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 -
I think planting a flag is enemy territory is a noble project. But... is this the right spot for that? Almost no one here believes in the strong stolen election hypothesis.
This feels like going into a Christian church and yelling "it's okay to eat bacon - fight me". Like, yeah, everyone agrees with you, and you are fundamentally misunderstanding your audience.
If you want to debate something more interesting, maybe debate the weak stolen election hypothesis, which I'll define thusly: An election run under 2016 rules would have led to a Trump victory.
Yeah I agree, and it's been one of my frustrations with ymeshkout. I think there's lots of things that are reasonable to believe / valid to discuss without having ironclad evidence one way or the other, but with him everything turns into a trial where you have to prove everything beyond reasonable doubt.
IME:
-Weakly justified beliefs resist close examination.
-Loose thinkers dislike rigor taking all the fun out of it. Theory is fun but details are a drag.
True, but if you insist on only discussing strongly justified beliefs, you won't have much to talk about. A fair application of the standard you're bringing up end with abolishing many of the ideas that the functioning of our society rests on.
False. It has nothing to do with the thinkers, but with the ideas. Rigorously justified ideas simply become a matter of fact. The theory of relativity might be mindblowing at first, but becomes rather mundane when you're taking time-dilation into account in your calculations for a living. The ideas that are fun are the ones that still have some mystery about them.
It’s fine to discuss any kind of belief. What’s problematic is having an imbalance between the strength of the belief and the strength of the evidence.
There’s a type of person who relishes gray areas and loose approaches towards grand theories. This type of person does not like systemic approaches to truth. Perhaps the classic example of this is when Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson tried to hash things out in multiple podcasts.
On a Motte podcast re: Jan 6, at some point toward the end Yassine’s counterpart said something to the effect of “you know I’m not following the exact details on that; I’m more of a big picture guy.” Same dynamic.
I don't think that's the case. Our entire society rests on very weak evidence. Is "abolish the police" a good idea? Is democracy the best way to organize society? We're no way near to rigorously answering those questions, but dicking around with them would most likely end in disaster.
I notice that your arguments rely a lot on psychologizing your opponents, and don't really contain much of a case for your approach to truth.
“Abolish the police” is a horrifically bad idea! I’m a bit flabbergasted you would propose that as an area with weak evidence.
“Democracy” empirically outperforms anything else we’ve tried at scale. Plenty of debate to be had over what “democracy” even means or if an even better system is possible.
My approach to truth is bog standard rationality(TM).
The dynamic of “loose vs. tight” thinking is issue-agnostic, by the way. On this issue, I’m psychologizing some posters who seem allergic to the lawyerly approach overall.
“Democracy outperforms” actually feels weakly proven to me. Lots of great empires and golden ages were not Democracies. A lot of Englands peak was hybrid. Augustus period of Rome wasn’t Democracy.
Singapore wasn’t a Democracy.
Peter Thiel of course believes in Monarchy.
Democracy also seems to work very poorly in low IQ countries. Even if you could make a strong argument that Democracy works best for Western European people you would still struggle with Democracy is best in sub-Saharan Africa. Saudi Arabia I feel like would be worse if Democracy between the historical religious and a likely fight over oil spoils.
It seems as though the key thing to government is having a great deal of individual agency below the government and buy in by the people.
Oh it is weakly proven without qualifiers.
Gotta limit it to the last few hundred years of history to start.
And I completely agree it’s “hard mode” that simply can’t be pulled off well in many parts of the world. (I don’t think IQ is the issue in say Russia or Iran, but culture and ideology matter.)
Bur after the USSR’s collapse, the ChiComms have the only real rival system in the running and it’s not a model that anyone is copying (unlike the Soviet model).
Western democracy/market capitalism/liberalism has worked in enough places over enough time, and defeated or outlasted several strong competitors, such that using the short hand of “it’s the best system” is something I believe is well justified by the historical record since 1776.
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
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link