site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   8653 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"Did prediction markets and other indicators that called the race correctly just get lucky?"

Is beyond the paywall, if anyone happens to have access beyond the paywall and is willing to C+P ....

(semi-relatedly, I would love a substack setup where you could buy say 10 (or whatever number) of general purpose credits and use them across any substack. I would absolutely sign up for something like that. Signing up for 10 different substacks for the sake of reading the 1 or 2 articles a month that interest me .... not so much).

(semi-relatedly, I would love a substack setup where you could buy say 10 (or whatever number) of general purpose credits and use them across any substack.

This is the use case that I'm annoyed Crypto hasn't managed to fill.

Same with newpaper articles. I'm not going to create an account and subscribe to read the couple articles per month I find interesting with every news outlet.

But if I could pay like 15-150 cents to read a particular article on the spot, with just a couple of clicks, I'd be pretty happy to do so.

Why on earth would you need crypto to solve this rather than just a credit card?

Because credit cards are very bad at EXACTLY these kinds of small and inconsequential transactions, especially at scale.

And it's in large part because they have to worry about, e.g. fraud and money laundering protections and massive regulatory burden.

The other part is the infrastructure to handle the bandwidth of that many transactions, which crypto has as well.

Crypto could fill the same niche that used to be filled by carrying around a few spare quarters.

Credit card processing fees are about 25 cents, IIRC. What are they going to do "If you pay the credit card company $0.15, I'll pitch in another $0.10 and let you read the article."?

This was also the idea behind Patreon: a 100 fan to 100 artist transaction would take 10000 payments normally, but Patreon could reduce it to 200 and some internal accounting. (That didn't last too long, though.)

That didn't last too long, though.

What do you mean?

At launch, Patreon was focused on bundles of $1 payments to each creator. Then it focused on bundles of $10 payments. Then individual $10 payments, billed separately. Now it's largely the same as any other content hosting/discovery/payment platform.

To add onto ToaKraka's reply, crypto is literally designed to be transferred in increments that total up to sub-cents. Micropayments were one theorized method of paying for the Internet, but were deemed to be impractical. Brave's BAT was created as a sort of alternative to the modern ad-driven internet we have.

Credit-card processors impose fees that can be major impediments to small transactions. One page describes a fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. In that environment, making a 15-cent purchase is not feasible, because the fee would be literally twice that much. (See also all the small businesses that refuse to accept credit cards for any purchase smaller than 15 or 20 dollars.)

It wouldn't work like that. The aggregator would only bill the card monthly, or when it reaches a certain amount.

Then they're extending credit. Which they certainly do not want to do.

Nah, the dollar amounts are low enough that one month of access wouldn't be a problem. That's the way a lot of court vendors that provide online access work. When the product only costs 50 cents a page or whatever they aren't going to bill each transaction, especially since most of their customers are professionals making a lot of transactions. Instead they just bill monthly, and PACER only charges if you spend more than $30 in a billing period. If this is too risky, then they can always set up a draw-down account where you pay, say, $30 up front and it bills your account until it reaches zero before automatically replenishing.

It's in no ones interest to move to a worse revenue model in a field where almost noone pays anyway

Substack seems to have proven that's a problem with the content, not the audience.

I’m actually surprised enough that there is no newspaper subscription service which comes with, say, 50 free articles/mo from whatever selection of newspapers that I assume it falls afoul of anti-trust law somehow.

Because a large number of subscribers presumably read only a few articles each month and might cancel their subscription in favor of that cheaper model across multiple papers.

There are aggregators like PressReader that include every major news source but cost hundreds of dollars a month for full access (the ‘professional’ plan) and there’s Bloomberg, which also has every major news source but costs tens of thousands of dollars a year.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats