site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30404 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

A second degree manslaughter conviction is not that bad. only max 15 years for killing someone

Only. Only 15 years and a normal-life-ending felony record, for restraining a violent drug-addled mentally-ill person who the government refused to do anything about. If that's what you call "not that bad", what IS "that bad"? Crucifixion?

Since I was asked to elaborate: Just about every part of this comment is extremely low quality.

restraining

Excuse me? A 15 minute chokehold resulting in a dead person is "restraining"?

violent

This is not in evidence. Unless you mean his prior assault arrests, which were not known to anyone on the train and thus irrelevant.

drug-addled mentally-ill

Neither of these remotely justifies death.

Excuse me? A 15 minute chokehold resulting in a dead person is "restraining"?

Yes. Restraining a person sometimes causes their death, as it did in this case.

This is not in evidence. Unless you mean his prior assault arrests, which were not known to anyone on the train and thus irrelevant.

We have information -- like his prior conviction for assault -- that those on the train did not. On the other hand, they had information we did not, such as his exact behavior at the time. Our prior for Penny acting violently or in a threatening way on the train should indeed be affected by his previous arrests.

Neither of these remotely justifies death.

Death requires no justification. The question is whether Neely's behavior justified Penny's actions, not whether they justified the result.

Restraining a person sometimes causes their death, as it did in this case.

If Perry does get convicted of manslaughter, it is false that it would be for restraining someone. Death is an essential component. There is absolutely no reason to describe the events this way except to make it seem like Perry didn't do anything wrong, without addressing any of the relevant facts.

Our prior for Penny acting violently or in a threatening way on the train should indeed be affected by his previous arrests.

"Our" prior does not justify your claim that he was violent. This is at best extremely weak evidence; the only witness statement I saw claimed he was not violent, which while obviously far from perfect is better evidence.

The question is whether Neely's behavior justified Penny's actions, not whether they justified the result.

This is just bizarre. Are you of the opinion that the consequences (or at least, expected consequences) of an action, have nothing to do with whether they are justified? I suppose this would be consistent with your idea that drivers shouldn't be held responsible for driving recklessly.

Are you of the opinion that the consequences (or at least, expected consequences) of an action, have nothing to do with whether they are justified?

It is Penny's actions which are justified or unjustified, not what followed from them. It is true that he might be facing assault or strangulation charges rather than manslaughter if Neely hadn't die, but it is not Neely's death which requires justification; it is Penny's actions which led to that death. The distinction is important; skipping over it is how you get to arguments like "Neely's behavior didn't justify killing him". The question is whether Penny's actions in putting him in a chokehold and thereby risking Neely's death were justified, not whether Neely's death was justified.

You made a big deal about the severity of the punishment. Whether his actions were justified is not dependent on whether someone died, but the level of punishment, if a crime was committed, very much does depend on whether someone died. Why did you bother to make a big deal about the size of the punishment? Either he was justified and there will be no punishment, or he wasn't and is guilty killing another person, in which case a significant punishment is clearly appropriate.

The question is whether Penny's actions in putting him in a chokehold and thereby risking Neely's death were justified, not whether Neely's death was justified.

I think this is just semantic games. We have legal standards for when civilians can use lethal force (for what I hope are obvious reasons) which amount to "it is justified to kill this person." Using lethal force does not always result in death, but death has to be a justifiable outcome in order for the use of deadly force to be legitimate.

At some point, people need to live reality on reality's terms and realize that the New York City policy, culture, and values are all pretty clear that being screamed at, threatened, and occasionally assaulted by vagrants is normal and that doing anything about it will result in consequences for the person that interfered with the normal state of affairs. The options for New York City residents are to accept the normalcy of cowering before their moral betters or electing to leave. I have plenty of complaints about the local politics in my area, but the local expectation isn't that lunatics get to berate normal people and ruin public spaces. I would strongly suggest moving to a place like that for anyone in New York that is sick of garbage strewn on the streets and vagrants disrupting their work commute.

What sort of indicators would be most salient when evaluating where to move to?

If I were moving right now, I would care about demographics, population change, and economic freedom, but none of that would substitute for just visiting and seeing what I think.

How the state you are moving to treats gun rights is usually a good indicator. Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws are another further indicator. But the really big indicators are social, not legal.

