site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 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.

14
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

But that just makes the choice all the more stark - if you're a guy who wants to start a family, why would you pick a woman who's nearing 40 to do that with, instead of a woman 10-15 years younger for whom you don't have to shell out $100,000 in conception fees?

Because there exist in the world such things as love. And a human is generally speaking more than the sum of its parameters and identities. Also she may be able to suck golf ball trough a garden hose.

One possible reason would be because you get along better with the one who is 40 and shares your values, and you personally are a late-career tech person in the bay who has made good financial decisions and probably has a net worth with 8 digits where "shell out $100,000" is just not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

I'm sure there's always at least one possible reason in the universe of possible reasons, but I'm trying to model what a typical man would do, not write a sitcom about a 40-year-old career woman who has a whole lotta love to give and is searching for someone who completes her. "Marry a millionaire" should not be anyone's plan for starting a family - if you've reached this point, odds are you've already lost the game.

She doesn't need to care about what a typical man would do, she needs to care about what the most desirable man who reads this and goes "you know, that is exactly what I'm looking for" does.

It is true that this approach would not scale to everyone doing it. I predict that

  1. This will in fact work out for her, because she is a prominent person in a community containing many neurodivergent people who weigh "smart" and "philosophically aligned" more heavily, and "functional", "young", and "fit" less heavily, in their evaluation of partners than is typical for the broader population.

  2. Conditional on this working out for her, it will inspire a number of people to do the same thing. It will mostly not work out for them, because they will mostly not have her advantages.