site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   38813 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 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.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I can't help but think about this post that was linked on the SSC reddit a few days ago: https://matt.sh/panic-at-the-job-market

(long, rambly post that I don't fully agree with but it did say a few interesting things) In particular these two quotes:

Modern tech hiring, due to industry-wide persistent fear mongering about not hiring “secretly incompetent people,” has become a game divorced from meaningfully judging individual experience and impact

...

Such job descriptions also means: your job is physically impossible. You will always feel drained and incompetent because you can’t actually do everything everyday. You will always be behind because each of those bullet points can be multiple days of work per week just on their own (plus, how are you supposed to be productive in 35 different areas requiring months to years of experience if you actually want to be good at each task?). So, from day 1, you will already be about 4 months behind on your expected job responsibilities and you’ll never catch up. It turns into an endless game of managers and executives saying you are “underperforming” because you have 18 primary tasks, each primary task requires 4 to 20 hours of effort, and every manager wants their task done within 4 hours. You are setup to fail. What’s the point?

Maybe a point is some companies just shouldn’t exist if they can’t afford the fully staffed professional teams required to build and maintain their products? The worst secret in tech is amateur developers are happy to act like entry level workers across 20 arbitrary roles for years (in the absence of never having enough time to focus on building up long-term experience or best practices). You can’t get gud if you are always rushed from task to task without any chance of leveling up knowledge and capability through “deep work” as we would historically expect of professionals.

I don't think it's like that at every company, or even the majority. But there are certainly some companies like that. They, in theory, care greatly about their tech workers, because the salaries are high and they have a vague understanding that tech is important. But they don't have a good system for actually hiring good tech workers. And then, once hired, they use them all as generalists, moving quickly from one thing to another, with no chance to actually develop expertise or fix deep underlying issues. And they are never given any kind of decision-making authority in the company, only responsibility to "just fix whatever breaks."

I think that behavior happens the most in companies that are not "tech companies," but still use tech. Banks, airlines, large retailers, that sort of thing. They need tech to function, but it's just a cost center to them- they want to just pay a fixed price per month to "handle tech" and then not think about it ever again. And it seems like those are the ones being bitten in the ass by this thing, because it turns out that running a windows server with third-party antivirus on it with automatic updates is not actually very secure! I wonder if we'll see any restructuring, or if this sort of thing is just going to happen every so often forever, as companies get blindsided by tech issues that they don't understand and never cared to try and understand?

i think the culture of secrecy is the bigger problem. they are paid lot and expected to not blabber to the media if they expect to be employed now or in the future by other companies

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