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 -
Objections 1 and 2 are pretty much my primary take here.
A large infinity minus a small infinity is still infinity.
You can block any number of mainstream sites with corporate offices who actually have to fear government regulation, and there will still be infinite sources of porn available for kids who want it.
It will just be less centralized and less moderated and less regulated, therefore much more likely for kids to see much worse stuff or meet actual groomers or etc.
(like, Pornhub censors searches for the word 'rape', for goodness sake. Do you really want kids going to Motherless or Exhentai instead?)
This seems so blindingly obvious to me that, yes, it is hard for me to resist the intuition that the people pushing for these laws can't actually believe that it will actually decrease the amount of porn kids see, which makes my mind immediately flail to makeup another motivation for them. Punishing porn sites financially out of religious spite, compiling databases of all porn every citizen has ever seen so they can secretly appropriate it and use it against political enemies and malcontents, simple vote-grabbing by appealing to their base with pointless boondoggles that carry the correct cultural signifiers, etc.
I in fact have enough perspective to apply Hanlon's Razor, and imagine that these extremely old and out-of-touch legislators actually do believe that this will make kids see less porn somehow. But it's really really hard for me to do that, it makes so little sense to me and has such obvious dystopic tendencies, I have to entirely take the outside view to hold the possibility in my head.
So I'm not surprised that lots of people with the same intuitions as me can't/don't default to that assumption, and see sinister motives instead. Failing to apply Hanlon's Razor is pretty much a fundamental defining feature of the culture war in general.
If progressives passed a law saying that any site which allows unmoderated comments or comments that feature racism or misogyny will require Real ID to use, with al user's actions on such cites recorded in a database alongside their real names and identifying details, because children should be protected from such things... would the right not assume that this move has nothing to do with protecting children and is 100% sinister and dystopian? That's about what this law feels like.
More options
Context Copy link