site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I think I mostly agree with your position on the fundamentals. I left my post as conditional as it was for a few reasons, including but not limited to:

  1. it wasn't necessary to argue the truth of the premises to get TheDag to understand the logic

  2. I'm too close to the feminism/MRA issue, as both a victim of misandrist child abuse and a 30-year-old virgin, to be confident in my objectivity

  3. I'm trying to follow something like that Doctor Who quote "I help where I can; I will not fight", and arguing the fundamentals would be wading into the Culture War for real (if you go through my posts you'll see that while they're not always taken as such, most of my CW posts at least technically stick to clarifications).

I think nuclear war's fairly likely inside the next few years, and I think there's a significant (if small) chance of AI X-catastrophe by the end of the decade. So a) CW issues feel trivial by comparison, b) raising the temperature of the CW worsens both of those risks because it weakens the West, c) if we do have a nuclear war, a substantial chunk of the Blue Tribe is going to literally die in a fire and the SJ movement is probably going to collapse in on itself, so opposing them now feels at least somewhat moot. Luke 12:20 and the Warcraft 3 introduction convey my attitude pretty well.

And to come full circle, this means I kinda do agree with TheDag on high-temperature actions being a bad idea right now even if I mostly agree with you on who's at fault (and even if I'm too much of a deontologist to actively oppose people fighting for ideals I sympathise with).