site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28330 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Historic flooding in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Whole towns washed away. People retreating to their attics as water levels rise. People losing everything.

Tragic. Horrific. But this is the Culture War thread so I am going to ask the insensitive question, what does this mean for the election in <40 days?

My first thought is that there is a certain irony that these states are among those that just limited the forms of ID allowed at a voting booth. Someone who has lost their house is less likely to have all their documentation, and getting new copies will take longer than the time before the election.

Rural areas that were wiped out will have a harder time finding their polling location under the mud and timber. Mail-in voting will be difficult without a mailbox.

People are going to watch the Biden-Harris's administration to see how they respond.

Do these factors make it more likely for these swing states to turn Blue or Red? Buncombe County, one of the hardest hit, went 60% for Biden in 2020.

Awful stuff, the devastation is insane. And as others have said, there hasn't been any major flooding in these areas since 1791, apparently.

I am normally all for government incompetence and infrastructure failures being pointed out, but honestly this just seems like an act of God. I don't blame anyone in Asheville or the surrounding areas for not being prepared.

But I do blame the federal government for not doing more - where are the jets and helicopters going out there? Where is the televised response and shipping in of starlink and other supplies? I know there's been a FEMA bill signed to give funding but c'mon, this should be an easy publicity win for the left. I have 0 clue why they aren't making more of a big deal out of this.

If anyone does have videos or responses from the White House pls link, because I'd love to see it.

where are the jets and helicopters going out there? Where is the televised response and shipping in of starlink and other supplies?

I feel like this would be the perfect place for that Pawn Star's meme, where flooded Appalachians are begging for aid, and the Federal Government just goes "Best I can do is 100,000, 67 IQ third worlders"

Having just finished volume three of Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire, I'm reminded of how towards the end the Roman Empire was so depopulated by mismanagement and oppressive taxes (there was a specific anecdote about I think Diocletian temporarily suspending the taxes on having children), as well as civil wars, famine and pestilence that they just started letting Goths and whoever else wanted to cross their borders to raise the GDP of the regions. That these newcomers murdered all the locals and pillaged their cities barely seemed to matter. Did they pay their taxes? Uh.... not really... in fact they demanded thousands of pounds of gold as tribute. But a bunch of Roman bureaucrats got to embezzle money and take bribes so it all worked out in the end.

The lack of response looks extremely bad when we consider how much aid has been poured into Ukraine and Palestine, AND 10's of thousands of refugees have been pulled out of other country's (such as Haiti's) disaster areas and housed on U.S. Soil.

They should have C-130's airdropping supplies already. As it stands, Kamala hasn't even sent a tweet.

There should already be promises to put a couple billion or so dollars into rebuilding (i.e. what they claim they'll do for Ukraine once the war ends).

If the U.S. government can't even muster up the same kind of resolve and resources to rescue U.S. Citizens on U.S. soil due to a natural disaster, then unironically, they do not deserve to rule, full stop.

This is why its such a horrible idea to remove all the slack from the system to spend on relatively frivolities. When the need arises to spend your reserves due to an actual unexpected disaster, you don't have the change to spare.

I sure hope it doesn't take as long to deliver aid to North Carolina as Ukraine. Hopefully fewer fights over it in Congress as well. Maybe there should have been more funding for FEMA in the continuing resolution?

Does FEMA need additional funding? Use of the fund was approved yesterday and as far as I understood it the damage, while severe and tragic, hit mostly relatively low density areas. This isn't a hurricane Katrina situation, right?

Does FEMA need additional funding?

Partly I am taking a shot at the claim that comes up every time there's some kind of disaster in the US (see also: Hawaii, East Palestine, wildfires, etc...) that foreign aid has somehow compromised our disaster response capabilities - often by the same people who oppose funding disaster preparedness - when in fact the US has capabilities for disaster relief so we don't have to respond in an ad hoc manner like we do with foreign events. When the question comes up: why aren't we doing X grand gesture of relief, the answer is usually that we have something more practical but less grandiose that we're already doing.

But also, apparently yes..

Starlinks are a good point. In a sane world FEMA has thousands of them with batteries ready to deploy. I wonder if they do though, given the apparent hatred of Musk in the federal government.

God that’s so pathetic.

Someone who has lost their house is less likely to have all their documentation, and getting new copies will take longer than the time before the election.

Less likely, on the margins, sure. But realistically, what things would you grab on your way out the door if there was a catastrophic weather event? Personally, I'd be grabbing my phone, which has my driver's license in the case. Even in the event that my home was wiped out by a catastrophic flood, I would still almost certainly be able to provide the required identification to vote. If anything, this makes me even less sympathetic to the idea that it's actually totally normal and reasonable for legitimate voters to lack identification.

Okay I’ll respond here and say: my drivers license or any of my “documents” would be among the last things I would think to grab. I’d want:

  1. Kids/wife/debit card

  2. Hardware authenticators (irreplaceable)

  3. Laptop

  4. Gun

  5. “Survival” stuff like a fishing rod and a water filter and some lighters.

I realize this makes me very stupid, and this event has made me reevaluate my thoughts. For instance if I lost ALL of my “documents”, could I reconstruct them? My intuition says: yes, easily. Just “steal” my own identity. I have my DL# and SSN memorized. I know my full name, DOB, all of my addresses, employment history, etc.

What would it actually take, I wonder?

My debit card is in my wallet besides my license— is your’s in a separate container?

Yes it’s in the glovebox in my car. Home Depot is the only place I go that doesn’t take Apple Pay, so I keep it in there in case I go to Home Depot.

I guess if it was explicitly a driving license I would keep that in there as well, but it seems there are lots of other, non driving related things I need it for (flying, for instance) so it lives in the house.

What are hardware authenticators?

It’s a hardware 2 factor authentication device.

So like when you log in to a service, instead of texting me, I have to insert/read something from a little piece of hardware.

Oh like a Digipass, gotcha.

I'd consider my credit+debit+cash to be urgent and my driver's license to be replaceable ... but in effect that means I'd definitely have ID, since it's all in the same wallet.

I feel like the "I don't know anybody voting for Nixon" lady, but I don't think I know any adult who doesn't carry ID habitually. I guess my wife sometimes leaves her ID and cards at home when I'm driving, but even then it's less often than not.

Things are probably different in cities with good mass transit, but does that describe any of the ones flooding?

We now have recognised digital drivers' licenses on your phone, but to be honest I wasn't carrying one before then anyway. A wallet is just one more thing to carry, everything is on the phone. An ID isn't necessary to fly domestically here either, so it's easily left at home as well. I'd currently need to use cash maybe once every two years.

In my state of Washington in the last legislative session we allocated $150,000 to study the idea of digital driver’s licenses. The study is due at the end of this year. Maybe in the upcoming session we can get a bill passed to implement them and then in another year, minimum, they can roll out.

We now have recognised digital drivers' licenses on your phone

And you’d be a fool to use it. Are you planning on handing your unlocked phone to a cop?

If it wasn't clear, I don't live in a country with as adversarial a relationship with the cops as the US, but I have a shortcut to pin the app on open, kiosk mode. I've never had to use it in the 2 ish years it's been available but I understand the ID verification flow doesn't require a phone to be handed over, just a QR code displayed and scanned.

You have a lot of trust in the kiosk mode. I don’t know where you are, but I see the relevant difference as the fact that US cops and courts cannot compel you to unlock your phone, whereas in most of the rest of the world they can.

I haven’t brought my drivers license with me for any reason other than flying in…years.

My car unlocks with my phone, which also has apply pay. I don’t carry a wallet with me, and I don’t carry house keys with me either. My house uses electronic locks, and I’m very competent with a lock pick (and can improvise one very quickly) in the event that that fails.

Usually when we fly finding IDs is a task on our to do list.

On the one hand I've always heard you have 24 hours to produce your license (no idea if that's true). On the other hand....what do you do if your phone gets lost, stolen, or broken?

My phone crashed in a major city in another state on me once and that was bad enough with my wallet and keys and someone with me.

So hypothetically, what happens if you get stopped by Police and they ask to see your license? Or is that not a thing that they ask for where you live?

I’ve never been stopped by the police. But if I was I’d give them my DL# and they would presumably just look it up on their computer in their car.

Depending on local policy (and the mood of the cop) you might get forced to show up in court over that. At least I know that's theoretically supposed to happen where I live (but probably rarely gets applied unless you're violating some other law simultaneously since it's a huge waste of time both for you and for the government).

I guess I just don’t care. If they make me show up to court because I didn’t have the little plastic thing, and instead just had them look it up, that’s funny to me.

Go on the clown ride at the clown show to get scolded by clowns for not having my clown department issued clown card with me. Nothing could be funnier to me.

I could be wrong, but I feel like an officer would probably look you up with the number, but then chide you with a "you need to carry your license when you drive" before he sent you on your way.

@Stellula Having had this experience I was sent on my way with a summons to appear and produce the license in court.

Upon appearing with my license the case was dismissed but I was admonished for not having my license while driving.

Yeah that’s exactly what I assume would happen.

To weigh in somewhat in between you and /u/roystgnr, I have my license with me 100% of the time when I leave the house, but also have repeatedly had a "why in the world do you not have your license?" conversation where my wife has been denied alcohol for lack of ID. So, I am well aware that this is way above lizard man constant levels, but am also absolutely baffled at what the upside is to not just having your ID in your wallet.

