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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I truly cannot understand why you would deliberately choose to spend so much of your free time in a specific online space when you believe that the majority of users in that space (excluding you) consciously endorse "fuck everyone not like me" as a lens through which they view the world; in which you don't seem to be having any luck persuading anyone not to endorse this worldview; in which you don't even seem to believe that anyone participating in this space can be persuaded not to endorse this worldview; in which I'm not even sure if you want to. It's just such an utterly baffling way to spend one's time. Do you really enjoy telling people "lol, you just hate everyone who's different from you" (not in so many words) only for the mods to tell you to knock it off for the nth time? Like, seriously, honest question - what are you getting out of this?

Why wouldn't you? It's much more fun to speak to people you disagree with - you make contact with their ideas, sharpen your rhetorical tactics and understanding of the subject matter, and maybe you'll learn something or maybe they'll learn something. And those people having moral flaws like "I hate everyone who isn't me" doesn't make the conversations any less interesting! They still have object level claims and complicated reasons for believing them.

Whereas being surrounded by people you agree with is (relatively) more like talking to a mirror. You know what it's going to say, so why bother?

Maybe I'm typical-minding. It really doesn't sound like much fun to me.

I agree with curious_straight_ca, and what they describe is also pretty close to the intended purpose of this forum.

I don't think you are, most people would find this place unpleasant as is, saying nothing about my hypothetical. But I think my approach is better, and so long as you can get good object-level disagreement out of it there's no reason to be put off by anything else.

I think both are found commonly.

I neither said excluding me, nor consciously endorse, nor that no one can be persuaded, nor that I'm not learning anything myself.

See discussion here and here.

Also, flagging @somedude and @sjet79, this is an immediate example of what I'm talking about. I don't thin this user is dishonestly putting words in my mouth to avoid the question, or w/e you were saying Hlynka did, but they sure are assigning beliefs and characteristics to me that I never said and don't follow from what I wrote.

Like I said to both of you, I think this is an honest mistake that happens when people talk across an inferential gap, and it gets noticed when the miscommunication is of a type that looks like hostility or strategy. But it happens all the time and just sometimes gives that appearance.

you got my username wrong, and misgendered me. Second thing is mostly in jest, idk why but sjet feels like a female form of my username.

Sorry about that, typing on phone at the time