site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32403 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If you tell your kids that you'll kill yourself if they don't eat their vegetables or whatever, you'd be way over the line into abuse. If you observe to them dispassionately that you are statistically more likely to kill yourself if they don't eat their vegetables, you haven't salvaged the situation. It isn't the guilt trip that (necessarily) puts you over the line, it's threatening suicide.

Right because eating vegetables and suicide are not linked (I assume!). But depression and suicide are. If I tell them "If you don't eat your vegetables I will be disappointed you have chosen not to eat healthily" I am guilting them with a reasonable outcome on my behalf. If they were doing something that actually would increase my risk of death, then it becomes once more reasonable. Don't pretend to throw your brother off the roof, you'll give me a heart attack perhaps?

Don't pretend to throw your brother off the roof, you'll give me a heart attack perhaps?

No sale. This only works because "you'll give me a heart attack" is a figure of speech. "Don't pretend to throw your brother off the roof or I'll kill myself" speaks for itself.

It's a bad example true, but remember the speaker in the original is not saying they will kill themselves, but that others might. So maybe this one is closer:

If my son is a truck driver and wants to call out to play Call of Duty and I say, if you don't deliver that shipment of widgets, the widget factory will shut down and people will lose their jobs, some might starve and some might even commit suicide. I am not going to hurt anyone or myself, I am predicting the potential consequences of his actions. I might be making those consequences up to guilt him, or they may be true or I may be exaggerating them for effect. But we can't tell which without knowing about the widget factory and the financial situation in the town etc. Whether I am correct in guilting him depends on the accuracy of my prediction. If I work at the widget factory myself, that might mean that I am either knowledgeable enough to know it is one delayed delivery from bankruptcy OR guilting him because my bonus depends on being able to de-widget the widgetiser.

But you can't tell which, whether I am doing it for personal gain or to protect the town (or both!),

If my son is a truck driver and wants to call out to play Call of Duty and I say, if you don't deliver that shipment of widgets, the widget factory will shut down and people will lose their jobs, some might starve and some might even commit suicide.

This is stupid. It's telling that this sort of achingly awkward construction is the best you're able to come up with after many attempts. It's fine to tell him that he's going to cause privation and misery by shirking, I suppose. Invoking suicide is a rhetorical record-scratch moment where you immediately sound like you've gone off the deep end. It adds nothing, you'd never include it, and it makes your statement less compelling rather than more if you do, because it sounds so transparently manipulative and irrelevant to the point.

It adds nothing, you'd never include it, and it makes your statement less compelling rather than more if you do, because it sounds so transparently manipulative and irrelevant to the point.

That's fair I think, none of the analogies away from mental health have been great. I think those still stand however.

A heart attack is involuntary. What makes it a threat is that you are going to act if they don't do as you demand. The fact you are pinning actions you are going to take to hurt yourself on them makes it more abusive.

Again though remember the original example was about other people hurting themselves. So maybe we're losing it in analogies.

If I say stopping medication to bipolar people increases the risk of bipolar people killing themselves. That can be either true or false. Whether I am bipolar doesn't change anything about what those other people do. If I say I will kill myself if you stop that medication, then that is a different type of statement.

If my son is a truck driver and wants to call out to play Call of Duty and I say, if you don't deliver that shipment of widgets, the widget factory will shut down and people will lose their jobs, some might starve and some might even commit suicide, I am not going to hurt anyone or myself, I am pointing out the potential consequences of his actions. I might be making those consequences up to guilt him, or they may be true or I may be exaggerating them for effect. But we can't tell which without knowing about the widget factory and the financial situation in the town etc.

I think what offends, at least to me, about this line of argumentation is that it implicitly incentivizes committing suicide. It's a kind of brinksmanship of slave morality. It has the same kind of energy of forums that hear about a mass shooting and are, often not even secretly, hoping for it to be their kin slaughtered by the hated outsider. It's this ugly race to the bottom of grievance where instead of groups showing how excellent they are everyone is slavishly hoping for their ingroup to come out as pathetic and worthy of sympathy as possible. It's an impulse I recognize in the worst parts of myself. And if this is the impulse that gets my ingroup what it wants why not indulge it?

Yeah that got a bit too abstracted.

The problem is, you are 100% correct imo, the idea that better treatment of trans people will reduce the risk of their suicide is not inherently abusive, and it's a fairly standard part of risk management re the mentally ill. Which is why it became such a popular talking point. But then you had trans people lobbying for their community with it. And when trans people started lobbying with that talking point the potential for abuse increased by orders of magnitude, because when you lobby for the community you belong to, anything which affects your community necessarily affects you.

And a percentage of trans people, like a percentage of the rest of the world, are manipulative abusers who saw a superweapon - by ramping up the emotion and playing on their fear, they could make their community (many of whom are on hormones, never mind their default mental state) feel like they were being viciously persecuted and driven to suicide. Then even if someone points out that they are a sociopath manipulating everyone, they can discredit them as a transphobe trying to kill trans people.

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