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 think I made it clear why that article presents what isn't just education curriculum like math, it's foundational to a hostile ideology:
I identify it as belonging to a Religious narrative that provides a center, and an anti-christ, of the moral universe and orients the boundaries of acceptable political thinking.
It's the implementation of ideas explicitly laid out by Jewish critical theorists, anthropologists, and psychoanalysts intended to cure what they consider to be embedded psychopathology in white people- what the author referred to as a "Western mind virus."
The motivation is to influence children to hold Jews in high regard while simultaneously hold their own ethnic heritage in low regard- or, more often, to be taught they have no ethnic heritage at all (many here make the same argument, by the way). More explicitly, the author is calling for children to be taught that Jews have a special quality and history while simultaneously white children will be taught they have no such thing, and for them to assert that would be the ultimate evil.
Technology is going to increase the effectiveness and impact of all of this, making it a lot harder to deny than the days where something like Schindler's List would fulfill the function which will now be fulfilled by mandated curriculum which will include visits to these mega-churches where students will be subject to visceral AI-powered AR/VR experiences which will be tailored to train the perception of those children of Jews- and their perception of themselves relative to Jews.
Otherwise I don't see why you wouldn't have just replied to my original comment and I could have responded to you there.
This is a strange behavior that I have noticed get worse and worse lately. We have threaded comments for a reason, and the top comments should act as an anchor for the topic. I echo your request for people to stop doing this. Please keep the discussions in their relevant threads. The obvious exception would be if you're responding to something from a previous week.
More specifically, it's a weakness of cramming everything into a single megathread rather than using separate threads. The Reddit style isn't perfect, but the way we use it is even worse.
Yes this! We have an entire forum site here and we have one thread per week. It's absurd. Why do we do this? datasecretslox seems to work just fine as a normal forum.
I don't think you guys realise the effect it would have on engagement. Because everything is crammed in together, you end up reading and participating in conversations you might not have even clicked on as a separate thread - I know I wouldn't click on a thread about golf, or the current political status of California, if they were separate threads, but because they were crammed in here I read them both and learned a lot. And note that the golf talk was a tangent from another conversation, that would be nipped in the bud as off topic in a standard forum structure.
But that's just first order effects, it gets worse from there. Now when you come to the motte you see one thread and, depending on the time of day, between 20 and 100+ new comments on the thread, indicating a decent amount of activity. Separate threads would see between 1 and 10+ comments per thread - to start. But the psychological effect of seeing only one or two replies is quite different to seeing 10 to 20. Maybe instead of posting now you will check out another thread and when you come back there will be more replies.
Except everyone else thought the same thing, so the slightly obscure thread just dies, and everyone just posts in the llm thread or the trans thread. Except by numbers it's more accurate to say that 'everyone' just left because it's depressing posting in a forum where threads get one or two replies and just looking at the board is demoralising.
At least that's what I expect would happen.
I really think the megathread is the secret sauce.
I don't. I think it's a liability and it's high time we dropped it. But that's not likely to happen because too many people believe it is the secret sauce.
What makes the Motte different from everywhere else on the internet if the megathread is dropped?
(I would have agreed with you ~2 years ago, but since then I've come around -- the resilience has been remarkable)
More options
Context Copy link
You can try creating thread instead of posting top comment (unless you never post top comments).
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