site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37167 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.

The current distance between normal English and African American English isn't an edict of nature, it can be reduced.

None of this is an edict of nature. That's the whole point, and why there isn't one universally correct set of rules.

The statist perspective here is simply wrong. We're talking about a dialect that is already low status in society - you can't regularize it any more by edict because we are already living in that world. The people who speak BVE simply don't care about your approval (although obviously many of them can switch to SAE when they need to).

Many nation building projects included picking one language among many and teaching it to the people of the entire country: France, Italy, Poland... There are still dialects, but the diversity of language in each of these countries has been reduced in comparison to the state before standardization.

And in Germany to this day there are extreme regional differences, even when comparing the vernacular in nearby cities like Dusseldorf and Cologne. Sure, everyone speaks High German too, but just about everyone in the US speaks SAE as well.

I'm glad you brought up Italy because they actually have a hodgepodge of local languages infinitely more bewildering than someone 'axing' you a question. You can't make people completely sever their connection to the language that they heard from their family and parents growing up, even if the high modernist government doesn't speak it.

That's the whole point, and why there isn't one universally correct set of rules.

There is correct English just as there is correct Python or correct French. American Africans (and their "wigger" admirers) who deviate from this ideal are wrong only in so far they claim the language the speak is English.

We're talking about a dialect that is already low status in society

Is it low status? If I mock Ebonics will the elites laugh with me, or pillory me? Because in a country where non-standard dialects really are looked down upon, even far-leftist politicians openly mock them.

you can't regularize it any more by edict because we are already living in that world.

If we lived in a world in which a student speaking correct Ebonics (but wrong English) the teacher would mock them, and would be given 0 points if they answered thusly, I would agree. But today's teachers in America tolerate Ebonics even when it is presented as English.

The people who speak BVE

Do you mean AAVE?

simply don't care about your approval

If they didn't care about approval, in the case of the "lawyer dawg", the Ebonics native speaker would have said it was his insufficient grasp of English that cost him an attorney, and wouldn't have appealed.

I'm glad you brought up Italy because they actually have a hodgepodge of local languages infinitely more bewildering than someone 'axing' you a question.

And if you went to the era before unification of Italy the distance between languages spoken on Italian peninsula would have been even greater. My point wasn't every Italian speaks the same language (I even mentioned that no two people do), but that state intervention can reduce the differences.

There is correct English just as there is correct Python or correct French.

There is no academy of the English language.

There is correct English just as there is correct Python

Which Python version is the correct one?

2.7 obvs

There is correct English just as there is correct Python or correct French.

The comparison to Python is useful. One big project in NLP back in the day was defining a formal grammar for English, analogous to one for a programming language. Countless careers were spent on this paradigm.

That project failed, spectacularly. Human language empirically doesn't follow a formal grammar. All it is is a dense, giant mass of statistical correlations that agents pick up through positive reenforcement through interactions with other agents. Try writing a grammar of English in a couple of megabytes of ANTLR files, and you are doomed to fail.

Of course, you can train some classification model on some subset of English data labeled as proper and the rest improper. But you'll find that the stricter you make it, the more you'll find good and even great English rejected.

There is correct English

Ah, maybe you can clear that up for me. Is the correct English SAE? Or is it British English (RP? Midlands pronunciation? East Anglian?)? Or Scottish English? Or Australian English? Which one is the one true English?

If I mock Ebonics will the elites laugh with me, or pillory me?

Do a few job interviews in Ebonics and see how many offers you get.

My point wasn't every Italian speaks the same language (I even mentioned that no two people do), but that state intervention can reduce the differences.

Indeed, and the differences are already highly reduced. We're litigating 'ask' vs 'aks' in this thread. Try talking to a Sicilian in Ligurian and tell me which difference is larger.

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