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 -
Anyone find it difficult to "work hard" for reasons that essentially boil down to disbelief? For example, I play some multiplayer games, mostly RTS and MOBA games. I can see some interesting ways to improve at those games. For the RTS games, some of the ideas I had involved a spreadsheet, of course, and an autohotkey script that would make an additional save game every time I pressed the build worker key so that I could easily compare different decision branches while hill climbing toward an optimal build order. I can see some experiments I could perform in Dota 2, such as running a custom game on 2 computers to explore how I could take advantage of blind spots in enemy vision, or doing some mathematical modeling and running a solo game to figure out the exact patterns of how waves of enemy creeps cascade and yoyo from losing to overwhelming the enemy creeps.
But then I think, hardly anyone even bothers to consistently watch replays. At least, that's my perception. These ideas I'm having, they're weird. I've never heard anyone talk about doing this sort of thing. Would someone really try this hard to win at a video game? Well, eventually, I had the chance to join some high skill discords, and, yes, they made spreadsheets, the were timing things down to the second, they were re-running test ideas dozens of times until perfect, they'd spend hours testing and looking for bugs. Turned out that really was how some people got good. I had the right ideas, but I couldn't believe in them because I couldn't believe others were trying that much because up to that point, I hadn't been trying that much so that must be how others acted too, because otherwise they'd have talked about the extra things they did.
It's all these soft spaces where you can take the time to figure out best ways of getting upvotes on reddit, best ways to get lots of clicks on youtube and it's hard to believe that someone would resort to something like giving their comments an initial boost through alt-accounts so they can ride their initial higher visibility to thousands of upvotes, but that was exactly what incredibly reddit popular and actual scientist Unidan did.
Which all kind of circuitously leads me to the following point here. If it's so easy to have such a bias like "nah, everyone's just playing it straight for the most part" even in the face of seeing that sort of belief overturned multiple times, how much are we discounting the possibility of various conspiracies by a similar kind of bias in favor of ordinariness? If these sorts of weird and trying too hard kinds of tactics are effective at getting you to, say, the top .1% in some endeavor, then even if people willing to bend the rules or go to insane lengths are rare, they could easily make up a substantial proportion of such a small sample of people. For example, could Epstein have actually been running a business model of offering up underage girls to the rich and powerful, surreptitiously recording it, and then blackmailing them? It seems insane, it seems something at least 95% of people wouldn't even dare try, it seems high risk, but if you could pull it off, would you not be a rich man?
This is basically the secret to getting better at something on your own in my opinion, it's to kind of finding ways to keep getting more ambitious and doing things that people are too lazy to do.
Regarding conspiracies, I think it's actually pretty rare to have multiple people working together at this kind of level, I think ambition is usually a solo venture for the person at the level they're at unless it gets kind of encoded into the scene like it can with sports and games.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think it makes sense as a for profit business, but do think it makes sense as an intelligence operation. What better way to ensure cooperation of rich and powerful men than blackmail? It also fits with the soft sentence and claimed warning when he was first convicted. His wealth seems to have been a front, making someone a hedge fund manager is a cheap front for a government agency.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't, and that's why my family and colleagues call me a schizo conspiracy theorist. Because one day I started making Vidya strategy spreadsheets, and the next day I saw shadowy cabals cooking up international plots against my demographic everywhere I look.
It'll happen to you too
It's true I'm afraid. What, did you think it was just a coincidence gamergate happened just after mobas started getting popular? Of course not! Note however, that it is a natural consequence of spreadsheeting, not a conspiracy - only people who make spreadsheets for pokemon games think it's a conspiracy.
I know nothing about the Eve Online playerbase, but this model suggests an extremely high rate of conspiracy theorists. Can anyone confirm or refute?
Absolutely ridiculous number of theorists. It doesn't help that the game lends itself to corporate espionage and one of its most publicised events was a tale of some guy worming his way into power with a rival and destroying everything but mostly it was the spreadsheeting.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm surprised that you didn't expect people to watch replays in the most tryhard game in the world. People doing that sort of thing wasn't even an open secret. It was just open.
