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 -
She is a crank whereas your opinions are perfect and normal. Oh but wait — weren’t you the one defending the Selzter poll and calling other people (like me) partisans hacks despite us clearly stating the facts for our doubts? And yet who was right? Maybe that should cause you to have just a minuscule amount of introspection instead of just criticizing your out group. That is, maybe you get a lot of things wrong.
You and the other so-called 'partisan hacks' don't get to say you're right because a coin came up heads despite a poll saying it had a 60% chance to come up tails. The fact that you 'correctly predicted' an event has little inherent bearing on whether your reasoning was correct.
I'm incredibly tired of hearing this talking point. Did you correctly predict the election map in 2020? in 2016? Do you have a better record overall than the pollsters you critiscize? What reason do I have to believe that you are not a broken clock that is right twice a day?
On the other hand, you're fine to critiscize OP calling someone a crank with no substantive reasoning.
Selzer said Harris +3. I think it was Trump +13. This wasn’t a close call that went the other way. This was a disaster for Selzer. But it was obvious that Selzer was way off for the numerous reasons I articulated pre election. Note I didn’t try to call the election; I merely said the poll was obviously wrong for a few reasons and that was correct.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I owned up to the Selzer poll being wrong, specifically about thinking it would be off by less than 10 points. The arguments against it were pretty uniformly medicore, along the lines of "nah, it just feels wrong" or crosstab diving or "unskewing", against a pollster who had a track record of proving her critics wrong over and over (e.g. in 2020, when she was far more pro-Trump than most of the competition, and ended up being right). Obviously it ended up being incorrect, and now Selzer has a lot of egg on her face.
Also, I'm not a fan of ad hominem attacks so this will probably be my last response to you.
Perfectly justifiable. If you prefer: "My priors of this being true are so enormously low and a single extreme outlier poll is such a small unit of evidence, so I refuse to significantly update my belief regarding this. The likelihood that a single poll is wrong is far greater than the likelihood that my entire understanding of the electorate is this far off. By far greatest likelihood is a one-off polling error. Miniscule likelihood it is correct and I am demented and detached from reality in my understanding of Trump's support."
Luckily our brains have excellent heuristics that approximate all this. So at a glance you can easily say "Smollett is a liar, no way that happened" or "Nah, that poll is just wrong". And you sound jivey talking about priors and weights of evidence if you simply state the obvious likelihood delivered to you by the sophisticated mechanisms in your brain.
More options
Context Copy link
Dude. This isn’t an ad hominem. You made nothing but an ad hominem in the OP and then I called out that maybe you should show more humility.
As for the Selzer poll, I pointed out that the Selzer poll would require believing there were massive shifts in multiple populations over a short time that wasn’t captured by anyone (indeed her prior poll showed Trump +18 — a 21 point move wasn’t explained by Biden to Harris). That should’ve given you pause. Calling those bad arguments ignores the fact that those arguments actually reflected reality whereas yours did not.
Tbf cricitizing (even unfairly) a 3rd party is not really ad hominem.
It is functionally the same. Ad hominem in the classic sense is “your argument is bad because you are a bad person.”
There was zero intent to engage with the concept that Tulsi is good or bad pick Instead, the poster just said “she is a crank.” It is functionally the same—not addressing the issue and instead basically name calling.
Funny enough the poster claimed I was engaging in ad hominem. Instead, I was pointing out that the poster’s judgement isn’t great—especially when it comes to political topics. So read most charitably his comments re Tulsi amounted to “trust my judgement.” So bringing up his bad judgement is directly addressing his argument. He couldn’t handle it and decided to throw a fit and block me.
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