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RIP Culture War Thread

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Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#21

Post by seiferteric »

labster wrote: post #16
ufmace wrote: post #14

This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, w…

It sounds like you wanted a revolutionary open discourse, and are surprised that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. I really don't know how to fix the human empathy problem, though.

My problem is all of the throwing stones in glass houses, hypocrisy an self righteousness I see out there. It's so easy to attack something a public figure might have once said but no one is looking through the "attackers" entire history to see what they might have once said. I don't believe any real person has never said something they later regretted (or should regret) and would be embarrassed by if it came out. As you said, empathy is the problem. People need to be more forgiving ans understanding. Only when someone has established a record of being wrong/bad should they be "attacked" for it, otherwise it should be sufficient to respectfully point out why you think they are wrong and move on with your life.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#22

Post by paulpauper »

I dunno why people think moderating comments is so hard. It's obvious when someone is arguing in bad faith: repeating the same stuff over and over, condescending tone, dismissing opposing side, etc. People are afraid of being accused of censorship.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#23

Post by ufmace »

gipp wrote: post #19
ufmace wrote: post #14

This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, w…

What you've left out of that idyll of the early internet, though, is that its population was - smaller, by many orders of magnitude - from a highly homogeneous distribution of cultural backgrounds - mostly of comfortable material means These are, and have probably always been, prerequisites for the kind of civil discourse you're talking about. The "heavy-handedness" of tech companies is IMO less a cause than it is a…

You may well be right about the civil nature of things in the early days being due to being composed of a small group of techies whose culture wasn't all that different from each other. Maybe it was naive of everyone. It doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world, though, to hope that even the most different of us could talk out our difference more and resort to violence and intimidation less. Maybe we're now seeing how wrong/naive we all were.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#24

Post by thebooktocome »

wbxrs wrote: post #15

Looking at those charts, why are libertarians considered right-wing? They may be so economically, but they definitely are to the left (or even the far left) socially. Giving that this post talks about social stuff, and not economical stuff, I believe that 51%/49% chart to be simply wrong.

They may be socially liberal as individuals, but they are all too willing to curtail the government's ability to protect the rights of minorities. That's why they get classified as right-wing by most everyone except themselves.

For example, the libertarian solution to the Christian baker, gay wedding cake problem is that the government does not have the right to stipulate non-discrimination laws for public-facing businesses. Follow that logic to its natural conclusion, and we're back to segregated restaurants. Doesn't sound very leftist to me.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#25

Post by ufmace »

labster wrote: post #16
ufmace wrote: post #14

This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, w…

It sounds like you wanted a revolutionary open discourse, and are surprised that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. I really don't know how to fix the human empathy problem, though.

I'd say that I'm not worried that the discourse is full of revolutionaries. I'm more concerned that the extremist tactics and justifications that the worst of them have used in the real world have carried over to the internet, and we get into the same old arms race where everyone has to copy the tactics of the worst actor out there, or get swamped by them.

To truly have empathy for all is indeed a hard problem though.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#26

Post by rosser »

thebooktocome wrote: post #24
wbxrs wrote: post #15

Looking at those charts, why are libertarians considered right-wing? They may be so economically, but they definitely are to the left (or even the far left) socially. Giving that this post talks about social stuff, and not economical stuff, I believe that 51%/49% chart to be simply wrong.

They may be socially liberal as individuals, but they are all too willing to curtail the government's ability to protect the rights of minorities. That's why they get classified as right-wing by most everyone except themselves. For example, the libertarian solution to the Christian baker, gay wedding cake problem is that the government does not have the right to stipulate non-discrimination laws for public-facing bus…

The counter-argument to that is often something like, "Well, people just won't patronize the segregated establishments, because who would support that?!", and with that, we've demonstrably already lost touch with reality.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#27

Post by iron0013 »

manfredo wrote: post #13

What really hit home was this passage: > I acknowledge many people’s lived experience that the thread felt right-wing; my working theory is that most of the people I talk to about this kind of thing are Bay Area liberals for whom the thread was their first/only exposure to a space with any substantial right-wing presence at all, which must have made it feel scarily conservative. I moved from Western Washington where…

I'm from the midwest, and the thread seemed consistently right-wing and reactionary to me. I don't encounter people with... let's be charitable and call it "controversial" politics like those of the typical Culture War Thread poster in my day-to-day life, so what exactly does Scott think is an appropriate contrast to the liberal bubble he thinks dominates west coast tech culture? East Texas? A Trump rally?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#28

Post by fallingfrog »

I think part of the reason for this is just the period of dislocation that we're living in. I mean if the culture war thread was around in 1967 what kind of things do you think you'd find in it? It would have been much worse than what people write today. 7000 buildings burned in the city of Detroit and the president had to send in the 82nd and 101st airborne divisions to put down the rioting. What would those people have said on reddit? Now, things are changing again, and people are dividing into camps. In other words I think that the external situation is driving the online discourse rather than the other way around.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#29

Post by haberman »

paulpauper wrote: post #22

I dunno why people think moderating comments is so hard. It's obvious when someone is arguing in bad faith: repeating the same stuff over and over, condescending tone, dismissing opposing side, etc. People are afraid of being accused of censorship.

The problem, as described in this article, is that some people have good faith beliefs, respectfully expressed, that are nevertheless so repugnant to others that you will be tarred for not censoring them.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#30

Post by Stronico »

thebooktocome wrote: post #24
wbxrs wrote: post #15

Looking at those charts, why are libertarians considered right-wing? They may be so economically, but they definitely are to the left (or even the far left) socially. Giving that this post talks about social stuff, and not economical stuff, I believe that 51%/49% chart to be simply wrong.

They may be socially liberal as individuals, but they are all too willing to curtail the government's ability to protect the rights of minorities. That's why they get classified as right-wing by most everyone except themselves. For example, the libertarian solution to the Christian baker, gay wedding cake problem is that the government does not have the right to stipulate non-discrimination laws for public-facing bus…

That's like saying having legal abortion guarantees a zero percent birthrate. It would be legal to for restaurant owners to offer segregated sections if they wanted to, that's all.
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