site banner
PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   32172 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 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.

Do you seriously believe there are no possible financial instruments that could result in complex projects being completed without IP law?

I think they won't be anarchism. Plausibly trade secrets if the field lends itself to them. It's not just the complexity, it's also the risk element. Anarchists would do well to remember that the basis of private property to begin with is guaranteed by the state, intellectual property is special case of private property which can be deconstructed in much the same way. Can you build some things without a state protected right to own your tools? Sure. Can you build large scale projects? Maybe, but it'll be much harder than if you can rely on the police to prevent people from riding away with your tractors.

Patreon is an an object lessons of how the market adapts to scenarios where IP law stops being relevant

Patreon exists within a context where IP law exists. Most large scale projects for media are completed outside of patreon, in fact the vast majority of media spending operates under traditional IP law frameworks.

Kickstarter proves that complex engineering products can be pre-funded directly by consumers, without need for investors. It's true that we don't currently have Biotech Patreon, for example-- but I'm arguing that that's a consequence not of the boundary conditions of capitalism, but of the specific market distortions introduced by government enforcement of IP law.

I'm not saying you wouldn't be able to produce some small scale projects. I'm saying you're going to have orders of magnitude less resources deployed. much fewer life saving drugs.

I'd love for there to be a realistic alternative to IP law, and as an improvement I think IP should have a much much shorter life span. But replacing it with nothing will cost us a whole lot and you're just hand waving that loss away.

The difference between actual private property and intellectual property is that private property i excludable. If a person other than the owner takes that property to use for themselves, then the owner is directly harmed by their inability to use it. Consequently, it makes moral sense to defend that property because you are defending against an aggressor, and the state ultimately benefits from reducing the cost o violence by taking that responsibility to prevent theft upon itself.

But intellectual property isn't excludable. You are not harmed when another person uses it. You have no moral right to commit violence to prevent other people from innocent use of your ideas. You're raising the "but what if we have less innovation" objection as a practical objection-- but in the natural experiment of the US versus china, the chinese have been out-innovating us as a direct result of their poor enforcement of IP law. The empirical result is that the justification for IP law is fundamentally unsound.

I'm going to need a source for China out innovating us. Certainty they benefit from igniting or copyright and I'm not of the camp that thinks they don't innovate at all. But out innovate us? And China does have IP law.

Empirically, GDP growth is higher than ours, and they're an increasingly large part of earth's industrial and scientific base (measuring by goods produced, scientific papers written.) I understand the impetus to blame copying and catch-up effects, but I think that's cope; if it were true their growth would be going s-shaped but instead they're releasing Deepseek and producing electric vehicles and solar technology better than everyone else.

They're per capita gdp is still much lowe, it's not chips to notice that it's catch up effects. China didn't even contain the most productive Chinese people. Do you think deepseek is still ahead?

I bring up GDP growth because I think it's a good indicator of innovation-relative-to-resources. I'll concede that if we had some measure of absolute innovation, the chinese would probably not be ahead-- but the important part is that they're system structurally advantages them, and as the resource gap closes their innovation will accelerate, not decelerate.

The fact that the most productive chinese people live outside of china is the opposite of reassuring-- it means they're not even operating at their full power level. As china approaches parity with the US, while also having better infrastructure and standard of living for elites, re-immigration will look increasingly attracive. That's a double benefit for them-- strengthening them at the cost of the west.

America's main competitive advantage is it's historical ability to drain the best brains of the entire planet, but Trump is putting sort of a damper on that given his obvious hostility to even university-educated immigrants.

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