site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   21612 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 9, 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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Ozempic I wasn't on long enough, or at high enough doses, to see any results, but at the initial dosage I tolerated it well but did not see loss of appetite, etc. happening, and those were the touted effects of "this makes losing weight so easy!"

It would have been better to put you on a higher dose than give up on it altogether, though it's a shame the starting dose didn't work for you.

Trulicity, while in the same class of drug, isn't one that's licensed for the purposes of weight loss, just for the management of diabetes. Which is perfectly fine, but a failure in that regard is unexceptional.

Besides, as a Catholic, I'm sure you're aware that not everyone is so lucky as to encounter a "miracle", but Ozempic works for most people, with minimal side effects, and that's good enough for me, even if it isn't efficacious in literally everyone.

For every person like you who drew the short straw, there's who knows how many who did what no amount of advice to exercise or diet achieved.

Most responsible medical advice would be "you only need to lose ten kilos, stop eating the greasy comfort food and become more active" but if you can manage to wangle it, you may not like the side effects. The major mechanism of action of these drugs is to slow stomach emptying (so you feel fuller for longer, thus don't eat as much and as frequently) and that can be accompanied by everything from flatulence to stomach paralysis.

It doesn't just make your digestion slower, it also makes you less hungry too, in an unrelated manner.

My mom's liver is failing, and no amount of attempts to diet or the tough love people have given her has helped. If she doesn't lose weight, I don't like her odds of making it another decade.

Is life worth living? Depends on the liver.

My case is far more discretionary, and as life has demonstrated, I am capable of losing weight the hard way. I'd still very much rather not, and when it gets cheap enough I'd much rather just take a pill. I, like millions or billions of others, am more than willing to pay for convenience.

But you'll (1) be expected to diet and exercise alongside it, so give up the greasy biryani and (2) be on it for life - stop taking it, the weight piles back on. Most responsible medical advice

Expected? Certainly. Do you need to? Not really. It curbs your hunger my itself, and doctors have been impotently suggesting the above to billions who listen and nod intently and go back to having a cheeseburger. The drug makes the burger unappealing. At that point you're not fighting yourself, you're just doing what you want to, naturally or not.

Cure for gambling/alcoholism/addiction? I'm very dubious, I don't see how this links up with the reported mechanism of action

You should be gratified to hear this came as precisely much a surprise to you as it did to the manufacturers and inventors of the drug.

Doesn't mean it's not true, the human body is fucking weird.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-new-weight-loss-drugs-like-ozempic-treat-addiction1/

The research is very much in the preliminary stages, yet it's promising.

Yet the weight loss, which is by far the most important thing the drug does, is indisputable.

It would have been better to put you on a higher dose than give up on it altogether, though it's a shame the starting dose didn't work for you.

Supply chain issues. The chemist was able to get a month's supply of the starting dosage, but when the doctor was upping me to the higher one no dice - they couldn't get it. So that's when my doctor switched me to Trulicity and the side effects were so bad I said "hell with this, I'm not staying on this one".

The drug makes the burger unappealing.

I read all the wonder stories and was hoping this would happen for me, but nope. Burgers were just as appealing as before. Granted, had I been able to get onto the higher dose for a longer time, who knows? But I think I wouldn't be that lucky. If someone can invent a reliable, guaranteed, "this will kill your appetite" drug that doesn't involve paralysing your intestines or invoking streaming diarrhoea, I'd greatly appreciate that. The only time I haven't been able to eat is when I was so sick, the nurse literally couldn't get a measure of my blood sugar with the 'stick and test strip' meter, and they made me drink sugary energy drink to get the numbers up.

I really, really, really wonder about the addiction results. It'd be grimly funny in that cosmic irony way if it actually does have something to do with the mechanism of addiction, and all the people telling fatties like me "look porker, losing weight is easy: just stop stuffing your face with junk" had to admit that maybe food too is addictive for some people. But probably not, and something weird is going on there.

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