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 -
When it comes to the UFOs, there has existed a longrunning conflict, if you can call it such, between UFOlogists who subscribe to the "nuts'n'bolts" explanation - there's nothing supernatural here, they're beings from some other planet flying physical ships - and UFOlogists who subscribe to theories as UFOs as interdimensional creatures, ie. offer an explanation not covered by our current understanding of science, a supernatural explanation.
There's also a longrunning trend of nuts'n'bolts ufologists eventually becoming interdimensionalists and starting to include all sorts of woo in their spiel - the current congressional effort seems to be leaning that way already, and it's understandable that secular lawmakers, which Democrats would generally tend to be, would be leery of this direction, since there's a short skip, often barely disguised, from "UFOs are interdimensional creatures" to "UFOs are demons, let us pray".
Personally, I've argued for some time that this whole flap has other explanations already, but frankly, if I had to accept that the UFOs really represent something extraterrestrial, I'd go with an interdimensional explanation, too, since the interplanetary one doesn't really make sense logically at all. Why the heck would the ayyys be sending ships here just to... do stunts? Where are the promised goods?
Also, regarding conspiracies, I'd say that there are two separate reasons why different fractions of the left are leery of them. The more mainstream liberals have adopted a trust-the-science, trust-the-experts sort of a worldview, which doesn't really offer that much space for conspiracy theories, especially considering that most conspiracy theories usually just boil down to the supposed experts and technocratic governance just being a smokescreen for some sort of a sinister plot to tell lies to take power.
This doesn't mean a complete aversion to conspiracy theory - you can still decribe conspiracies by dark forces seeking to dethrone the benevolent experts to take over, like the idea of a Trump-Russia plot - but it's also not particularly necessary to do so, you can always just blame the forces of stupidity for the fact that the best and the most scientific advice is not being listened to.
Meanwhile, on the socialist left, where there's more distrust of the experts (particularly of the mainstream economic and foreign policy set in the West), there's an aversion to conspiracy theories, since it's seen as an "easy", lacking explanation for things that have deeper structural causes. Ie. socialists find it weird when right-wingers bang on about the WEF, specifically, despite WEF representing a group of capitalists, since the suggestion seems to be that the problem is just that there's this cabal of bad capitalists and if we just expose them and... somehow... get rid of them, then capitalism will start working properly and all would be good again.
Between these there has traditionally existed a populist left that's too left-wing to be liberals but not really socialist enough to be socialist, and this crowd has generally been more amenable to conspiracy theories, but there just seems to be less space for them than previously.
I don't believe in Aliens, I think there would be evidence the government and academia working together can't hide even if they do manage to work together, but I don't think this is a very good argument. After all, we went to the moon basically just to show off. A civilization capable of interstellar travel is probably using a similar portion of capabilities; we don't know how to travel between stars, we're civilizationally in 1865, when From Earth to the Moon on that question. It took another hundred years to be able to do it. Our civilizational capacity in the 1960s was orders of magnitude beyond what it was in the 1860s, and no doubt in another hundred years it'll be orders of magnitude more than it is now assuming we don't collapse before then.
Right, but the ‘UFO phenomenon’ is seen by most Ufologists as mostly pertaining to involvement beyond simple scientific or recreational activities on behalf of the so-called ‘Ufonauts’, or the intelligence behind the phenomenon at large, given the fact of how intricate the deception and psychologically-based operation of this intelligence seems to be. This seems to be indicative of something beyond simple probing for the sake of another intelligence understanding a lesser one (especially since, if these things are actually aliens, and could engineer the space-time metric like no-one’s business, something like nanotechnology or ancestor-like simulations wouldn’t be too far away in the tree of technological development most likely, and having nuts-n’-bolts style data-collection would be too ‘clunky’). Jacques Vallee formulates a handful of arguments against the hypothesis that these are actual interplanetary spacecraft here if you take the data seriously. As a corollary of this, the ‘control system’ that Vallee describes the UFO phenomenon as being (some sort of atemporal ‘higher-dimensional’ memetic phenomenon attempting to manifest its existence to us through manipulation of our mental, spiritual, and physical faculties) also seems to be very hard to distinguish from some sort of intelligence operation done on behalf of the US government, as some of the first abduction experiences also seem to point to some psyops entirely. The issue is that the intelligence community also seems to have some sort of belief in these things (as shown with Grusch et al.) and also seem to consider themselves as ‘superior’ to the rest of the population due to their knowledge of such things ultimately.
So we’ve come to this weird impasse where elements of the intelligence community are attempting to manipulate phenomena like this, while also ostensibly believing in it, to the point where the so-called ‘gatekeepers’ consider themselves incumbent to manipulate the rest of humanity with this given technological advantage for the ‘greater-good’ in a mode of absolute secrecy, which coincidentally is very reminiscent of the top-AI labs and the idea of ‘pivotal acts’. Also, the whole ‘this memetic structure from a higher atemporal dimension is attempting to manifest itself through us without direct causal actions, mentally and physically’ idea is an antecedent to the Landian accelerationist idea of AI & capitalism as a basilisk which has itself been succeeded in this community by e/acc people. So it’s interesting to see how that plays out.
EDIT: some links fixed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Every single explanation for why actually existing socialists states have been failures and horror shows rests on a giant conspiracy theory. Sanctions, reactionary forces within the state, take your pick. Hell conspiracy theories are a good part of the reason why said states became horror shows to begin with, since they resorted to conspiracy theories about kulaks and speculators as an explanation for their own failures, and punished these people accordingly.
Yes_Chad.jpg
"Systemic" explanations are a cope of the autist. Libertarians think they can create a good system by drafting just the right constitution, that will keep the state small for sure this time. Ancaps think they can create a good system by just abolishing the state. Socialists are scattered across a similar spectrum with regards to capitalism. Hlynka's Cat is laughing at them all.
The fact that we've been stuck so long acting systemic explanations are better because they're systemic probably says something about the usefulness of our academic elites, but that's another story.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link