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 -
If this is still supposed to be about the unlikeliness of abiogenesis, then this analogy would only make sense if you believed that the conditions necessary for the arising of life happened only once in the entire history of the universe. Then it really would be a miracle.
But it's more like there are a bajillion people about to be executed, each with their own thousand-strong firing squad and we know that at least one of them survived. With so many tries, one of them could have gotten super lucky. (And of course, we don't really know how many marksmen you need to postulate to match the probability of abiogenesis happening in some small volume of the primordial soup at a particular point).
(If it's about the wonder of the fact that our universe can support life at all, then I'm fine with answering "I dunno" while insisting that there's no justification for jumping from "I dunno" to "therefore, God.")
This is correct.
The level of analogy for which he makes sense would be ways the physical laws of the universe itself is fine-tuned for life. As long as there are no varying-laws multiverses, then there's only one, not a bajillion.
I'll also note that the firing squad example makes this more complicated to me. I was reminded of Joe Carlsmith's SIA vs SSA series on anthropics, which I don't remember well enough to be able to give truly informed opinions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link