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.

What exactly is the communist style 1984 propaganda dream that’s happening now? All I see is people making memes on twitter trying to pump up the likely candidate who they want to see win.

It just seems like typical political campaign stuff. Ignore your candidates flaws and pump them up as awesome. It’d be strange if that wasn’t occurring, a bunch of different partisans engaged in a mutual information war is what we would expect to see when looking at a representative democracy in an election year.

They are literally deleting and rewriting articles about Kamala being named border czar in 2021 and being ranked the furthest left senator in 2019. Its very much a "we were always at war with Eastasia"

Which is exactly what you’d expect partisans to do in a political campaign

This is just watering down the meaning of “1984” and “communist state” the same way the other side does with “Nazis”

You know, this kind of blatant rewriting of very recent history was not the norm 10, 20 years ago.

Back then people could convincingly lie. But now we're pretty squarely at "they know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, and yet they're lying".

My take is that we passed through a threshold with Covid and tore something that was already scratched in the 10s. Now people change dictionary definitions as a matter of course instead of making decade long efforts to build academic corpora to do it. It's not the same.

I think you’re right, but I do wonder how much we saw this sort of thing in other deeply polarized times.

Or if it’s unique to the particulars of our current media ecosystem.

Rewriting the past is a pretty central part of the media propaganda in 1984. This isn't some big stretch like calling Mitt Romney a Nazi is. I don't think one needs to wait for people to have rat cages appended to their faces to start making 1984 references.

“Some of the news organizations in our media ecosystem are partisan and have shitty practices”

….

“I don’t see the difference between the US and a communist state”

I mean come on.

Well I didn't write that part. But establishment media is getting far too close for comfort.

I haven’t personally seen any articles rewritten. Do you have any links

In addition to the Axios one zataomm linked, there is this one that govtrack deleted from its own website: https://web.archive.org/web/20200816001336/https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/kamala_harris/412678/report-card/2019

Link to the Axios community-noted tweet: https://x.com/axios/status/1816078350659494130

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