site banner
PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   33144 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 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.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I will state for the record that yesterday a few hours before the debate I was reading about the Springfield affair and told my wife that "at this point if I were a US citizen I might actually vote for Trump." So in that sense, I was a 'floating non-voter', and Harris would have won me over.

Oh come on. You’ve been posting on The Motte, how long, since the SSC subreddit days? But you claim to be an innocent undecided after everything that was happened? Even if somehow you are undecided, you are the most atypical undecided imaginable.

If he'd stuck to messaging around the economy, used migration mainly as a competence issue ("Harris was made Border Tsar, well let me ask you this, do you the American people think she has done a good job of that?"), moved to the center at least rhetorically on foreign policy issues (why exactly couldn't he say it was in America's interests for Ukraine to win?), and made a more concerted effort to tar Harris with the failures of the Biden administration, I think he could have won.

This is why he did win. Everyone came away understanding that he had the winning hand on almost every issue. Whether he “won the debate” is irrelevant. Nobody says to themselves “I agree with Trump on everything, but since he was ineloquent I guess have no choice but to vote for Kamala. Sorry, I’m coconut-tree gang now.”

Trump persuaded people on the issues. On the other hand, I honestly can’t even remember one thing Kamala said.

innocent undecided after everything that was happened

You're right that I'm definitely very atypical of 'undecided voters', but I never said "innocent"! If anything, I think my indecision is a consequence of having been massively saturated with high quality arguments for both left- and right-wing worldviews, creating a kind of political bistability, in which small changes in my mood or the news cycle triggers political gestalt shifts.

Relatedly, I'm reminded of a fun anecdote from my college days. I was discussing capital punishment with a friend - let's call him Bob - who was an extremely successful competitive debater (British Parliamentary, not the Lincoln-Douglas crap).

I asked him, "Bob, what are the best arguments in favour of capital punishment?" "Oh, that's easy doglatine. Consider the following...", and he gave me a long list of arguments, evidence, and data.

I next asked him, "Hmm, and what are the best arguments against capital punishment?" "That's also very straightforward. We can group these into seven main types, as follows..." and gave me another cavalcade of arguments and facts from ethics, political theory, law, and social science.

Finally, I asked him, "So what about you, Bob? Are you pro- or anti-capital punishment?"

After a long pause he said "God, that's a hard question, I have absolutely no idea."

I wouldn't be surprised if mottizens are actually disproportionally chronically undecided. As far as my understanding goes, especially the rare posters and lurkers are still mostly disgruntled left-leaning grey tribers, disliking the woke far-left wing but not enough to make the full jump to the right. Especially since the right keeps nominating people like Trump, who are at the very least just personally very unappealing.

Try to resist the urge to speak for “everyone,” especially when you’re acting this hostile.

It’s been quite a while since your last warning, but you haven’t really done anything else in the meantime. If you’re just here to stump for Trump, put some more substance into it.

Eh, I disagree here. I was pretty pro-Trump going in, but after watching the debate performance I'm rating Kamala much more highly.

For me it's probably between voting for Trump and not voting at all though. Watching that debate, seeing how angry and flustered Trump was, how he didn't seem to have coherent plans besides just railing about how bad the democrats were, really frustrated me.

I was hoping he'd talk about the deficit, about bringing in Elon to increase government efficiency and cut, talk about nuclear and crypto. All things he's discussed on podcasts recently. But he just stuck to his same old annoying, and frankly disturbing angry populist rhetoric. Not a good look for moderates at all.

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