site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The issue isn't that they were doing their own preg checks, it's that they were operating and advertising a business that did it for other people for a fee. You can write your own will, for instance, but if you write wills for other people it's the unauthorized practice of law. Now, we can make the argument that that requiring a vet to do this is both unnecessary and outside the bounds of the statute, but there are two general problems I forsee with that.

The first is that the introduction of technology makes a lot of things that used to be the domain of trained professionals increasingly accessible to the general public. Take land surveying. Anyone of average intelligence can pull a deed from the courthouse, buy pro-grade survey equipment, and locate a pin, which is probably enough to do the trick if you're trying to see where you can put up a fence on your own property. But the field is deceptively complicated, and when the same guy decides to go into business for himself as a surveyor with no more training than basic YouTube tutorials, he's asking for trouble. The second problem is that most professional fields are so varied that it's impossible to define every specific thing one needs a license to do. The legislature can't run back into session every time someone comes up with a new medical procedure to make sure that you need a license to do it.

As for specific problems with allowing unlicensed people to do preg checks as a business, I can't comment on because I don't know anything about vet science. But if this is something that's plausible then the solution is to lobby the state legislature to clarify the law to specifically allow it; God knows the farm lobby in PA is powerful enough to make it happen if there's that much of a call for it and the only real opposition is from vets that don't like it. But the solution isn't to start a business doing it and ignore the state when they tell you to stop.

The issue isn't that they were doing their own preg checks, it's that they were operating and advertising a business that did it for other people for a fee.

Isn't the complication here that they were running an AI service? So maybe as part of that it was "after your cow is inseminated, we'll do a follow-up check to make sure she's in calf, no foal no fee" arrangement? They weren't selling pregnancy checks as a separate business. I don't know the fine details and there must be more going on here than we know about.

The first is that the introduction of technology makes a lot of things that used to be the domain of trained professionals increasingly accessible to the general public. Take land surveying. Anyone of average intelligence can pull a deed from the courthouse, buy pro-grade survey equipment, and locate a pin, which is probably enough to do the trick if you're trying to see where you can put up a fence on your own property. But the field is deceptively complicated, and when the same guy decides to go into business for himself as a surveyor with no more training than basic YouTube tutorials, he's asking for trouble.

This seems fine? So long as that person is not allowed to claim to be a licensed land surveyor who's surveys will be accepted by, like, the Land Titles Office (much less the neighbours) -- consumers can probably decide for themselves whether such a survey is of value to them? (hint: the only time anybody is likely to get something surveyed it's because some government agency (or maybe the neighbours) is forcing them to; if that agency won't accept the results the survey is worth zero dollars

The legislature can't run back into session every time someone comes up with a new medical procedure to make sure that you need a license to do it.

Yes they can. Because "you may do nothing without a license unless we specifically say so" is not the law.