This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
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These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.
Quality Contributions to the Main Motte
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
Contributions for the week of September 30, 2024
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
Contributions for the week of October 7, 2024
Plausibly Concerning Something Other Than Trump v. Clinton Biden Harris
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Notes -
It never had or has to be that way.
Why on earth is that your conclusion when the far simpler one is that people don't remain in spaces they find uncomfortable?
Sure, it doesn't have to, but surely you see how maintaining the levels of open-mindedness one had when they were 20, is fighting an uphill battle?
The question is why are they finding those spaces uncomfortable? We've had several high-profile flameouts stemming from tolerating too much Actual Nazism, racism and sexism, but basically none stemming from tolerating Actual Communism, CRT, and patriarchy theory.
When one holds views that are unpopular with the establishment, one has no choice but to develop a tolerance for pro-establishment views as they're being expressed everywhere, but there is no need to develop such tolerance when you're holding prop establishment views to begin with. You can always go somewhere where opposition to your ideas is not allowed to be questioned.
As to why I think open discourse is an existential threat to the regime, it's because they tell us so! Western governments are quite open about their need to control the kinds of views that are allowed to be spread on social media.
The other reason I usually hear for posters feeling uncomfortable boils down to being piled on. I have a lot of sympathy for this, but attempts to find solutions haven't really gone anywhere. I always suggest turning off the voting system, and rate-limiting responses to minority-view posters. Do you think that would help? Do you have any ideas on what could be done to alleviate feeling piled on?
Other than that have I missed something? Are there reasons for discomfort that don't boil down to tolerance for repugnant views, or being piled on?
Likely a good suggestion here, but I do not think doing so improved Scott's substacks comments or anyone's substack comments. Not having a voting system does not seem to make DSL any more peaceful or open, but there's other structural barriers there.
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Voting is literally the only way the community can respond to a persistent troll the mods have decided to enable. They can ban people for criticizing the troll, they can ban people for reporting the troll, but as far as I know they can't ban them for downvoting the troll.
I don't know why anyone would want to take that one recourse away from the users.
There was only one instance that I recall where this was an actual issue, and it was Darwin, and by the time we moved here, even the mods were tired of his schtick.
Because for every person that gets downvoted for being a troll, there are scores that get downvoted for having an unpopular opinion.
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TheMotte does seem to have homogenised somewhat faster than DSL, and this is an obvious potential cause.
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I'm the wrong person to ask this because I was constantly fighting against uncharitable depictions of wokeness even when I believed many of the same things the more prominent people here believe. Whether it's because I have more quokka in me or I am simply better at decoupling my anger at wokeness from the argument I'm willing to believe about it, I've always tried to muster the energy to take people to task for uncharitable arguments which are directionally correct.
I've never struggled in this regard. Not since day one. I can charitably describe the views of 2020 election truthers even when I vehemently disagree with them.
Oh, then sure, I agree - people who can easily spaces to share their politics won't develop resistance to opposing views, and the left has this in spades online. I think your framing denies the majority the right to express discomfort with views without it being a stain on their character.
I think the first definitely would, I've never seen the second proposed. I was and still am an advocate for the first, I suggested it a long time back as well. I think the second has some issues, though, because you'd have to control for the quality of the responses. It doesn't help if a bunch of incendiary and uncharitable commenters get there first. Or perhaps the people who get there first don't make good arguments?
It's a fundamentally difficult problem to solve, as I think you are aware. I suggested to Zorba that this space lacked left-wing chatter i.e comments which made it clear that any left-wingers/wokes/pro-establishment types were not without reinforcements. It's not rationally honest, but it's psychologically helpful.
Edit: Another idea would be to pressure people away from exo-sadism (the belief that your enemies only act they way they do to always hurt you no matter what). I believe this is a serious impediment to getting anyone who isn't already anti-woke to come here and possibly defend their ideas or critique yours. Just as anti-abortion advocates would not remain in spaces where they are presumed to just hate women, your opponents are not going to show up if they are presumed to be evil, monstrous, inhuman, etc.
Yes, there are people who, if accurately described, would fit that description. But in consequentialist terms, it would have greater value for the plurality of views if half the political spectrum wasn't treated as if it were the sworn descendant of Stalin himself.
