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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   4633 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 28, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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As Andrew Breitbart says, politics is downstream from culture.

People on the right need to be better at winning the culture war by producing more of their own entertainment. This is difficult because the personality traits that lead someone to be conservative also lead them to not engage in works that dominate culture, such as entertainment and media. And conservative media/shows/games tend to be comically overtly conservative.

But there is a gap in entertainment. If people on the right can make entertaining works that dignify and uplift the values they hold dear without making it overtly political and cringy, they can start winning via culture. More and more people are consuming media/entertainment from East Asia because they don't push woke nonsense (or don't do so as much as it is done in the West), so there clearly is a demand for non-Hollywood non-woke content.

Also, form a strong community. Be a good person. Start a family. Serve as a good role model. You don't have to do everything on your own. If you're a positive influence on just a few people around you, then you are already doing way more than the average person.

People on the right need to be better at winning the culture war by producing more of their own entertainment.

This might help some, but I doubt its enough. Because the marketplace of ideas doesn't select for truth, but for virulence. Many left wing memes are "cognitive heroin"; however bad they are long-term, too many people will prefer them. The Left's positions is simply more persuasive — or should I say "seductive"? — than the right's.

Start a family.

Far easier said than done in today's environment. And is this section aimed at me personally, or just a generic "you"? Because I'd have different answers each way.

Because the marketplace of ideas doesn't select for truth, but for virulence.

I believe you mean infectivity, not virulence. Infectivity is how easily something's spread; virulence is its tendency to kill its host.

Yeah, I'm not so sure he's wrong about that one.

Generic statement, I don't spend enough time here to form an image of any individual poster.

Also not meant to be a fully exhaustive answer, just an example of things that can be done. I don't think I need to repeat what other people have said, they have already said it far better than I can.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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