‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#591

Post by monoideism » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

gsk22 wrote: post #481

monoideism wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war#Broadening_of_the_ ... Specifically, stuff like QAnon, facemask protests, BLM, trans rights, "white privilege", anthem protests, etc etc etc. There's pretty widespread recognition in the US of culture war flashpoints. But before I engage anymore: are you American? Because we're discussing these political topics in the US context in this thread, explicitly.

I am American, which is why I was asking. I just don't understand how "culture war" is any different than "political disagreement over social issues". Why do we need a scary new term?

"Culture war" has been in active use since at least the 1990s, and probably much before.

I get that you don't like the term, but its use in this context is 100% accurate.

And it clearly is not just your side, it's the other side as well. Both of you are engaging in non-stop culture wars. And it's tiring, and dangerous for our country. You've probably not watched a country descend into civil war. I have. It happens much quicker than you'd think.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#592

Post by throwawaygh » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #482

throwawaygh wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Karl Marx WAS a great economist. > He really was not. He was great at politics. Not in the governance sense (he wasn't a statesmen), so you must mean in the other sense ("activities within an organization that are aimed at improving someone's status or position"). But this is sort of a difference without a difference, right? For most of human history, people who were "great at X" were in truth at least as good at…

> Anyways, can you define "serious academic" in a way that doesn't make this sentence tautological? Sure. Basically the entire field of modern day economics does not take the labor theory of value, in the way that Marx means it. In terms of an actual description of how economies work, almost all real life, professional, economists do not take Marxian "economics" seriously. > to give more nuanced analyses It is not a…

> Basically the entire field of modern day economics does not take the labor theory of value, in the way that Marx means it.

Yeah but that's true for EVERY theory of value contemporaneous to Marx.

Saying "economics reject the LTV" is in my mind a bit like saying that physicists reject Newtonian mechanics. It's both true but also severely under-estimates the significant influence of Newton on modern physics.

>> to give more nuanced analyses

> It is not a matter of something being "nuanced" or not. It is instead that the vast majority of modern day economists do not take Marxian economics seriously at all.

I gave one specific example: management schools still draw from labor theories of value to explain competitive pressure and price discovery in the service sector. There are hundreds of other examples like this.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#593

Post by dnissley » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 2:36 AM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #586

dnissley wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think it's too soon to play the blame game? Both of these groups were just following incentives (both to make money and also just survive in a competitive landscape). On top of that there's also two other groups that further complicate the picture: end users and advertisers. It's not clear to me that we need to go through the motions of trying to persecute one of these groups in particular, since the situat…

I don't think so, no. It's wrong to equivocate between groups "following their incentives". Facebook could have chosen not pursue algorithm-based advertising as a business model. The news companies didn't have the option of ignoring Facebook (and Google) by about 2014 or 2015 (news companies also didn't conduct unregulated psychological tests or commit fraud to push a video-first model). I don't really blame Facebook…

Facebook could have chosen not pursue algorithm-based advertising as a business model.

I think this is hugely presumptuous. Is there an alternative model they could have used? Are there companies using such alternative models?

It's hardly persecution to insist that American businesses stop doing gross harm to the American people.

Agreed, but it's very much not clear what the harm is. To say that it's algorithm-based advertising is not at all convincing to me, but maybe there's a good argument for that being the case that I haven't seen? What convinced you?

lots of people still use these platforms and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future

Yes, but I think you underestimate end users. The shift away from supernormal stimuli of all kinds will be slow and arduous, but for whatever reason I have faith that we will do it. We're successfully doing it with smoking, and making good progress on the sugar + sedentary lifestyle front as well with all sorts of niche diets and fitness regimines popping up.

Although it's still super early, I see the beginnings of a move away from this particular brand of virality based social media as well. Examples would be: the popularity of long form lecture series on youtube + online classes (masterclass is fluffy, but also points in this direction), the evolution of shared blocklists on twitter and other similar methods of "bubbling" (including the rise and rise of reddit, as well as discord), the trend of non-toxic, long-lived anonymous accounts on twitter, etc. etc.

Also, and maybe I'm just being unimaginative, but what kinds of market rules would make sense here?

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#594

Post by beaner » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 2:41 AM UTC

croon wrote: post #107

apatters wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you genuinely believe the mainstream US media doesn't lean left, have a look at the Media Bias Chart: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ The methodology is thorough and non-partisan (that's the point). Note that the triangle's apex is literally left of center.

Isn't the vertical alignment much more important than the horizontal? Not that it counters your point, but the left alignment at the top is very minor.

It would be more helpful if the logos were encased in circles, sized to represent the reach of the publication.

This chart is part of the equation, but it says nothing about which of the publications in it have more influence.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#595

Post by tonfreed » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 3:53 AM UTC

another-dave wrote: post #56

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

The problem with this is not many people actually use Twitter, and they actively derank content they don't like. For example just today I noticed "#donutdick" trending because the leader of the opposition down here said something stupid, but if I look literally anywhere else on the internet all I see is people criticising the premier.

