site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 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.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Excellent post!

In general I think we should be suspicious of any public program that tries to hide its costs, or launder those costs onto private actors.

Another example of this is AML/KYC regulations, which basically require banks to serve as a branch of law enforcement at their own expense. From the excellent Bits About Money post on the topic:

Money laundering is, effectively, a process crime. We criminalized it not because of the direct harms, but because it tends to make other interdiction of criminal activity more difficult.

Money laundering covers anything which obscures the link between another crime and the proceeds of that crime. This is intentionally extremely vague and expansive. The victim is, take your pick, either the state or the financial institutions the state has deputized to detect it. [...]

Much like KYC, AML policies are recursive stochastic management of crime. The state deputizes financial institutions to, in effect, change the physics of money. In particular, it wants them to situationally repudiate the fungibility of money. [...] They are required to have policies and procedures which will tend to, statistically, interdict some money laundering and (similar to how we discussed for KYC) trigger additional crimes when accessing the financial system. Particularly in U.S. practice, one sub-goal of this is maximizing the amount of assets which will be tainted by money laundering and then subject to forfeiture proceedings. [...]

And so every financial institution of any size has a Compliance department. One of their functions is having a technological system which will sift through the constant stream of transactions they produce and periodically fire “alerts.” Those alerts go to an analyst for review.

This implies floors upon floors of people who read tweet-length descriptions of financial transactions and, for some very small percentage, click a Big Red Button and begin documenting the heck out of everything. This might sound like a dystopian parody, and it is important to say specifically that this is not merely standard practice but is functionally mandatory. [...]

I think the thing that cryptocurrency enthusiasts are rightest about, which is broadly underappreciated, is that the financial system has been deputized to act as law enforcement. [...] Is this tradeoff worth it? I wish that society and policymakers more closely scrutinized the actual results obtained by AML policies. Plausibly we get sufficient value out of AML to have people attend mandatory diversity training at 1 PM, Banking the Underbanked seminar at 2 PM, and then AML training at 3 PM, while experiencing very little cognitive dissonance. But if that case can be made, then let it be made. I find the opposing case, that AML consumes vast resources and inconveniences legitimate users far out of proportion to positive impact on the legitimate interest of society in interdicting crime, to be very persuasive.

Sorry for the giant quote-post. I don't have much to say about this topic beyond "the above article is fully consistent with what little experience I have of AML/KYC from my work". I just think that article is very very good and also quite relevant to the topic at hand.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats