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 -
I agree with your specific point that both sides misrepresented the true cost of the loan, and I agree with you that it's annoying how often people who should know better make these kinds of poorly-informed and/or bad-faith arguments, to the point that it's barely worth reading most media due to the low quality of the arguments.
However, I disagree with your conclusion that in this case, Weidel/the AfD is more correct than Klingebiel/the normies. You summarize Weidel's claim in your conclusion:
But the statement is only “true” in a trivial sense that these two things happened together: a bridge collapsed and a loan was issued to India. But the statement implies something completely different: bridges in Germany are collapsing because the German government spends money on foreign aid instead of proper infrastructure maintenance.
That's a statement like: “Kids in Africa are starving while 40% of Americans are obese!” This is a 100% true statement, and it's salient because it implies that kids in Africa are starving because selfish Americans are stealing the food from their mouths. But if you have just a tiny bit of knowledge about topics like economy, supply chains, argriculture and world politics, you know that these facts are not really causally linked, which is supported by historical data which shows that as obesity rates in America increased, the number of starving kids in Africa decreased. It would be more accurate to say: the more Americans eat, the fewer African kids starve! Paradoxical but true.
Similarly, German bridges collapsing is not obviously correlated with, let alone caused by, German foreign aid spending. If you want to make that argument (even implicitly, as Weidel does here), then you need to back it up with arguments, which she doesn't, and you don't either. I think there are a lot of reasons to assume this is not the case.
For one, it's not true that the two expenses are mutually exclusive. Money spent on foreign aid does not come directly out of the infrastructure maintenance budget, or vice versa. Of course it's true that the German government cannot spend an unlimited amount of money, so every additional euro spent must be either removed somewhere else, or raised through taxes or something, but that's a very thin connection. The German government spends billions on thousands of different things, and raises money in hundreds of ways. You might as well say: “The German government spends hundreds of million of euros on forestry, while bridges collapse!” but this isn't quite as salient, is it?
So realistically, these two expenses have to be judged on their merits individually. Is the amount of money spent on foreign aid too high? It's not obvious from the facts. Others have already pointed out the benefits of some foreign aid spending, including international goodwill and kickbacks in the form of industry orders which boost the German economy.
Is the amount of money spent on infrastructure maintenance too low, then? According to a spokesperson, the bridge did not collapse because there was no money budgeted for inspection or maintenance:
It's easy to conclude, with hindsight, that of course this bridge should have been maintained better, otherwise it wouldn't have collapsed. But just like the optimal amount of insurance fraud is nonzero, the optimal amount of bridges collapsing annually is nonzero. This is exactly the kind of rational argument that in particular the AfD-caveman does not understand!
All in all, I don't find this story all that convincing as a case study on why people should distrust the normie media. That doesn't mean I like the normie media, but I think if you're a caveman, you are better off listening to the midwits, who are more likely to be directionally correct and less likely to be spectacularly wrong. Of course, we should all be listening to geniuses instead. The problem is that if you're a caveman, it's very difficult to distinguish genius from midwit from fellow caveman.
It's true that the optimal amount of bridges collapsing is non-zero. But it's also true that if you're going to decide whether a particular collapsing bridge is worth it, "the optimal amount is non-zero" is the last reason you should try using to justify a collapsing bridge. Otherwise, it becomes a fully general argument for all collapsing bridges, since any collapsing bridge you might care about is a non-zero amount.
A collapsing bridge is strong evidence that something went wrong.
Come on. Do you really expect him to say "Oh, no, we didn't inspect the bridge. We didn't follow the guidelines. And nobody was surprised by this incident. Everyone in the government expected the bridge to fall down"? Of course not. Nobody's ever going to say that regardless of whether it's true. (And even if it's true, "we followed the guidelines" is just ass-covering. Nobody can put any blame on them if they followed the guidelines, right? It's entirely possible the guidelines are bad.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link