site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   36912 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Arbery's shooters were absolutely guilty, though.

Not according to the people I argued with online about this. That was here or in the culture war reddit threads.

The guilt or innocence of Arbery's shooters depends on weird technicalities of Georgia's (FWIW, not updated since the Jim Crow ear) citizen's arrest law. It was obvious from the video that this was a bad shoot, under normal circumstances, but it was also reasonably obvious that it would have been a good shoot if the McMichaels had been uniformed cops making a lawful arrest which Arbery resisted.

If you interpret a badly-drafted statute maximally in the McMichaels' favour, you can reach the conclusion that Arbery's trespassing on a building site was a felony and the McMichaels were engaged in legally justified hot pursuit of a dangerous felon, which means that the situation is legally closer to the uniformed cop scenario. Unless you are broadly supportive of white-on-black behaviour-corrective violence in the way that the Jim Crow era legislature that wrote the law was, this is an absurd legal result, and it isn't surprising that the Georgia courts didn't buy it.

But morally, the only argument for what the McMichaels were doing was "in a high-crime society, good ol' boys blowing away an outsider acting suspiciously in someone else's neighborhood is pro-social". That argument was, indeed, made on the pages of the Motte.

Arbery's trespassing on a building site was a felony

But the building owner says he has security cameras and doesn't think that Arbery trespassed. Other people did at previous nights. Including a black guy. But as best the property owner knows not Arbery and especially not on the day of his murder.

His murderers never saw him on anyone's private property. They saw him on the public road and killed him there. And people around here argued it was justified by adding a lot of fictional information to their description of what happened.

Relatedly, whatever the legal guilt or innocence of Arbery and his killers, I do feel worse for a crazy lady that got gunned down in her own home than a guy that was likely casing a neighborhood. If we're ranking relative badness of shoots, the legal distinction between the shooters being police or clumsily constructed posses isn't going to change my mind much about which victim is more sympathetic.

But morally, the only argument for what the McMichaels were doing was "in a high-crime society, good ol' boys blowing away an outsider acting suspiciously in someone else's neighborhood is pro-social".

You make it sound like they sniped him the moment he passed on to the property.

If you want to make the case that ordinary citizens shouldn't play cops, and go chasing criminals that are clearly retreating, than go ahead and make that case. The arguments for it are pretty strong by themselves, you don't have to act like they went hunting for the guy.

He wasn't on anyone's property. Given the private security cameras at the partway built home, we know he didn't visit there either that day.

He was jogging down the public street. Not trespassing anywhere. Maybe he had bad motivations for jogging down the street. Such as possibly taking a look at houses to remember later for burglarizing.

Given what they did, sure, you could describe it as them hunting him down.

"Hunting him down" would require an intent to kill him when he was posing no threat. The way they acted was extremely dumb, but their behavior does not match yours or MadMonzer's description.

They saw him jogging on the public street. They chased him in trucks for a bit until he got tired of running from them. When he turned on them, they killed him.

That is fairly characterized as hunting him down.

I told you what I think is necessary for that characterization to be fair, and it's entirely missing from the argument. What they did is bad enough, there's no need act like they were intending to kill him.

More comments

This is a place where people pattern match 'leftists are upset about a white on black killing' to 'the whites must be innocent' a little too readily. Is the media often wrong about this sort of thing and only able to enforce consensus through sheer exercise of power? Of course. Were they wrong in that instance? Nope.

No they weren't?

This level of discourse is beneath us

Then bring it up.

Responding in kind adds nothing.

No thanks, the cure for assertions without evidence is to point out they're baseless, not for teacher to scold.

I’m not following.

How did your response, which also included zero evidence, convince anyone that laxam’s was baseless?

You just explained it to yourself my dude, a baseless assertion deserves a baseless response. Mockery is a powerful tool, and sometimes (as in this case) more appropriate than intervention from authority

They were civilians who chased someone down in their vehicles and came at him armed. He was justified in trying to get away and then coming at one of them when they made it clear that wasn't an option. They were absolutely guilty.

One of the 'guilty' got 25 to life for filming the ordeal. Perhaps we're just dealing with irreconcilable values differences

He was absolutely guilty of the crime he was convicted of though. It's a harsh law but it wasn't wrongly applied.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats