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 -
H... Hyperbole? I'm literally quoting the guy in this thread for one point and the leftist protesters for the other point. If your point is that "abortion curtailment -> women are chattel" is a bad faith argument, take it up with your nearest college campus.
Also the "curtailing freedom of movement" evidence is (entirely? Almost entirely?) actually curtailment of freedom of driving through city centers. However, people moved around for a hundred thousand years before they could drive through a city center, so in some sense I am actually more partial to the "women as chattel" catastrophism.
I don't understand how you could possibly think this isn't an argument in favor of the slippery thesis.
Because it's totally normal to have different restrictions for activities in different places. I can drive at 65mph on the freeway, but I can't do that in my neighborhood. Is that an argument in favor of a slippery slope of speed limits being reduced to 25mph on freeways? I can park my car in some places but not others. I can punch people in a martial arts gym but I can't punch random people on the street.
Is the slope slippery in any of these cases? Probably not. More likely, there's a schelling point around which things coalesce, roughly speaking.
It was not that long ago, even more recently than the invention of the automobile, that pedestrians had much freer reign in city centers. Now, pedestrians are restricted to sidewalks and zebra crossings and much of the land in cities is given over to cars. It would be ridiculous for someone in the past to say there's a slippery slope towards pedestrians being banned from cities, despite the fact that their freedom was greatly curtailed and in the US we put up unbelievably ugly freeways in some of the most beautiful parts of our built environment. What ended up happening is that the pendulum swung one way, now it's swinging the other. Streets are getting pedestrianized, some freeways are being torn down or buried. So it goes. Looking at trends beyond the past five years makes it clear that the slippery slope happens to have a slippery incline at the end.
25 mph speed limits in your local area don't lead to 25 mph speed limits on the freeway because there's no mechanism by which the former makes the latter easier, so slippery slopes are only weak ones like "someone who wants to restrict one thing might have more desire to restrict another".
Having computer-controlled cars that phone home makes it easier to have cars that the government can turn off because the computer phoning home is a part of the mechanism that the government would use to turn the car off.
Then by this logic driver's license are a slippery slope to, I dunno, banning Republicans from driving? After all, there's already a mechanism by which the government would prevent Republicans from driving (by not issuing them a license).
If you generalize it a little to "taking away drivers licenses for disfavored things that have nothing to do with driving", yes. They already take drivers licenses away for failure to pay child support.
Why generalize? If the slope is slippery, it's slippery.
Because a slippery slope isn't going to slip to every possible thing in a category all at once. If you're too specific about which thing it slips to, you can endlessly deny that the slippery slope exists. By your reasoning, since you specified Republicans, a slippery slope towards taking away the licenses of Democrats, or people who won't get vaccinated, or people whose names start with the letter A, wouldn't count because it's not exactly the same as the example you gave. That's sophistry.
The substantive part of a slippery slope here is that drivers licenses will be taken away for things with no connection to driving, not specifically Republicans and nothing else. They have indeed slipped like this.
You're basically claiming that the slope is slippery, but it's not actually going to slip towards any particular thing.
Cool, then my response to you is simple. Just as you simply claim that there isn't a slippery slope to Republicans losing their license for being Republicans despite all mechanisms being in place, I will simply claim that there isn't a slippery slope to "taking the wilderness away from us" despite all (hypothetical) mechanisms being (hypothetically) in place. That was easy!
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
So you're just going to invoke the increasing normalization of the regulation of transport since the 1950s as an argument against that trend continuing into the future...because the trend is just normal? And then argue that the trend is great actually.
None of this makes any sense.
No, I'm invoking the fact that "I can do anything I want anywhere I want" is not a reasonable Schelling point and is not true for any other activity, even activities that you think are not endangered - so the fact that you can't drive in places you could drive before does not, in fact, mean that in the future you won't be able to drive at all, any more than the fact that i can't jaywalk across six lanes of traffic on Market street means that in the future I won't be able to walk around at all.
Where did I say that? I don't really care whether people in Oxbridge need a loicense to drive their cars across town, presumably they are getting the government they deserve. For my part I'm glad I can visit my local downtown area and hang out on the street without car noise and constantly avoiding pedestrians on a three foot wide sidewalk, so sue me. The marginal changes to curtail cars in downtown areas look like a good thing to me, and I see no appetite around me to ban driving in other places, and yes, I acknowledge it would be Bad if you couldn't drive into the wilderness.
Freedom of movement in peacetime is a customary right of Englishmen recognized by countless laws and enshrined even in the Magna Carta.
I agree it's incompatible with modernist government, but the idea that an ancestral tradition that dates back centuries is "not a reasonable Schelling point" is further nonsense.
You're once again conflating "freedom of movement" with "freedom to drive my car anywhere I want, anytime I want". You can't drive your car into my garage, you can't drive your car into a parade, you can't even drive your car on the sidewalk, on the wrong side of the road, when the light is red, or when you're drunk. None of this is an impingement of your freedom of movement.
Bringing up the magna carta is interesting because, when it was written, perhaps 10%-25% of the population were straight up serfs who were literally bound to their master's land. So much for enjoying freedom of movement.
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
More options
Context Copy link