Well, people talk about it, but like, how often do I see "watching replay" in a friend's status bar or a replay review on someone's stream? It kind of seemed like one of those things everyone said to do, everyone agreed is good, but hardly anyone actually did.
pro players of anything are always actively studying their own games and their opponents. Watching replays is less valuable when you're not a pro playing against random people in matchmaking. Self critique is not as effective if you are below the skill level where there is nobody better than you that can simply point out the mistakes you failed to notice.
Your friend isn't pro enough to benefit as much from watching replays over just playing another game in the same amount of time.
Also, people watch replays played back at a higher speed, or skip to important moments to save time.
More options
Context Copy link
Watching a replay goes very quickly. You're likely interested in specific parts of the game and jump around to those to watch those.
Most of the game time is completely uninteresting because you know exactly what happened and why.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This reminds me of the doping scandals in the pro cycling world. This all broke in the American mainstream a number of years ago during the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong.
It seems to be the case that basically everyone in the pro cycling world is doped to their eyebrows on prohibited performance-enhancing drugs, to the level that you can't compete at all without your own batch of medical experts to figure out how best to drug you up without getting caught. It's become the culture there, which means that everyone is using somewhat different methods to dope and evade, which means that it's really tough to come up with a way to stop all of it at once - if your new test doesn't catch everything, than whichever doper is skilled or lucky enough to have a method that it doesn't catch has a huge advantage and will probably win everything. Part of the detail of this is that performance levels at the top are so high that you need all 3 of supreme genetic makeup, plus massive dedicated training, plus lots of drugs, to be competitive. There's no crutch to slack off on anything.
All of this feels like it changes the morality of it. If nobody is doping in a sport and you do it, then you're a cheating asshole. But if everyone is doing it and it's impossible to compete without it, then you're just playing the game, same as everyone else.
Presumably amateurs getting closer to these high levels of competition conclude one of 1. Everyone here is really just that much better than me and I can't compete, oh well, 2. Everyone here is on a shitload of drugs, I'm not ready to risk wrecking my body like that so I'm out, or 3. Everyone here is on a shitload of drugs, so pass the needle, I'm in.
Ah yes, that's a great example. It makes too much sense for them to dope up, there are enough biochemists saying they can hide PEDs from tests. Standing from the perspective of an ordinary person uninformed about such matters, it would seem really implausible that there's doping, then there are tests to detect doping, and then there is the game of getting around those tests so you can dope anyway, and every single competitive athlete chooses to play the test evasion game.
Another issue is maybe the recent chess cheating scandal. #1 grandmaster in the game accuses another, younger grandmaster who cheated as a teen, of cheating to win against him at an offline tournament. We're told they were checked for devices, so people online are making jokes about anal beads, part of the joke being that, perhaps, this is too ridiculous an extent to go to for cheating. But, in fact, why not? The prison wallet is a time-tested loyal friend of the smuggler. Doesn't just have to be in his ass either, since there are audience members at the match, all he'd have to do is have a confederate in the crowd with some pre-arranged way(s) to signal a few pertinent messages.
I hear also that most of those male instagram fitness influencers actually got that look on juice and then put their followers through that silly game of "how to get as big and shredded as a steroid user without using any steroid.
Anywhere where cheating can get you ahead after adjusting for risk I expect to find a lot of cheaters.
Fitness influencers in particular seem like it’s a pretty low risk game, because afaik normies are very rarely prosecuted for personal use of ‘roids/HGH/anything else.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Since the NFL started testing for steroids in the 80s, it didn't take long to realize that basically everyone performing a physical sport on TV is probably doping as hard as they can without getting caught.
It wasn't until I saw Dr. Dre after a few decades and realized everyone on TV was probably doing it, too.
More options
Context Copy link
I'm reminded of Bill Burr on Lance Armstrong: "Our 'roided up asshole beat your 'roided up asshole!"
