site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   29555 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Listen I'll be the first one in line to say the CPI is fake and gay, a government chimera imagining what the average American needs to buy every month while ignoring the actual experience of oneself or one's friends trying to buy things.

But this is an area where we have a very clear partisan valence to interpretations of economic data. And repeatedly I've had the experience on this very forum of people making loud proclamations of how bad inflation is, with prices listed, that are literally false. My interlocutor will claim eggs are $11/doz, that gas prices are higher, that chicken is $8/lb. I don’t know how else to interpret that experience.

You'll have to point me to where I denied this is biased along partisan lines. I'm saying that even taking the bias into account, you'll still get results implying a number quite a bit larger than 3%.

But what does "a number higher than 3%" mean exactly? What is the number you're talking about? Do you think the basket of goods is poorly constructed, or that the numbers for the basket are faked?

CPI is an artificial concept, but that's because there is no natural concept to stand in for it.

Wish I knew, my bet is on the (possibly deliberately) poor construction of the basket, but I have no way of telling. I don't know the precise number either.

Look, the whole conversation started with KnotGodel saying inflation is not a big issue, because it's only 3%. When people dispute that he goes on his "actually it's perfectly consistent with the official data you're disputing" spiel. Well, if it's perfectly consistent with the data, and the majority of Americans are saying that it is indeed a very big problem, then all that means that either the 3% number is wrong, or that number actually means inflation is a big problem.

You brought political bias into the question. Fair enough - it exists but is not big enough to dismiss the concern. KnotGodel's original argument is still wrong. Unless people psyopped themselves into believing the prices are higher than they are.

So, here is a link to a prior conversation on the forum on this topic. To summarize: Hlynka proudly proclaimed that he KNEW inflation was higher than claimed because...

It doesn't take rigorous analysis to notice out that the price of staples like gas, chicken, and lumber has been rising consistently for about 18 months now and are up 10 to 20% relative to what they were at the start of the year.

My receipts say that gas has gone from $3.50 / gal to $4.15, "cheap meat" IE Costco frozen pork and chicken has gone up from ~$5.00 per lb to $6.75 and the price of a hardwood 2"x4" has nearly doubled from $18.25 for 12 ft to $34.00.

And I audited his claims thus:

National Gas prices are $3.478 as of today, though I should note that my state has gas prices of about $3.70 by AAA numbers and I paid $3.29 at the grocery store this morning, so your mileage may vary.

Target Brand Boneless and Skinless Chicken Breast is $2.99 at my local Target; though I suppose price may vary somewhat by region so I checked and it is also $2.99 in Brooklyn. Here is frozen, which is a little pricier online at a little over $3 a pound, which surprises me as I normally figure frozen is cheaper per pound.

As for the "hardwood 2x4x12" I'm not quite sure what to price that at. What hardwood are we talking about exactly? I've never in my life bought a maple or cherry or oak 2x4 longer than 6ft, since I'd be using it for furniture or cabinets. Prime Fir 2x4x12, the typical item for framing and construction, is a whopping $7.07 at Lowes, less than half the price it was at its peak a couple years back. I will note that for rarer woods (I recently needed some Cedar for window sills), the problem isn't so much price as availability, I have to waste time calling around until I find someone who has something that maybe might work. And the quality at a lot of lumber yards has gone down, I'm rejecting more boards than I used to, and finding clear 1x6 is tougher than it used to be. But the price jumps have mostly come down to normal on commodity lumber that most people use for construction and home improvement.

And there was no counter argument, although he replied further down in the thread repeatedly pointing to stuff like rotisserie chickens getting smaller. ((I don't mean to pick on the departed, it's just a clear example of what I'm talking about))

And this is what frustrates me. People will offer examples of inflation, concretely, and then refuse to back up their claims with data. I realize I might have been unfair to you, personally, because I'm imputing a lot of that behavior to you even though you haven't personally demonstrated it. But a lot of these claims seem to follow the same pattern: someone says that inflation is really bad, and the statistics are fake, and then they'll make a claim like eggs are $11/doz and refuse to engage when I can literally link to eggs for less than half that.

There's a lot of problems with the structure of the CPI, but honestly a big part of what we need to talk about isn't inflation in the traditional sense, it's WeirdFlation. It's the feeling people get when a TV that used to cost $4,000 is $500, but a ranch house that used to cost $150k and sit on the market for weeks is priced at $450k and sells in a week with no inspection. When forklift operators are making more than court personnel or teachers. When the ratio of pounds of steak you could buy for the cost of a T shirt has changed radically. We attach status to consumption, so when the ordinal value of consumption changes it is confusing. Things that we perceived as our birthright are almost out of reach for the average worker, but things that were once out of reach are affordable for a few hours pay.

We're all going through our own version of Agatha Christie's statement that growing up, she never dreamed she would be rich enough to own a car, nor poor enough not to have servants.

Tell me, why am I supposed to relitigate a conversation Hlynka had?

As it turns out aquota and Nybbler provided an explanation that squares the circle. There were several years were inflation was pretty high, and conversations around it assume that wages will follow prices, so if the speed of the increase of prices drops to something manageable, the problem will solve itself. It turns out that this assumption is sometimes wrong, and people are now upset their wages never caught up, and prices never fell.

Or, you can keep telling me how the whole thing is somehow a partisan-bias-fueled psy-op, even though more than half of Democrats believe in it too.

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