site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   36912 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 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.

This may be ungracious, but this is another moment where I cannot help feeling that kind of centrist triumphalism all over again.

The weapon was always bad. It was bad regardless of who used it. It was bad of regardless of who it was aimed at. It was, remains, and will continue to be bad.

"It's different when we do it" was never convincing.

Incidentally, what are people's feelings on these AI article summaries? It's not a long article, and I usually try to avoid that kind of AI summary on principle - especially because it would have been quite easy to just write a summary directly. What value does the machine add?

I feel like this is weak writing by Scott especially for a psychologists. Actions/behaviors change before beliefs. “Wr are what we repeatedly do” - said by some famous philosopher.

Enforcing social norms will eventually change beliefs to your side. This is basic civilizing of barbarians.

Scott’s central point that nobody learns anything useful from persecution feels wrong to me. I would like to live in Scott’s world of principle libertarianism and debating society but unfortunately I think our tribal instincts for bloodlust are likely correct.

You don’t end a cultural civil war by being nice to the other side. When your side is in power you enforce new cultural norms and hope they stick.

I think he is fundamentally wrong that people don’t learn anything from being persecuted. HD lady will learn that she has the wrong memes. And then if you do it correctly accept your memes as correct. Starve or learn new memes.

HD lady will learn that she has the wrong memes.

As I pointed out the last time this topic came up (though perhaps not to you personally, I can't remember): if this were true the culture war would be over by now. Because the right would've learned they have the wrong memes, and changed. The fact that this hasn't happened should be glaring proof to everyone that cancelling the left isn't going to teach them a thing. It will simply further stoke resentment and lead to further conflict.

As I pointed out the last time this topic came up (though perhaps not to you personally, I can't remember): if this were true the culture war would be over by now. Because the right would've learned they have the wrong memes, and changed.

They have. Everything's moved left.

You don’t end a cultural civil war by being nice to the other side. When your side is in power you enforce new cultural norms and hope they stick.

In this case aren’t they the same thing? How is swinging back enforcing a new cultural norm?

This may be ungracious, but this is another moment where I cannot help feeling that kind of centrist triumphalism all over again.

There was something about your response that rubbed me the wrong way the last time, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but with my response to the article, I think I managed to crystallize it: Yes, it's wrong when we do it, but for us to become unburdened by what has been (sorry, couldn't resist), you have to offer people some form of catharsis. It can be material, or it can be symbollic, but you've got to give them something, otherwise you're asking for saintly levels of forgiveness, and I'm not even a Christian.

I think that's fair? There's still a reasonable discussion to be had about what kind of catharsis is appropriate, but I'll grant that demanding unconditional forgiveness and generosity towards one's ideological foes can be difficult. In particular, while I hope we can all agree that an emotional, id-driven impulse towards vengeance ("they made us suffer so we must make them suffer!") is wrong, considerations of justice or even just making it psychologically possible to move on might require... a kind of penance, or amends?

If it were a war between two clear opposing parties, you could imagine conditions for that. We don't just take all your cancellations and then forgive them full stop - we may, while not cancelling in return, nonetheless ask for recompense. Reinstate or compensate unjustly-cancelled people. Offer them some kind of sincere apology. Remove previous cancellers from power and don't trust them again. All the kinds of things that you would expect from an aggressor who is defeated in a war - not just to stop, but to apologise and attempt to make it right.

That's why, for instance, the sacrament of penance and reconciliation (most often in the Catholic Church, but also more broadly) requires four things - sorrow for the fault, a firm resolution to repair its effects, sincere confession of wrongdoing, and then the sacramental penance itself. While vengeance remains wrong, there's a case for asking the wrongdoer to repair the harm as much as possible, and to demonstrate sorrow and a reformed conscience.

This is much more foggy, however, when dealing with large and vague camps like 'the left' and 'the right'. As Scott's post points out, most people who identify on the left are opposed to cancellation! Moreover, many enthusiastic cancellers as individuals seem very unlikely to recognise their wrongdoing (likewise for right-aligned cancellers) or repent. In fact, often they double-down and blame the other side even more. So there isn't a central organisation to ask for repentance, and it would be wrong to take it out on individuals who weren't involved. Perhaps the best we can hope for is for left-wing organisations to disavow cancellation as a strategy?

Incidentally, what are people's feelings on these AI article summaries?

Use the LLM to give you the first draft of a summary, review it, correct it, post it.

Do not mention you used one, and if you do, make it very clear it was reviewed carefully - of what use is the summary otherwise? I can generate it myself, and you come across as lazy, just padding the post out. Take full responsibility for the post.

Frankly, for a forum like Reddit, I think you can proofread an LLM's output, and nobody would be the wiser. That's the dataset it's trained on anyway.

Here, though, it's pretty obvious when someone's using one. If you're going to go through the effort of cleaning it up to seem like an intelligent human trying to persuade, you might as well have written it yourself.

If it's a way for a reply poster to "skim" Scott's article without reading it, then that's also anti-ethical to what we're supposed to be doing here.

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