site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I know post-Covid we have more traffic fatalities. Looks like phone adoption could have caused a minor spike, then a larger spike that went down before 2019-2020. The pre-2020 increases aren't found in other nations looks like, so the phone factor may not be real.

People get comfortable, then they stop driving and start doing whatever else. Most people are not going to be F1 capable drivers. There the act of working a vehicle is an active, exhaustive set of skills that require constant attention and decision-making. The average person puts however many thousands of hours behind the wheel and they stop thinking about it unless their lizard brain gets triggered.

Average people are going to have lapses in attention while driving. Average people will make a mistake and get mad at someone else for it. Most of the time they won't hurt themselves or others. That's how I assume the majority of accidents occur. Not cases of poor judgment ("I can make this light"), but cases of without much judgment, absent mindedness, and habit.

Cases of misjudgment and bad drivers obviously cause accidents. The courts don't try very hard to identify these people out of the sea of tickets and educate them. Even people that get DUI's don't have to take more training. They get sent to some state-sponsored money mill that they pay money to be told drinking and driving is bad. Forget DUI school. Make them take driving classes taught by professional drivers. People that receive DUI convictions could be the most elite class of driver on the road.