"The argument I'm willing to believe about it" might be the crux of the issue here. Like you, I can charitably describe almost any view, but I'm having real trouble believing these views are held honestly. What good is my Charitable Steelman about accommodations for trans people being about alleviating the suffering of people afflicted with a rare condition called gender dysphoria, when people spearheading gender affirming care are putting up conferences where they say you don't need dysphoria to be trans, that schizophrenia or multiple personality disorder shouldn't disqualify you from transitioning, and for that matter maybe we should dispense with that pesky binariness, and start affirming eunuchs as an identity? At some point it's the steelman that caricatures actually held views, rather than the supposed strawman.
That depends on what you mean by "expressing discomfort". I think we all agree that FCFromSSC improved when he abandoned the firebrand speeches about not wanting to share a country with the other tribe, and embraced exactly the kind of decoupling you were advocating for earlier. I wouldn't call it a stain on someone's character if they can't do that, it's far too human of a flaw, I can't pull it off myself most of the time, but it seems it's something necessary for both sides to do in order to create the kind of space you'd prefer.
I agree, but the advantage is that it's a structural, rather than a cultural measure. The latter, like your "no exo-sadism" suggestion has the issue of needing buy-in from the majority of participants. If the problem is the current culture, you're going to have a hard time convincing people who maintain it to do a 180.
I'm not sure what you mean by "rationally dishonest". I agree that something that would signal "there are other people like me here" would help in drawing more left-wingers, but tribal chatter usually boils down to shitting on the outgroup, which is exactly what you want to avoid, from what I understand. Even if we found a way around that, is the idea here that the regulars here would perform such chatter to attract new left-wing users? Won't that fall apart rather quickly, the moment we discuss any issue of importance (and maybe that's what you meant by "rationally dishonest")?
I'm not sure I agree with the premise. Back when we had a much more of a 50-50 split, we regularly had to field accusations of racism / sexism / xeno-islamo-trans-phobia, and we kind of had to take that on the chin. In fact, I kinda think that to the extent you're right, it's more of a product of Current Year culture than being some iron law of human behavior. I distinctly recall Christians, creationists, etc., showing up on atheist forums of yore, trying to convert us, no matter how much they got shat on.
This goes back to the earlier point about cynicism. I have no issues taking someone at their word when they say "I believe in X, but I don't want any of that crazy Y and Z stuff", the problem we're having is that for a while we've been seeing the "Y and Z are not happening, and it's a good thing that they are" pattern unfold several times. When we start discussing issues X', Y', and Z', I can take a specific supporter of X' at his word, but it's going to be hard to believe that the movement he's a part of is not going to push for Y' and Z' in short order. If specific charity is not enough, and group-charity is necessary... that's going to be a tall order.
I think it's good because it reminds people what the better position is. Not just oppositional, but actually taking a stance which doesn't amount to rejecting one side or the other by embracing the opposite totally. But I acknowledge that it's hard to say something like "you're saying the truth, but you should be more sensitive to presentation" when the issue might be so lopsided.
But we don't expect people to be just human. We expect a level of rationality and reason.
I'm staring any my own response and trying to determine the same thing. How did I forget what I meant in ~24 hours? If I think of it, I'll let you know.
Right, but we're talking about people who don't have that thick skin. The asymmetry means that if you want to hear their ideas, you'd have to "take it", as it were, when they say uncharitable and unkind things.
That's a tall ask, and I recognize that. I can't say I'd tolerate it if I was treated that way. So maybe this whole thing is doomed from the start.
I think that often comes down to the vast inferential distance between the two sides. One man's hypocrisy is another's "clear distinct situations".
I suppose you're more right than I initially thought - this space probably is as good as it could be for what it's aiming at.
Well, the latter has the issue that sometimes one might hold a strong opinion, and feigning neutrality would be hard to pull off, and come off us dishonest anyway, but on the former I guess you're right, and I'll try to keep that in mind. I think I even managed to pull it off one time with words to the effect of "I do have my doubts sometimes, and if I'm wrong the opposing view that I find most likely to be true is...", followed by an expose on a group that holds a completely different view, which I disagree on the level of fundamental values. If that fits with what you had in mind, I guess it's something worth going for.
Funnily enough, that's something I'm willing to concede immediately. My tendency to sperg on some issues will probably get in the way of living up to this standard, but it's a standard worth aiming for.
I may have lost the track of the conversation somewhat, but I think that was my point. This is why I'm salty at all the people that outright flamed out - I thought we all signed up on for some baseline level of decoupling. But yeah, in the end we're all only human.
