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 -
I still can't get over the American Pravda aspect of this. Why not just say, "yeah, it wasn't great, but Covid was a tough time and we did our best"? Would anyone have thought worse of election officials and leadership if they did so? The ridiculous claim that it wasn't just good, but actually the bestest and most beautiful election ever just serves to further undermine trust in institutions. Insisting on phrasing it that way feels more like point deer, make horse than a literal claim about the quality of the election.
This and a handful of other threads over the last couple months have got me thinking about doing another Inferential Distance post on "trust" and "credibility" because it's becoming increasingly clear to me that there are a lot of people who seem to think that it's something that can somehow be arbitrated or imposed. The New York Times is a "Credible Source" because [reasons]. Appeals to academic consensus are "credible" because [reasons].
The idea that credibility and trust are resources that can be acquired, expended, and undermined just doesn't seem to factor into liberal thinking.
They believe, apparently correctly, that they have a set of institutions sufficient to manufacture and maintain credibility indefinitely no matter what they say, as long as they back each other up. The NYT can say whatever it wants and it will be credible -- just ask NPR, CNN, the Washington Post, whatever nonprofit NYU just spun up, etc. Whatever Fox News (or the New York Post or the Washington Times) says is "not credible" because "Faux News". The ground truth is too hard to reach and so never enters into it, at least for a majority of those paying attention at all.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
You and I clearly have fundamentally different (and functionally incompatible) understandings of what the word "credibility" means.
What does credibility mean to you?
What I'm getting at is that to answer that question is an effort post in itself because it is clear that my concept of "credibility" is very different from that of many other posters.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If it's published in the NYT, a sufficient number of people will believe it or act as if they believe it. That's "credibility".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t know, when Burger King changes their french fry recipe, do they say it’s pretty good or do they proudly announce that it’s “the best ever” even if it’s a minor change in oil made for cost saving reasons? It seems extremely standard for every change made by some organization to be ‘the best ever’, because the alternative is that it isn’t the best ever, which means there’s been a decline. Yeah, perhaps service declines during coronavirus were inevitable across the board, but they weren’t usually advertised as such. Who can forget major hotel chains announcing that they were now only changing sheets every other day to ‘fight climate change’ or ‘reduce the spread of covid’ rather than to save money?
The processes changed, sure, but to have officials go on TV and say yeah we’re pretty sure it’s going to be a fair election but it might not be the fairest yet seems unlikely, even if the political climate isn’t as heated as it was in 2020.
Fair enough, I don’t disagree. I think a lot of government is interesting in that voters are theoretically both the shareholders and customers.
More options
Context Copy link
Domino's explicitly admitted that their pizza sucked. I found their advertising compelling and thereafter purchased Domino's pizza for the first time in a long time. It was true, they did make it better!
Sometimes, it's actually better to just tell the truth, if for no reason other than establishing credibility.
Still sort of think the low end delivery stuff sucks. I think I prefer grocery aisle pizza over Dominos plus relatively cheap to fix them up and add flavor (garlic, jalepenos etc) to your own taste.
More options
Context Copy link
I think that still fits with her narrative. They only admitted it sucked after they changed it. They didn't say their new pizza sucked
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It’s probably based off some narrow technical claim from an agency that is true. For example I’m guessing the number of electronic voting machines with no paper trail has decreased. So if you have a bunch of things you have been trying to improve and they have all improved since the last election and are the best they have ever been then you can claim it is the most secure ever. There might be other things that you don’t measure that have been going in a negative direction but because they aren’t part of the improvement plan they don’t exist.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link