RIP Culture War Thread - /r/slatestarcodex's regular thread for debating polarizing issues showed the difficulties and risks of hosting those conversations
This is a really good post that discusses a lot of topics very relevant to Tildes, and helps explain why moderation isn't nearly as simple as "just let people discuss anything, as long as they...
This is a really good post that discusses a lot of topics very relevant to Tildes, and helps explain why moderation isn't nearly as simple as "just let people discuss anything, as long as they stay civil".
Perfect illustration of why containment doesn't work, and attracts more and more of the people you don't want to be dealing with - who then continue to pollute the rest of the place with their...
Perfect illustration of why containment doesn't work, and attracts more and more of the people you don't want to be dealing with - who then continue to pollute the rest of the place with their nonsense (and it is nonsense). On a place like reddit it's hard to track these people and banning them has no effect, either. When assholes crash your party, you don't give them their own room. Once you're on to them you kick them out of the house.
I think the example set by /r/neutralpolitics shows that you can make progress in this area. It's in framing the discussion, and yes, it does require more moderation. Perhaps the better question is, do we need the headache, and can it even be avoided? I don't know. Plenty of politics here already in various threads, but I think what's missing is we don't have many/any of the people who make grinding away on that millstone their daily purpose on the forums they visit.
Edit: I think it's worth noting that a key part of /r/np's success is in what they consider to be a valid qualified source. You'll notice that since the alt-right mindset is not based in facts, they have no qualified sources to cite, and are so at a rather key disadvantage in any discussions.
I was hoping that once we have a wiki here and a $shortlink mechanism to the wiki pages, records might arise that 'settle' various topics in a once-and-for-all manner with hard facts and solid sources. These can then be linked easily from memory whenever those conversations rear their heads. Anyone trying to weasel in bullshit then has the unenviable task of refuting the entire body of evidence, which only gets updated and more immune to bullshit as the topic gets continually linked over time. People who want to refute said bullshit only need to remember the link's short name, not type out a new chapter of war and peace every single time.
The opposite of these pages would naturally arise over time as well, the 'fairy tale' equivalent full of opinionated sources and astroturfed, unsourced bullshit masquerading as real evidence claiming to refute the real page's hard facts. Being a record of its own, however, it's just exposing itself to attack and rigorous dismantling of the bullshit, as well as serving as a warning what 'fake science' and 'fake news' actually look like. It's exposed.
It's as if the conversation becomes a pair of warring pages instead of a war that appears in every thread - instead the links to those pages appear, and force the conversation to start off right where it last left off every time.
That's if we don't take steps to excise the bullshit and the purveyors of bullshit when they lose their shit after being called out, which we would. I don't know how well this would all work out but it's interesting to think about, and the wikis have other advantages.
I don't see much value in having a dedicated space where people are freer to be jerks to one another, if that's what a politics space would be taken as. Any political space would have to have...
I don't see much value in having a dedicated space where people are freer to be jerks to one another, if that's what a politics space would be taken as. Any political space would have to have trained, dedicated people making sure that conversations start with a good frame that isn't unreasonably hostile to opposing views. From there, they'd need to be carefully tracked in the comments, and that's where things can get tricky because it's where tempers are most likely to flair over genuine miscommunications and glib presentations.
Passion is a form of emotional investment, and so this sort of content will be highly engaging for its participants. It's an open question on whether you can reasonably restrain that passion all the time.
Sometimes I wonder if much of the problem with discussing politics (online or elsewhere) isn't the participants' insistence and desire to make sure everyone else agrees with them. Starting off with a culture of acknowledging and accepting that people are going to disagree (and that there will be some conservatives, and no, holding conservative views is not the same as engaging in hate speech), and that there's a way to disagree without trying to bite each others' heads off may do some important work for laying the groundwork of potentially positive exchanges on political discussion.
I used to moderate a very large politics and religion subforum within a very large gaming forum. In my experience, I don't think this is really possible. There is naturally going to be a span of...
Exemplary
dedicated people making sure that conversations start with a good frame that isn't unreasonably hostile to opposing views.
I used to moderate a very large politics and religion subforum within a very large gaming forum. In my experience, I don't think this is really possible.
