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 -
Supposedly.
This article doesn't even credit the CIA's remote viewing unit for accomplishing this. It says the CIA consulted a psychic, which to me sounds like the CIA paid someone who wasn't a staff member.
I think at least some of the people in the "CIA remote viewing unit" were on a contract basis. As I understand it, the intelligence agencies (reasonably!) had a lot of questions about if remote viewing was a thing that would work, so at least part of their M.O. was to go out and get people who were supposed to be good as psychic stuff and test them. I don't think this involved making them full-time employees. Maybe you wouldn't consider them part of the "CIA's remote viewing unit" even if they were getting tasked by the CIA (or whoever) to do remote viewing as part of the ongoing remote viewing project, I dunno.
Obviously Jimmy Carter is reporting something somewhat vaguely that he wasn't directly involved in, and perhaps the CIA went and got a psychic in a manner that was completely unrelated to the ongoing investigations into remote viewing, I haven't dug into it. The entire saga of the government's remote viewing project is kinda convoluted to me and I don't claim to be very familiar with the ins-and-outs of it – it moved around between different agencies and departments, with different sources of funding, and then was supposedly shut down, and then some people who were supposedly former staffers then came out and talked about the program, and who knows if they are telling the truth or not.
But that seems to me, off the top of my head, as the best example of "the CIA used a psychic to accomplish a tangible intelligence task" that seems somewhat credible because Jimmy Carter verified it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link