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RIP Culture War Thread

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Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#151

Post by cmroanirgo »

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…

Wasn't there a thread the other day about how Utpoia always ends in Dystopia?

It seems the internet is a good example of what humanity actually is, given free reign (-ish) to its individuals. In short, there are the lovers and there are the haters. It seems that our fascination with the latter is enough to add fuel to the fire, despite declaring that we're 'a lover'.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#152

Post by komali2 »

manfredo wrote: post #133
komali2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you're saying, and as a Texan, I feel like I understand your viewpoint. I've got thoughts on the issue too, having lived in the Bay area for a couple years now. Mostly they revolve around this point: >half the country. I disagree that half the country is conservative. I was put onto this idea by Michael Moore actually, who argued that if you run the surveys, turns out most Americans support liberal values…

You're essentially trying to say, "we're tolerant of all views except for those that are morally wrong." There's nothing tolerant about that. If that's your definition of tolerance, then Saudi Arabia and mainland China are tolerant countries - they just have different views of morality.

I never used the word tolerant but on that note, I don't think morally wrong views should be tolerated.

What are morals is the obvious counterpoint and that's fine - I'm not arguing people should be jailed for it, or physically harmed. I'm saying the worse that should happen to a racist is that they are ignored. We aren't China, in that sense.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#153

Post by AnimalMuppet »

fzeroracer wrote: post #135
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterargument is: Odious as defined by who ? By me? Heh, eschaton, your beliefs might not come out so well by that measure. Defined by you? No thank you. Defined by society? Twenty years ago, homosexual marriage was an odious belief by that standard. Today, it's not (instead, opposing it is now considered odious). Same with racism sixty years ago. Same with slavery 160 years ago. "Odious" is a moving target. Bu…

I assume you have not read Sarte's comments, then? Whenever you participate in a community you accept that there are going to be individuals controlling the discussion to an extent and cleaning up things that affect the site in a negative way. For example no matter how kindly you might argue or how much data you may provide on how the Jewish people should be eradicated, that sort of comment would get you rapidly flag…

I have read Sarte's comments (at least I think I have - no link, so I'm not sure).

Look, I'm glad that racism and genocide are banned on HN, and that I don't have to wade through the garbage. CW wasn't trying to be HN, though. It had moderators, but they had a different set of filters, and they let a lot more through. That was by intent and design.

Then some people decided that, because it allowed stuff from the far right, it was supporting the far right, and that wasn't OK - any forum that allowed it at all had to be shut down, even if they allowed it from the far left as well.

From what it sounds like from the article (not an unbiased source, I know), the CW moderators were doing pretty well at their intended task, and a pretty interesting community was flourishing there. But some outside people decided that their definition of "odious" should be the one enforced, and threw various increasingly dishonest hissy fits until CW shut down.

Is that really a good thing?

Is it really a good thing if more than one group figures out that they can do it?

The urge to censor viewpoints that we consider odious is strong, but I'm really not sure it's the most righteous course (especially as it was practiced here).

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#154

Post by dvtrn »

chc wrote: post #150
dvtrn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to behold that every response to this comment in the last hour, with the most recently made response being posted 56 minutes ago (as of, at least before the time I hit the 'reply' button) are ALL downvoted to light grey. I await my turn for making this observation.

The responses are also mostly expressing the exact same hollow moral relativism — "Who is to say what is odious?" — so it's not surprising that they're voted similarly.

I suppose that's where I'm going to disagree, the idea that these responses are 'hollow' by daring to ask such a question. Maybe it's because I had the honor of living at a time in the US when certain behaviors were not only deemed socially odious but were codified in law as odious until enough people stood up and asked "who are you to say sending my daughter to a segregated school is odious" or "what is so odious about my mother choosing to sit at a certain place in this eating establishment" that sweeping legal and social change (with much room for continued progress to be made, mind you) came as a result of such 'hollow' and 'relativist' inquiries-as you call them.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#155

Post by mikeash »

malvosenior wrote: post #119
mikeash wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem is that too many people think “polite” just means “no profanity or name-calling.” It is impossible to respectfully argue for a racist or homophobic position. The very nature of what you’re arguing for is that some people are inherently less than others, which is the opposite of respect. But if you state such an argument without using naughty words, a lot of people will misinterpret that as respect…

A lot of people will extend the definition of "racist" to include things they don't like but would not be considered racist by most people. For instance there are still people who think the Covington teens are racist even after the additional footage became available. I've seen plenty of accusations of racism against people who say the teens are innocent.

