site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It misrepresents the central point of the case. McDonalds coffee was hot coffee, not some sort of ultra-dangerous killer liquid. If you've ever made instant coffee or tea you've made a hotter beverage.

Here's a NSFW reddit thread with a picture of her burns, which is way worse than the experience most people get when they spill coffee on themselves. I daresay something that would cause those injuries could be reasonably described as "ultra-dangerous".

One of the answers to this Quora question has a picture of someone's arm after they touched molten metal, and to non-medical me it seems similar enough to the lady's injuries. Yes, less time in contact with skin between her coffee and his slag, but I just don't think the distinction is enough to be worth arguing over.

And, again, I like a good metaphor.

Here's a NSFW reddit thread with a picture of her burns, which is way worse than the experience most people get when they spill coffee on themselves. I daresay something that would cause those injuries could be reasonably described as "ultra-dangerous".

It wasn't any sort of extreme temperature which made the burns bad. It was pouring the very hot water on a sensitive area of an elderly woman's body, then literally sitting in it with clothing that apparently made it worse. At this point the apologists then invoke the eggshell skull rule, but that's wrong; the eggshell skull rule is about damages, not liability.

Here's a NSFW reddit thread with a picture of her burns, which is way worse than the experience most people get when they spill coffee on themselves

Yes, but that is not because McDonald's made some magical McEvil Coffee that was 400° hot without it being immediately obvious by looking at the cup from a distance.

Someone in this thread tried making the argument that the cops shouldn't be affaid of having boiling water thrown at them, because they were clothed. Someone else pointed out that this makes things worse. This is what happened here. If she prepared coffee at home, spilled it herself while wearing the same clothes, the effect would be just as bad, or worse.

Huh, alright, Claude agrees with you about the home brewing:

Q. What is the temperature range for coffee in a carafe of a home drip coffee brewer? In *Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants, *Stella Liebeck's attorneys argued that, at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C), McDonald's coffee was abnormally hot, but I have trouble assessing that claim without knowing how hot other coffee is.

A. To assess the claim made in the Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants case, it's helpful to compare the temperature of McDonald's coffee to typical home-brewed coffee. Let's look at the temperature range for coffee in a carafe of a home drip coffee brewer:

  1. Brewing temperature: Most home drip coffee makers brew coffee at temperatures between 195°F to 205°F (90.5°C to 96°C). This is the ideal range for extracting the best flavors from coffee grounds.
  2. Initial serving temperature: Immediately after brewing, the coffee in the carafe is typically around 180°F to 185°F (82°C to 85°C).
  3. Holding temperature: Many home coffee makers with warming plates maintain coffee at temperatures between 150°F to 170°F (65.5°C to 76.7°C) after brewing.

Comparing these temperatures to the 180–190°F (82–88°C) range cited in the Liebeck case:

The McDonald's coffee temperature falls within the range of freshly brewed coffee from a home machine. However, it's higher than the typical holding temperature of home-brewed coffee after it has been sitting on a warming plate.

I wish you The_Nybbler had focused on that instead of the slag part. Because, and I am wondering if you're not people aren't hearing me here because you haven't nobody has replied to this point, I liked the metaphor and hope we continue to have colorful writing here.

Edit: I just realized you're not The_Nybbler. Correcting last paragraph in italics, original text crossed out.

I thought I was attacking the point of the metaphor by being equally colorful...

...Does... Does this mean colorful writing can get in the way of productive conversation...? (No, it is the children who are wrong!)

Oh, no, I enjoyed your colorfulness. I'm still hung up on this comment because I think focusing on the molten iron slag metaphor pedantic. Colorful writing can get in the way of productive conversation, sure, but I feel like we here can handle it better than in many other forums because of the userbase and the rules. I learned something today, and that's awesome, because I had believed that McDonald's coffee was abnormally hot when it actually wasn't. I came into the thread with that old understanding, and I enjoyed ABigGuy4U's response because it colorfully confirmed my priors. If the counter to that post stopped at the differences between iron and coffee, I would have learned that comparing coffee to iron is wrong in some contexts, the end.

Instead, there was a discussion, and I took the time to ask an LLM, and it turns out that was wrong. Rereading, I also notice that this may have been implied earlier in the thread but without enough details for me to learn from it: I didn't know what side the fact sheet from the American Trial Lawyers Association took. I don't think the criticism should be on the colorful writing, because even if ABigGuy4U's point was made without metaphor it still would have been the same root error of believing McDonald's coffee was dangerously hot compared to other coffees.