site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32956 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 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.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What is the alternative? It's not like those animals are not killed in the production of the regular omnivorous diet. If you are interested in animal welfare, it makes sense to go with the diet that kills the fewest possible animals even if the number is not zero. (Growing all of one's own food? I'm not sure you can get all the range of nutrients with your own work, and you are still going to kill the soil microfauna and plant parasites.Vat-growing food seems the ideal, but it will take a while before that is enough to fully support a human body.)

Commensurably more are killed in the extra vegetable production required for a vegan diet, so there could be some inflection point where killing animals directly provides enough calories that it means fewer dead animals in total compared to the sheer volume of rodents killed.

I don't know if this is necessarily true; meat and dairy animals also require plenty of plant food, so an omnivorous diet still requires a lot of agriculture in addition to direct human food production. Granted, many such animals are raised on pasture land that could not be farmed in the first place, and even the ones fed with crops are given cellulose-rich material that humans could not digest, but factory farming still has a pretty large agricultural footprint.

If someone is to the point of caring about the soil bacteria, wouldn't vat-grown food still be wrong? It's living... sort of... and the nutrients that compose it come from somewhere. Wouldn't all existence be basically impossible?

I was thinking more of insects and earthworms. No, if you add bacteria to the moral calculus then one's immunitary system is a worse atrocity than any ever devised by humans, and that's indeed not a very practical principle.

Commensurably more are killed in the extra vegetable production required for a vegan diet, so there could be some inflection point where killing animals directly provides enough calories that it means fewer dead animals in total compared to the sheer volume of rodents killed. This assumes that vegans treat all animals as morally equivalent (1 cow=1 mouse).

Isn't one of the vegan arguments about the amount of crops grown purely to feed animals and that the same land could be used to just directly grow more calories than are produced by the feed crops once converted into meat?

Main issues I could see with this:

  1. Marginal land used for grazing not suitable for crops / feed crops more resilient + able to grow where the human consumption equivalents cannot (know this is to some extent true in terms of pastures, though not for all pastures, do not know enough about soil and climate preferences for different crops for that bit)

  2. Harvesting feed crops somehow kills less birds / rodents etc (have absolutely no idea, obviously combine harvesters and pesticides would kill regardless, but don't know if feed crops are less attractive to those animals to begin with so less wind up dead)

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