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 -
There are, broadly speaking, two types of growth:
Extensive growth is where you increase outputs by increasing inputs.
Intensive growth is where you increase outputs through process improvements that allow you to produce more or higher-quality outputs with the same inputs.
In recent decades, economic growth in wealthy countries has been heavily skewed towards intensive growth. For example, carbon emissions per capita peaked in the 70s in the US, and total emissions peaked just before the GFC. Growth is coming mainly from producing better stuff, not from producing more stuff. Computing technology is the ultimate example of this: Computers are orders of magnitude more powerful than they were in the 80s, but use the same materials in the same quantities, more or less.
The socialist claim that capitalism requires infinite growth (it doesn't, although increases in per-capita GDP are certainly desirable) and therefore requires infinite growth in resource consumption is simply false. We have had quite a lot of intensive growth, and can continue to do so indefinitely. In theory, there may be some optimal state of the economy beyond which no improvements are possible, but that's so far removed from the status quo that it's a purely theoretical concern.
The point of growth is that it increases material standards of living. That aside, there's a cognitive bias where people perceive slow growth as regression. This is how you get people like Bernie Sanders and his followers on Reddit insisting that real incomes have collapsed when all the evidence says otherwise. Living in a high-growth economy just feels better than living in a low-growth economy.
More options
Context Copy link