site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35576 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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.

16
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2022/Candidates/Guide

It's election season at Wikipedia. If you want to ask ArbCom candidates about whether or not they think Wikipedia is biased and vote accordingly, you can. It might simply cause the most die-hard progressive ideologues to be elected in the short run, but in the long run it could shed light on something not often discussed. What was that thing where the Wikimedia foundation was giving grants to some CRT-type charity that people thought was highly dubious? I think Yudkowsky retweeted about it. You could ask about that.

Edit: of course, whether or not these candidates care about AGI X-risk is more important than their politics.

I think you should look into what ARBCOM is.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

In addition to its role in dispute resolution, the Committee determines which editors have access to CheckUser and Oversight permissions, and considers certain matters where exceptional factors such as privacy preclude a public hearing.

Arbitrators are volunteer users—usually experienced editors and administrators—whom the community of editors at large elects to resolve the most complex or intractable disputes that may arise within the community, and to oversee the few areas where access to non-public information is a prerequisite.

and what they generally do

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/WikiProject Tropical Cyclones closed 27 May 2022 (AN notice)

MarioProtIV (talk · contribs) is indefinitely banned from closing, or reopening, any discussion outside their own user talk space. This restriction may be appealed after 12 months.

Chlod (talk · contribs) is warned about using off-wiki platforms in an attempt to win on-wiki disputes.

Elijahandskip (talk · contribs) is warned about using off-wiki platforms in an attempt to win on-wiki disputes.

LightandDark2000 (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic banned from pages about weather, broadly construed. This ban may be appealed six months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.

MarioProtIV (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic banned from pages about weather, broadly construed. This ban may be appealed six months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.

Leaders/moderators of off-wiki chat platforms (i.e. IRC, Discord, Telegram) should consider the following practices for their platform:

Advertised on-wiki, including at relevant Wiki Project pages and more general pages (e.g. WP:DISCORD).

Instructions and links on how to join are provided.

Users are asked to authenticate to their onwiki identity.

The rules and expectations are posted in a prominent place (e.g. a read-only channel). WP:HARASSMENT, WP:CANVASS & WP:OUTING are considered in those rules and expectations.

There is active moderation to enforce the rules and expectations. The moderation team is made up of trusted members and is sufficiently large for the size of the platform/channel.

They have absolutely zero influence on the Wikimedia Foundation or any of their funding decisions. As much as possible they are not involved in the substance of any editing decisions and are all about behavior. Even if the entire committee was ideologically aligned with you they would not accomplish any of the things you think they have the ability to.

This is like saying we should make sure Catholic umpires are hired by the MLB so a salary cap can be implemented.

It seems like what you actually care about is Board elections which happened a few months ago.

I’d prefer to see this comment without all the sarcasm.

Do you have any candidates that you’d actually support as level-headed technocrats?

I was not being sarcastic about anything. I'm not sure when you think I was being sarcastic.

Is there any ready information out there about the views of different candidates for Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee? Reading Wikipedia's candidate guide and questions to the candidates really did not shed any light on which of them may be more, or less, committed to fairness and balance on the site.

You can submit questions to the candidates.

What was that thing where the Wikimedia foundation was giving grants to some CRT-type charity that people thought was highly dubious? I think Yudkowsky retweeted about it.

https://twitter.com/echetus/status/1579776106034757633

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579776106034757633.html

If you use Wikipedia, you've seen pop-ups like this. If you're like me, you may have donated as a result.

Wikipedia is an amazing website, and the appeals seem heartfelt. But I've now learnt the money isn't going where I thought...

The organisation which administers Wikipedia - to whom the money goes - is the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Wikimedia is a San Francisco non-profit with 400 employees - which has exploded in size in recent years.

In a decade, Wikimedia's spending has soared: from $10 million in 2010 to $112 million by 2020.

This suprised me, seeing as Wikipedia seems to be functionally the same website it was 10 years ago. So what explains this huge increase?

Maybe more people use the site, making it more expensive to run?

No: 2021 website hosting cost $2.4 million - which is LESS than it did in 2012.

In fact, according the Wikimedia Foundation's own website, less than half of what they spend goes on directly supporting the website.

Bear in mind - Wikipedia used to be an incredibly cheap, volunteer run website. Watch a minute of this video of Jimmy Wales talking about how Wikipedia operated back in 2005:

So where is the money going? Well, a lot of it Wikimedia gives away to other organisations. And a significant portion of their staff are employed in that process. From 2012 to 2020, the spending on salaries increased fivefold, and $22.9 million was given in grants.

At this point, you should know that while Wikipedia emphasises a "Neutral Point of View", Wikimedia is openly politicized. It is a full participant in America's culture wars, and this helps us understand how they spend the donations.

Let's take a look at two big recipients.

The SeRCH Foundation received a quarter million dollars of donor cash. Glancing at the website, you could assume it was about the admirable goal of minority representation in STEM

However on closer inspection, it turns out to be a bit more unusual than that. They're proponents of an "Intersectional Scientific Method" involving "hyperspace"(?)

Their output is extremely long YouTube videos which get about 50 views a time

In the videos they discuss issues in science like objectivity (they're against it) and bias (they're in favour).

There's been one new video in the last year.

Also enjoying Wikimedia's largesse was Borealis Philanthropy. Borealis is yet another grant giving organisation: They're even more political, and fully committed to driving America's cultural revolution.

Wikimedia gave $250,000 to Borealis's Racial Equity in Journalism Fund. That money was then cascaded down to a dozens of ideologically aligned news outlets across the US.

Thus, the money you give to keep Wikipedia online is diverted to bankroll the inescapable American culture war.

Back in 2017, a Wikipedian called Guy Macon wrote a strident article entitled "Wikipedia has a Cancer". He predicted Wikimedia's runaway spending would bankrupt Wikipedia, resulting in its takeover by Facebook or Google.

Since then, Wikimedia's budget has almost doubled.

What Macon misunderstood is that orgs like Wikimedia are not cancers. They are parasites that cannot survive outside their host. Almost nobody would donate to Wikimedia so it could spend money on these causes - without Wikipedia, Wikimedia would starve.

In the west, an advanced industry of NGOs, charities, and foundations has evolved which funds so much of the weirdness in our daily lives. A caste of activist-professionals have emerged, which inevitably capture any non-profit with spare cash.

This is what is sometimes called The Blob: a powerful but inconspicuous force that has given us the dysfunction of the 21st century.

Wikipedia is an amazing and important website. But it doesn't need your money. It has enough to stay online, improve and grown.

What it needs more donations for is to fund one side in the United States' culture war.

A sad footnote to this: In 2021 SeRCH ran their own funding programme, "Hot Science Summer".

In deciding who to fund, the key criteria was use of the Intersectional Scientific method. Everything else - a scientific background, data - was optional. What could possibly go wrong?

One of the projects was into spatial learning in the California Two-Spot Octopus, for which the researcher got 12 hatchling octopuses.

Unfortunately, the lab experiment went horribly wrong, killing the poor creatures before the research could be concluded.

This doesn't even mention the Tides Foundation.

Yikes, that's WP:CANVASSING!

Wish I had time to stalk all the accounts running for it like I usually do. Don't recognize any names on here though, which is probably a good sign. Do you know any of them?

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