site banner
PaperclipPerfector  20d ago (text post)   30956 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.

CEO consigned man's wife to death. Man kills CEO's wife.

Makes perfect sense to me. You can disagree with the morality, but don't claim it doesn't make sense.

This is psychopathic and utterly inconsistent, to boot.

Yes, because it's the neighbor, not the wife.

Yes, I'm suggesting that if "Do unto others" justifies murdering a man's wife because your wife died (Which is changing the facts, so its not even what happened here!) then it justifies murdering a man's neighbor because your neighbor died.

My whole point is when you bring in third parties who DON'T have blame for the outcome, now you're the one 'doing unto others' by bringing innocent parties into it.

And that demolishes your moral standing, whatever it was.

A man's wife and children directly benefit from his actions, and are an extension of him in a way that his neighbor is not.

You are saying they are unrelated third parties, I'm saying that's not true, but the neighbor actually is an unrelated third party, so your comparison is simply false. If I accepted your premises, I'd accept your conclusions, but your premises are nonsensical.

A man's wife and children directly benefit from his actions, and are an extension of him in a way that his neighbor is not.

I want you to be specific. How much 'benefit' does one have to receive for the connection to be close enough to justify a revenge killing. If the neighbor borrowers his mower, is that enough? If he lent some money to the neighbor and allowed him to afford life-saving surgery, is that enough?

You're adding epicycles. It used to be just "do unto others," but now you're adding in "Do unto others, and do unto those who benefited from those others." I'm happy to chase this to whatever extremes you like, but understand that it will probably lead me to conclude that under your moral code, it is acceptable to kill you.

This is basically a slightly more sophisticated Gangland mentality. "You send one of ours to the hospital, we send one of yours to the morgue." At least in gangland everyone is (sort of) willingly participating.

You are saying they are unrelated third parties

Bullshit. I said they are innocent third parties, having committed no action worthy of blame, and certainly not death. 'Related' parties is a completely different question, and a harder one.

And that goes double for the kids, who almost certainly has no conception of why their father would be considered bad.

your premises are nonsensical.

Please, state what you believe my 'premises' to be.

I'm not going to engage in your silliness of conflating a man's wife and children, his own family, his own issue, and the woman with which he has chosen to perpetuate his line, with the person who happens to own the property next to his. It's a farce, and I'm uninterested in your hypotheticals trying to equate the two. There is no equivalence.

I'm not adding epicycles, I'm defining others more broadly than discrete individuals, but rather as families, then tribes, then nations.

Your premises are that only individuals are responsible for their own actions, and those actions can be neatly separated and contained to solely that person. I think that's obviously wrong. Your other premise is that a man's wife is no more related to him than a man's neighbor, a premise that is as obviously incorrect as it is misleading.

Your premises are that only individuals are responsible for their own actions, and those actions can be neatly separated and contained to solely that person.

Yes.

And in order to be coherent you'd have to believe this too.

Otherwise, why do we hold the CEO responsible for his actions, rather than acknowledge that he is only acting amongst a massive network of incentives and players responding to endless numbers of variables.

Or we can tie everyone into the web of consequences and spread the blame around.

Your other premise is that a man's wife is no more related to him than a man's neighbor, a premise that is as obviously incorrect as it is misleading.

Close. You're playing a bit lose with the term 'related' in this case.

Genetically speaking the neither the wife nor the neighbor are probably very closely 'related' to him.

Romantically speaking the wife is clearly closer.

Geographically speaking the neighbor isn't much further.

Its just not clear to me why the nature of the wife's relationship to him somehow endows her with blame, or what-have-you, while the neighbor is excluded from blame?

They are more like "a separate person and a separate moral considerance" than "this man's property that it's okay to hurt and remove to hurt him", that's the argument.

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