There is naturally going to be a span of what we consider "acceptable views" and where you draw those lines will depend on where you stand on those issues yourself. And generally, a fair minded liberal or conservative is going to have their rulings undermined by partisans who don't view their "rulings" as legitimate. What winds up happening is endless toxic arguments about the moderation in addition to endless toxic arguments about politics.
Part of the problem is that on truly polarizing issues there isn't really a way to clarify that in an unbiased way. You either think Charles Murray is onto something or you have a basic understanding of what the Ecological Fallacy is. There is no way to frame that discussion that's fair to opposing views. Half the point of even having the argument is to frame the other side as being bad. It doesn't even have to be in bad faith, if you are on one side of an argument odds are that you already internalized a framing that makes you hostile to the other side.
You can moderate to guarantee that all discussion is fact based, but your moderators are human and fallible and some political tribes that are largely not fact based may still have something useful to add to the discussion. For example, anti-GMO activists are generally motivated by a tenuous understanding of GMOs from a standpoint of consumer safety. If you shut down ALL anti-GMO arguments on the grounds of it not being scientifically factually accurate you're going to wind up shutting down the handful of arguments that are actually tenable.
From there, they'd need to be carefully tracked in the comments, and that's where things can get tricky because it's where tempers are most likely to flair over genuine miscommunications and glib presentations.
Once upon a time flame wars were the biggest problem with arguing politics, and this sentiment you've expressed seems like a relic of that era. Unfortunately, that time has passed and biggest problem now isn't just that people are mean to each other, it's that social media has literally weaponized/gamified rhetoric to take advantage of moderation standards in ways that shut down discussion unfavorable to their views. They employ techniques like JAQing off, sea-lioning, gish gallops, and dogpiling specifically to overwhelm and frustrate people who disagree with their point of view. This is done primarily by alt-Right/GamerGater types, but you also see it sometimes from Anti-Vaxxers and certain quarters of the "Dirtbag Left."
On some level, once you let a critical mass of people like that in there is no saving your forum. They're wholly toxic to discourse because they're not interested in discourse. They're interesting is pretending to engage in discourse in order to get exposure for their views. They're playing Debate: The Gathering. You need to have some decent EQ as a moderator to actually be able to spot this happening at scale.
Starting off with a culture of acknowledging and accepting that people are going to disagree
I've rarely found this to be a problem in discussion forums. If people weren't going to disagree the forum wouldn't have any discussion in the first place. You could do some slight things to encourage people to be open to changing their minds or "agree to disagree" more than they do now but that's it. I think the bigger impediment is the temptation to try and be fair to everyone and letting in bad actors. Many progressive/liberal forums work quite well and are able to have productive discussions that span members from the center right (like, Mitt Romney types) all the way to "Breadtube" Socialists and Communists. People might get mean or unfair or even nasty, but as long as a moderator shuts down threads that devolve into unproductive sniping and personal attacks it's fine overall.
Once you let Fox News conservatives, tea party types, or tankies into the party though, it goes downhill fast. In small numbers they're manageable, but once they achieve large enough numbers to where they feel like they have a base they will rapidly wreck the place. They can't help themselves, it's baked into who they are and how they think. They're authoritarians at their core, and authoritarians don't believe in persuasion or deliberation, they believe in dominance and imposing hierarchy by force.
When they engage in "debate" it's not an exercise in moral suasion, it's as a form of dominance posturing which is why their go-to strategies are committing the fallacy fallacy, playing civility/tone police, or generally hunting for excuses to disqualify your opinion. Once they get involved, everyone else, even the liberal types who DO believe in discussion, get put on the defensive and get out of the habit of listening to each other.
I will point out, none of that stuff above is exclusive to the alt right. Lots of "woke" progressives fall into the habit of looking for excuses to disqualify you from participating rather than listening to or engaging with what you're saying. What differentiates them from the alt right is that it's a bad habit borne of laziness with the "woker-than-thou" crowd, but it's a weaponized strategy among the alt right. You can train and moderate the "woke" person to be a better poster. You can't fix an authoritarian though. Not on an internet forum anyway, they need to work out shit in their personal lives first.
