site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It is a special kind of Madness. I do almost all updates myself as you are allowed to do almost all your own work in my state and my town is also kind of wild about building codes. In my town it is residential sprinkler systems, even though we haven't had a deadly fire in 100 years. The fire chief's car even has 'residential sprinklers save lives' on the side of it, guess what the other half of his family does, you guessed it residential sprinkler systems. I would like to add another unit to my property but guess what that means, residential sprinkler system would have to be installed and inspected every single year from then on out and serviced every three. They are one more point of failure and horrific water damage, all for no real net increase in safety. The fire department is 99% ems calls .09% brush fires .009% parades and .001% structure fires already.

It NEVER stops, nothing ever comes off the books or gets easier to build. They just let everyone in town build an ADU if they want, no one has done it as it basically needs to be as expensive as your main residence due to code compliance. Same people that are "worried" about affordable housing are the ones driving up housing prices and creating cost disease. Rather have someone burn to death using a propane heater in a tent than not have r50 insulation in the roof of a new home.

In my town it is residential sprinkler systems, even though we haven't had a deadly fire in 100 years. The fire chief's car even has "residential sprinklers save lives" on the side of it. Guess what the other half of his family does? You guessed it: residential sprinkler systems.

To be fair, residential sprinkler systems have been mandatory in the IRC since year 2011, so your jurisdiction is not necessarily being corrupt here.

They are one more point of failure and horrific water damage, all for no real net increase in safety.

The NAHB also opposes this code provision, considering it a waste of money when three-quarters of house-fire deaths occur in houses that don't even have working smoke alarms.

In my town they didn't implement it until 2018 and it is not a state wide requirement. Most states don't require them and about half leave it up to the towns. Thanks for the link, it allowed me to find the list of states https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-priorities/codes/fire-sprinklers/fire-sprinkler-state-adoption-2019.pdf?rev=fb2e43a2c10249c79234ac4ef2405470&hash=93C19612CC1E730D343D25624862D0A8