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 -
A lot of the initial theory was based around small business and education web services, such as video streaming, collaborative media work, so on, and at that often included multiple simultaneous users per residence.
I'm a real severe skeptic of that -- and the Cloud focus that drives no small part of it -- but having set up remote users or small offices on <5 Mbps lines or long chains of P2P microwave links, there genuinely are a surprising number of really common functionality that either doesn't work, or doesn't work consistently, in those environments. Even if you're focused on atoms rather than bits, 'simple' things like security cameras, backup systems, file shares, and all pretty much have to be hosted locally for all but the most minimal of setups.
The more you get into bits, the harder, even for stuff you wouldn't think of as online. A short internet outage can turn building a Java program into an ordeal; even moderate packet loss can make OnShape unusable for collaborative CAD, and gods help you if someone turns on OneDrive for their machine.
I think it's wrong, but it's not self-evidently crazy.
(On the gripping hand, it's very far from clear that StarLink won't be able to achieve these results by 2026, if it doesn't already.)
More options
Context Copy link