site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 4, 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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I uh didn't realize that Erik Prince had been tied to back-engineering Nazi time-travel technology, though, so thanks for the spare link to peruse.

It’s pretty funny to word it that way, but you should also probably watch the opening segments of this new interview of Jorjani when you have the time even if a lot of the things said in it is batshit crazy. Any conspiracy you can imagine, he touches on; remote viewing, time-traveling Nazi breakaway-civilizations, crash-retrieval UFO programs, future unaligned ASI simulating our pasts, etc. are not spared. The crazy thing is the fact that this guy had Steve Bannon’s ear and was clearly involved in intelligence to the point where he got his blackmail telegraphed on the New York Times even as he was basically an unknown philosophy professor in the public eye beforehand.

Which raises the point of how there are intelligence operatives and contacts saying things like what Jorjani says without batting an eye. David Grusch was involved with briefing the NSC and the President on behalf of the NRO and then says the government has knowledge of the afterlife and interdimensional lifeforms. Whatever is going on, it’s not just your run-of-the-mill false flag.

Uh, it seems plausible to me that intelligence agencies actually select for the kinds of guys that wind up getting into this stuff. Like intelligence work is basically looking for a much more boring version.

I've theorized for some time that one reason why intelligence agency types and pilots tend to be so into UFO stuff and believe UFO lore explanations for potentially more mundane elements is precisely because that's the type of a profession you get into if you want to "learn the truth", make first contact, get into space to see the secret alien moonbase and so on. In intelligence agency types you get into more of an X-Files territory, in case of pilots it's more like getting into astronaut training and then enacting Rendezvous with Rama.

It’s not a coincidence that the CIA recruits a lot of Mormons from BYU, either, due to their lifestyle and loyalty choices; Mormons also coincidentally believe that there exists a race of infinitely many nordic-looking Supermen all living on their on planets, and that Joseph Smith upon receiving his first revelation from two of these beings was knocked effectively unconscious (not unlike many contactee experiences).

That’s a long-winded point to saying ‘you’re right’, by the by, but it’s just another piece of data that makes all these things weird (as the alien contactee experience, as independent from the causal influence of Mormonism, was something the IC legitimately investigated in the 50s.)