I'm going to go all meta again - I've deliberately avoided places like /r/scc and don't have direct knowledge of the topic under discussion because I've seen way too many of these metastasizing...
I'm going to go all meta again - I've deliberately avoided places like /r/scc and don't have direct knowledge of the topic under discussion because I've seen way too many of these metastasizing malignant disputes elsewhere.
Naming the forum "Culture War" might have been a tip-off that malevolent tactics of "warfare" wouldn't be punished.
Many progressive/liberal forums work quite well and are able to have productive discussions that span members from the center right (like, Mitt Romney types) all the way to "Breadtube" Socialists and Communists. People might get mean or unfair or even nasty, but as long as a moderator shuts down threads that devolve into unproductive sniping and personal attacks it's fine overall.
Based on experience, I've found that people with honest intentions and different value sets can look at the same set of facts objectively, come to opposing political conclusions, and still live together. [I'll do an "I Married a Goldwater Republican" AMA sometime.]
The intrinsic problem is that even with the best of intentions, the only way to "win" is to attack the underlying values of the opposition, not come to a consensus on which shared values can be used to sustain a community.
The whole formulation of "culture war", in the U.S. at least, was the opening salvo in an ongoing attempt to destroy liberal pluralism. The noteworthy thing about Buchanan's "culture war" speech is that it endorsed intolerance of the liberal viewpoint and dog-whistle racism in superficially logical, civil language, employing a slew of dishonest rhetorical tactics; it's the rock that right-wing America is currently standing on.
Among the tenets of liberal pluralism is that we can agree to disagree.
As shown in the /r/scc "Culture Wars" debacle and others, unrestricted tactics in political forums are weapons intended to destroy the ability of an opposing viewpoint to dispute at all. As you said, that's at the heart of the authoritarian undertaking.
It's hard to fight against this without running headlong into the paradox of tolerance. Efforts to do so get weaponized as "Waah, you don't care about free speech!". Scott Alexander was incredibly naive, at best, to believe otherwise.
It's not enough to spot this action and call out the aggressors, but rather, just post a sign on the gate that says, effectively, "We are pluralists, we don't tolerate intolerance" and enforce that principle firmly regardless of which political position uses damaging tactics.
I don't think neutral politics is an improvement. Many studies suggest that the facts don't particularly matter in changing hearts and minds. Moreover neutral politics further exacerbates the...
I don't think neutral politics is an improvement. Many studies suggest that the facts don't particularly matter in changing hearts and minds. Moreover neutral politics further exacerbates the mentality of "spectator politics" - that we are not participants of the political system but merely observers.
For example, I'm not allowed to ask a question there about the merits of a particular political ideology. I'm not allowed to advocate for anything I believe in as a top comment.
the post itself is fine, but boy do the comments (ironically enough) demonstrate why "culture war" containment bullshit is an awful idea and why internet debate in general is fucking terrible....
the post itself is fine, but boy do the comments (ironically enough) demonstrate why "culture war" containment bullshit is an awful idea and why internet debate in general is fucking terrible. you've got people in there sympathizing with actual nazis for getting fired from their jobs for being nazis because they're being "subject to injustice" and holding up this idea that if we just debate with all people we can come to an amicable compromise, which is laughable and in my opinion, probably one of the dumbest fucking conclusions people have come to in modern times.
like, jesus, can we please, please, please as a collective stop acting like all viewpoints are created equal and should be debated equal, or that being able to shit out a technically competent defense for hitlerist genocide or stalinist purges or anti-vaccination or whatever the fuck suddenly means we need to actually entertain those ideas or validate them instead of combating their rise and telling their adherents to go fuck themselves? i know there's this notion that doing that is essentially leaving people to their own vices, but if even this place doesn't generally lead to people changing their much less extreme viewpoints when there is an incentive to do all of the things that theoretically would convince someone of your viewpoint, what hope do you think you have of convincing a fucking nazi or a tankie or an anti-vaxxer (who all have likely rejected the overwhelming scientific or historical consensus to reach their viewpoint) in a way that won't ultimately facilitate the spread of their views to other people?
