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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I live in a society where high school football is a very big deal.
Now the law in Texas says that, theoretically, any high schooler who wants to play American football can do so. There not being enough interest for a girl's division, that means that girls who want to badly enough, and whose parents have taken leave of their senses, get to compete on the boys team. This is discouraged but it happens. There are periodic news stories about a- usually junior varsity, these girls tend not to make the cut for a varsity team- high school football team forfeiting a match rather than expect their players to tackle a girl. Functionally football is an open sport, and I think most men's sports are like this in general- as long as there's no doping, anyone who wants to compete in that league gets to. Women's athletics is the restricted one.
"Production" and "Open". It's possible to beat Open competitors with Production equipment but Open is its own division because the equipment is specifically designed to be more capable (and less practical).
Ex-men are trying to win Production division by bringing Open hardware into Production via a bunch of bad-faith arguments and the judges are too captured by politics to notice the intent. So it goes.
Are these actual categories of football equipment, or is this a metaphor? The usage here reminds me particularly of competitive shooting, or perhaps also auto racing.
Yeah, these are competitive shooting divisions.
But then that's the thing- the reason they're like that is that sure, you can get an advantage by buying the meta gun, but you can't strap a bunch of other bullshit that doesn't fit in the general spirit of the category and then claim it's balanced (yeah, I'm sure that high-end 2011 with a comp and a dot identifies as a stock Glock 17).
I guess the difference is that even if I had a 2011 I don't want to compete against people running stock Glock 17s, because it's not really even a measure of skill at that point, it's also a question of how hard you can game the gun itself (because in that division, if you're the first guy to come up with putting a red dot on your handgun you deserve the win you're going to get by doing so because that's what that division is for).
It's poor sportsmanship to be intentionally trying to break the categories, which is the reason the entirety of the men's division isn't doing this even though at the end of the day they're passing up another chance to win. And once you lose that concept you don't have a game any more.
I feel like the solution is usually to have a bunch of categories/divisions (see Le Mans racing and 2-Gun shooting), though maybe this doesn't work so well when it comes to humans vs. machines.
If you don't have the ability or the willingness to give poor sports the boot it's not going to work regardless.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link