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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 1, 2024

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Thanks. I try to be careful about specifying when I'm saying what I believe, steelmanning what some group or person on the left might say about the topic, or playing devil's advocate to stress-test a position. I do get the feeling that people are often not noticing this distinction, maybe I can be more explicit about it or maybe that's a lost cause.

I do feel like this community many years ago (like, back when it was part of /r/ssc and right after) was much more interested in stress-testing ideas against devil's advocate objections, and searching for steelman representations of the opposition to learn about and discuss, and trying to pass ideological Turing tests. And it feels like here and now it's more often about gesturing at the 'loony left' being dumb and then expressing incredulity of people disagree. Not that it is/was 100% either one then or now, just feels like the types of conversations I'm trying to have are not appreciated the way they used to be.

I've been around since the /r/SSC culture war thread days. I'm probably more centrist that most here and I have really always appreciated the contrarians who participate in this space like Darwin used to. Since the move to /r/themotte and even more since the exodus here, unfortunately it does feel more and more like the spirit has shifted to dunking, probably partially because of the friction need to find this forum and setup an account rather than just popping by on your normal reddit account.

I have been reading this discussion and all of your posts in it though. I don't agree with everything you're saying but I do appreciate the fact that it forces the conversation into words so that I can read arguments and rebuttals. Please continue.

contrarians who participate in this space like Darwin used to.

You are, in fact, still talking to Darwin.

Please continue.

Can you elaborate on what you're getting out of it? It's not exactly fun to debate the finer points of "when I said 'people like JK Rowling' I didn't actually mean JK Rowling", and being expected to charitably respond to a strawman of your position, and to smile and nod as your position is labeled a "blood libel".

To be fair I'm getting more out of the responses. Without the catalyst get generate those responses where people do try fairly hard to elaborate their points to someone who disagrees with them, it's not nearly as interesting. The way he's shifting around and stuff is annoying but at least it's generating a conversation that a bystander can skim through and find good nuggets in.

Thanks. I try to be careful about specifying when I'm saying what I believe, steelmanning what some group or person on the left might say about the topic, or playing devil's advocate to stress-test a position.

Because a common dishonest tactic is to take a position that's an exaggerated version of your normal one as a test to see what you can get away with. Anything you can't get away with, you then label as a "joke" or "just getting you to think" or "playing devil's advocate". If you want to play devil's advocate, do it for a position that you don't directionally believe in. You've talked about steelmanning the opposition above, but a leftist playacting as a more extreme leftist isn't steelmanning the opposition.

Also, your "devil's advocate" position seems to contain flaws that are best explained by you sincerely believing in the position. For instance, someone taking a devil's advocate position wouldn't misrepresent Rowling's book--there's no incentive to be careless about something you don't really believe in. But a true believer has an incentive to be careless.