More options
Context Copy link
When the media says taking steroids is cheating, is it really cheating if everyone is doing them? There is no way around this: banning the substances means people find ways around it, allowing drugs creates an arms race of drug use. It's like this for all competitive endeavors it seems. People will do anything for an edge.
Another way to look at it. Call it "cheating" or not, it is a rule (and an enforced rule) that anyone caught with drug use is declared to have lost. It might be part of the game to be on drugs, but in this case it is also part of the game not to be caught.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, it's still cheating even if everyone is doing it. Cheating is not defined by how common or uncommon it is.
I think that it is, actually, and feel like the idea that it isn't represents a confusion of means with ends.
The objective of sport isn't to follow the rulebook like holy writ, and the "winner of sport" is not he who most religiously adheres to the commandments of the International Olympic Committee Good Practice Handbook Subsection 17 Paragraph C. The written rules are a means, not an end. The end is... some combination of showcasing human physical excellence, putting on a good show for the spectators, and getting from the start line to the finish line faster than others.
When the start line is (figuratively) "doped up to the eyeballs" and the finish line is "100km of French cycling routes away" then you are still competing 'fairly' against your opponent if he's as doped up as you. That both if you exceed the 14ppm blood oxygenation level stipulated by the IOC... who cares? Other than sports lawyers who want to carve out a permanent need for their own employment, I don't think it benefits anyone to be a rules-autist about this stuff.
Sport has a third tenet though, which Coubertin and his buds might actually have been convinced is the most important: it's supposed to foster good health and morality by rallying all around a universal human endeavour.
How wicked is it that the institutions setup to give good rolemodels to youth have become spectacles of hypocrisy?
Cheating isn't just about fairness, it is also about honesty and truth. So yeah if everyone does it, it's still cheating because I care that the people earning the millions and being on the posters are a bunch of fucking liars. Sodom was a wicked city, "everyone does it" is not an excuse.
At least wrestling had the guts to admit that it's all fake. But it's no longer sport then, just dynamic entertainment.
More options
Context Copy link
The rules are indeed a means, not an end. But not following the rules is cheating, full stop. The rules may need to be amended if they aren't serving a good purpose, but if you break the rules then you are a cheater even if everyone else does it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yup. Primary reason the anti drug rules are important is because with them pros will ride the razor's edge of discoverability; without them they will ride the razor's edge of ODing or death.
A lot the drugs athletes take under PED bans right now are just testosterone but re-synthesized to avoid detection. There's a lot of ways to get T levels up, and the safest ways to do it are also the most studied and easiest to detect. In this way, PED bans actually incentivize athletes to take riskier drugs.
People like the narrative idea of a Faustian bargain so much they assume it's always true that there's one on offer. But it's possible if under a scheme where PED's are allowed that the rational choice for athletes is sticking to basic steroid cycles and blood doping that gets them 95% of the way there and avoid the riskier experimental stuff that might not even help.
that is an excellent point right up there with the thing where due to illegal drugs being illegal people will get them from street dealers, whose drugs are going to be massively more dangerous than a theoretical legal equivalent.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not seeing an important part here?
If pros want to put dangerous substances into their body in pursuit of the limits of human achievement, that's their perogative. It is after all their body. And for a more noble and quixotic cause than most people put dangerous substances into their body.
It's important because I find it unaesthetic to have athletes dying from ODs on PE drugs, and, more crucially, so do the people running the olympics.
More options
Context Copy link
Only if they don't misrepresent to the fans that their achievements were achieved without drugs.
And even then, people act in stupid and self-destructive ways and having a drugs-allowed athletic competition is a magnet for people to kill themselves using drugs.
I hate is wen people do this. Probably because openly admitting drug use would open up possible consequences. Discussing steroid use on YouTube may mean demonization for that particular video.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Pretty much all highly successful people are obsessive or outliers, usually both.
Is this a universal problem or just a problem of "industrial society" or "capitalism" or "the reign of quantity"? I'm honestly not sure.
