site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

No, as far as I remember it was not about assigning points, it was about choosing the size of the moral circle, if you look at the graph each circle has the previous smaller circle included within, that imagery is intentional, that is how the participants were meant to interpret it, when they choose animals (big circle) the humans (small circle) is included within.

Yes, you're right.

Finally, we assessed the heatmaps generated by participants’ clicks on the rung they felt best represented the extent of their moral circle.

The size of the moral circle was examined in that study, but was not used to generate the heatmap:

Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0/figures/5

EDIT: nvm, they just reused the same term to refer to two different things.

Well they explicitly say heatmaps were made from the size of the moral circle, and I don't see any other heatmap besides that one.

Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a.

Sounds vague enough that I don't think i have to change my interpretation, even if the wording kinda sound like they're talking about the points allocation.

Every liberal I know would in fact not choose a tree over their family, even if they care about the environment, if your interpretation is right that goes against what you can just see with the naked eye.

Liberals are not these caricatures that "care about rocks more than about their families", please ask any liberal you know if they care less about someone the more closely related they are to them, if they would rather cut a tree or a family member, they are not actually insane.

Sounds vague enough that...

I came down on the other side of that vagueness, but their raw data source is the pixel people clicked on, which is undeniable evidence for your interpretation of that.

Liberals are not these caricatures that "care about rocks more than about their families", please ask any liberal you know if they care less about someone the more closely related they are to them, if they would rather cut a tree or a family member, they are not actually insane.

I have, and that's why I found it plausible. Humans as equal to everything else in the universe is not at all outlandish of a statement. (As to whether they would actually follow that through to its conclusion? Nah, I doubt it. It's all talk.)