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 -
Sorry I'm seeing you put a lot of effort and my reply probably won't be very satisfactory... but this is also why I have to jump in - you're right, we are speaking past each other, and I'm afraid all this effort is in vain. None of this addresses my argument that Germany cannot be accurately described as doing "Potemkin industrialization". Feel free to post quotes from the book - they are actually very interesting - but if you do so, please do it with the knowledge that this type of argument is not going to move me. It's not because I'm stubborn, it's that it presents a very narrow context.
The quotes don't let me see the entire economy of Germany, let alone let me compare it to the UK or the US. The pre-war times was the era of the Great Depression, there were incredibly insane policies, superficially meant to alleviate the problems of the working class, being implemented all over the world at that time. I'd have to dust off my Mises-Libertarian days' notes, but if I recall correctly, America was literally arresting people for selling their goods too cheaply, in order to fight deflation. In war time everybody switched to a command economy as well, and I assure you, economic pathologies are endemic in those regardless of whether you're a Nazi, or a nominal "capitalist".
In math / tech fields there's the concept of a sanity check. The idea is that it can take a lot of effort to reach a conclusion, and it's pretty easy to make a small mistake somewhere in the process, that will turn whatever it is you're deriving from representative of reality to clown world. So to ensure your conclusion is (/has a decent chance of being) correct, you come up with an easy test that will let you know if you made a wrong turn somewhere. For example, when you're deriving a formula for some physical metric you're interested in, you check the units of measurement that the formula spits out. If your formula for acceleration spits out anything other than units of velocity divided by units of time, you know you screwed up.
And so, I proposed to take the raw output of tanks / aircraft / ships / munitions, and compare them between the belligerents of the war. These couldn't have been Potemkin tanks, and Potemkin aircraft, and Potemkin bombs, that they were using, otherwise the war would resolve a lot quicker than 6 years. You can't build real military equipment in a Potemkin factory, so I think those were real as well, and therefore I only see 3 possibilities:
Now, if you want I can go watch the videos you linked, and we can have this conversation in the next week's thread after I had the time to digest them, and we both cooled down... but also tell me, do they actually address the kind of argument I'm making? Is there any kind "big picture" comparative analysis they go through that will satisfy my need for a sanity check?
More options
Context Copy link