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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25097 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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So the Motte struggles to productively engage with ideas that are usually held and advocated by the types of people who are a poor fit for the culture here, is that right? Sure, I can believe that.

In general, the Motte is a very male social group that is structured around creating conditions for a masculine "fair fight". The rules are all about structuring an environment where people openly challenge each other, state their position and opposition plainly, and have a battle of wits, skill, and knowledge. The roles of popularity, status, and broader coalitional politics of the people involved are supposed to be temporarily suspended. Some kind of analogous form of this kind of competition occurs throughout the animal kingdom, but almost entirely between competing males, and it's more common as intra-group competition. The outgroup may be regarded more like dangerous animals that need to be eliminated by any means necessary.

Feminized social spaces don't tend to have much time even for the concept of a "fair fight". In fact, for women (or feminine males), the very notion of a fair fight is foolishness. Female social competition is much more about misdirection, subtefuge, and ambush. You should never challenge an enemy openly and square off against them; there should be no declaring a time and place or choosing your weapons. The goal is to wait until your opponents' back is turned and strike, or even better get someone else to strike for you. The roles of popularity, status, and coalitional politics are front and center, and even the very means by which the battle is waged.

This is essentially why too many women in academia is ruining science and related fields. Once there are enough relatively ordinary women, they shift the culture away from the "fair fight" model of science, and so science is now more about popularity, status, and coalitional politics and the battle of ideas is engaged by way of back channels. I recall recently listening to an interview with a philosopher lamenting the terrible influence that critical theory has had on the philosophy profession, and how it has all but taken over without seeming to have won any arguments. Infamously, such people do not engage in debates, i.e. "fair fights", but rather they use indirect, institutional, and social power to defeat their enemies often without even giving them a chance to defend themselves.

In my experience, advocates of veganism (as opposed to all vegans) tend to disproportionately belong to the latter group, and so they aren't going to feel comfortable and competent at interacting with the Motte. Sometimes people like these will actually stumble upon good ideas, and those ideas will perhaps not get a fair hearing on a forum like The Motte because their advocates usually don't fight fair. This could undoubtedly cause a blind spot. There is no solution. White nationalist types tend to be rather masculine in their disposition, and so they usually intuitively and more comfortably engage with the fair-fight culture.

The rules are all about structuring an environment where people openly challenge each other, state their position and opposition plainly, and have a battle of wits, skill, and knowledge

I don't think this is true as stated. It's more of a place where we can discuss ideas and share perspectives. People do stake out opposing positions, but don't really battle as much as they do elaborate and try to convince. I understand why this feels right, the analogy fits. But this place is, if anything, one of the least "battle"-based "political debate" spaces on the internet. Does anyone, for instance, mentally keep track of who's winning the most arguments? I certainly don't - I do have a sense of who's writing well or poorly, but that's almost never based in winning, it's just based on how informative or enjoyable I find reading individual posts. George_E_Hale would be up there if I had to make a status ranked list, even though he just posts little life stories totally unconnected to anything else. Whereas, in say, a community for a small online game, there's a strong competitive spirit and desire to win, people carefully watch who's beating who and try to copy their skills, and form teams based on winrates and stats. Or even in other political debate spaces, there are formalized 'debates' and people discuss after the fact who won the 'debates', who had better arguments, etc. In both of these, while it's not normative, people regularly get very mad when they lose repeatedly, which I don't really see here. So IMO themotte is significantly more feminine in the respect you describe than the kind of 'fair fights' you see in sports - and that's a good thing.

And, indeed, themotte has significantly more women than most other high-intelligence online spaces I participate in, and women are if anything overrepresented among posters I enjoy reading the most versus average posters. (although it's still obviously very male skewed)

Also, iirc most of the major innovators in critical theory, postmodern philosophy, and other in-large-part-BS academic fields (I think there are some good parts in critical theory and postmodernism, but it's undeniable something went wrong) were male. I don't think women have much to do with why Derrida, Freire, or Lacan are like that.

In my experience, advocates of veganism (as opposed to all vegans) tend to disproportionately belong to the latter group, and so they aren't going to feel comfortable and competent at interacting with the Motte

Eh. There are a ton of extremely 'masculine' (in terms of discourse style) vegan advocates, even though you're right that vegan activists are disproportionately female (iirc), so I don't think this is actually an issue at all. Random examples - avi bitterman, vegan gains (both of whom are also very "masculine" in the physical sense), also Effective Altruists (less so in the physical sense)! One of the much more aggressive and combat-oriented debate communities I was referencing above is significantly composed of vegans.

I recall recently listening to an interview with a philosopher lamenting the terrible influence that critical theory has had on the philosophy profession, and how it has all but taken over without seeming to have won any arguments.

Do you still have links to the interview?

Reference here for all the people who got really mad at me for characterizing anti-woke sentiments as believing women are not as competent in high-status professions.

Also:

science is now more about popularity, status, and coalitional politics and the battle of ideas is engaged by way of back channels.

Pretty sure it always was, and only doesn't look that way to us because victors write the history books and because there wasn't social media to record and promote all of it to a wide audience.

Always was, but less so. It's all on the margin, as the economists say. It's not like men were always honorable, but they could at least sometimes be held to that code of honor. It sometimes worked, and that was usually enough. Now it's mostly gone.

The competency of men vs. women is a complicated issue; female social norms don't scale as well but work better in some contexts than others. Science loses much when the "fair fight" model is rejected in order to be more "welcoming" to people who shouldn't be there. Women also tend to bring down the status of professions, because a large part of what makes a profession high status is that it makes men desirable to women, but the reverse is rarely true. It's one of the reasons why high status seems so frustratingly elusive for many women; they do the same things as the men but don't enjoy the same results.

It's worth noting that "fair fight" spaces have their own failure modes, notably that people interpret their opponents uncharitably and take opportunistic potshots. One of my favorite things about quokka spaces is that they avoid those failure modes.

Also "status" is absolutely a thing in masculine spaces, which is one reason why "I'm sorry, I was wrong" is never seen here.

"Never" certainly isn't true. Example 1 and 2 from me.

Also "status" is absolutely a thing in masculine spaces, which is one reason why "I'm sorry, I was wrong" is never seen here.

How many examples do I need to find before I hear this from you? I want a number. I recall seeing this dozens of times in my time here. Status is a thing everywhere, and in healthy cultures apologizing can earn you status.

Also "status" is absolutely a thing in masculine spaces, which is one reason why "I'm sorry, I was wrong" is never seen here.

I did get something quite close! It does happen!

Status is a thing, but once a challenge has been accepted the rules are fair. You're equals at least temporarily. The idea is to suppress the role of status in the conflict.

The rules are 'fair' in the sense of 'it is illegal for rich men and the homeless alike to sleep under an overpass.'

Sure, it's not fair in the cosmic sense of all that might have been but for the random vicissitudes of life. A "fair fight" does not need to satisfy that standard to achieve its intended purpose.

I'm not saying the rules aren't fair. I'm saying the failure modes of the "fair fight" philosophy also hinder productive discussion.

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