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 -
Ok, so people (read: voters) will keep getting payments but the grants and funding to will be cut. It's not at all clear who any of this effects from that first article. As for medicine in poor countries...I'm sure China will be more than happy to fill that void.
I'm pretty sure Bush II did something similar during his second term. I was working at a non-profit. Some amount of funding stopped coming and we had to hustle for more state and charitable funding. I don't think it had any effect on the community, but maybe in the long run some services (like free dental, a school they ran) might have been stopped.
The Reuters piece was super vague, likely because the leak or memo or whatever was super vague. These things happen either out of malice against the rule-makers or to put people on notice. So the effect is a population of chicken-little's crying about the sky falling. Without more specifics it's almost impossible to set any parameters for what may or may not be a negative externality.
I think many here would agree that there's opposing standard of merit from the various NGO's and Universities and Whatever to compare against. We don't have anything aside from numbers going out and maybe the people employed. Grantees report all kinds of things that their program is definitely doing, but no one (I dunno maybe effective altruists) has done the work of presenting whatever the value-add is for society. Hence the, "Why should we assume their functions are good," statement.
So you'll get the people who never question the goodness of their programs screaming to the heavens, the people who doubt the goodness of these programs cheering in the streets and everyone else shrugging their shoulders and getting on with it.
More options
Context Copy link