It is a massive benefit of the abundance of industrial society that it can support and reward obsessive outliers in their pursuit of human achievement.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
yeah you don't hear of those people either. they are not giving TED talks and such
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In my case, not really, but that's largely because I am one of those strangely obsessive people who will spend hours per day on sometimes obscure endeavours to the detriment of my own health and sanity and wellbeing.
That being said, I think your overall point is pretty compelling that most people might have a bias in favour of ordinariness, since most people obviously cluster closer to the mean than those who occupy the extremes of achievement. The people in the top 1% of anything are not representative of the general population and it's likely that you can't expect most people to be able to predict their behaviour all too well - people are susceptible to the typical mind fallacy even when trying to model the behaviour of very atypical people. Though obviously the question of whether there are a significant amount of actual high-level conspiracies that people dismiss out of hand due to their extrapolation of their own behaviour onto people that simply don't act like them probably can't be answered with much certainty.
Yeah, I guess that was mostly a rhetorical question of sorts than an actual one. I mean, I have these doubts because I'm not used to working hard. It's a weird process to work more than you're used to in the sense of voluntarily doing not just more volume, but inventing new tasks for yourself to do. Like, is it normal to write a short story using every word you looked up that day? I don't think many people at all do that, but I can't deny that my own experience has shown me that merely looking up words does not cement their meanings in my memory and merely remembering their definitions does not then put them into my active vocabulary. So it all checks out logically, but it just feels like I shouldn't do it because what I think of as normal people wouldn't do it and it's probably too tryhard.
True, we don't have access to the underlying information that would help prove it one way or the other. But there's this gnawing sense that most reasonably thought-through conspiracies would work.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To be honest, your initial instinct of "only losers would spend so much effort at something that matters so little" was completely right. I myself don't spend all that effort on all my ideas to improve trivial things in games because the time and energy that would go into that is so much better spent improving other things in my life. I suppose you should have one, maybe two "useless" hobbies where you spend this much effort to improve things, but no more. Money matter a lot to a lot of people, so it's not surprising at all that you'd get crazy effort going into optimizing its generation, and it's also why there aren't many easy-to-think-about ideas for making lots of money, but there's loads of those for getting better at stuff nobody cares about.
Well, partly true. The instinct's not really connected to anyone being a loser. I mean, I've spent considerably more time playing those games casually since the time when some practice ideas had occurred to me than it would have taken to see them through. Assuming those efforts had paid off and future games become more satisfying, it would have probably been worth it. But that feeling of disbelief occurs all the time. Sometimes disbelief that Problem N really requires time-intensive Method C to solve. Sometimes disbelief someone "up high" would really seed a rumor somewhere in the blogosphere so that eventually tabloids quote it, then next tier up newspapers quote it, and then good ones talk about it until it looks legit to anyone not willing to do a deep dive to investigate the dependencies.
Everything I listed could make you money. Optimizing youtube views absolutely can get you paid loads, especially if you got in on it early. Getting really good at a game can get you paid as a streamer, booster, or coach. Getting super popular on reddit for what Unidan was doing definitely got him some job offers to be a vsauce type guy. feel like once something becomes a job you can't really perceive its basic weirdness anymore because it comes across as just so. You know, there just happen to be workplaces, located real close to stock exchanges, paying people millions to come up with more ways to act faster on price data from exchanges. There are also people who buy up a bunch of ASICs to have them calculate hashes all day for money. You can experience the weirdness and the conspiracy aspect only in the stage where you're not yet sure if you or anyone else could be making money doing [weird overly tryhard thing].
Like, maybe there's an unexploited niche of finding a bunch of cheap, unknown onlyfans models from whom you order videos to your specs that you dub over with your own male voice through a good voice changer and then you use those videos to legitimize multiple financial dominatrix accounts to the right people on twitter who then will pay you large amounts because you demanded it and even larger amounts when you berate them for being worthless paypig slime.
More options
Context Copy link
The problem with making money, such as on drop-shipping on Alibaba or Amazon, is it's inherently adversarial and returns tend to be lopsided. Learning a skill or a hobby is not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link