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 -
Wait, in the Senate? Did you never hear of Strom Thurmond?
The Senate is a bizarre institution, and extrapolating…anything…from an N=100 dataset is folly. Once you’re in the Senate, it takes a LOT to get you out of the Senate, as seen from this list. There’s only 2 Senators from each state, and once you’re in you immediately accumulate a huge amount of power but then also pretty much vote along party lines, and unless you do something truly wildly insanely wrong, your state party has no particular reason to kick you out.
So if you tossed a coin 100 times and it landed heads 98 times, you would be agnostic about whether it was biased?
More options
Context Copy link
Sure. Hence "why wasn't this as big a problem", not "why wasn't this a problem". 30 years ago 6% of Congress was over 70; when Thurmond retired it was 8%; when I was goggling at Feinstein it was 18%; now it's 23%.
The House is a bit more data, and the secular trend in Congress as a whole seems to overwhelm low-sample-size jitter. I guess we'd expect a ton of temporal auto-correlation, though, so maybe the explanation is as simple as "we're in the period after demographics gave big opportunities to Silent Generation and Baby Boomer politicians but before senescence pushes them out"?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link