site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

My brother is half-owner of a small business. Most of his workers are temporary contracts rather than full time. But he regularly employees a few dozen of these contract workers at a time. So I guess I've seen it up close and its lost all the magic to me. My brother is good at details and finance, he isn't great at the "being a boss" thing so he sticks to contractors when he can.

Most industries like to think they work hard. I think some of them are objectively wrong when they think this. Media seems like one of the objectively wrong ones. You need certain knacks to succeed and get by in media, and that limits the playing field. Its a bit like basketball. Since extreme height is such a glaring requirement, there is more differentiation on other traits. Like if anyone could be made into a 7ft giant, would the current crop of NBA players remain? I doubt it. Almost all of them would be out-competed by harder working more conscientious guys. MJ is like a god to the NBA, but he wasn't anything impressive at baseball where height is not as strict of a requirement.

I listed a few reasons above why I think Alex Jones would be a good businessman for that size company. I fully believe you when he say he runs a tight ship and a successful business. I just also fully believe that such skills do not prevent you at all from making dumb legal mistakes, dumb mistakes about who to marry, or dumb lifestyle choice. Most of the guys I've seen that have tanked their businesses did so for one of those reasons, not because they messed up on the business side. My brother made a dumb mistake about who to marry, and when they get around to having a divorce she will destroy his business.

Like if anyone could be made into a 7ft giant, would the current crop of NBA players remain? I doubt it. Almost all of them would be out-competed by harder working more conscientious guys

Agreed. I got a lot further in pro sports than I should have due to being a 99th outlier in certain physical attributes, but it was always funny seeing my position being 3 or 4 guys of a potential pool of about 10, maybe 20 candidates versus the normal-sized positions where it was 3 or 4 guys of hundreds of aspirants. The normal-sized guys were a lot more skilled/generally able as a result of that filtering.