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 -
How many of them lasted as long, or held so many in thrall, or caused so much damage, or brought us so close to much, much worse?
I stand by my original statement. The nazis lasted twelve years, and roughly the same for the Japanese empire. The communists held power for nearly a century, and ruled something like a third of the whole world for roughly two generations, killing and brutalizing an absolutely staggering number of people in that time.
Note that "empire more evil than" is distinct from "caused most damage overall". Unless you go with some strict variant of ultrautilitarianism.
Aztecs killed far less people, but they remain strong contender to be more evil. Maybe in a quite tragic way as they actually believed own religion.
Similarly, nazi Germany is in my opinion more evil than USSR.
If you count overall damage and count all communists as one competitor, then yes they caused most damage overall.
In what way are they "more evil"?
Why?
I would consider deliberate mass murder combined with being an oppressive corrupt empire as worse than treating cretinous well intended idea too seriously and predictably becoming an oppressive corrupt empire.
Germans entirely deliberately planned to oppress/murder others, as a goal. While Russians were more selective (a bit) and it was not entirely whole point. I guess that puts Aztecs also above Third Reich for me.
Not sure where to put Mao, this level of murderous incompetence and tyrany is quite unique and whole class by itself.
(not that I rate USSR high, just a bit above Nazi Germany and Aztecs)
Communism involved large amounts of deliberate mass murder, and large amounts of mass rape and torture as well. Nor was this some aberration of Stalin or Pol Pot; Marx himself explicitly endorsed mass murder of "others" as a goal in the founding documents of the movement. It was, as you say, the explicit plan from the start.
Describing Communism as "taking cretinous well-intentioned ideas too seriously" is exactly the sort of thing the OP was describing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Debating five year peak evil versus career Evil Above Replacement and Evil Efficiency versus Counting Stat Evil Accumulation. Can we come up with an equivalent for an Evil Dak Prescott with good evil stats but they're all in evil garbage time?
I feel sad that I am not getting this joke :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wins_Above_Replacement helped a bit
So a debate sports fans love to have is ranking old timers in various forms. The GOAT NBA player, the GOAT shortstop, the GOAT Miami Dolphin. And part of that debate is defining Greatest, and there are classic ways the debate breaks down.
Is the GOAT the guy who had the best peak to his career, or is a guy who was not quite as good at their respective bests but did it for longer superior? Sandy Koufax won three cy young awards in four years and accumulated half his career WAR in those four years, while a player like Derek Jeter never had anything close to that kind of performance, but put up more wins over the course of a 20 year career. Which is "greater" as a career? Which more deserving of going to Cooperstown?
Is a guy who accumulated the most stats (hits, points, wins etc) the best, or should we look more at how efficiently he accumulated those stats? This is especially a big debate in basketball, where players usage is more variable: in baseball the players get up to bat as often as they get up to bat, while in basketball a player might hog the ball and take lower percentage shots in volume and end up with a bunch of points even though it would have been better for him to pass the ball to a teammate, while a player who makes only high percentage shots adds more to the team even if he accumulates fewer points.
Dak Prescott is the quarterback for a rival NFL team to my own favorite team. He's, factually, pretty good at his job, but a frequent criticism of Dak is that he's less than his stat sheet indicates. He puts up fantastic numbers against weak teams, but loses the big games. Or, against a tough team like Baltimore two weeks ago, his team falls way behind early as Dak screws the pooch, then he'll engineer half a comeback and lose anyway. But after the game he'll have pretty good numbers and it will look like he had a decent game, while in reality most of the numbers he put up didn't matter because it was "garbage time" the game was already over.
For evil athlete equivalents:
Evil Sandy Koufax (greatest four year peak evil): Khmer Rouge, hands down
Evil Derek Jeter (overrated, but actually very solid numbers over time and a lot of big wins): The British Empire
Evil Nikola Jokic (highly efficient play that flies under the radar): Mao Zedong
Evil Carmelo Anthony (Big counting stats but poor efficiency): Adolf Hitler
Evil Dak Prescott (Only achieved anything in garbage time when the game was already decided): Stepan Bandera
Evil Mike Trout (Truly evil but never had the team around him to do it in the playoffs): Yassir Arafat
Evil Dustin Pedroia (Just a little guy, but gets dirt on his uniform, just keeps pluggin' away): Benjamin Netanyahu
ETA
Evil Ben Simmons (huge hype but never delivered): Fidel Castro
Evil Wilt Chamberlain (unbeatable records against questionable competition before the modern era): Genghis Khan
Evil Ken Griffey Jr (amazing career cut short too early leaving us to ask what might have been): Reinhard Heidrich
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