site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   23826 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 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.

Though Adam Lanza had received mental health treatment, apparently (going based off of Wikipedia here) he'd stopped any contact with mental health providers by 2006 to never return, and his most dramatic documented mental health issue before anyway was clean freak-esque OCD. It doesn't seem like he was on the radar of law enforcement at all before the shooting either (and wouldn't have even had a gun to his name if they ran the records, as they were all owned by his mom).

So what makes you think Sandy Hook had anything to do with society openly valuing the "freedom of 'dangerous lunatics'"? It doesn't seem like Lanza was known to anybody before the event as a "dangerous lunatic", not even his mom (who certainly must have known he was an eccentric recluse, but given that he killed her too presumably she would have taken better measures to protect herself from him had she thought he was actually dangerous).

If you were to cast a net on "dangerous lunatics" wide enough to include people like pre-Sandy Hook Lanza, not only would everyone on this site almost certainly end up in it, while you might solve perhaps the problem of lone wolf shootings, you would have the much bigger problem of an open "incel" insurgency to deal with. After all, if you're going to jail them anyway for potential mass shootings that most posters in this subthread admit that most of them statistically-speaking won't even commit...

Here's the rundown:

When he was 13, Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome by a psychiatrist, Paul Fox.[155] When he was 14, his parents took him to Yale University's Child Study Center, where he was also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He frequently washed his hands and changed his socks 20 times a day, to the point where his mother did three loads of laundry a day.[166] He also sometimes went through a box of tissues in a day because he could not touch a doorknob with his bare hand.[167]

Lanza was treated by Robert King, who recommended extensive support be put in place, and King's colleague Kathleen Koenig at the Yale Child Study Center prescribed the antidepressant Celexa.[168] Lanza took the medication for three days. His mother Nancy reported: "On the third morning he complained of dizziness. By that afternoon he was disoriented, his speech was disjointed, he couldn't even figure out how to open his cereal box. He was sweating profusely ... it was actually dripping off his hands. He said he couldn't think ... He was practically vegetative."[155] He never took the medication again.[168] A report from the Office of the Child Advocate found that "Yale's recommendations for extensive special education supports, ongoing expert consultation, and rigorous therapeutic supports embedded into (Lanza's) daily life went largely unheeded."[163]

In a 2013 interview, Peter Lanza (Adam's father) said he suspected his son might have also had undiagnosed schizophrenia in addition to his other conditions. Lanza said that family members might have missed signs of the onset of schizophrenia and psychotic behavior during his son's adolescence because they mistakenly attributed his odd behavior and increasing isolation to Asperger syndrome.[155][162][169][170][171]

I don't buy the claim that this is such an ordinary history that the dragnet would catch Motte shitposters. I suppose it is true that his utterly amoral parents protected their precious psychotic baby as he devolved from merely being an isolated lunatic into a murderous lunatic and that there might not have been much anyone could have done about it after they elected to do so. In any case, there is simply nothing anyone could have done to make this guy less of an unloveable incel.

I don't see anything about any violent tendencies there. What, are you suggesting that if society didn't "value the freedom of lunatics more than the safety of innocents" they'd bust down doors and drag away everyone who doesn't follow up on their OCD treatment? Sounds like a great way to make sure no one ever voluntarily visits a psychiatrist ever again.

It's especially odd to suggest this given that recently society doesn't even have the capacity to keep incarcerated the people who are provably guilty of actual histories of real violence. Plenty of "mini-Lanzas" (that is, post-shooting) have been released on to the streets (mostly if they're black).

Sounds like a great way to make sure no one ever voluntarily visits a psychiatrist ever again.

IIRC there are a few polities in the US that will revoke (or are at least empowered to revoke; I believe Washington is among these) your self-defense rights, and seize that property, if you do this and answer the psychiatrist's questions honestly incorrectly.

Safety culture is inherently not capable of dealing with "unsafe tendencies" in a constructive or well-reasoned manner because the only thing it can respond with is violence.

New Jersey's even better -- if you've ever seen a mental health professional at any time since birth, you have to tell the state their name and hospital affiliation to even apply to be able to buy a gun. Don't know it? No gun for you.

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