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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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The ad actually strikes me as too jokey to be effective. But maybe it doesn't hit close enough to home for me to understand why it would be effective or offensive in either direction. It just seems like a standard current year SNL skit in that it's not really funny but you can tell it's trying to be and mostly aiming for some agreement claps.

It’s basically this comic/meme, intending to make conservative women feel gross when men in their lives have opinions about sexual morality.

Jon Haidt’s work on Moral Foundations Theory suggests that grey tribers don’t have instinctive moral judgments except when freedom or coercion are involved. I’m not surprised it’s not hitting here as fighting words like it did over on patriots.win when someone posted it there.

Jon Haidt’s work on Moral Foundations Theory suggests that grey tribers don’t have instinctive moral judgments except when freedom or coercion are involved. I’m not surprised it’s not hitting here as fighting words like it did over on patriots.win when someone posted it there.

Can you expand on what you're saying here? Obviously it's fighting words. But this isn't the place for fighting words, this is where we politely discuss things.

And my moral foundations aren't particularly grey tribe: when I took the moral foundations test, my highest foundation was purity, by far -- like massively higher than even most conservatives.

(Although the more interesting thing about my moral foundations is that on Care/Harm and Fairness I score similar to the liberal average, and on liberty I score close to the libertarian average. The only one in which I didn't get close to matching the highest concern was Loyalty, which is probably explained by my contrarianism. I guess what you could pull from this is, if there's moral condemnation to be had, I'm there for it. Even if my in-group is the one that needs to be condemned. Which makes sense, my ancestors were Puritans.)

So I guess you could say I'm literally the guy the ad is attacking. But the reason I don't have an especially intense emotional reaction is that the views they're criticizing aren't real ones, they certainly aren't mine. I do have a disgust reaction to the way in which my segment of the poltiical spectrum is being slandered. What are you expecting me to do, start beating my chest?

I was trying to give user Plural one possible reason “it doesn't hit close enough to home for me to understand why it would be effective or offensive in either direction.”

For you, clearly it does hit home, as it does for me. But this is a rationalist space, so I’m not surprised to run into someone for whom it doesn’t.

And for the record I find it a very offensive ad.

Okay, fair enough. Apologies if that was too confrontational. From what you wrote it sounded like you were describing the overall reaction.

And I guess I find it offensive, but that's paired with a healthy dose of "wait, this is actually what you people think I believe? Really? This is your best shot? This is your big moment? This is it? You had to make this wild stuff up? You understand so little of your opposition you've actually crippled your ability to attack? Really?" so my overall reaction is that it is more of a joke than something I'm seriously upset by.