site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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.

4
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Here are some general arguments for why women are choosing bear over men, trying to not strawman to the best of my ability:

I think I can do better: The framing of the question sets it up as an obstacle, so the respondents are treating it as one. If the question was "Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man or a guidebook to local plants?" then people would recognize it as a choice between types of assistance, and (more likely) choose the man. If the question was "Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a bear or a guidebook to local plants?" then they would just be confused because it's obviously trivial and arbitrary. If the man could help you in this hypothetical, then why are you even asking the question?

I thought about bringing up the fact that the question can be leading to an answer by juxtaposing a man to a bear, but I couldn't find a good way to fit it in so I left it out. But it's still telling that if both are being treated as a dangerous being that could potentially harm you, women would rather it be a bear than a man.

Also, I'm not sure how much the framing matters. If the question was "Would you rather be stuck in a forest with a woman or a bear" most people would say woman, and would not probably consider the scenario of fighting a woman.

If the question was "Would you rather be stuck in a cage with a man or a bear" which dials up the potential aggression/dangerous aspect up to 100 then I wonder how many people would still pick bear over a man.