site banner
ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35347 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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.

26
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I lost interest in Canadian politics after I saw this article. I cannot say for certain that the election was rigged. But if you were going to rig the election, this is what it would look like.

https://torontosun.com/news/national/elections-canada-205000-mail-in-ballots-were-not-counted/wcm/fc92a391-61f2-4da2-9104-e402ca4f2639/amp/

(February 2022)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6499013

Almost 100,000 mail ballots not counted in federal election: Elections Canada (June 2022)

Even when you are caught, claiming it's a mistake is perfect plausible deniability.

That it happened twice in a row, I find completely unconscionable.

The Canadian government's actions against political dissidents over the last two years leave it a non-democracy regardless of election procedures. You can't have free, fair elections if huge swaths of political opinion are the target of state violence. After the use of the emergencies act against people protesting vaccine mandates, how certain can we be that Trudeau won't engage in similar attacks on his other political opponents when expedient?

"You can have protests as long as they are inconsequential enough for us to safely ignore" is not all that different than "you can't have protests".

We were literally told that the protest was inconsequential and not even a real thing that rises to the level of something worth ignoring for the first two weeks as it gathered steam travelling across the country -- you may have missed this due to living on the wrong side of the continent, but the swing in media coverage from "not a real protest, there's only like twenty trucks" to "OMG this is a threat to national security" once people actually showed up in Ottawa was extremely noticeable to those who watched it unfold.

No, they have an image of American cities burning and occupied for weeks by anarchists because they saw exactly that happen less than a year prior.

Yes, they are fools for being terrified by terrorism.

But then again, you brought up the thousands of people from your country who took to the streets during a pandemic for protests which did not and could not have any impact on the American justice system. So it seems weird for you to claim the right -

a) think they deserve special treatment,

And b) are being silly for caring about what happens in America.

The right only thinks they're special because they have never protested anything before.

This was in fact the very first and only time the Emergencies Act (1988) was invoked, for a protest or otherwise. Its predecessor, the War Measures Act, was invoked against a leftist Quebec Nationalist group... not due to a protest but after they kidnapped a diplomat.

was invoked against a leftist Quebec Nationalist group... not due to a protest but after they kidnapped a diplomat.

They also kidnapped and strangled a provincial cabinet minister from Quebec -- although I think the murdering was not until after Trudeau had invoked the War Measures.

It would be kind of cool if there was an expectation that if you request a mail-in ballot you had damn well better return it, and not just change your mind that it is too much work and toss it in the trash. But until we live under that paradigm, I think a 90% follow-through is pretty decent.

All of your points are great and you're probably right.

But if you wanted to cheat, you would merely need a mechanism to delay likely opponent's votes, i.e. areas where their constituents live.

Basically, anonymous voting already has a trade off of less security in exchange for anonymity. But it allows backdoor attacks since a voter cannot check to who their vote was finally counted for. Combined with the security tradeoffs of mass mail in ballots, a sophisticated agency could cheat the vote, and while suspicions might be raised if it didnt go smoothly, the anonymous voting means there is no means to check the final count by the backdoor.

I cannot say for certain if there was cheating only that the current system is vulnerable to it.

But if you wanted to cheat, you would merely need a mechanism to delay likely opponent's votes, i.e. areas where their constituents live.

This is word for word what Democrats said while losing their shit for the moral outrage du jour in 2020 with DeJoy, who was going to stop all the Democratic ballots from being sent in.

I do not like mail-in ballots in general, and I can say why if we want to get into it. But on this particular front, the people who are given the convenience to vote from home can make the reasonable effort to send their ballot in early, verify their ballot was received, or even deliver them to the county clerk.

I cannot say for certain if there was cheating only that the current system is vulnerable to it.

If Canadian voting scares you then you need to read up on California voting.

I'm saying it's a possible vulnerability. We are so accustomed to anonymous voting that we forget that it creates backdoor security issues. Usually those are difficult to implement but much less so with mass mail ballots. The vulnerabilities overlap well for an agency looking to surreptitiously control election results.

Maybe it hasn't happened yet but it certainly could happen.

If we applied basic infosec sensibility (assuming the worst when seeing a obviously exploitable gaping vulnerability) to voting, almost no election can be considered legitimate.

But most people don't for some reason.

Just for future reference, if you want the actual URL and not Google's amp shit, you can get it by clicking the share icon in the top right corner of the page. It's a little more effort, but I don't think it's wise to trust amp links.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats