site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28507 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I always vote Libertarian no matter who their candidate is. I want no part of the bipartisan shitshow. I wish we had a Proportional Representation Single Transferable Vote system to allow a larger portion of the political spectrum to be represented in the legislature.

I get that the libertarian candidate often has the best policies, but do you not care at all about your vote mattering? I suppose some of this depends on whether you're in a place where there are competitive elections.

Fairfax County (like the entire DC metro area) is deep blue. I haven't seen a single Trump sign this year, and dozens of Harris signs. Four years ago, I saw two houses in my neighborhood with Trump signs and I can't help but wonder whether those houses got egged on Halloween.

It's endlessly frustrating reading the Post and the local subreddits where it's treated as axiomatic that any opposition to unending Third World immigration is xenophobia which is almost as bad, in their worldview, as advocating the legalization of rape.

Huh, just read through the Wikipedia page for it, actually sounds like a very interesting voting system. Problem is, I hardly hear anyone talking about voting system reform, just in a few places online, so public sentiment still has to come a long way before we get any kind of changes like that. Plus the two big parties probably don't want that to happen.

It would upset too many applecarts, so without some kind of coup or revolution it definitely will never happen.

(Unfortunately, this country is just too big. Each member of the legislature should represent no more than 50,000 constituents, but that would require a House of Representatives with 6,600 members!)

I wonder if a two-tier legislature would work. Bin the congresspeople into 82 "rooms" of 82 people, then these rooms nominate two different people to represent them in the house each month.

Note that doing this tends to mean that the top-level house is very one-sided; anything that relies on a supermajority (or on a large-enough majority to absorb a significant fraction of conscientious objectors) will be available far more often. As such, it's relatively easy for this to turn into a dominant-party system.

The most-well-known example of this system at present is literally the PRC, although in that case this isn't the only control preventing other parties from competing.

That's why I suggested each group nominates two different people. If the group doesn't have a supermajority, they will send two people with differing opinions.

So, the people could vote for representatives to elect the people who hold power? That makes sense. Maybe the first-tier representatives could even pledge themselves to a particular second-tier candidate, so people know what they’re getting.

Since the job of the first-tier representative is to elect a second-tier representative, maybe we could call them “electors.” And we could even combine them into a larger body of electors, an electoral college. Heck, while we’re redesigning the election system, we could even have these people vote on the president, too!

I kid. And obviously the chief complaint about the electoral college is that it’s designed to favor rural voters and small states. But if we redesigned elections around this particular model, maybe we could collapse a bunch of federal elections into one, while reducing the number of people per representative so the representation is more granular. I recall reading a proposal for something like that a while back, but I don’t remember where.

I agree that the Wikipedia article is quite illustrative.

I think I have a few objections to STV over simple proportional representation with party lists.

  • I don't care for districts. The idea to physically visit my representative's office in town would never cross my mind, the internet exists. The only thing districts exist for are redirecting federal gravy trains to their constituents. I have no problem with voters voting for someone from their own city or state, but that should be their choice, not pre-baked in the election system.
  • If you put all the candidates for a parliament onto the ballot so I can rank the candidates who I actually care for, that will be a bloody long ballot. There are 733 representatives in the Bundestag, the number of candidates per seat are likely higher by a factor of five or so.
  • While Arrow's theorem affects all voting systems, it does not affect all voting systems equally in practice. With party-list proportional representation, if I have an oracle of how everyone else will vote, there is just so much strategy I can apply. You could check if your vote will influence the possible coalitions (which would be very unlikely but also very powerful), but otherwise, you vote for whatever party best represents your values. (Without an oracle, it is generally a mix of both of these considerations.) However, with STV, strategic votes matter a lot. Suppose my preferred candidate is very popular, and I expect a ton of people to vote for them, so he gets x>q votes, where q is the quota for election. This means that in the next round, my vote will be discounted by factor of (x-q)/x. So if I know beforehand that my preferred candidate will get elected, it would be rational not to vote for them, and instead put all my efforts into backing my next preference. However, this strategy is not stable -- if everyone assumes that their preferred candidate will win anyhow, nobody will vote for them.
  • In list-based proportional representation, the one thing keeping representatives in line is that if they don't vote along the party line, they might not find themselves on a favorably spot on the list for the next election. The deal offered by parties is basically: 'be our straw man for voting in parliament, in exchange you get to shape (party) policy in some area and have a relaxed job with good compensation and little heavy lifting'. If there are no lists and getting elected depends on the population searching for your name on the ballot, incentives change dramatically. Your most likely competitors for votes are your colleagues in your party. Your best strategy is to throw them under the bus. If your party is woke, accuse them of being racists. The resulting equilibrium would be that you no longer have parties (yay!), but instead have a parliament filled with 700 independent representatives who were the most successful at selling their own brand like some youtubers. Now imagine having to find a majority coalition among the top 700 youtubers.

While I am a strong proponent of 'one person, one vote' for electing parliament, I don't think it is required that every representative shares the same voting power in parliament. Instead of transferring votes, one could simply say that if a candidate reaches x>q votes, their voting power in parliament will simply be scaled by factor x/q. You would get much smaller fractions where a few key players of each party make up most of the votes, plus perhaps a few hanger-ons whose main appeal is that they represent niche interests, plus some popular independents.

Finally, you are correct that changing voting systems is hard. The powers that be have formed in response to the present voting systems. While it is sometimes in their best interests to change particulars to entrench their party interests (e.g. gerrymandering) it will almost never be in the interest of a supermajority to fundamentally change the voting system, especially not in a way which lets in outsiders.

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