site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33970 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.

The world is always like this, it isn't worse now or something. The can will be kicked forever

This assertion is a perfect representation of the type of thinking I suggested I found cargo cultish.

The Romans had somewhere in the realm of 1,000,000 men in the field at any given time. Recruiting, training, equipping, paying, housing, feeding, dealing with waste, disciplining, etc. From Scotland to Syria. For centuries.

The next time a European power could field a million men for any amount of time was the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century

The next time the state capacity existed to successfully garrison a million men across the continent for an extended period of time was the American/Soviet involvement in WWII/Cold War in the middle of the 20th century

People always talk the fall of Rome like it means something. We are not Rome, the rest of the world also kept on spinning, China fielded larger armies that whole time yah know. in 300 BC they had armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands facing off. So no, WWII was not the first time a state could garrison a million men. Number of people in your army is not the measure of a state.

This is a slight exaggeration - the actual legionary army (i.e. excluding locally recruited auxiliaries who weren't available for service outside their own province) peaked at 400-500k in the 2nd century. And Byzantium was still able to field 300k men until they lost most of their high-quality agricultural land to the Islamic conquests. The first European monarch to field an army of that size is Louis XIV. Louis XIV's army was better equipped than the legions, but worse trained.

But the big picture is correct. In terms of social technology, Western Civilisation didn't recover from the Fall of Rome until the Early Modern Era (In terms of physical technology, we had overtaken Rome by the High Middle Ages - the Romans couldn't have built a Gothic cathedral and didn't have spinning wheels).

Could it be, perhaps, that a few things changed about the warfare meta since the Roman times? Something that would make equipping and coordinating a competitive soldier/combat unit more expensive?

We're not fighting in phalanxes with spears anymore.

Neither were the romans? Yes they achieved some gains with triarii but they thrived primarily after the Marian reforms and the move to manipular formation and legionary standardization with gladius, scutum, etc.

Were you aping on Obama being so catastrophically wrong in '12 about horses and bayonets? Could you explain why you chose to share that thought?

I chose to share that thought because I don't believe you can compare largest army in the Roman times to largest army in modern times (or even in the 1800s) and conclude that modern states are worse at fielding armies purely because they have fewer soldiers. I'm not convinced that I'm wrong just because I got some minutia of Roman logistics wrong. The core of the argument is that the Romans are apples and WWII soldiers are oranges. "You don't know your apples" is irrelevant.

Okay :)

Avoid low effort responses, please.

This is probably backwards. The equipment for a Roman Legion probably represented a greater relative investment of manufacturing and material compared to modern arms.

I'm less certain on how much training was actually done. But I can more or less bet that a middlingly and quickly trained rifleman is much better than a middlingly and quickly trained Legionary.

I suppose it's true. The amount of farmers to feed one warrior was higher in the ancient era, so fielding a lot of warriors was more impressive - if you only care about that part of state capacity.

The conclusion seems to be that the ancients squeezed their people harder, but are they more glorious because of that even though they'd get far less out of their million Romans than we could get out of 100k WWII soldiers?

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