site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   27059 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 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.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The feeling of working on an effort post on a topic, only to see that it was brought up a half day earlier and the discussion is mostly done is disheartening. It is why I often personally want the rule enforced against others. Point 1 is how i make sure I don't violate the rule or the spirit of the rule. I've had stories I've wanted to share here, but all i can think of is "[link] discuss?"

There is no rule against posts that aren't effort posts. Most effort posts are bad. I'm worried were incentivizing people to write a lot of uninteresting wordy posts just so that they can start a discussion on something interesting. I don't see the harm in asking what other people think about something. What I think we do want is something to stop people from posting just anything. There should be something to explain why something is worthy of discussion. I don't see why it has to be something that requires a lot of effort.

There is no rule against posts that aren't effort posts. Most effort posts are bad. I'm worried were incentivizing people to write a lot of uninteresting wordy posts just so that they can start a discussion on something interesting.

Can you come up with another proxy that keeps intelligent people who do write interesting things coming back to the site, and stops the Motte from turning into the rest of the internet?

The effort is a bar you have to clear to participate here.

We have lots of other rules that have sort of accomplished this goal despite not having requiring all top-level posts to be effortposts.

There is no harm in asking people questions. Which is why we have a small questions Sunday thread. It doesn't have to be used exclusively on Sunday, it can be used all week.

That is explicitly for dumb questions though.

Perhaps the intro needs to be rewritten. I never read that as saying no smart questions.

lol, I mean sorry, but picturing someone despondent because their internet post didn't make it out of the oven fast enough is just embarrassing.

If you have a long effort post to make, why not just make it as a reply to a less narrow top level post like the one above? Shorter posts like this generally have a much broader scope and therefore you can have a lot more replies and jump off into a larger variety of topics. If someone writes a 10 page essay about that time Feinstein almost got killed by left wing terrorists in response to her passing then people that might want to discuss some more topical aspects of the event are forced to post an entirely new top level comment. Which is obnoxious considering this place is already a chore to navigate and horribly disorganized. Especially for anyone trying to find older discussions.

lol, I mean sorry, but picturing someone despondent because their internet post didn't make it out of the oven fast enough is just embarrassing.

Rude as hell. Have you ever actually worked on an effort-post and contributed a seriously valuable top level comment here? It takes a lot of work to do it well.

You come in here, lurk and benefit off of people that put in time and effort to provide you intellectual stimulation and entertainment, then mock them for doing so. Not a good look.

I generally skim the top levels and am just here for the comments. Much like media posts on reddit. We don't all derive the same utility from the same things.

Its fine if you leave. I only see warnings and bans on your notes. If you don't like it, that is more of a complement than a criticism. Not sure why you consider it worth it.

Not sure why you consider it worth it.

The people here are interesting, but everything else about this place makes it so obnoxious to use that I go through phases of being frustrated by the limited means of engagement and the convoluted rules.

It's rather ironic to complain about posts generating more heat than light when you obviously don't apply the same standards to your moderation. Maybe the reason this post when to shit was you jumping in all "bad cop" to try and save the quokka effortposters from their despondency. You think of that maybe?

Maybe the reason this post when to shit was you jumping in all "bad cop" to try and save the quokka effortposters from their despondency. You think of that maybe?

It was shit before I arrived and said anything. There were four 4 relatively low effort post responses, three of which had reports, and one of them was crappy enough that I handed out a warning for it.

Why on earth should moderation be held to the exact same standard as commenting?

Because moderation is often inflammatory, far more than trolls, they should be held to higher standards. Should police not be held to higher standards than civilians? What a bizarre question. Mod straight up admitted that most other mods would have just warned the user and not banned and then did it anyways due to personal vendetta.

'Personal vendetta' is your view, mine is that they treat first time offenders differently from others.

Mods are held to different standards, not necessarily higher on all axes.

