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 -
Would it? Most of the time, when industry advocates are here arguing this sort of point, they're implicitly assuming that the use of medical professionals will drop to zero (or be banned). Thus, they're imagining the least knowledgeable person deciding on their own medical treatment. But when we look at the car maintenance world, we see the vast vast majority of low-knowledge folks still using automotive professionals. The rate of self-injury is, indeed, low, but someone needs a bit more than arguments from bad imagination if they're going to rest on a claim that the rate of self-injury would surely be "quite a bit" higher.
You hear this same shit from the realtor cartel, and frankly, any cartel that wants to maintain its market power. "Oh real estate transactions are so complicated; can you imagine how the sky would fall if we didn't get our 3% cut of every transaction?! PEOPLE WOULD BE HARMED!" You know what really would happen if you lost some of the sketchier tools to maintain your market control? First, you'd probably have to clean up your act, but second, lots and lots of people would still use you, but for your actual expertise, rather than because they think they're basically forced into it. Sure, will there be some harm that didn't occur before? Probably. But there's some harm now that wouldn't occur then, too. You need an actual argument about magnitudes rather than just imagination.
EDIT: Remember when it was every state, rather than just two states, who banned you from pumping your own gas into your car? Surely there were folks saying how risky and dangerous it would be (gasoline is flammable, don'cha'kno?) to let ignoramus individuals do it. How's that argument looking for those two states that have held on to it?
My argument is we can see how huge and insane the supplement and alternative medicine industries are, and it's good they're not allowed to use medications that actually have effects, because then they'd actually hurt people instead of just being placebos.
I don't see how you can make that conclusion. People currently take a variety of things that don't hurt them; therefore, they will take huge and insane amounts of stuff that hurts them if we let them?
Imagine that we did ban personal auto repair. You have to draw the line somewhere, so there's some unregulated space where people could go ahead and buy, like, bumper stickers, stuff that hangs down from their rear view mirror, or even vortex generators. And someone observed that folks do a bunch of stuff with their car that is stupid and doesn't provably help the car go faster, run longer, or get better fuel economy. They then conclude that it would be a disaster if we stopped banning personal auto repair, because that obviously implies that masses and masses of people would severely hurt themselves. Why couldn't we end up with the world we have now, where most people still just take their car to a professional, but some do it themselves? Yes, some people hurt themselves doing it themselves, but I don't see why we should have concluded that it would be a huge, mammoth disaster.
I would note that I think there's probably a significant difference between a label that says, "These claims about being vaguely good for your hair health or whatever are not evaluated by the FDA," while still being cognizant that the product has been evaluated for safety... and a label that says, "This product will seriously harm or kill you if taken improperly; please consult a medical professional."
They have a lot of comically false beliefs about the benefits of the things they currently take, demonstrating they're not able to correctly identify the effects the supplements have. If unscrupulous firms are allowed to market real drugs in the same way, that market will similarly not be able to discern that the real drugs don't have the claimed effects, and they'll take a lot of the real pills and hurt themselves!
People have comically false beliefs about all sorts of stuff in the world. We have not discussed what the constraints on marketing would be; I think your comment assumes that there would be none, but I think that is unlikely. So far, we've only been talking about the total ban.
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