site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 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.

Is there anything more to your point here than "AI currently exists and may have military applications, therefore there will never be a dangerous superhuman AI", which is an obvious non sequitur?

My dears, my darling, my honey, my sweetie-pie:

Thank you for yours of the 28th inst., your reply has been received and noted and will be actioned whenever (if ever) I can be arsed to do so.

This is indeed a reaction, and is helpful for me to note and keep track of various opinions. So, shall us put 'ee down for "it's all copacetic", shall us?

  • -28

My dears, my darling, my honey, my sweetie-pie:

Stop this.

No.

I've put up with you doing the Nanny bit because you're a mod and you have the authority, but I'm not going to accept sneering without responding in kind.

If OP can be polite about their response, I'll be polite in return. OP goes on about "reality is only allowed to have appropriately gritty" so on, I'll respond in the same tone.

You can tell me I'm wrong, you can tell me I'm banned, but you can't tell me how to feel my feelings.

  • -13

No one is telling you how to feel your feelings. You know that having feelings and how you express them are two different things.

You get cut more slack than you know because people (including me) actually like you quite a lot, despite your inability to control your feelings and your tendency to respond to even the least little bit of poking with explosions. So be assured that the contempt you are showing me now and have shown me in the past is not taken personally.

That said: replying to a mod telling you directly to stop doing something with a foot-stamping "No, not gonna, you can't make me, you're not the boss of me" temper tantrum is an escalation with a response that you clearly chose. So yes, banned.

I don't need or want to deal with this nonsense right now, so I will let the other mods decide when or if to end your ban.

You guys are making some really terrible decisions lately.

There is truly a Hlynka-sized hole in the moderation team. This kind of petty shit is getting worse and worse, and the King's court is really struggling to conceptualize their subjects as agents.

What makes you think Hlynka wouldn't ban her even sooner? He had an extremely short fuse as a moderator, and his decisions always struck me as arbitrary.

Hlynka-in-theory, as a conceptual perspective, as opposed to Hlynka-in-practice.

Er… what is Hlynka-in-theory?

As @ArjinFerman correctly points out he was very liberal in handing out bans. Maybe his petty squabbles were with a different ideological subset of posters, but they were petty squabbles nonetheless.

More comments