site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36049 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 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.

Meta: what is it with like half of top-level posts being provocative nonsense? This is a big problem. Mods, I think «low effort» would be better than this.

Are you a smoker? Are you personally convinced by what you write and cite? Are you willing to bear responsibility for convincing anyone of your case? Would you donate your organs to a mottizen who has lost his own as a consequence of trusting you?

For the record, I have a nicotine patch on my skin right now, and regularly use alternative nicotine-delivery methods, believe there's something to the quip that greatness declined when the anti-smoking campaigns gained power in the 2nd half of the 20th century (who was it again?). By the same token, I am not maximally negative on gout.

Some in my family, some of the most important people to me, died of causes obviously exacerbated by smoking cigarettes; Russia is a country of heavy smokers and short male lifespans; tobacco smoke is indelibly low-class-coded in my olfactory bulb. Such are my biases.

Your link includes this chapter on risk:

The reader may ask, "Well, if smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, just what does?". Recent studies suggest that the answer lies in the genes of those individuals who develop the disease.

One must be cautious in assessing the genetic evidence, because molecular biologists, many of whom are employed by the rabidly anti tobacco government establishment, are not above the use of techno-babble in support of the establishment position on smoking. In their book on gene therapy, Altered Fates, authors Jeff Lyon and Peter Gorner quote scientist Philp Leder as saying that nicotine is a "mutagen par excellence". A mutagen, according to them, is another way of saying "carcinogen". There are, however, absolutely no studies showing that nicotine is a carcinogen. If it were, the FDA could scarcely have approved the sale of the nicotine patches, used by smokers who choose to quit smoking.

Quite frankly, I do not know whether there is a risk to smoking, or not. I do know that "risk" is not the same as causation.

This is just sad – picking on the weakman when purporting to debunk mainstream. Whatever properties nicotine has or doesn't have, you are trying to defend tobacco, and so does this Colby dude. Gwern:

All of the harm seems to stem from tobacco, and tobacco smoking in particular; this is not necessarily obvious because almost everyone casually conflates tobacco with nicotine (especially public education programs3), treating them as a single synonymous evil I dub “nicbacco”. When someone or something says that “nicotine” is harmful and you drill down to the original references for their claims, the references often turn out to actually be talking about tobacco rather than nicotine gums or patches45. Other methodological issues include comparing to current smokers rather than former smokers or failing to control for the subjects being the sort of people who would begin such a societally-disapproved activity like smoking; the studies typically aren’t designed properly even for showing an effect: you need a study which finds deficits in smokers but not in non-smokers or former smokers (eg. Heffernan et al 2011 or Sabia et al 2008/⁣Sabia et al 2012 although neither enables nicotine inferences since there was no nicotine-only control group). The 2019 United States outbreak of lung illness linked to vaping products offers a case in point of this prejudice: despite every sign pointing to adulterants added to illegal THC/marijuana vaping fluids by fly-by-night operators rather than nicotine (such as the decades of nicotine vaping by millions of people not causing them to land overnight in hospital ICUs), the outbreak has been used as an excuse to ban legal nicotine vaping fluids instead—which is like banning aspirin as a response to the opiate crisis because they’re both used for pain relief and they both come in pill form, and some OD victims also used aspirin recently, so that makes them pretty much the same thing, right?

That's just one random piece of your source, going poof.

I think the evidence is overwhelming – the genetic data, the life expectancy effect, the lung cancer incidence rate, and many other clear indicators pointing in the same direction. Using gwern's words again (now from his section on HBD) «the persistence of the debate reflects more what motivated cognition can accomplish and the weakness of existing epistemology and debate». If causality between smoking and adverse health outcomes cannot be conclusively shown, this is an indictment of our methods and perhaps our scientific institutions, not the hypothesis.

But on the level of pure observation: the physical enfeeblement and accelerated aging of smokers, their inability to move well for prolonged time (very annoying for fit people, even though most are too polite to state it directly), their stench, their yellow teeth and cracked skin, all of those correlates of unwellness are so obvious to the naked eye, it can well compete with obesity in how ridiculous and self-clowning it is to downplay. Yes, there are generally healthy obese people, I suppose. (I'd guess they'd be superhuman if not for all the extra adipose tissue). No, there is zero chance obesity doesn't make them worse off. Likewise for smoking.

In people, I greatly admire φιλοσοφία, the love of wisdom; and wisdom is necessarily grounded in truth. An obese person can be pitied for his plight, or respected for coping with it, or even for embracing the hedonism, social conventions be damned. But an obese person who is in denial about the cost of his lifestyle is lacking character to such an extent it'd be a waste of time to engage on any level sans the most superficial, I believe; I would never let such a person play a role in my life that I wouldn't entrust to a journalist or a hooker. Likewise with smokers.

Or might this be just a bit where you are hinting at some other risible delusion, just a more popular one, perhaps? Or something like COVID-masks-and vaccines stuff again?

Please be plain.

Meta: what is it with like half of top-level posts being provocative nonsense? This is a big problem.

The standards for top-level posts are such that anyone posting such has a good chance to get modded. The people posting nonsense don't care, though.

the life expectancy effect

I have to step out, so I don't have time to dig in at the moment, but this attribution seems immediately suspect to me. My anecdotal experience with travel in Spain and France is that smoking is much more common in both countries than in the United States. I seem to recall the self-reported data matching up with that. If someone tells me that French people live longer than Americans because they don't smoke as much, I find myself doubting their motivation for the claim.

People in Southern Europe tend to smoke a lot, but they are also comically thin in comparison to people in the US. I have been in Southern Europe for a few days (far more often in the past) and this trip I haven't seen a single obese person yet. I have only seen a small number of fat people, all of them middle-aged or old women. Diets tend to be pretty good, both in terms of quantities and qualities, even though people tend to be epicures about their food - it's possible to eat very well and healthily enough. People walk around a lot and have at least decent cardiovascular health.

Stress levels are higher than stereotypes would suggest, but people are generally better socialised than most places and have both rich family connections (one Southern European friend was shocked that I only talk with my parents once per week normally) and extensive friend networks (a Southern European college town's nightlife is one of life's great joys). Grown women will walk arm-in-arm with their mothers or friends, while the men are far more adept at platonic expressions of affection with each other than most places. This is true even in some of the more reserved parts of Southern Europe, e.g. most of Northern Italy.

Since most people who smoke don't get lung cancer, even though smoking very probably causes lung cancer, it's hardly surprising that high rates of smoking don't have an easily noticeable impact on Southern European life expectancy.

There are, however, absolutely no studies showing that nicotine is a carcinogen.

It is a poison; one of the favourite murder methods in Golden Age detective fiction was the gardener using nicotine spray for the roses, and that nicotine being snaffled to poison the victim.

So is caffeine if lethal in relatively small doses = poison.

It's pretty irrelevant, given that people generally aren't taking large enough doses to die.

Not all poisons are necessarily carcinogens and mutagens (which requires their mechanism of action to target the nucleus, and this is not how nicotine produces its effects); nor are all poisons meaningfully poisonous in low doses.

It's true that nicotine can be pretty damn lethal, of course.

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