That isn’t really a response to the criticism. Pure ad hominem. I even understand your position but shouldn’t you hold yourself to a higher standard

They started it off with a criticism where they basically call the purpose of themotte "embarrassing"?

I mean this without ad hominem, and without reference to the remzem: if you are not here to discuss the culture war then you don't belong here.

The second criticism is that larger essays tend to have a narrowed scope. I don't think this is even true. Plenty of top level long posts have a large scope. If it was true, their complaint is then that the discussion is overly narrowed, so if you want to post on a separate aspect of the event you need to go create your own high effort top level post. This sounds like a feature of the rules and not a bug. Our rules are meant to facilitate higher effort discussions. Complaining because a rule does exactly that is always going to be met with a "good, glad its working".

The third criticism is that searchability is poor on the website. I'm human, not a robot. I do try and hold myself to a higher standard, but the user has quite literally missed the whole purpose of the community, and insulted it while deep into that misunderstanding. So yeah at this point I was annoyed at the user, and didn't address it. If someone who was a respected member of the community had asked me I would have probably addressed it thus:

  1. We do try and preserve some good discussions via the quality contributions reports.
  2. Its not entirely clear to me how searchability would improve the quality of discussions. I'm open to hearing that explained.
  3. Some users don't want searchability. They don't like the thought that their words on this website could be collected and sifted through in order to unmask their real-life identity.
  4. Searchability would also probably need to be built in from the start. I suppose we could run posts through an AI and have it auto-categorize them. But the typical way to do it on the internet is to have the users categorize their own stuff. That is the only way you get past a simple text search, but you can already text search on this website, so I assume that isn't what they wanted.

The fourth criticism is that navigation is a chore. No details on why, so its hard to know what aspect of it is a chore. The fifth criticism is that nothing is organized. I'd probably have the same responses to that criticism as I would to the searchability complaint.

In general the goal of this community is discussion. We try to have rules and features that serve that purpose.

  1. The first criticism was not criticism of the motte or discussion. It was a criticism that someone would get disappointed that someone preempted their post.

  2. With respect to your second point, scope (like quality) is orthogonal to length. What I think we want is insight; not length.

The first criticism was not criticism of the motte or discussion. It was a criticism that someone would get disappointed that someone preempted their post.

They are still shitting on quality posters. I'd rather keep the quality posters happy rather than this user.

With respect to your second point, scope (like quality) is orthogonal to length. What I think we want is insight; not length.

And the top level post provided no insight either. Shared a link story, asked some basic questions, and basically said "discuss". Had it done so, or attempted to do so I might not have banned.

I don't think my minimum level standard for a top level post is very high. People seem to come out of the woodwork every time this comes up acting like I'm asking them to write a novel. I'm not. Just start the discussion, put some level of thinking and effort into your post. If it looks like you tried and fell short I'll probably only provide a warning. The original poster did not try at all. And there is a group of users that constantly want to resurrect the bare links thread, so they post what they think is just past the line on acceptable. Sometimes I am going to drop bans for this. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Shared a link, asked some basic questions, and basically said "discuss". Had it done so, or attempted to do so I might not have banned.

Since I got the banhammer, let me get this much clear - no links were shared. Go back and read it, I didn't link to anything. I said I just heard the news and wanted to know what would happen next. You're in your rights to hit me for that, but don't say I did something I didn't do.

Fixed

I think it’s fine to think “there is something a little off if someone gets despondent over being preempted on a discussion board.” Look, I participate here because I think the people are interesting etc. But it isn’t like we are competing for Pulitzer Prizes etc. If someone preempted something, I’d think “well at least there is another person who thinks like me and seems reasonably intelligent” and go on my way. Being despondent is not psychologically healthy.

"despondent" is a word that remzem added to the discussion as a way of insulting the posters.

I only used the word "disheartening".

Magnifying another person's complaint to make them seem unhealthy isn't exactly good behavior is it? Or would it be fine for me to characterize you and remzem as "suicidally upset" over this rule scuffle?

More comments

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