gave you bad advice, but it's far far more statistically likely that if you don't take the advice of 50 different people the problem is with you rather than them. On the other hand ignoring 50 people who gave you unsolicited advice is seen as far less bad, because all 50 of them might not have seen the reason why X' is unfeasible for you.
I personally try to at least give a small justification for why the advice they gave me wouldn't work when I'm put in such a situation, and then other person, their duty discharged, goes on with his day. Repeatedly pestering the same person multiple times with advice on the same thing they don't take is most definitely seen as overstepping though, and looked down on, generally it's fine to give 1 piece of advice, maybe 2 if you really know the person well and like them, before moving on with your life, more is seen as excessive but of course the closer you are to the person you are giving advice to the more you can do here.
Interestingly financial advice is the one type of advice I do not give to anyone, not even those close to me. This is because if the advice doesn't work out they will blame you, while if the advice does work out they won't thank you in anywhere near a proportion to how much they would have blamed you in the counterfactual. "Buy index funds and don't touch them" is where I leave it at (incidentially this is also how I invest my own money).
And of course, certain things really are beyond the pale, telling people "you should have at least 4 kids" is not gonna fly unless you're their parent or grandparent or your argument is so high level that it would apply to basically everyone (in which case it isn't personal advice any more). Interestingly though far more people can get away with "you should have at least 2.2 kids", probably because the argument behind giving the latter advice does not rely on much specific factors about the person you are giving the advice to, so it really doesn't matter you don't know them well at all. I have been told multiple times I should donate my sperm to a sperm bank though, completely out of the blue...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link