site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   30205 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I've never understood the argument the US customary units are "human-centric".

I mean, I find it really easy to work with some units because I know their origins. It's much easier to know that a "league" is about as far a person can walk in an hour, and it is 3 miles, and then to work from that fact to how far my D&D party could walk with 8 hours of travel on flat terrain, than to do anything involving distance with metric units.

In practice, 24 mi in eight hours would make me assume the party was made up entirely of marathon runners.

Obligatory mention that GURPS, unlike Dungeons & Dragons, has multiple sets of rules for long-distance travel, depending on how much detail you want. Assuming default humans with no encumbrance at all:

  • Basic Set p. 351: Hiking achieves a speed of 50 miles per day, at no cost.
  • Low-Tech Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors p. 32: Hiking achieves a speed of 2.5 miles per hour, at a cost of 1 FP (Fatigue Point) per hour. Once you've lost 7 FP, you move at half speed. Resting regenerates 6 FP per hour. Some quick algebra indicates that the optimal strategy for a 16-hour day is 14 hours and 40 minutes of hiking mixed with 1 hour and 20 minutes of resting, for an overall speed of 37 miles per day. But you may want to keep your FP higher than 3, just in case you are ambushed while hiking.
    • The Last Gasp (Pyramid vol. 3 iss. 44 (Alternate GURPS II) p. 4): It's unrealistic that your speed isn't reduced until you've lost an entire 7 FP. Instead, your speed is reduced by one-fifth after you've lost 5 FP, and by two-fifths after you've lost 9 FP. Also, it's unrealistic that your FP regenerate at 6 per hour. Instead, your reservoir of FP is divided into 5 points of mild fatigue, which regenerate at 1 FP per 2 hours, and 5 points of severe fatigue, which regenerate at 1 FP per 8 hours. Some quick algebra indicates that the optimal strategy for a 16-hour day is 8 hours and 40 minutes of hiking mixed with 7 hours and 20 minutes of resting, for an overall speed of 22 miles per day.
  • Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures p. 21: Hiking achieves a speed of 2.5 miles per hour. Instead of doing a bunch of finicky FP math, just assume that you spend 30 minutes striking camp in the morning, 3 hours resting throughout the day, 30 minutes pitching camp in the evening, and 12 hours actually walking, for an overall speed of 30 miles per day. If you are ambushed while hiking, you are missing 1 FP when the encounter starts.

Seems like the best rule would be something like "pick an exertion level from "Gentle Amble" to "Forced March". Multiply by the difficulty of terrain and individual encumbrance. That's how much fatigue you gain per hour of marching.
The straight-line distance you travel is your march speed x hours x terrain difficulty modifier (from "marked highway" to "the cursed swamp-forest maze of fuck-you."
Tune the table so the DM can have players traveling from 0-40 miles a day.

So you're only moving at the speed of your slowest party member, and the wizard is going to arrive more tired than the monk-ranger. Maybe have him ride the barbarian or use a few spell slots on Harkonnen's Floating Fatass

GURPS also incorporates rules for forced marching, terrain difficulty, and encumbrance, but I omitted them from this simplified overview.

Ahem

It's easier to remember historical trivia and perform the unit conversion than just "5 km/h is walking speed"?

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