site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 3, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I actually do not think that the Middle East is a big danger because a lot of the countries there are actually at least somewhat rational and clear-eyed about fallout afterward (pardon the pun). Ukraine is unlikely because the kind of tactical nukes Russia has been talking about are most effective against massed battlefield formations, of which none really exist. Pakistan and India are unlikely because neither actually wants the other dead, they "merely" hate each other. There's no win condition.

Personally China and Taiwan seems the largest threat to me. The US does not have a no-first-strike policy and I could envision the US dropping a nuke on a Chinese fleet, coastal city, or military base if they first suffered significant battlefield losses. As an additional factor, plausible mass Chinese hacking of US communications might distort the information landscape and cause a premature and make a knee-jerk, low-information response by a trigger-happy president more likely. On the other end, but less likely, the Chinese are demonstrably irrational about bringing Taiwan into the flock (dropping the issue would very obviously be much more in their national interest) due to some ideological prison they've constructed for themselves. Taiwan I would argue is NOT a core Chinese interest, but they treat it like one, and so might be more likely to defend it as if it were their own sovereign territory, causing a massive miscalculation in escalation.

North Korea is an ongoing concern almost for the reverse of the above: NK is irrationally paranoid of being invaded or wiped out, and has low communication resiliency and transparency, making an overreaction to some unpredictable provocation more likely than you'd expect.

Basically, the ingredients for a nuke are simply: significant irrationality, massive disparity in understanding mutual goals, possibility of low availability of information in a crisis, possibility of incorrect information in a crisis, and chain of command issues.

My bet is never, but I place a 20% chance of a nuke within 30 years.