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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25308 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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I’m going to jump in, mod hat on, to say that I specifically appreciate the contrarianism.

Policy debates should not be one-sided. If an issue comes up in the CW thread, it probably isn’t one-sided. There is nothing wrong with presenting positions which would otherwise be ignored. Steelman at will.

In fact, users simply love to ask for defenses of facially unpopular opinions. Sometimes this is rhetorical bait. Other times it’s an attempt to get around the “look what those people did!” rule. And there are times it’s genuine, because this community really is unusually fond of sensemaking.

But.

There is one glaring, obvious risk of playing the devil’s advocate. People may think you’re actually, wholeheartedly helping out the devil. And he’s not known for acting in good faith.

A lot of people are convinced that you will say anything to score points for Your Team, whatever that may be. I’m not sure that you can disabuse them of this notion, but I’d love to see it.

Best of luck.

You guys are still going to end up permabanning him at some point down the road. Same as Darwin the first time, same as Hlynka. The trajectory of the mod team's qUaLiTy CoNtRiBuToR charity cases is always obvious from a billion miles away.

Maybe.

But he will generate some actual value along the way, which is more than can be said for a number of less visible contributors.

Well, I hope you guys are also keeping track of the negative value he's generating as well, because to the extent his posts result in the kind of conversation you want to promote, it's only because others are biting their tongues. The only reason I'm not there wrestling in the mud with him, is that I'm finally, slowly, becoming wise enough not to jump in with people who do the "bring you down to their level, and enjoy it" thing.

Yeah watching him say shit like "well when I said people like Rowling I didn't actually mean Rowling herself" while getting downvoted fifty points through the floor on every post he makes at least contributes some humor value. Just try not to ban too many otherwise okay posters for getting frustrated with him along the way.

I used to be one of those "quality contributor charity cases". People make choices, and sometimes they choose to change.

Thanks. I try to be careful about specifying when I'm saying what I believe, steelmanning what some group or person on the left might say about the topic, or playing devil's advocate to stress-test a position. I do get the feeling that people are often not noticing this distinction, maybe I can be more explicit about it or maybe that's a lost cause.

I do feel like this community many years ago (like, back when it was part of /r/ssc and right after) was much more interested in stress-testing ideas against devil's advocate objections, and searching for steelman representations of the opposition to learn about and discuss, and trying to pass ideological Turing tests. And it feels like here and now it's more often about gesturing at the 'loony left' being dumb and then expressing incredulity of people disagree. Not that it is/was 100% either one then or now, just feels like the types of conversations I'm trying to have are not appreciated the way they used to be.

I've been around since the /r/SSC culture war thread days. I'm probably more centrist that most here and I have really always appreciated the contrarians who participate in this space like Darwin used to. Since the move to /r/themotte and even more since the exodus here, unfortunately it does feel more and more like the spirit has shifted to dunking, probably partially because of the friction need to find this forum and setup an account rather than just popping by on your normal reddit account.

I have been reading this discussion and all of your posts in it though. I don't agree with everything you're saying but I do appreciate the fact that it forces the conversation into words so that I can read arguments and rebuttals. Please continue.

contrarians who participate in this space like Darwin used to.

You are, in fact, still talking to Darwin.

Please continue.

Can you elaborate on what you're getting out of it? It's not exactly fun to debate the finer points of "when I said 'people like JK Rowling' I didn't actually mean JK Rowling", and being expected to charitably respond to a strawman of your position, and to smile and nod as your position is labeled a "blood libel".

To be fair I'm getting more out of the responses. Without the catalyst get generate those responses where people do try fairly hard to elaborate their points to someone who disagrees with them, it's not nearly as interesting. The way he's shifting around and stuff is annoying but at least it's generating a conversation that a bystander can skim through and find good nuggets in.

Thanks. I try to be careful about specifying when I'm saying what I believe, steelmanning what some group or person on the left might say about the topic, or playing devil's advocate to stress-test a position.

Because a common dishonest tactic is to take a position that's an exaggerated version of your normal one as a test to see what you can get away with. Anything you can't get away with, you then label as a "joke" or "just getting you to think" or "playing devil's advocate". If you want to play devil's advocate, do it for a position that you don't directionally believe in. You've talked about steelmanning the opposition above, but a leftist playacting as a more extreme leftist isn't steelmanning the opposition.

Also, your "devil's advocate" position seems to contain flaws that are best explained by you sincerely believing in the position. For instance, someone taking a devil's advocate position wouldn't misrepresent Rowling's book--there's no incentive to be careless about something you don't really believe in. But a true believer has an incentive to be careless.

Thank you for posting this, I really appreciate it.

Personally if I was in charge and there was a mod decision that required a subjective judgement call, I would err on the side of extending leniency to posters with viewpoints that are underrepresented on this forum. I especially value posters like @guesswho who have alternative viewpoints on the "classic" culture war topics. It makes these discussions a lot more interesting.

I would err on the side of extending leniency to posters with viewpoints that are underrepresented on this forum.

I would not. It's the moderation equivalent of not putting BLM protestors in jail because they're on the side of the left.

Justice should mean equal treatment. If equal treatment leads to disparate impact because one side commits more crime, so be it.

In a world where you only had 3 BLM activists and wanted to hear their opinions then it becomes a bit more nuanced I think.

If we want this to be a place with multiple viewpoints represented then justice is not the only consideration.

Which isn't to say I agree with the proposal, just that i think justice is not a good argument on its own. Being just isn't one of the founding principles of theMotte.

I would argue against it from more of a broken window perspective, bad behaviour breeds bad behaviour and damages the level of discourse.

It’s already been acknowledged that longstanding posters with lots of AAQCs will be given a bit of extra wiggle room, and I would simply extend that to posters with underrepresented viewpoints as well, because the mere existence of a rare viewpoint is its own type of Quality Contribution.

If they get AAQC’s, sure that makes sense. If it’s standard Reddit fare mixed with weakmanning, no, it does not.

I think people are interpreting what I said too broadly. I'm not saying that you should have free license to break the rules just because you're a contrarian. I'm just saying that I think it would be appropriate to give them a gentle reminder or two about the rules before the mods start escalating to warnings/bans.

In particular I've noticed a pattern where people with unpopular viewpoints are more likely to get riled up during debates, which makes sense, because when your views are unpopular it's easy to feel like everyone's out to get you. So they're more likely to get provoked into breaking the rules on civility. For the sake of cultivating a wide array of perspectives, which is a goal I value very highly, I think it would be appropriate to keep this in mind and extend them a small amount of leniency.

If they just seemed like a very dense poster and they weren't contributing anything except standard-issue moral outrage, then I might be slightly less lenient, but again as I already said at the beginning, it's a subjective judgement call.

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