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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Well yes it generally "tends" but that is not a necessity.
Firsly let's not conflate fuzzy set of biases "ideologies" such as wokism with a well defined/scoped opinionated narrarive "ideology".
For example there is deliberate/motivated ideology and even utopism in V for vendetta, the great dictator and black mirror.
I think we live in an era that has a void of ideology, narratives and utopia.
I can imagine many optimistic but insightful rationalist utopia that I would deliberately realize and influence if I was a film maker.
However the world is not rationalist and the wokism and anti workism in modern cinema is pure cancer and I strongly fear the consequences it has on the future allocation of beliefs weights in the worlwide mindshare market.
That is a bold claim I'd love to see evidence/arguments for, because if true, then it pretty much falsifies, like, this whole community.
Can you expand on that ?
I am new here so I don't know exactly what you mean and what are the main beliefs of the motte community.
You could mean that a deficit of ideologies in this era would invalidate the motte in general ? Don't think so.
I believe you might have meant that such lack of ideologies would invalidate the notion of culture wars? If so I see what you mean.
So let me constrain my initial statement:
There is no shortage of tribes/groupthink, although some groupthinks have fuzzy/approximate delineations and have not necessarily core identities.
Some tribes do have well scoped ideologies, e.g the feminists/masculinists/egalitarianists.
Some tribes have well scoped beliefs such as flat earthers, but their belief is not an ideology per se, it is not a mindset/mental framework, nor is it a theory that desire to alter society for a "greater good".
Some tribes do have unscoped/universal ideologies though, such as the rationalists/homo logicus.
There is no shortage of beliefs, especially polarizing ones.
One could have thought the advent of the internet would uniformize mankind as in since everyone has easy access to information, people would gradually converge to semi-consensus as to what constitute reality.
There are many explaining factors that explain why people tribalize, polarize and can't assimilate what others says, including cognitive biases, and that is a too rich topic for me to analyze it in this comment.
Fringe theories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fringe_theory) are very interesting as they represent the frontier of science/knowledge.
Some do have key insights or have had scientific value, for example Lysenkoism.
So if we have more than ever, tribes, polarization and fringe theories/beliefs, what did I mean by
As I implied, here I have a specific meaning for the term ideologies, the keyword being to ones related to utopia.
The salient message I have is a classic and relatable one, that we live in an era of disenchantment.
The previous centuries, despite all their factual horrors, were filled with a high pace of progress and strong ideologies that made people dream of a better future.
For example:
The advent of democracies,
liberalism,
communism,
and socialism.
Regarding the pace of progress, every single metric of quality of life got improved, medecine, education, transports, socialization, etc
After each ideologies came their implementations and with time, their flaws and limitations got revealed to the world.
Nowadays we have a bitter but realistic look at past ideologies, and a deficit of new ideologies to sell a new dream/utopia.
Concomittant to this is an extreme plateau regarding scientific progress. The number of patents and papers each year is increasing fast and has never been that big, and yet the reality is we are constrained by the immutable laws of physics and we hit considerable diminishing returns everywhere.
There are many reasons to be afraid of the future, so many in fact that I can't be exhaustive about it.
Be it climate deregulation, the insane coming scarcity of chemical elements, the escalation of military and economic tensions worlwide and the risk of pandemics or the fact ageing is not considered to be a disease, to say a few.
The other side of the coin is that, yes we live in a modern world that give us a lot of abilities and yet there are fundamental things technology currently doesn't solves.
Humans are not happy enough. Most lives are utterlerly wasted being dysfunctional. That's right everyone has a mental disease, the fact it's not recognized as one by the medical system is irrelevant and does not invalidate the fact we all have it.
For starters, the diagnostic for ADHD is based on magic numbers for the tresholds, I've seen papers showing that with slighly lower thresholds, ADHD can be diagnosed to ~20% of mankind.
But the real disease concern 100% of mankind. We have a lot of time and we spend it ineptly. Humans are victim of hypnosis, a lack of awareness, very deficient memories regarding their qualias, low available memory, low eugeroy, low volition and of a potent hedonic treadmill.
As such humans waste most of their lives.
Again a topic out of scope for this comment.
In addition to this, people suffer from a loneliness epidemic and a recession in friendship relatability and intensity worldwide.
Mankind needs a new ideology, a new utopia.
Not a new sect/religion, not a new unrealistic dream, but an actionable vision that would bring revolutionnary results and hope in this misery.
People wants to feel like Chaplin made them feel https://youtube.com/watch?v=J7GY1Xg6X20
I have theorized a third way, a new power allocation system (a cracy) with results not only in politics but in recommender systems too, as would underdstand the people that ask themselves the right questions. I also have theorized a successor to capitalism. I develop a pragmatic way to AGI with incremental goals, I am the only one to have a precise and complete roadmap to increasing significantly men healthspan and lifespan.
I could go on with my works, why me ? Why if anyone finds a way to disrupts the world will it be me? Because I have not stopped dreaming, and yet I am a true rationalist. Very few people on earth follow simultaneously those two requirements.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link