site banner

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Specifically regarding EROI, this makes it sounds like you're calling for continuing to use fossil fuels.

Actually, the opposite - continuing to use fossil fuels is impossible, because there's a finite amount of them and you eventually run out. But worse, because humans tend to extract the easiest, best resources first, the energy return and economic viability of them will go down well before we actually run out.

And if fossil fuels are the only energy source capable of powering modern civilisations, then when you remove that energy source without replacing it with something better/equivalent you end up without modern civilisations - there's no inherent law of the universe which says that modern western lifestyles are a permanent fixture of reality. You don't end up in Mad Max land (we had civilisation before we had fossil fuels after all) but you do end up with a society very different to the one we have now.

As I said, it has recently improved and some of the first new reactors since the 1970's have finally started to come online.

I will believe that this problem has been solved when those reactors are functioning and supplying us with electricity - but people have been saying similar things for the past decade, and nothing has happened. Again, these advanced reactors have been on the verge of solving the energy crisis for the last 50 years, so I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Curious what you think the energy problems we are facing actually are.

Climate change is going to cause vast amounts of economic damage as extreme weather events increase and climate belts slowly head north. These changes are going to encourage much more energy usage precisely at a time when that energy usage makes the problem worse - and the source of that energy is starting to run dry. The transition from fossil fuels to a new mixture of energy is going to cause lots and lots of economic pain on top of having to deal with massive amounts of pollution and changes due to global warming. There are going to be climate refugees as water systems change location, good farming land moves around (Siberians are probably going to be pretty happy though) and some places simply become unliveable. We need to find a viable alternative to fossil fuels, and in order to have a gentle transition to a society that uses that alternative we need to find it several years ago - which means that we aren't going to have a gentle transition even if we do manage to find something.