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 have two questions:
$controversyis spreading, what's the point of bringing Russians into it, if you're not going to make a claim on the spread being a result of their interference?Yes. The point is raising an uncontroversial example demonstrating the claim that there are motivated actors who will try and shift a public discourse regardless of context, and whether or not that involves lying or truth.
Notably, the controversy here isn't whether the Russians do it, which was the claimed example, but how responsible they are for the effect of discord, which was not argued and irrelevant to the position.
Russia was raised as single example because a single example was all that was needed to demonstrate the premise, a single example from US politics could have been interpreted as an insinuation of relative responsible to the party invoked and insulting to the tribes associated with it, and two or more examples would have been twice or more the work without changing the generally uncontested point that the example was raised to demonstrate.
Writing about a whole bunch of groups seemed unnecessary. Is it?
It's still not clear to me what is the meaningful content here. What information is it bringing that wasn't already being taken into account?
- Jews steal!
- Everybody steals!
- Well yeah, but we were talking about Jews.
What can I say, I disagree. If you wanted to make the point that we are all being psy-opped by cyber-warfare divisions of every major world power, the point would have been better made as a general statement. If you single out one particular power, it will look like you think there's something different about them in particular.
It's a bit like that thing about cat-eating Haitians. The claim is not particularly interesting if it was a freak occurrence, and raising it only makes sense if Haitians are disproportionately more likely to do it.
To the person who originally felt that there may be actors trying to manipulate public discourse, affirmation that there are actors trying to manipulate public discourse.
Someone is learning something for the first time every day. The information is always meaningful for those who weren't already taking it into account.
Except that not all psy-opps run in the Russian style, which was the specific style identified for the example, so claiming that every major world power is psy-opping in the same way would not only be wrong, but a deliberate falsehood.
And if I didn't single out an example, I could be accused of not supporting a claim and doing low-effort posting.
Shrugs
Is there a credible reason to believe a disproportionately refugee population from a state with endemic contemporary food insecurity is not disproportionately more likely to partake in non-traditional dining?
I'm not sure what to tell that person other than "welcome to the Internet". There have been actors trying to manipulate public discourse since forever. Maybe you mean "state actors"? That is an interesting development, as far as history goes, but it's not even a recent one.
Ok, so there is a reason to single-out Russia. I'll even agree with it. Unlike when they're trying to affect countries in their orbit (say, for example, Russia trying to push Ukrainians to vote for a pro-Russian party), Americas rivals probably have greater incentive just to cause chaos to weaken America, rather than back any particular faction, so their cyber-warfare operations will look particularly twisted.
And while this might be an interesting conversation if we were discussion psy-ops in themselves, I still feel like my earlier "what's the content here" question still has merit. Because Russians have an incentive to cause chaos and have westerners at each-others throats, you can't even tell what narrative they're promoting. It could be "FEMA IS PREVENTING VOLUNTEERS FROM DELIVERING AID" or it could be "RUSSIAN BOTS AND CONSPIRACY THEORIST ARE CLAIMING FEMA IS PREVENTING VOLUNTEERS FROM DELIVERING AID". It could even be both. It just doesn't seem to bring that much into a discussion on whether it's true that FEMA is blocking aid.
I'm actually on team "Haitians eat cats" for this very reason, it was just an example. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure the analogy even fits that well, but my point was just that if you single a group out you should show how that group is different from the other groups.
More options
Context Copy link
The argument is that Haitians never did it, not once. And TBF the evidence in favor of them doing it is pretty weak. I'm not aware of anyone who says there was a freak occurrence of Haitians eating cats.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link