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 -
Revolution against people who insist that their way is "natural" "necessary" and "god ordered" even when it leads to endless death and suffering is necessary and natural part of history.
What if I do repair what is "not broken" to avoid dying?
What will you do to stop me? What will you threaten me with that is worse than death?
Is it? Can you point to some examples where such revolution actually succeeded according to its own priors? Are we about to get another of those cartoonish, unsourced anecdotes about how everyone prior to the Enlightenment thought medicine was witchcraft and burned doctors at the stake?
Why even attempt to form a correct view understanding of reality, when re-writing the past is so much easier?
Shouldn't death be sufficient, since that's exactly what hypothetical-you is desperately trying to avoid?
"What is the consequence of defying the luddite?"
"Death. "
"Then what is the consequence of submitting to the luddite?"
"Death."
"How shall we proceed, General?"
Conflict is eternal; if you can't deter people from instantiating horrors by threatening death, there's nothing left but to follow through and fight it out.
Transhumanist valhalla with everyone fighting at all times seems slightly superior to the wirehead utopia.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Hey! I just wanted a Space Ark to GTFO of here.
No, I mean stepping away from pursuing transhumanism means death, even if you don't personally execute us.
Well, but if you build me a Space Ark, and I GTFO, you can do whatever you want.
I was replying to the other guy who didn't settle for a space ark yet.
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
It certainly is. And those revolutions always fail. Because if something is truly natural, necessary and ordained by God, you never really escape the consequences.
Of course if it isn't, then they don't. But I don't see any reasonable argument that death isn't a natural part of the universe.
Violence ultimately, but I don't hold that cruelty has ever been an effective deterrent so I don't feel the need to invent worse punishments than death.
Hmm, certainly seems like us transgressors of God are doing quite well for ourselves as a matter of fact.
I'm not arguing this. Everything dies eventually. I'm arguing that dying in 100 years isn't any less natural than dying after 100,000 years. Do you see a difference yourself?
I'll refer to the first part of this reply. We've got you beat on the violence as well buddy.
I don't really care to go into the large argument about how miserable industrial society has made everyone, go read Ted if you want to see those arguments, but on the face of it I do want to address the most painfully ridiculous elephant in the room, which Nietzsche famously predicted as a direct consequence of this transgression:
How many people died in the XXth century?
This doesn't alter the moral calculus a iota for me. But I also don't believe you. Otherwise you'd be holding Afghanistan right about now.
How many did not? For most of recorded history, one third of all born children died in infancy, quite often taking their mother with them; of course these billions died quietly, often unnamed and unrecorded, and a death tax of a child every three in nearly every household is not so notable and exciting as a holocaust killing a hundredth of that number all in one event. The survivors didn't even find it all that noteworthy; after all it was all natural, and probably the will of God. Now the death tax is gone from most of the world, and on its way to be gone from the rest of it.
Granted, Mao is still to blame for the worst famine in history. But famines with a death tolls in the millions were quite common before the 20th century; before mechanized agriculture and the Green Revolution, it did not take a mad ideologue to starve millions in India or China; it happened quite naturally whenever the weather was too dry or too wet or too warm or too cold for a few years in a row.
Smallpox killed half a billion people just in its last century of existence (its thirtieth, give or take). It killed a significant fraction of all humans who ever lived, and left most of the survivors crippled, blinded, or disfigured. Now it's gone; and nazism and communism and religious fundamentalism and all other deranged ideologies ever dreamed up have a long, long way to go before they even get close to the death toll of one of these perfectly natural facets of the human condition.
"Accept nature", if taken as seriously as those other slogans, could be stained with quite a lot more blood than "proletarians of the world, unite" or "work will set you free".
More options
Context Copy link
https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-evidence-on-violent-deaths Proportionally less than in any previous century from violence. Or in early childhood, thanks to modern medicine. Or from starvation, thanks to industrial fertilizers. As for happiness, Ted might have had a better point if he went for the invention of agriculture. But pre-industrial agricultural society meant that the vast majority of humanity were subsistence farmers subject to frequent violence.
My impression is that, while Ted Kaczynski has interesting points about runaway tendencies in technocracy and the potential for social control and all that, any of his arguments about human misery have to be taken in the context of him being abused in what was probably a literal psy-op. Ted may say it didn't permanently affect him, but I dunno...
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If my way is not ordained by God, then let Him strike me down. If yours is, why are you worried that He will allow my way to destroy yours?
We are all instruments, and my worry is part of it. I'm tempted to quote that parable about the man who refused help many times on account of his faith, not realizing it was God sending all those people to help him.
We can't expect God to do all the work.
not realizing that because God never gave him a clue for it? God knowing that he would not realize it and yet not doing the necessary correction. So God in this scenario is as effectively impotent as always.
God is a descriptive term for the nature of the universe, not a will in the proper sense. I am an atheist.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
That's what people usually say when asked to demonstrate whether their claims of God-ordainment are falsifiable or not, yes.
Well yeah, it's just the coherent outcome of this position. What of it?
We're not having a disagreement that can be settled through reason.
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