site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   23859 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.

Did you see this opinion piece just two weeks ago that mathematically broke down voting patterns? They use some data to show there's a bit more of an L-shaped 3-3-3 split on the court (with they consider to be both an institutionalist as well as ideological axis), and also mention that not very many of the cases overall show the traditional 6-3 explicitly partisan split vote. In fact only 5 of 57 cases landed this way. Related, they also argue that how "important" and "divisive" a case is (per the media) actually turns out to be even more highly subjective than commonly thought.

NB: split and analysis was from the 2022-23 session

NB2: The groupings they found are Sotomayor - Kagan - Jackson; Roberts - Kavanaugh - Barrett; Alito - Gorsuch - Thomas

Some friends and I discussed this and propose the following improvement: 3-3-2-1. Keep the groups almost the same, except cleave Gorsuch into an idiosyncratic group of one. Thomas and Alito seem extremely compatible, but Gorsuch is the member of the court most often beating his own drum. And of all the conservative justices he's the one most likely to cross over to the liberal side, for reasons conservatives will unusually respect.

Do you think Gorsuch is his own group, or just happens to have a few "pet issues" that he individually feels strongly and deviantly about? I think the article pointed out he often goes his own way in Native American cases, for example.

Gorsuch is I think the only one formally trained in philosophy. He has a very interesting mind that creates unique opinions. His influence will be profound. Doesn’t hurt that he is a good writer.

I don't think I'll ever forgive him for Bostock, but he's easily the best Justice since Scalia, and as good a replacement as anyone could have hoped for.

Interesting article! This finding in particular caught my attention:

The three liberal justices voted together in fewer than a quarter of the non-unanimous cases, and the six conservatives voted together only 17 percent of the time.

This suggests the pattern I noticed is real, although the size of the disparity is not huge. However, I would still like to see a similar voting breakdown focused only on cases with strong culture war salience. The court decides a large number of cases each term that don't have any obvious partisan ramifications. It may be the case that the justices don't particularly care about ideological conformity in such cases, but are more likely to vote as a block on cases involving controversial partisan issues. And the conservatives and liberals may do so at different rates.

I also dispute the 3-3-3 breakdown presented in the article. The authors put Gorsuch and Thomas (who agree 77% of the time) in the same group, but their chart shows that Thomas is more likely to agree with Barrett (82%) than with Gorsuch, and Gorsuch is more likely to agree with Barrett (82%) and Kavanaugh (80%) than with Thomas, and equally likely to agree (77%) with Roberts!

I confess, I am a hopeless wordcel, so it's highly likely that I've misunderstood the statistical wizardry at play in this chart. However, the numbers they give suggest to me that the Justices' breakdown more like 3-3-1.5-1.5: three liberals who vote together, three conservatives who vote together (Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett), Alito, and two Justices who often vote with Alito but don't reliably vote with each other (Thomas and Gorsuch).

Roberts and Kavanaugh definitely vote together more with each other than with Barrett.

Yeah, I thought it added something unique. Re: "I would like to see a similar voting breakdown focused only on cases with strong culture war salience":

Let’s look at the three cases from last term that were described as the most politically divisive that were decided along that ideological, x-axis.

The Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s student loan debt forgiveness plan. That was a 6-3 case that lined up ideologically and was by nearly any measure an important one. But if that case were decided only along the ideological axis, then why did five of those conservative justices uphold the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement plan? That decision held that states — in this case Texas and Louisiana — couldn’t sue to force the president to deport undocumented immigrants who had been convicted of crimes while in the United States? This was also considered a highly political case while it was pending before the court, but because it was decided 8-1 in favor of the Biden administration, it barely got any attention. If it had been decided 6-3 against the Biden administration, it no doubt would have been considered divisive — which just highlights the problem with the definition.

The Supreme Court also decided three cases about how to deal with the country’s history of racial discrimination last term. The court upheld section 2 of the Voting Rights Act which requires states to consider race in creating congressional districts. That was a 5-4 decision with the chief justice, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh and Jackson in the majority. The court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act which gave adoption placement preferences based on tribal status. That was 7-2. And it struck down Harvard and North Carolina’s race-based admissions policies by a 6-3 vote along ideological lines. Only the last case got major headlines. Why? Perhaps because the other two didn’t line up strictly on ideological lines, and therefore were not divisive.

I think they are making the case here that there's some very, very strong selection bias in play when we categorize things as "politically divisive", roughly analogous to "strong culture war salience". In other words, if we only ever describe whether a case is divisive based on the result, rather than the actual case, of course we are going to see a lot of divisive and partisan cases! It's - I think it's kind of like begging the question logical fallacy, yes?

Of course you probably could rate ideological controversy before cases are decided and then look at voting patterns. I think they didn't in this case because they wanted to focus on a time period where the 9 justices were also the current justices, and Jackson was only confirmed in 2022. I agree I would be interested if this type of analysis held up in other previous years with different justices, though it would lack the same generalizability.

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