People will make bad arguments on all sides. This is not a surprise, and is not really related to my point.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#156

Post by tomatotomato37 »

ufmace wrote: post #122
jasode wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. The naivete of everyone is somewhat understandable because each generation lets new technology (e.g. telegraph, airplanes, internet, etc) seduce them into thinking its capabilities will help humans unders…

Those are true and good points, and the overall argument may be true too. But if so, what are we to do? Don't bother trying to make the world a more peaceful place because we are doomed to failure?

The big issue is that we are trying to make technology as the solution to a uniquely human problem, when at most it would just shift some factors around. It's pretty telling that nuclear superweapons have somehow managed to do more for (forcing) peace than all those other technologies mentioned above

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#157

Post by komali2 »

50656E6973 wrote: post #98
komali2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I'm skeptical of this - I've never seen a polite racist argument, for example, or a polite homophobic one. The closest I've seen is a post riddled with condescension - something along the lines of "you don't understand, I'm trying to save your soul from the…

I've been racially slandered for posting MLK quotes, even though I'm not black (they assumed I was). Conversely I've also been called a racist/bigot for claiming white people didn't invent racism/slavery, or that statistical differences in social groups shouldn't automatically be attributed to oppression, or that Frederick Douglass is evidence of how someone can free themselves from oppression. They obviously had nev…

>Conversely I've also been called a racist/bigot for claiming white people didn't invent racism/slavery, or that statistical differences in social groups shouldn't automatically be attributed to oppression,

Hmm. That sounds like it can be frustrating, but I can see how it can happen. For example - what's the point of claiming "white people didn't invent slavery?" I can't think of any reason that doesn't involve a blanket statement about either white people or some other race, which would be prejudgement/prejudice by definition. Hence, smacks of racism. Similar for statistical differences in social groups - dangerous territory as it is what "rational racists" try to do all the time. I use those statistics all the time though to demonstrate that it's impossible to prove that a group of people have a certain average IQ or some other grab bag trait because of race, due to noise from other variables like socioeconomic status, local culture, local healthcare availability, local government policy, etc.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#158

Post by pitt1980 »

BryantD wrote: post #44
pitt1980 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it 'worth drilling into'? What's the relevance?

If there are 10 right wingers and 10 left wingers, but the right wingers post 10x as many comments, that's a rather different scenario than if they're posting equal numbers of comments.

Even if that’s the case, so what?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#159

Post by chc »

dvtrn wrote: post #154
chc wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The responses are also mostly expressing the exact same hollow moral relativism — "Who is to say what is odious?" — so it's not surprising that they're voted similarly.

I suppose that's where I'm going to disagree, the idea that these responses are 'hollow' by daring to ask such a question. Maybe it's because I had the honor of living at a time in the US when certain behaviors were not only deemed socially odious but were codified in law as odious until enough people stood up and asked "who are you to say sending my daughter to a segregated school is odious" or "what is so odious ab…

It's not asking the question that's hollow — it's actually a worthwhile question — it's asking it as a rhetorical question, as those comments do. They are asking it for the specific purpose of not answering it. If they'd actually grappled with the complexity of the question to come up with an answer, I suspect they'd be upvoted.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#160

Post by MFLoon »

kadendogthing wrote: post #145
MFLoon wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear: you're arguing in favor of doxing/no-platforming/otherwise suppressing people who espouse 'ridiculous, harmful, or "bad"' ideas? Leaving aside the issue of pre-judging which ideas fall into that bucket, what about the fallible targeting mechanisms of the mob? Do you think that what happened to the culture war thread was good and justified?

Where does "doxing" come into play? Why did you just whimsically group those together? Feels like a bad faith question.

Because they were grouped together in the original article, as tactics Scott Alexander's detractors had employed against him in trying to silence the CW threads.
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