site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   23957 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Grown adults who don't know how to cook proper meals and eat fast/convenience food for every meal should feel ashamed, even if they aren't.

Division of labor and specialization.

Maybe this isn't quite the same because I actually know how to cook quite a few dishes well, but I've chosen to do so less and less over the years as my net worth has increased. The value I place upon my leisure time has been increasingly, highly non-zero. After spending a large part of my day/week wagecucking, or at least salarycucking, the last thing I want to do in my spare time is more work.

Cooking is rather time intensive—not just the act of cooking itself, but moreso the cleaning afterward. Just like you pay a Person of Hookery not for the sex, but rather to go away.

I could spend hundreds of USD a year having my slop delivered to me, or picking it up, and it's barely a drop in the bucket compared to the impact of a typical day's market movement on my portfolio. When I do have my slop delivered, it's multiple entrees (saving the rest for later days) so I at least get some economies of scale relative to the relatively fixed costs of delivery fees and tipping.

Thus, I don't feel ashamed at all. The situation might be different if I were the stereotypical urban young person making low six figures (the first digit closer to being a 9 than a 2) in a VHCOL area with little saved/invested, having my avocado toast or whatever delivered to me one meal at a time for 30 USD a pop.

I mean, my grandpa has massive gaps in his culinary knowledge. He will admit that he probably should know how to cook many things he doesn’t, but that he’s older and never really had much reason to learn.

Grown adults who can’t cook isn’t new. When he was my age his wife cooked, his wife still cooks, and in the unlikely event she passes before him(she’s younger in addition to the tendency for men to die earlier), he’ll eat fast food or be cooked for by his children or live in a nursing home.

Food delivery isn't very good specialization. There is a major agency problem. Restaurants are incentivized to make food cheap and tasty, but health and nutrition are opaque to you. You have no control over portion sizes. Everything is premixed which makes reheating leftovers in a satisfying way difficult. It's also kind of an all-or-nothing thing; if you get food delivered regualrly, you don't gain the skills to cook well, and ingredients become difficult to use in time since you don't cook often enough.

I'm saying this as someone who did this myself; it may have saved some time, but in retrospect, I think learning to cook is important even for people who can afford delivery regularly. The exception is if you're actually rich enough to pay someone to cook for you; the rich man with a personal chef has none of these problems. But subsisting on slop from grubhub is sort of an awkward in-between.

I don't think personally cooking one's own meals was ever the standard for men living in cities. Or women with money, running a moderate household. I'm not sure how meaningful it is that they would hire a cook directly, rather than a courier. But Freddie, at least, is a communist, and probably opposed to the ways of wealthy households.

I don't know about all flavors of communism, but Soviet Union ideal was that everyone eat at canteens.

I wouldn't think to judge a millionaire for indulging in the screamingly bad deal that is food delivery but.... what about the other parts? The generation of a ton of useless plastic and other trash, the total inability to get a fresh french fry, the inability to actually know when your food will be there, the general inconsistency....

Every time I get food delivered, it feels the opposite of luxurious. Unless it's pizza or sushi, I only feel ripped off and pathetic.

Then again I'm in a tier 2 city suburb. Door Dash may perform better in a tight urban center.

I don’t think you shouldn’t feel ashamed. My first digit (at least in USD) is closer to a 9 than a 2 and I still enjoy cooking. The relationship between your food and you should be healthy. Call it spiritual garbage, but so is much of our relationship with human civilization.

To cook feels to me fundamentally healthy. It is satisfying. And I find that - Michelin starred restaurants aside - I can do better in thirty minutes in my own kitchen than pretty much anyone available on the apps.

I find that - Michelin starred restaurants aside - I can do better in thirty minutes in my own kitchen than pretty much anyone available on the apps.

I'm not in a position to have food delivered, but I find that almost any pre-prepared Costco meal is better than one I cooked (they keep up with the trends; they have birria now). We still cook from raw meat and root vegetables about half the time, but unless it's a taco or something, there's a marinade, some kind of eggs and crumbs or else cooked in a pan and deglazed, then some kind of roasting for one to six hours. The tacos are not bad, but also not better than from a food truck, and with less variety. I absolutely cannot cook proper beans, but I think it takes 8 hours and a piece of pork fat. We can't bring ourselves to eat enough beans to justify that.

I absolutely cannot cook proper beans, but I think it takes 8 hours and a piece of pork fat. We can't bring ourselves to eat enough beans to justify that.

Beans take longer than that.

More evidence I should stick with takeout beans.

To cook feels to me fundamentally healthy. It is satisfying.

Whereas to me it is tedious and unfulfilling. If I were doing it for someone else that might be different, but it’s just spending an hour of my life (I’m clumsy so prep and cleaning takes forever) to accomplish something that lasts a few hours at best. And the result is inferior to any restaurant.

My first digit (at least in USD) is closer to a 9 than a 2 and I still enjoy cooking.

I meant in the other direction, i.e., closer to $99,999 than $200,000. The stereotypical urban young person does not make closer to $900,000 than $299,999.

The relationship between your food and you should be healthy. Call it spiritual garbage

I wouldn't call it spiritual garbage, but I don't think or feel in such a manner.

It is satisfying. And I find that - Michelin starred restaurants aside - I can do better in thirty minutes in my own kitchen than pretty much anyone available on the apps.

There is a certain satisfaction to it, but there too lies the opportunity cost of leisure time and effort. I don't know about 30 minutes—especially when including cleaning time—but I also believe I generally cook better than most mainstream restaurants, at least the dishes I'm good at. I've gotten pretty good reviews from dates and family. However, the former is likely biased in me having a halo effect by the nature of the occurrence, and the latter is biased in that we likely like similar flavor profiles (and I've appropriated many ingredients/techniques from them).

The sandwich effect, flavor fatigue, and the culinary Coolidge Effect whack away at the enjoyment I get out of my own food.

The relationship between your food and you should be healthy.

I guess I don’t see anything unhealthy about the thought process, “Somebody who does this for a living, and whose job it is to cook food, is likely going to do a better job than I would at making this dish. Also, that person is on the clock at that restaurant anyway and would still be preparing someone else’s food, even if it’s not mine, whereas I’m off the clock and could be using this time for leisure instead of for cooking.”

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