I mean, there is another option - take simple steps to anonymize yourself before intervening, and if things go wrong flee the scene. A motivated modern police force can absolutely catch you if they decide to pursue the case, but they have a lot of similarly sad cases on their plates. A single extra "mentally ill vagrant dies in a scuffle he likely started, suspect disappears" isn't going to attract undue law-enforcement resources, and it's going to be suppressed in the media rather than being shouted on the street corners. "Blue-voting city fails its most vulnerable, again" isn't a narrative that pays the bills like "Outgroup member murders innocent in broad daylight", and the boys in blue have even less motivation to track you down in the absence of public outcry.

The downsides I can think of are that if you do get caught you'll be punished more severely, and that certain anonymizing tactics might make you seem like the aggressor and be on the wrong side of further bystander intervention. For the former, I'm not familiar enough with US/NYC law to know how badly, but since it seems probable that Penny is going to jail for a long time, a few more years doesn't seem like a good tradeoff against something like a 90% chance of a clean getaway. For the latter - well, this seems to come up rarely enough that two separate people in a train car being willing to get their hands dirty seems unlikely, and a brawl between unrelated belligerents is less likely to inspire heroics than one-sided harassment.

Any time someone dies they're going to be looking for you. There's a lot of minor crime in New York but not a lot of killing, relatively speaking.

That can work for something like a fistfight. Maybe even if the vagrant is in the hospital but isn't terribly injured. Bodies always have drawn law enforcement attention.

I mean, there is another option - take simple steps to anonymize yourself before intervening, and if things go wrong flee the scene.

Not possible using a train/subway system due to CCTV. Even if you went into some toilets and did a full change of clothing and masked up, they would back trace your movements when analyzing footage and probably be able to figure out who you were (height/build). This is in a homicide case anyway where cops are diligent about their investigations. Simple assault and maybe they wouldn't bother.

You have to be the change you want to see.

Only 15 years and a normal-life-ending felony record, for restraining a violent drug-addled mentally-ill person who the government refused to do anything about.

There are mentally ill people when I go down the street. some of them yell at pedestrians. I would love if someone could do something about it, but that's not the job of citizens even if he is a major burden on society and net-negative value. I cannot just go up to one of those guys and choke him out, not that I could or would choose to take that risk.

It wasn't on the street though. They were captives in the actual environment this took place.

Changes things.

that is a good point. Subways are a hotbed of culture war, . You got many people of diverse backgrounds confined to this small metal tube, same for airplanes. Most passengers are behaved; it only takes one to fuck things up for everyone.

Man, that's an awful lot of euphemism, nonsense, and irrelevance crammed into such a short post.

  • -25

Make an argument; sneering is not an argument.

I can do that, but when are you going to make the same point to nybbler ?

  • -10

When he posts something that is nothing but low-effort sneering, like your post.

We don't mod people for making bad arguments (or arguments you don't like).

The comment I replied to is low-effort sneer that contains claims but no arguments.

I'm not interested in going round and round with your whining about why I modded Suzy but I didn't mod Johnny. If you disagree with my mod decision, feel free to appeal to Zorba. (Protip: reporting every mod comment that makes you angry multiple times is not an effective way to advance your case.)

I'm not interested in going round and round with your whining about why I modded Suzy but I didn't mod Johnny.

There are some things that moderators should be doing regardless of whether they are interested in them or not.

It's like having a restaurant owner who's "not interested" in making sure his food is stored at the right temperature.

There are some things that moderators should be doing regardless of whether they are interested in them or not.

Arguing with people for as long as they wish to continue the argument is not one of them.

We are janitors, we clean up messes. We are not your staff, we are not your employees, and we are not obligated to provide you with a satisfactory level of customer service.

To the degree that we care about providing a good discussion environment (which of all us do), we are usually willing to explain our reasoning. You can criticize us, you can ask for clarification, you can argue that we made a bad call. But you don't get to play Karen with us.

The term whining here is uncalled for. That's a reflection on your irritation, not the complaint. One might also argue that for a mod to use such terms discourages active participation, to say nothing of direct feedback. Just a thought.

edit for typos

Usually I don't insert my personal opinion about someone's complaint, but sometimes, whining is whining, and "You modded me but you didn't mod him!" after I have already explained why, is whining.

Presumably, the mods will make that point when he doesn't make an argument. Reading his comment, I see:

  • A felony conviction is very bad,

  • there were mitigating circumstances in this case, and

  • the top level comment used a nonstandard definition of "bad".

You can believe whatever you want about the quality of the comment, but the arguments about the situation are there.

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