site banner
PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   31950 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Increased drug use is one suspected reason, but I think it might just be brain rot from being on right wing twitter too much. It should be noted that left wing social media contagion has similarly destroyed rationale thinking in the last ten years.

I think another, more charitable argument would be that the media environment is saturated with so many lies and false reporting, slanted journalism, etc etc that it's easy to discount things you don't like and focus on things that seem correct.

The journalistic / expert class brought this upon themselves, as far as I'm aware. Elon doesn't have time to do the enormous amount of checking that is required in this environment to verify every claim. Perhaps he could hire someone, which would probably be a good idea, but doesn't seem like how he operates.

I have to admit that Musk's overall accuracy has fallen off a proverbial cliff, from my view. Previously he'd drop some redpill truths that others wouldn't touch but were ultimately factual. Now it feels like a coin flip as to whether or not what he's posting is real. That's not super different than the hit rate for the journalistic / expert class but it still feels lower.

You’d have to be an idiot to believe that Zelenskyy has a 4% approval rating. Has any wartime leader ever had an approval rating that low? I’m pretty sure even Tsar Nicholas in 1917 would break double digits.

Why? This is a symptom of outside thinking- Zelenskyy != Ukraine, and its perfectly possible to be Ukranian, cheer on their military, want no peace deal, and hate Zelenskyy's guts for the way he has conducted the war and turned Ukraine from a somewhat shaky democracy to a military dictatorship. This is in fact the attitude shared by several of my Ukranian friends.

But since a) elections are suspended indefinitely, b) opposition parties are banned, and c) only state-run media is allowed to officially exist, we will never have reliable poll numbers.

I agree 4% is probably low, but I think the 53% number some sources have floated is laughably high as well.

He would have been killed by his own high command if his approval numbers were actually cartoonishly low.

Obviously the support for Zelensky is high. The fact that we cannot know the percentage with high precision doesn't mean that we don't know the percentage with error margin that is less than ±10%.

Is his course good for Ukrainian people? Who knows. I personally think that Ukrainians are too obstinate to consider they could ever get Crimea and other territories back. It prevents them thinking more about how to protect the rest of Ukraine. But that's their choice. Ignoring this will not be productive. Suppose the US forces Ukraine to do elections and Zelensky is again elected. Then what? Or someone else is elected with the same aspirations as Zelensky.

And forcing to elect a certain leader that yields to the US will lead to a new Maidan. Ukrainians want free elections not some US or Russian stooge.

I could believe 53% is inflated (I've got no clue really) but I suspect anything below 10% and he'd probably have faced an internal revolution by now.

Yeah I agree in this instance it's pretty egregiously dumb.

I don't know, I haven't seen the level of absolute lying and bullshit in other media sources. Might be the perspective if you only live in some Tucker-style right-wing echo chambers.

Many of the things he tweets out don't even require enormous amount of fact checking, simple heuristics about how the world works are enough to sense that something might be bullshit. There's no need to be charitable to someone who is one of the richest guys on the planet and blasts out nonsense to millions of gullible readers.

The journalistic / expert class brought this upon themselves, as far as I'm aware. Elon doesn't have time to do the enormous amount of checking that is required in this environment to verify every claim. Perhaps he could hire someone, which would probably be a good idea, but doesn't seem like how he operates.

The "it's ok to do it because I think other people are doing it" argument is a rather weak one. I wouldn't accept "mom he hit me first" from my kids, and I don't think it any better for grown adults to be employing as an excuse for their own bad behavior.

You don't have to verify every claim, you can also just not make claims that you haven't put any effort into checking yet. You could discount claims that you see online as unproven until proven otherwise instead of believing everything you see.

Hitting back isn't the same as starting the hitting. Responding to someone else doing something shitty by "doing something shitty" is missing the context of one person responding and the other person initiating. One is different than the other. Out of context, hitting could be viewed as shitty. In context, hitting can be good, actually, .e.g., in the context of self-defense, or punishing a person who keeps hitting the defect button.

Analyzing the world through the eyes of a lecturing mother treating others like children isn't a good way to model the world. There is no adult in the room, the other adults aren't their children, and not annoying the mother and preserving harmony isn't the purpose of the existence of the world nor the optimal outcome.

In a media space where institutions have burned their credibility through their their own lies, agenda, and manipulation to the point most ignore it or treat it for what it is which results in most people floating around in the pool of nonsense, telling a person who is trying to win in this space that they need to be a paragon of truth isn't good advice, it's more likely simply going to result in them losing, which I suspect you wouldn't mind.

I wouldn't accept "mom he hit me first" from my kids

This attitude leads to schools punishing kids for being bullied because it takes two to start a fight, and they dared try to fight back against the bully. Self-defense and initiation of force actually are things.

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