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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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And so on. Even though no one is taking command, dividing tasks among participants, etc., the end result is still a bunch of people working together to find dirt on someone.

Okay...and?

I'm reminded of a recent Sam Seder conversation with Jesse Singal, in which the former referred to a publication by Sam Harris in 2004 called "In Defense of Torture". Seder said it was horribly irresponsible in the context of what the US was doing to captured terrorists, but this is precisely how 99% of humans work - you talk about a subject when its relevant, unless you're an academic who explicitly focuses on that. Given that none of the people involved are, I don't see any problem with them doing this.

Do you remember when someone brought up some weird Bay-Area Rat woman trying to date people via Google Docs, and this whole place suddenly devolved into a knitting circle trying to one-up each other in passing judgement on the woman's life choices? Well, are they not free to discuss it? Sure they are! But just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

There are ways of doing things which can make or break them. I recall the incident you're referring to, but not the discourse here. Without checking, I'm assuming there was some rather uncharitable psychoanalyzing of Bay Area Rationalists and women. But the issue there is the uncharitability, not the inherent discussion.