site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37978 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.

Below is the list of examples for "stochastic terrorism" on Wikipedia. Notice anything?

NPR was reporting that Trump allies have "already" given partisan remarks, saying that Democrats, who claim that democracy is under attack, are to blame for the rhetoric against Donald Trump. Browsing Reddit just now I read users coming up with conspiracy theories about this shooting for the purpose of discrediting them before they spread with any momentum.

I don't want the assassination attempt on Trump to be included in the article for stochastic terrorism. I just want those who are preemptively scoffing at the expected Republican outcry against this to examine their reactions to this shooting and try to have the same reaction when it happens to the Democrats. Or vice versa, or whatever. Be consistent or be quiet. Obviously, outright glee is being suppressed, for now, either by self-control or moderation policy. For that I'm grateful.

The 2009 murder of George Tiller has been described as an example of stochastic terrorism, as many conservative news opinion shows and talk radio shows repeatedly demonized him for his administration of post-viability abortions.[21][28][20]

In their 2017 book Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism, criminologist Mark S. Hamm and sociologist Ramón Spaaij describe ISIS,[1] Anwar al-Awlaki, and Alex Jones as guilty of stochastic terrorism.[19]: 157  In the 2010 Oakland freeway shootout, Byron Williams was said to be en route to offices of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tides Foundation, planning to commit mass murder, "indirectly enabled by the conspiracy theories" of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones.[19] They also cite the 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council.[19]

The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot in 2020 has been described as an example of stochastic terrorism.[2][6][1]

In the wake of escalating attacks on the LGBT community in the early 2020s, including bomb threats on children's hospitals and the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting, right-wing activists such as Matt Walsh and Chaiya Raichik of Libs of TikTok have been accused of stochastic terrorism.[29][30][31][32]

The May 2022 Buffalo shooting[11][33][34] and the August 2022 Cincinnati FBI field office attack have been cited as examples of stochastic terrorism.[35][36][37][38][39]

The perpetrator of the October 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi stated he was looking for Nancy Pelosi and hoping to intimidate other Democratic lawmakers, actions that have been described as stochastic terrorism.[6][4][40]

In June 2024, two racially motivated stabbing incidents happened in Oulu, Finland. The attacks were predated by years of hostile rhetoric from far-right politicians in Finland, most notably from the Finns Party.[41][42][43]

Did they include the Focus On The Family(?) shooting on that list? If not it would be fascinating to find the editor who removed it.

Anything more recent than, say, 5 years old AT LEAST has zero business being involved in any article on stochastic terrorism. Which is probably a legitimate thing, we know radical thought has at least some influence on mainstream thought such as the Overton Window idea -- but if we look to the world of finance, which actually does have to deal with a similar kind of problem paradigm, we can learn a few important lessons.

Namely, timescale matters. If your lifetime goal is to retire, then you shouldn't try and time the market. Keep your stocks in play, don't panic sell. Assuming your goal is lifetime political accuracy, rather than just winning a single election or maybe two, adjusting your priors about stochastic terror based on a a few events is very similar to panic selling at signs of a market slump. At the time and people scales we're working at, it's just too hard in my opinion to accurately judge an underlying distribution's makeup based on fundamentally very rare events on a short time scale without massively increasing false positive risk. This is doubly true since we don't have a good, consistent model for the underlying (stochastic part of the conversation) terror event generation function or frequency. The model for political assassination is sort of broad, I guess, maybe dating back to the era of personal firearms in general, but still so data-sparse I'd be skeptical of anyone claiming to understand the distribution too deeply.

And I'd bet if you chased some of the Wikipedia citations, most of the actual science involved would caution exactly the same.

I just want those who are preemptively scoffing at the expected Republican outcry against this to examine their reactions to this shooting and try to have the same reaction when it happens to the Democrats. Or vice versa, or whatever. Be consistent or be quiet.

And people in hell want ice water.
I want what you want, too, but I think there's little chance of this event turning down the temperature, or for most people to take this as a moment for self reflection. I think we are beyond that.

I think it's because calling someone a "Nazi" isn't expressing hostility or hate, but merely describing reality. It's the Nazi's own fault they were punched in the face because they should just stop being a Nazi; it's not the fault of the person who called them a Nazi.

That said, I think there is a good case for viewing stochastic terrorism as a mostly right-wing thing, because the extreme left does not gain its moral legitimacy from the moderate left, but rather the other way around.

What reality do you think the modern-day usage of 'Nazi' describes, beyond 'person I want you to be hostile to or hate'?

The historical Nazi referred to a specific brand of genocidal nihilistic cult of personality which pursued wars of conquest. That is not the reality being referred to by contemporary usages.

I read nomenym's comment as describing the POV of the typical antifa member; that there was an implicit "in the minds of people who advocate punching a nazi" attached to the end of their first sentence. Perhaps I'm wrong.

The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot in 2020 has been described as an example of stochastic terrorism.

Not to detract from the larger point, but this is such a clear example of COINTELPRO, but for the right. Entirely fabricated by the FBI in the perfect opposite of stochastic terrorism.

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