I think you're 100% correct, social media stories are the equivalent of the cute fluffy stories 20 years ago, but there's a huge moral hazard associated with that.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#596

Post by free_rms » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 4:14 AM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #589

free_rms wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, we're back to the magical shifting definition. If there's such a world of difference, why conflate the two using the same word?

That's a question for the English language and dictionary authors, not for me. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/us/merriam-webster-racism...

Any thoughts of your own on the matter? We're way in the sidebar, don't worry about downvotes. Tell me why.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#597

Post by f1refly » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

orf wrote: post #509

Viliam1234 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is fighting for others a problem? Generally, it is not, but there is a risk that "people who are not X, but are fighting for X" will misrepresent the opinions of "people who are X". Also, "people who are X" usually have diverse opinions, while the "people who are not X, but are fighting for X" crowd often develops a monolithic opinion, and if you disagree with it, you are called anti-X. To give an example, I kn…

> but a woke white person might sic a Twitter mob on me for the sin of cultural appropriation. Who cares. Wasn’t the point of the article you’re commenting on that a tiny minority is responsible for outsized impact in discussions like this? So who cares what a “Twitter mob” says about you practicing yoga? Does this really have any bearing on current social justice issues like real cultural appropriation, anymore than…

Your employer who's afraid of a pr disaster cares. Maybe your landlord cares. Some of the more unstable mobsters might care and threaten your physical well-being. Those three points happened already, they destroyed lifes and careers.

Also I never understood the concept of "cultural appropriation", what the heck does that even mean? As long as human history goes we've been copying cultural perks from other lands, regions and tribes. To tell people this is suddenly not okay for some reason is beyond crazy.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#598

Post by barry-cotter » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #441

barry-cotter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t believe you’re a lunatic. I believe your values are inimical to excellence and that you support destroying one of the tiny number of schools that support accelerated education for gifted children in the USA. That benefits no one and harms the children deprived of the opportunity to go to a school where they are challenged.

But you led with people like me as example of extremism in modern discourse. What makes me not an extremist but my peers extremists? It is true that we probably have somewhat different values. I don't personally value TJ having some high rating as decided by magazines and would happily sacrifice scores if I believed it was possible to better provide education to gifted students across Fairfax County. And I do believe…

If you read what I wrote you will not find the word extremist anywhere. I didn’t say you you intend to sabotage quality education. I said you were against excellence. Turning a gifted school into a normal one will in practice be the end of academic acceleration. There’s no reason to believe getting rid of an option for the gifted will benefit anyone. If you have any examples to the contrary please share. Academic acceleration is rare in the US.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#599

Post by nikitaga » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #575

nikitaga wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: "if you don't support Black lives, unfriend me" (a sentiment you agree with, from your other comment in this thread) Step 2: "I almost never encounter people who think we should [...] not fight racism" You're free to exclude anyone you don't like from your friends – it's your life. But if you do this, maybe don't use the fact that your bubble doesn't have anyone who thinks differently from you as evidence of…

My so-called "bubble" includes dozens of uniquely massive metros that represent hundreds of millions of people. They drive, and historically have driven, most advances in art, culture, innovation and economic output. So it's not like I'm living in some remote backwater getting my news from obscure blogs. I'm up in the mix. As far as the current movement that aims to of change policy and perspectives to better protect…

> My so-called "bubble" includes dozens of uniquely massive metros that represent hundreds of millions of people.

This can also describe the entirety of hard-left twitter, which yes, definitely is a filter bubble and an echo chamber, which has nothing to do with geographic distribution, but everything to do with groupthink, high internal conformity, and not being receptive to foreign ideas.

> Can you name a couple historic movements that had the goal of expanding rights or ending oppression that you, today, would oppose?

Are you implying there would be a shortage of those? In the US:

- Gun rights as they are

- Antivax

- Pro-life movement

- Unrestricted freedom of speech

- Certain special religious rights (regarding exemptions from various taxes / rules / etc.)

- "Free markets" in specific fields like healthcare

- Largely unrestricted rights to political donations

- etc.

Each of those has many, many millions of passionate defenders. These are legitimate civil rights issues / movements, even if you disagree with them.

Something being a "civil rights movement" does not automatically make it right, even if historically that was more often the case than not.

Even communism could be described as a civil rights movement, if it won and discredited capitalism. It is described that way in countries where it won.

Both pro-life and pro-choice can be correctly described as civil rights movements – rights of the mother vs rights of the fetus. I'm not pro-life, but I am able to engage with other people's opinions without labeling them racists / bigots / etc. and excluding them from my life, because I can be wrong, and I wouldn't see it otherwise.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#600

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 4:48 AM UTC

srtjstjsj wrote: post #577

shadowgovt wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how the provided counterexample is a counterexample. It appears to indicate unconscious bias favoring women in STEM faculty positions for hiring.

No evidence is given about whether the bias is unconscious.

I believe it can be inferred that it's not conscious, because if women were actually being hired intentionally at a 2 to 1 ratio, that would be an obvious violation of law against gender discrimination.