site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   12377 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has published its final report on the results of their investigation (dated from December 4th for some reason). It's quite the whopper at 520 pages and I'm only starting to read through the thing, but they tackle one of the big scissor issues of the issue - the origin of the virus - right at the start so there is a good hook right away. I have not read the Fauci emails so some of this might be old news, but some of those include rather damning excerpts.

According to the report, what would eventually become Proximal Origin started on Feb 1 with a write-up by Kristian Andersen who has Noticed™ some concerning biological properties of the virus which did not strike him as natural. He contacted Jeremy Farrar over this, who acknowledged his concerns and referred him to Fauci; Fauci was appropriately alarmed and shortly arranged a conference call to discuss the findings. Andersen mentions that the talk they had before the call was his first time talking to Fauci, and that he "specifically suggests that if [Andersen] thinks this came from the lab, [he] should consider writing a scientific paper on it."

So he does - apparently encountering inconvenient difficulties along the way. Feb 8, in an internal email from Andersen (p.24):

A lot of good discussion here, so I just wanted to add a couple of things for context that I think are important - and why what we're considering is far from "another conspiracy theory", but rather is taking a valid scientific approach to a question that is increasingly being asked by the public, media, scientists, and politicians (e.g. I have been contacted by Science, NYT, and many other news outlets over the last couple of days about this exact question).

<...> Our main work over the past couple of weeks has been focused on trying to disprove any type of lab theory, but we are a crossroad where the scientific evidence isn’t conclusive enough to say that we have high confidence in any of the three main theories considered. <...>

Feb 20, in another email from Andersen as the work continues (p.25):

<...> just one more thing though, reviewer 2 is unfortunately wrong about "Once the authors publish their new pangolin sequences, a lab origin will be extremely unlikely". Had that been the case, we would of course have included that - but the more sequences we see from pangolins (and we have been analyzing/discussing these very carefully) the more unlikely it seems that they're intermediate hosts. They definitely harbor SARS-CoV-like viruses, no doubt, but it's unlikely they have a direct connection to the COVID-19 epidemic.

Unfortunately none of this helps refute a lab origin and the possibility must be considered as a serious scientific theory (which is what we do) and not dismissed out of hand as another ‘conspiracy’ theory. We all really, really wish that we could do that (that’s how this got started), but unfortunately it’s just not possible given the data.

Emphasis mine. There are already hints of a foregone conclusion, but it doesn't seem bad yet - however Jeremy Farrar, who referred Andersen to Fauci earlier, seems to have different concerns. Same page, email from Farrar (emphasis mine):

I hope there is a paper/letter ready this week to go to Nature (and WHO) which effectively puts to bed the issue of the origin of the virus.

I do think [it's] important to get ahead of even more discussion on this, which may well come if this spreads more to US and elsewhere, and other "respected" scientists publish something more inflammatory.

He later gets notified via email that "rumors of bioweaponeering are now circulating in China", to which his response is:

Yes I know and in US - why so keen to push out ASAP. I will push Nature

Same page, another email from Farrar to Andersen reviewing (some version of) the draft:

Sorry to micro-manage/microedit!

But would you be willing to change one sentence?

From "It is unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus."

To "It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus."

That's... certainly one sentence, I suppose.

I'm still reading but from a cursory glance the report tackles many topics, including the government response, the lockdowns, economic impacts, etc. I think many people will find their hobby horse something of interest in here. Discussion thread go.

There has been a significant decline in students’ academic performance because of pandemic-era school closure policies. Standardized test scores show that children lost decades worth of academic progress.The performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading declined to levels recorded two decades ago, and the average composite score for the ACT by high school graduates dropped below 20 for the first time since The students whose classes were less disrupted in the 2020-2021 school year lost about 20 percent of math learning compared to losses of 50 percent for students who did not have access to in-person instruction.

According to Eric Hanushek, an economist at the Hoover Institution, pandemic-era students could lose an estimated $70,000 in lifetime income.These losses are estimated to be two to nine percent of lifetime earnings, depending on the state they live and the severity of school closures.

Does this make sense? I had the misfortune to do some university during the pandemic, I can confirm that very little was learnt. Zoom is not conducive to paying attention, there was a perfect storm of technical problems, bad mics, and alt-tab is seductive. My teacher friends tell me there was a noticeable quality decline in this period, from an already low baseline. So the story they're telling is quite reasonable. The pandemic also probably has an enduring effect in blackpilling people on education, it makes it feel like even more of an arbitrary mess to be gamed and engineered.

But do children learn anything in school anyway? You can graduate from high school and then get a degree without knowing much of anything. I don't know if I learnt that much from the unaffected parts of my degree, as compared to reading a few books or doing my own independent research or working. Newton got a lot of great work done during his pandemic lockdown period.

But do children learn anything in school anyway? You can graduate from high school and then get a degree without knowing much of anything.

Surprisingly, some students do indeed learn in school. It happens to some students, on some days, and in some classes, when the perceived norms for students is to pay attention and do the work. When those norms are gone, those students who would have learned something are not paying attention and miss the opportunity, or they are paying attention but have not done the work and are thus unprepared for the moment.

This is not the most efficient way to learn. But it does happen, just not often and not to everyone.

I worked with high-school and college students before, during, and after the pandemic. The holes even in their elementary-school math (like fractions and decimals) are so much larger now than before. But what's really impressive is the holes in their expectations for what the school norms ought to be. No, the fact that you showed up doesn't mean that you will pass the class. No, the fact that you wrote 'idk' as your answer does not earn you partial credit. Yes, we are going to have an in-class exam, and no you can't use your laptop or phone, and no you can't work in groups. How were you supposed to know how to answer this question, you ask? Do you observe this section in your textbook that you were required to read, with a very similar example worked out in detail? Do you remember these two similar problems we have done in class? Do you recall these three similar problems on the homework, which I see by your turned-in work you have done correctly? Was that perhaps not your work?

Rant over; I am just so happy I have retired.

The pandemic also probably has an enduring effect in blackpilling people on education, it makes it feel like even more of an arbitrary mess to be gamed and engineered.

My understanding is that a bunch of forms of mild noncompliance increased since the pandemic. Education, unregistered vehicles and the like. Polite society lost the mandate of heaven in enough eyes.

How do we distinguish the effects of COVID from the effects of the anti-standards and anti-law-enforcement movement born out of BLM?

To be blunt, by who’s doing the noncomplying. Rednecks- it was from Covid. Blacks- it was from BLM. Everyone else is just copying one of the two(or possibly both).

I don’t think you can. One of the most “institutions are untrustworthy” moments was public health telling us that gathering in the thousands to protest for racial justice was okay because racism was more pernicious to public health than COVID.

But if we weren’t protesting for racial justice then we had to stay home, not visit our dying relatives or attend their funerals, and certainly not gather for mere socialization.

I'd say almost all of the incalculable long-term damage that was done to our civilization by the lockdowns is irreversible.

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