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 -
Apparently, a lab in china has created a virus with a 100% kill rate in humanized mice. Combined with the fact that there's a decent chance that COVID was a lab leak, this sort of thing is extremely dangerous to be doing.
I'm not sure how best to make it so that people are not incentivized to do things like this, but ceasing to fund this variety of research (it looks like the US ended one program that was pushing this sort of thing last year), and instating some sort of legal liability on those who do this, and especially if they dispose of it badly, probably seem like good decisions.
Extremely dangerous diseases are among the top few things in being both disastrous to humanity (unlike climate change) and also relatively likely (unlike a massive asteroid hitting earth). Development of them is also something that is not excessively difficult to do. This is probably the closest thing we have so far to Bostrom's black ball metaphor. People joke about Yudkowskian airstrikes on data centers; would airstrikes on labs be similarly warranted? More seriously, though, there should be far more effort put into preventing this sort of thing than there currently is.
Bostrom's concerns should probably be something more important to be aware of. The ideal is just to not develop technology in specific fields to the point that killing millions is a cheap and easy thing to do. Of course, the tradeoff is totalitarianism, a terror of its own.
EDIT: Some of the comments have argued, relatively convincingly, that this particular news story was overblown and misleading.
Large-scale medicine is a good example of anarcho-tyranny. Malaria vaccine to save untold thousands from a painful death? Not without years and years of exhaustive development and trials and the WHO sitting with its thumb up its arse for no reason! Fuck around with lethal untested experimental viruses? Why, of course, no problem there.
How do you propose attaining a state that can not be described as anarcho-tyranny in this fashion? If you write your ban on this instance of "fucking around", the next guy writing a post like yours will just get to say something like "basic research to understand how to best fight emerging pandemics? Not without billions spent on paranoid safety procedures! Fuck around with [new thing that has no motivated political constituency fighting against it yet]? Why, of course(...)." The things that are seemingly unreasonably banned and encumbered today are just noncentral examples of yesterday's irresponsible-scientists-have-gone-too-far scenarios.
More options
Context Copy link
I feel like your use of anarcho-tyranny implies elite control and nefariousness, but if they fast-tracked it by ignoring safety concerns, the antivaxx masses would flip their shit. Even regular people are more comfortable doing nothing than risking harm, copenhagen ethics style. They’re not pushing the fat man on the tracks, no matter how many kids die. It’s really only 'psychopathic' utilitarians who care.
It's plausible to me that lots of examples of anarcho-tyranny are driven by public opinion. African tribe A wants the country's government apparatus to be asymmetrically used in their favour against African tribe B. Bleeding heart liberals in the West want a legal system that "doesn't punch down."
In the same way, and for exactly the same reasons, American gender/skin color A wants the country's government apparatus to be asymmetrically used in their favor against American gender/skin color B. Justifying a system that oppresses B is always and by definition "punching up, not punching down" (according to A).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link