site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   25097 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A similar sort of arms race is happening in hiring. Resume -> run through LLM to fake effort ('personalize') for a billion jobs -> hiring managers run through LLMs to try to regain sanity in number of seemingly-effortful applications. It's a rather unfortunate Nash equilibrium.

Anecdotally I've seen a lot more 'have any friends that would be a decent fit for this job?' style hiring lately than I have in a long time. And I suspect that may be one of the major outcomes - more web-of-trust style communication.

This is easy to solve: just flip the script. Have the recruiters and hiring managers reach out to people. All you need is a job market clearing house, where job seekers advertise their interest, and companies make the first move. Clearing house verifies identity of job seeker, to prevent creation of multiple profiles, and charges companies a fee per contact, so that they don’t spam people indiscriminately.

This works, because this model has been very common on the tech industry. In my dozen+ of years in this industry, I only ever cold sent my resume to one company, for an intentship. I got that job, and from that point it was always recruiters reaching out to me.

There have been many many many attempts at such a clearing-house.

They all end up falling over sooner or later due to misaligned incentives. Sooner or later someone gets the "bright" idea of charging people for "premium" access. Which can kind of work for a while, until 'premium' turns into 'priority'. And sooner or later someone realizes "wait, we get more money charging month-to-month if people stay on our website instead of leaving because they got a job", and start arranging things to have near-misses as opposed to good fits.

Same cycle that happens in dating markets.

This only really work when there is an oversupply of jobs compared to "qualified" labour.

The purpose of a CV, personal letter etc. Is often more an attempt to pre-empt part of the interview process than matching credentials to job requirements (both of which often are inaccurate). The entry of AI's here makes things less like a clearinghouse because you get less useful information before the interviews.

All you need is a job market clearing house, where job seekers advertise their interest, and companies make the first move.

Does this really not exist yet?

LinkedIn. With all the associated pathologies. But you have to be established and have some skills to sell.

Maybe boomer advice will become relevant again, and we'll start having to approach potential employers in person.

For that, you'd have to break HR's stranglehold on the process. Strongly in favour of, by the way.

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