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 -
I have a pet analogy I've been using for over a decade on this point, and I recently encountered a term that helps better encapsulate what said analogy is gesturing toward: "ordered toward"
Consider hand grenades. Then consider a movie prop "grenade" that looks like the real thing, but isn't. The law treats those two things very differently, and for a clear and obvious reason: real grenades explode, fake movie props don't.
But, one might argue, some subset of "real" grenades are "duds": due to manufacturing defects, the effects of time, or whatever, don't explode when you release the spoon. But the law makes no effort to carefully identify and separate out the duds, to be classed with the movie props as "non-explosive" — instead, it classifies them with the fully-functional grenades. Therefore, the law can't actually be about "explosive vs. non-explosive," and the line drawn between real and movie-prop grenades is illegitimate and should be removed.
Of course, most people would likely reject this argument. The key is precisely the phrase I spoke of before: ordered toward. A real grenade is ordered toward exploding — even if, thanks to our living in an imperfect, entropic universe, some subset fall short of that purpose — while a movie prop is not ordered toward exploding. For a "dud" grenade, the "non-explosiveness" is incidental, accidental. For the look-alike movie prop, the non-explosiveness is inherent.
In short, this is an argument that teleology can constitute a valid "joint" upon which reality may be "cleaved," particularly when it comes to law.
(It continues to dismay me how many secular people firmly accept the creationist philosophical principle that "purpose" requires a conscious purpose-giver, when an important element of the theory of evolution by natural selection is that it provides an explanation of how an undirected, atelic process can produced directed, telic entities. The usual rejoinder people make, when I argue this, is to conflate the process of natural selection with the products of natural selection; which, as I like to say, is like confusing tennis shoes with a tennis shoe factory.)
More options
Context Copy link