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 -
Eight years later, the “crackhead taxi driver” analogy still holds.
Imagine you have a destination in mind. You hail an Uber, 4.9 stars, great vehicle, clean. You tell them where you want to go and they look at you like you have three heads. And after realizing you’re serious, they flat out refuse to take you there. No matter how much you beg or attempt to reason with them or bribe them.
So you call up a Lyft. 4.6 stars, nice vehicle. Same outcome, first they think you’re joking, then you’re crazy, and finally an idiot.
On and on it goes. Seven vehicles later, you hail an unlicensed taxi cab. The driver opens the door, it smells like piss inside. There are empty beer cans and takeout containers strewn around the vehicle. You tell him where you want to go, the driver looks at you for a minute with his cigarette still in his mouth and says “Fuck it, let’s go. Hop in.”
If you’re a Trump supporter, hearing that you just jump in. So far it’s you’re only shot to get where you’re going, it’s getting late and you’re getting desperate.
Honestly? Don’t blame anyone who chose that way. With the benefit of hindsight, I think they were absolutely right.
Agreed except that I want to point out that the "serious person" Trump alternative Nikki Haley is every bit of the crackhead that Trump is, in her own way. Saying something "Hamas attacked because it was Putin's birthday" is unhinged and betrays an attitude that would be really dangerous to have in the nation's chief diplomat. Of course, Trump chose as diplomat once, so a pox on him too :-P
More options
Context Copy link
If multiple taxi drivers refuse to take you to your desired location, and the only one that agrees is a crackhead, isn't it exceedingly likely that not going there is a sensible decision and if you continue to insist then you’re joking, crazy or an idiot?
Probably! But history is made at the margins.
For example, I bet if you ask four random cabbies in Manhattan in the 1940s to take you to Harlem, it’s not crazy to think that most of all of them would reject you. Some percentage of the refusal is rational, concern about crime etc, but certainly not all of it. Maybe not even most of it.
And more importantly, there were non crazy reasons to want to go to Harlem in the 1940s, lots of them. There are plenty of good reasons to go to Cuidad Juarez today, but a lot of people on the US side of the border would refuse.
I think it’s an excellent, but not perfect, analogy.
History is strewn with lots of groups who did and believed things that the majority thought were crazy. Most really were crazy. A smaller percentage weren’t crazy at all with the benefit of hindsight. And sometimes the majority of society were clearly the crazy ones all along.
That’s the risk of living in history, backing the “wrong side” in hindsight, but we don’t have hindsight in the present.
This is the reason why you shouldn't base your moral opinions on what you think "the right side of history" will be. You'll probably be wrong.
It's kind of like trying to fully max out utility, only not only do you have to account for all the pleasure and pain that exists everywhere in the present, but you have to develop actual clairvoyance too.
"The right side of history" is an insane justification for any moral stance, because of its uncertainty. When religious powers made eschatological predictions, they at least did so with the justification that omnipotent, omnescient powers made an infallible prediction that certain moral stances would lead to ruin. When secular people talk about "the right side of history," their argument rests on the authority of social opprobrium (which, for every reason in the book, you'd think lefties would be less likely to think of as reliable) and on utterly unreliable predictions of the future, as every such prediction will be.
Fools base their opinions on what people around them think they should believe. And it stands to reason that even greater fools base their opinions on what they think maybe people will believe at some unspecified point in the future.
I’m just saying, I a hundred percent agree with you. Which is why “Wrong side” is in scare quotes, I absolutely don’t frame this that way.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
To play along with the metaphor, it probably means either as you suggested ("perhaps that's a bad destination") or that civilized taxis aren't interested in serving "people like you". I wouldn't be surprised if the people in question see it more like the latter.
More options
Context Copy link
If we lived in a normal world, yes, but we seem to be living in some absurdist "everyone pretends to not see the elephant in the room" comedy. The desired destination is "stop immigration, bring jobs back to America, cool it with the global empire that doesn't benefit people at home" and a bunch of cultural issues from "stop transing kids" to "stop teaching racism". Now, if the taxi driver came out and said that's an actually insane destination, we could have an actual conversation, but what we get instead is the conversation Truman Burbank would have had if he asked the taxi driver to take him somewhere outside of Pleasantville.
EDIT: changed the analogy to one that's more fitting.
Excellent analogy; elite political parties are only interested in driving you around a highly astroturfed overton window, and if you claim to want something else they'll try to gaslight you that you really wanted something they want. "I want to stop mass immigration" "Gotcha, we'll get you some tax cuts!" "No, I want to stop mass immigration" "Ohhh, sorry I misheard you. We'll increase the defense budget, just like you asked, don't worry".
More options
Context Copy link
I love this analogy, the Truman show is a perfect encapsulation of our incredibly stupid media ecosystem that has penned in an increasingly small amount of people into epistemic closure.
In the taxi analogy, trump haters act like they are requesting we go to the city of dis on the 7th circle of hell, when we really want to go to like… upstate New York. Can you imagine if every cabby you asked to go to upstate New York cried or pissed and shit themselves or immediately tried to change the subject or flat out refused to talk to you afterwards? I imagine That’s a common feeling being a Trump supporter, like “What the fuck is wrong with these people? I just want to go to Connecticut from Manhattan.”
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link