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 -
I don't think any of this is true. The same people had lots of patience for slowly dribbled out show trials like the Jan 6th affair, and think censorship of their political opponents is so important that they wailed and gnashed teeth for weeks at the prospect of it stopping.
Jan 6th was about the possibility of the former president being liable for trying to overturn an election result, this is about Twitter being biased against conservatives. It's just not of the same importance.
You're right, they're not. Jan 6th had zero chance of changing the outcome of the election, the FBIs intervention in Twitter almost certainly did.
Or more fairly: please, anyone can phrase either incident as a constitutional crisis or a nothingburger, depending on preference.
Wait, how the hell can you say that the FBI's interventions in social media changed the 2020 election outcome? That's a wild assertion, you're essentially arguing that enough people were persuaded to not vote Trump by virtue of not seeing this story.
What's wild about it? It was a close election, smaller things could have changed it's results. When you ask Sam Harris and other adults in the room about censoring the laptop story, they will literally explicitly say it was warranted, because otherwise Trump likely would have won.
And no, not seeing the story didn't even have to persuade people to not vote Trump, it just had to not persuade people to not vote Biden.
Can you show me where Sam Harris or these "other adults" said this after the election was done?
But how would it have done that? We're talking about there being a group of voters who, in October 2020, held the unstated belief that Joe Biden was not worth being president, no matter what Trump was/did, if he had acted corruptly with regards to a foreign company. This group of voters also had to be geographically distributed enough that their exertion was a deciding factor in how the electoral college voted.
I do not believe there is such a group of voters that fits such the necessary qualities to make the argument that the NYPost could have swung the election had its reporting not been suppressed by Facebook and Twitter for some period of time. I don't even think the story was suppressed for that long.
I can't believe you haven't heard it, it was the talk of the day. There was one more high-profile Voxesque progressive saying the same thing. I want to say Noah Smith, but it hasn't made quite the same splash, and isn't seared into my memory as much.
No, we're talking about a group of voters who held the stated belief that Joe Biden was not as bad as Trump, but who might have gone, "bah, a pox on both your houses!" upon hearing the news, and refused to vote, or went third party.
That's fair. You're still asserting the existing of a group of people for whom this would have been the tipping point into not voting Biden and arguing that they were geographically distributed enough to theoretically swing the election. I would like to see evidence of this group existing.
Wasn't there some poll saying something to that effect?
If you're asking for something less biased, more precise, focused on the swing states, etc. before you change your mind - fair enough. But keep in mind "the FBIs intervention in Twitter almost certainly swung the election" was me being bombastic, and my actual point was "anyone can reasonably frame their preferred incident as more important".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Nailed it. People just don’t like watching boo outgroup misbehavior when they are the outgroup getting booed.
Musks needs to do something real here. And it’s creating standing for lawsuits. He needs to work with gop governors likely who can mimic misbehavior twitter can punish and in the process create test cases to take to the Supreme Court. Then we can have clear legal lines for these things.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link