A surprising amount of women's clothing does not come with pockets of sufficient size to store anything like a wallet, so they need to pack necessities manually before every trip based on need and available storage. This could be anything ranging from a handbag to the minimally-sized pocket of a tight-fitting piece of pants that might at most fit a few loose cards, which encourages keeping the ID card as a loose item to be tracked and brought explicitly.

Realistically, I wouldn't expect even something as dire as the current North Carolina situation to happen in literally an hour. If you live in a hurricane state, you should have some sort of reasonable plan laid out and be ready to execute in the event that something happens. This is probably good advice in general but becomes more important if you're somewhere that has a non-trivial probability of your house just being destroyed. If I lived in such a state, my go bag would include a few documents - it's not like these chew up much space or weight. Currently, I just always keep my passport in the backpack that I travel with, so that would be an automatic one without needing to think about it any further than chucking a few other things in and bugging out. Otherwise, top priorities would vary based on what the situation is. Things that I would pretty much always bring:

  • Handgun and magazines
  • Passport
  • Box of Clif bars and Maurten gels (seriously, it's a shitload of calories without much weight)
  • Phone (my case has my driver's license, debit card, and credit card)
  • Wool running gear - all-purpose across weather and keeps me warm even if wet
  • Handwarmers

Imperfect, but doesn't weigh much, is enough calories to survive for a few days even with heavy movement, includes self-defense, some warmth, and includes money and ID restoration.

Most of these people do not live in places where hurricanes regularly cause damage, and many people were not expecting flooding until it was window-high.

https://x.com/smokiesvol/status/1840077470931832933

https://x.com/Rex_Williams/status/1840467637467574395

Holy shit, those videos almost look like the effects of landslides rather than a hurricane.

Not thinking to grab your social security card and birth certificate I fully understand, but how would you possibly leave behind your driver’s license? Do you not keep it in your wallet, phone case, car, or some other similar place? I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time I left home without my driver’s license, since it never leaves my wallet.

Can I piggyback and have a non culture war sub thread?

I'm interested in learning and pragmatics. I've looked at predictive flood maps before, but it's hard to have any sense of 'how good' they are. I'd also like to know if they are pretty off in some ways, are there any heuristics shy of literally replicating all of the work of coding up a topographic model, a precipitation model, etc., and just turning the dial up, that I could use to more easily get a sense of where is still pretty safe and where might be deceptively dangerous.

One thing that would be helpful is that if anyone knows where I can find recent observational data to compare to the old predictive maps, so preferably maps of the current major flooding with geographic detail that is somewhat close to federal predictive flood maps. Any other reasonable heuristics would be appreciated, though I am open to the answer being that there just aren't any good heuristics that can be generalized beyond detailed knowledge/modeling of a particular geographic area.

You should summon Beej67 for real answers. Just some thoughts from a nobody: common sense, knowing your risk tolerance, and a satellite image can get you pretty far. Don’t be within 20 vertical feet of anywhere a meandering river has ever been. Avoid being at the end of a draw, and in a non-meandering river valley, look for areas where the river has been before, then double or triple the vertical distance. Flow data usually goes back quite a while, but visually, you should be able to ask yourself, "How did that rock end up like that?" You should have to work to get to water, if it's easy to get to you're at flood risk. There's also an element of you don't have to outrun the bear just another person. If there's a path for water to go flood some massive other area get hire then that.

Maybe I get to cheat in my area because I live in an area in the path of ARkStorm so worst case is pretty observable.

I’ve found maps useful for identifying hidden flood dangers, like streams that have been fully encased for a significant distance. The flood maps will show the risk. The heuristic I use is: "If this disaster did occur, would its consequences be so severe that I’d be affected indirectly no matter what?" Maximizing mitigation of the Yellowstone caldera erupting probably isn’t worth much of your time, since the economic effects would be catastrophic, and you'd likely need to become a prepper if you truly want to mitigate that.

are there any heuristics

Look where past floods / natural disasters (blizzards, forrest fires, earthquakes) were?

There are services like this:

https://www.augurisk.com/risk/state/north-carolina/buncombe-county/37021

Good bet would be that insurances have the best models and risk assessments.

Red voters in red states will not switch blue after a natural disaster. Why would they? At best the Biden administration handles this competently, at worst it's a disaster. Is Kamala Harris going to lead a public relief tour? Trump would.

Going further, does the administration even care about red voters in red areas? They haven't stopped spending money on charter flights for resettling Haitians. That's their priority. They will authorize whatever emergency funds sound good on a campaign ad.

