site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37852 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

After reflecting on this for an hour, I have collected my thoughts. Obviously this is bad. I don't think people are going to jump immediately to start making nail bombs, but Trump getting killed or dying under conspiracy-able circumstances were what I always feared as a tipping point to some kind of actual level of civil conflict in the US. The shooter has achieved maybe the second-worst possibility after killing Trump in trying to kill him and failing.

Idle culture war prediction: "stochastic terrorism" is quietly retired as a term. 95% of people who ever used that unironically have spent the last few months saying Trump is a fascist who is going to end democracy and everyone should be doing their best to make sure he doesn't win. I think it's sort of a shame because there clearly is a genuine phenomenon there that it touches on, just the nature of it makes it so prone to abuse I suppose it was inevitably going to become useless.

"stochastic terrorism"

On your broader points, yes. But on this, it is a good club to beat people with, so the club-wielders will experience perfectly targeted selective amnesia to keep using it.

Exactly. Rhetorical weapons like this were only ever created to be fired in one direction. MSM and Wikpedia editors will do everything they can to disallow an acknowledgment of 'both sides' for the term.

Idle culture war prediction: "stochastic terrorism" is quietly retired as a term. 95% of people who ever used that unironically have spent the last few months saying Trump is a fascist who is going to end democracy and everyone should be doing their best to make sure he doesn't win.

Or, per recounting by @stolen_brawnze above of NPR's reporting, one can place any attempts by people on the right to draw this connection squarely in the classic "Republicans pounce!" frame.

Edit: also add in comments like this one on Reddit, in keeping with Sailer's "frontlash" model.

And now I see Steve himself on X predicting such a frontlash.

Edit 2: Plus, among the many gems on Reddit — declaring this is a false flag by Trump to distract the public from his felony conviction/project 2025/the Epstein files/whatever; how it's oh-so-convenient that the shooter is dead; that this is just another example of how Trump "just attracts bad news", this is a symptom of "the rage he projects," that Trump "enabled this culture," and he's to blame for 'making politics dangerous in America'; that it's entirely understandable given that "people don't like pedophiles or rapists"; that if elected, Trump's going to use this as an excuse to silence the media 'exactly like Putin does'; how our priority must be stopping Trump from 'take his anger out on opponents'; how this is going to be our Reichstag Fire and we're about to become Nazi Germany 2.0; and so on, and so on, I'll specifically highlight this one in its (brief) entirety:

Amazing, the Republicans, who have developed a list of 350 political opponents that they believe should be incarcerated and/or put to death, and assert they have the right to be violent to achieve their goals of overthrowing our government, have the nerve to complain of political violence tonight. 😡

Edit 3: add in another proposed reason for it to be a "false flag" — so that Trump can drop out of the race without losing face:

He probably faked it so he can call off his campaign for being in fear for his life. Probably because we are coming too close to actually putting his criminal lying as in jail. I wouldn’t hold it past him for one second that he didn’t outright say to go ahead and shoot someone innocent to bring it all home.

I think "stochastic terrorism" might actually apply more to the right than the left. I think violent rhetoric from the moderate right will inspire more violent action from the extreme right, because the extreme right still looks to the moderate right for legitimacy. But the same is not true of the left. It's the moderate left that looks to the extreme left for legitimacy. The extreme left is the cutting edge, it sets the pace. This is related to Jordan Peterson's frequent observation that the moderate left can't seem to answer the question "When does the left go too far?" Fundamentally, the moderate left is utopian, and so it has no moral authority over the extreme left, while the moderate right's anti-utopianism is both a guard against the extreme left and extreme right.

because the extreme right still looks to the moderate right for legitimacy

In which universe do you live? That hasn't been my experience at all.

the moderate left can't seem to answer the question "When does the left go too far?"

As a 'reasonableist' leftist, I believe there are plenty of examples of the left, if not 'going too far' per se, at least noticing a real problem but pursuing the wrong methods of solving it.

They can be largely sorted into two major clusters: the hard-green de-growthist Gaians, and the wokists SJWs PJFTMWTIAATUftSSaPCYDs.

I think it’s possible that you are underestimating how utterly shameless these people are.

That's very possible. I think if a bystander wasn't killed there would be a decent chance 20ish% of the population would have settled on it being staged.

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