site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 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.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

the dead schoolchildren who, but for recent immigration from Africa, would likely still be alive.

Speak plainly.

This is true only in some trivial butterfly effect sense that is beneath notice, if you mean some deeper theory about it say it out loud.

Quite literally, this guy would not have knifed a Taylor swift themed dance party if he’d been in Rwanda.

Yes but this takes the same form as many other protests that rely on terrible logic, and can be rejected out of hand.

[Black guy of the week] wouldn't have been killed by the cops if we didn't have cops.

[Schoolchildren at whatever mass shooting] wouldn't be dead if civilians didn't have access to semiautomatic weapons.

Further

people would rather talk about that, than about the dead schoolchildren

Why would you rather talk about gun rights than dead school children?

Why would you rather talk about property damage than dead black people?

It's an absurdity. What are those against the riots supposed to do? Say, oh, yeah some kid went nuts, guess that means you're allowed to riot for some period of time!

I don't see how any of your examples show that the statement you complained about was only true in a trivial butterfly effect way. This isn't about an absurdly one-in-a-trillion event that you could plausibly say would be replaced by some other random tragedy if the immigration policy was different.

It's an absurdity. What are those against the riots supposed to do?

Say "riots bad, just do peaceful protests"? It's really not that hard, this is what the anti-BLM faction said originally, and was greeted with brilliant takes about how rioting is the language of the unheard.

How did that go for the anti BLM faction? Did that stop the rioting?

How is that argument about the butterfly effect going to stop the riots?

If you don't import Rwandans, there won't be Rwandan descended people that will stab British schoolgirls. If you don't import Pakistani you won't have thousand raped white girls in Rotherham.

Speak plainly.

Read charitably.

This is true only in some trivial butterfly effect sense that is beneath notice, if you mean some deeper theory about it say it out loud.

I disagree that it is true only in some "trivial butterfly effect sense." The children of recent immigrants are often targets for radicalization; indeed, crime rises among second-generation immigrants as they assimilate, though I've seen some recent (I suspect politically-motivated) attempts to muddy the waters on this.

I do not see anything racist about protesting against lax immigration standards when the inciting event was perpetrated by the child of recent immigrants. I find the counterprotesters in question exceptionally blameworthy.

I mentioned this above, but surely the parents aren't "recent" immigrants in nearly any sense of the word, right? Unless I have my timeline wrong they must have been in the country for at least 17 years, yes?

Speaking as someone who is British I would consider someone a "recent" immigrant if their family has only lived in Britain for the past few hundred years. Once you're past the three hundred year mark I think you probably have some right to be called local.

Even if you sincerely hold this view, surely you understand why it looks like disingenuous special pleading to nearly everyone else?

The line "huh, they're English the second they sneak in on a truck, but I'm still a Colonizer living on Stolen Land after 300 years?" has been going around. So any disingenuousness goes both ways.

I'd be willing to bet money that if you did a textual analysis of every use of the word "recent" as used by British people you'd find that easily 95% of the use of the word is used for lengths of time less than 10 years. Probably more. Challenge: can you even find a single example of the word being used, in a politics-adjacent way, to mean 20 years or more? I honestly don't think you can, not without breaking out the history books. The modern debate is one with the context of politics, not history. While I realize "history" is an extremely slippery term, there's a reason we don't really start to use it until the 20-30 year mark. The distinction? If I had to take a stab at it, I'd say "politics" is implicitly something you can do something about, and history is not (and history is also something you need a little distance from to gain greater benefits of hindsight as well as some extra objectivity). Although anecdotally that window seems to be narrowing (I've seen some "historical"-oriented analysis of events as recent as 15 years ago).

Given the finding that second-generation immigrant populations commit more crime than their first-gen parents did, shouldn't this actually be a warning sign - "if the current number of stabbings is bad based on 2000-level immigrant populations of [x], how bad is it going to be in 2044, when the current migrant populations of [5x-10x] turns over to a feisty second generation?"

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