To be fair, I see how the roles are reversed now. It takes a different form, but between the downvotes on unpopular views, and the constant background hostility to progressivism, it must take a pretty thick skin to post here, if someone is leaning left. The only thing I'll say in our defense is that it's still better than most mainstream forums, as we don't ban for disagreement, and are at least theoretically aware of the value of having dissenting opinions. But in any case, my hat is off for the lefties that still hang out here.
Sometimes, maybe even often as you say, but there are cases where it's really pants-down "you literally said this never happens" type stuff. "No one is doing surgeries on minors" is something still being repeated by people who haven't caught up with what's actually happening.
Right, and my point was precisely that this understandable feeling of salt can and often does end up making you think the people who flame out are worse as people.
At least, that's been my experience with the communities I see - a string of bad impressions will make people earnestly say they are writing off the whole group. How serious of a statement this is can vary, something just one good experience can mitigate/eliminate the former bad ones. But spaces in which you have both good and bad experiences while still substantively disagreeing are rare, and I'm not sure if this one would qualify.
Entirely possible I'm projecting, of course. The tendency I'm describing is one that I feel at times and have to remind myself not to indulge in.
On that, I completely agree.
I've been experiencing the exact same thing regarding certain right-wing arguments. I find that people who say that are often genuinely ignorant and/or refusing to apply their standards. Not necessarily even maliciously, just in a tribal fashion where you're hyper-alert for what your enemies say but you don't really care what your own side does. I dropped the gender war stuff, so I'll take your claim for the more substantial claim in my eyes - that people are lying (meaning intentionally) about the surgery thing.
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Is that even good enough? My experience increasingly is that any place not straight-up banning people in accordance with progressive views will bleed away all the progressives posters, who'll explicitly state that they're leaving since they're not willing to share a space with -ists. And it's obvious why, given that they can always go to reddit or similar where they can and do get anyone banned when they're losing an argument. The SSC subreddit, while still better than reddit overall, is a prime example of this dynamic.
I don't even completely disagree with you, this place is clearly populated by a very stable niche at this point, even if it's a very different one than what some on the left allege. But I also don't know any place more tolerant of differing viewpoints, and at this point I'm at a loss how you even can get progressives to join a not-progressive space.
Progressives would be useful in the "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" framing which a lot of spaces with partisans, like this one, have. In this framing, you need maximally left-wing people so that we can let the arguments break upon each other and see what comes out at the end. If I were the stretch it based on my experience, you might make this space better by having pro-establishment liberals come aboard. But they would probably be turned away by the sheer number of people defending Trump.
I've been mulling over this answer and maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but I don't see how you're even disagreeing with me. As I interpret it, even you seem to think that not banning many or most people willing to defend Trump (mind you, that includes quite a few moderate, left-leaning people that just don't think Trump is literally Hitler!) will instantly turn of the majority of establishment liberals. A view I agree with, but again, that precludes the possibility of "thesis-antithesis-synthesis", and not due to any action on themotte's side, but simply due to the basic attitude of establishment liberals.
In addition, as you may have noticed I slightly changed your wording from "pro-establishment" to just "establishment". This is because we actually still have quite a few "pro-establishment" liberals, in the sense of "I find the current right so odious I'm willing to vote establishment anyway". In fact it has so far included me, though I'm admittedly veering ever-closer to just say screw it. The only we lack are the liberals that are part of the establishment uncritically and without reservations, the NYT & Guardian readers and BBC watchers. And tbh, maybe it's because I'm completely surrounded by them here at university already, but I don't really miss them all that much. I know what they think quite well, and imo better than uncritically taking them by their word - I'm living with them, I know that they're frequently full of shit.
It's imo quite telling that themotte is still the kind of place where admins are going on anti-trump rants explaining why they prefer Kamala (but they dislike her as well), but that's not good enough for the establishment liberal, you need to be enthusiastic about Kamala.
Edit: FWIW I just took a look again at theschism and consider posting there occasionally to "see the other side" so-to-speak, but tbh that place looks, if anything, even more unhealthy.
I wasn't really disagreeing, just offering my thought on how one would go about bringing in people from a more mainstream elite perspective.
What makes you say that?
Edit: Also, I think the kind of establishment liberal who would hypothetically come here would not be an uncritical accepter of the NYT or the Guardian, they'd be able to at least entertain and defend the credibility of those papers.
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