If anything voter turnout will increase. When normal life is suspended public life becomes that much more important. Documentation will not be a problem: emergency atmosphere and community mindset will make people solve problems.

Red voters in red states will not switch blue after a natural disaster. Why would they?

The conspiracy theory that's relevant here isn't that a failed disaster response will turn those Trump voters into Harris voters - it'll turn them into corpses or people so busy with disaster recovery efforts that they're unable to vote.

I tentatively expect this to shift things towards Trump.

There's an old article on SSC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/04/a-thrivesurvive-theory-of-the-political-spectrum/

about how right wing politics are optimized towards surviving, ie in an apocalypse, and left wing politics are optimized for thriving when there are plenty of resources. When things are tough you make tough decisions and sacrifices in order to survive, and make stable family units that can replace the people who inevitably die. Which right wing politics are optimized for. When things are great and there's plenty to go around then you can do whatever you want and be inefficient but free and happy, and anyone trying to restrict you is doing it for selfish reasons, so you should ignore them, which left wing politics are optimized for.

Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is often depicted as a pyramid, but perhaps it would be more appropriate to tip it sideways, so the lower baser needs are on the right while the higher needs are on the left, as those are their strengths.

When things are tough, people want a tough leader who does what needs to be done, who will ensure their basic necessities, security, and establish confidence and project strength. Regardless of whether Trump is actually more effective at this than Harris, he certainly appears that way superficially. I expect more swing votes to shift towards Trump compared to the counterfactual scenario where these floods did not happen, though I have no idea how strong of an effect this will be, so not sure if it will matter or even be statistically significant.

Looking back, Katrina was politically and electorally brutal for Republicans, while Sandy clinched re-election for Obama. This despite neither storm primarily impacting swing states. It's all in the optics of the president being in control or out of control.

The takes post hurricane are always hilariously stupid, the kind of weird bourgeois socialism that Trump would love. Insuring beach houses that get flooded every couple years to preserve homeowner value after the private insurance market refuses to play there. Hubristic rebuilding of stuff that'll last another few years. This is right in Trump's wheelhouse, so maybe he'll benefit more than average.

One of the real material advantages to having the media in your back-pocket.

While the bulk of the failure being at the state and municipal level (Mayor Nagin would ultimately be sentenced to 10 years in prison for embezzling hurricane relief funds) the media sold it as a lack of federal oversight.

OOT, Has it really been 20 years?

It really has. In summer 2005, DC’s Batman Begins and Marvel’s Fantastic Four were released.

It's all in the optics of the president being in control or out of control.

Which, in this case, has the bizarre twist of everyone knowing that the President isn't in control of much of anything, but the VP popping in and out of acting like she's in charge depending on whether it would be electorally helpful or not.

Insuring beach houses that get flooded every couple years to preserve homeowner value after the private insurance market refuses to play there.

This continues to infuriate me. Even if someone thinks it's a public problem, I have no idea why it would be a federal problem. Florida has hurricanes. This is a known aspect of Florida. Florida has a GDP comparable to Spain's, they can price in their local natural disasters without coming to the Midwest demanding handouts. Floridians, in my experience, are often smug about what they view as excellent weather and the lack of income taxes, but also demand that the rest of the country subsidize them because they have dangerous weather.

A strange thought: should Gulf Coast states become RV states? Hurricane developing? Everyone drives North. Coast is clear? Everyone drives back.

I'm curious what the alternative is to building homes and watching them get wrecked.

Building codes (including Florida's) do contain guidance for designing houses that are resistant to hurricane-force winds. The Wood Frame Construction Manual, incorporated by reference into the code sections linked above, permits prescriptive design for wind speeds all the way up to 195 mi/h.

I'm curious what the alternative is to building homes and watching them get wrecked.

Concrete. We have the technology to build homes which would take a Category 5 to wreck (and Category 5s are very rare even in Florida). RVs would be a very bad tradeoff. Besides the problem of living in an RV all the time, they're going to get wrecked in lesser storms which most current Florida homes easily survive. Plus, you'd never be able to evacuate in time; the roads would be jammed with RVs which would then get wrecked.

Another alternative would be "don't live there at all".

If the cost of rebuilding weren't subsidized, the market would (slowly) come to an equilibrium where either the places would be left without permanent structures or a good tradeoff between "build strong" and "build cheap but accept rebuilding" would be met.

This looks like trailer parks and commie blocks for the poor, and some combination of locally(possibly artificially) high elevation+reinforced construction+artificial barriers for the rich.

I don't really know how it would shake out. I expect there'd be an excluded middle, houses that were almost good enough to last out a major hurricane, if that's what you're getting at. It's possible the rich would also have some "disposable" construction, though only as second homes.

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