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 -
It just seems to me that in the modern world you're given way too much information than you can handle. You receive the news all over the world every day and do you know there's a war going on and here's the latest about that, also someone is dying in Africa due to a military coup, and somewhere is a genocide...probably. Oh and don't forget about the climate change that's going to kill us all....
This information stays with me for days on end. Sure some things I just forget due to not caring or just because the information provided didn't hold in my brain, like I know about the coup, but no more than that and my brain just leaves it as not important. But other things just sit there, and very frequently I just start thinking about them even though I should really finish work on the project (procrastinating is a thing). Sometimes consciously, most times....... it ends up like this. It's like the empty space is running out on my hard drive and I'm just hoarding everything dating back to my childhood and refusing to dump it.
Just feels like humans are not designed for this type of information overload (especially if you can consider it "too much and too fast") and living in the old times was simpler.
We were never designed for this level of information intake. We're designed to live and have relationships in villages of a couple of hundred people max, with concordant gossip. Not drinking from the firehose of social media weaponised to trigger and exploit our emotions.
You can push what you've said further and imagine a dystopian Warhammer 40k type setting where the capital planetary administration receives reports from thousands of worlds of all sorts of unimaginable horrors. Anyone with access to that information stream would have to either become completely emotionally unresponsive or go insane.
I saw an interview with Sam Harris the other day on Diary of a CEO. He talks about how he deleted Twitter and his mental health improved exponentially. It's a common story, but Sam is ostensibly meant to have a strong mind and even he had to take a step back.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link