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 -
On the contrary, more people rigorously examining claims and evidence would solve this mess quite rapidly, given the clear lack of actual evidence for the claims made of any significant fraud.
You can never have enough security and transparency to keep people who don’t sufficiently care about evidence and careful reasoning from believing what they want.
Maybe so, but last I saw surveys indicate that a large-ish majority of Republicans and a substantial minority of Democrats believe that some amount of fraud probably occurred in 2020 -- even if no fraud whatsoever in fact occurred, changes to procedures (and the extent to which existing ones are followed) are required to reverse this trend. Note that this has nothing to do with 'claims' nor 'evidence' -- even if no fraud occurred, there's a widespread perception that it could have -- which is not something that is compatible with a functioning democracy.
My own opinion is that there is a tiny amount of deliberate fraud in every election everywhere, and a larger amount of dubious, if honestly mistaken, decisions, e.g. a returning officer in one area may only accept ballots with clear postmark, another one elsewhere may take blurry postmarks, and a third may say even if there's no postmark that's fine. Which of these, if any, is fraud? Are the blurry ballots in the first district being deliberately vote restricted? Are the no-postmarks in the third fraud?
The polarisation around Trump just makes the problem even worse.
If the sloppiness and leniency between districts systemically differs by local political tendencies, it has potential to cause an issue of stochastically favoring a given candidate without there being any deliberate fraud or conspiracy. I know I'm a broken record with the emphasis on Wisconsin, but it's a great example because of the heavy county-level polarization. In 2020, most of the geographic state broke for Trump, but the population is heavily concentrated in Milwaukee and Dane counties, which also happened to be the counties where election officials encouraged people to use the "indefinitely confined at home" status to avoid needing to go to polls or provide the typically required identification for absentee ballots. I am entirely willing to take it as given that the decision-makers in those counties were very into Covid policies (stay home, stay safe!) and just wanted to encourage that, but in doing so, they implemented policies that would likely systemically increase the number of voters in their very blue counties with policies that were not taken by counties that simply encouraged their residents to follow the plain meaning of the law.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Trust in institutions is down generally and with elections certain forces are trying to hurry that along when they don’t like the results.
I used to work in one aspect of election security and I agree with you here overall, I’m just trying to be realistic about how much perception can be improved when strongly motivated reasoning is in play.
More options
Context Copy link
Lots of people thinking vaccines are dangerous means we should let Bill Maher dictate childhood vaccination schedules to doctors, because it would make people feel safer?
After loudly asserting falsehoods and assembling a critical mass of believers of said falsehoods, the purveyors of fantasy demand in the interest of social cohesion, that we coddle them.
No.
If you red-team something and find that there are security holes, you need to plug them irrespective of whether or not they've actually been exploited yet.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link