"You can lead a horse to water..." Honestly I kind of agree with you that if someone is that far gone, how can we save them? But I think the value in online discussion isn't for them as it for the...
"You can lead a horse to water..."
Honestly I kind of agree with you that if someone is that far gone, how can we save them? But I think the value in online discussion isn't for them as it for the majority of people that generally who don't have those extreme viewpoints. I'm having a discussion with you and with others on this site and generally I've learned a lot of new stuff. I definitely think it's a real shame that it seems that a super-minority of highly prolific posters have managed to take over what seems to be large swaths of the internet and even significant chunks of our culture as well, but I feel like fear of the discussion with others is just as bad if not worse alternative. Idk, I'm not sure how to solve this aside from ignoring the extreme ones and seeking out real discussion with real individuals. Still, I'm not saying I have answers, but I just feel that people not talking to each other is feeding this problem as well.
there's probably not one catch all solution to the problem, really, nor do i think it's one we'll ever solve definitively. i recognize the value in reaching out to people and communicating...
Idk, I'm not sure how to solve this aside from ignoring the extreme ones and seeking out real discussion with real individuals. Still, I'm not saying I have answers, but I just feel that people not talking to each other is feeding this problem as well.
there's probably not one catch all solution to the problem, really, nor do i think it's one we'll ever solve definitively. i recognize the value in reaching out to people and communicating also--because, i mean, a decent number of my comments on tildes are in that vein. realistically, though, i haven't really seen productive results come just from reaching out to people and communicating anywhere on the internet. it's a step for certain, but it obviously can't be the only step, because mere exposure to other people with opposing perspectives unto itself (on the internet anyways) usually just devolves into partisan arguing that goes on for hours but breaks no new ground (or actively creates more division in some cases)
In some ways I can kinda see it, the romantic idea that if everyone had access to all the information they required and a pleasant disposition, you can all arrive on the same page and map out a...
In some ways I can kinda see it, the romantic idea that if everyone had access to all the information they required and a pleasant disposition, you can all arrive on the same page and map out a universal morality. But for enough people, logic and reason are mere tools for the ego, and we all can't just get along cause they want to run the place.
For some context on the issue, I really like sov and nullc's posts in the HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19230282. In the r/slatestarcodex and HN threads, there was a lot of...
"I will be honest and admit I rarely read the [Culture War] thread myself." - Scott
"The experience can be a little jarring because you’ll have some insightful, genuinely depth hub worth comment upvoted and then another highly upvoted comments next to it will be how we should bring back eugenics and how we should limit immigration to people from high IQ countries in Europe and East Asia" - u/ yodatsracist
I noticed three main misleading arguments in the blog post: * That the SSC survey tells us anything about the CW thread. [...] Here is the data on the survey respondents readership of the CW thread: 3175 (42.7%) "No, I don't want to read it", 2346 (31.5%) "No, I didn't know it existed", 1425 (19.1%) "Yes, I read it", 369 (4.9%) "Yes, I comment there", 118 (1.5%) no answer. I don't want to assume bad faith, but I think it's really suspect that this wasn't mentioned in the post.
In the r/slatestarcodex and HN threads, there was a lot of discussion about this as if it was another stock example of deplatforming, but I think the issue is more subtle than that. I see the issue less like "Do we want to be in a world where CW is allowed to exist?" and more "Should CW be part of SSC?". It attracts its own users and brings a different standard of discussion, and that doesn't stay contained.
I'm not very active in the SSC community, but I've been a fan of Scott's articles for years. It was stuff like the CW thread that made me stay away from its community. I wish there would be more self-reflection there about the standards of the community, and I hope the CW thread removal causes some change.
And I think that at least some of this ethos is Scott's fault. I don't understand how this is complicated - if you spend more time being charitable to neoreactionaries than progressives, then the former will feel at home in your community and the latter won't. If you spend more time talking about spurious accusations of racism than things Trump did wrong, that is a very valuable signal about the kind of thing you care about, and people will self-sort accordingly. Your personal beliefs that you only mention offhandedly don't really matter!
I think community is defined more from the top than people generally admit. Maybe I have fundamentally different ideas than Scott about what makes a good online community, and I should find and foster a different place.
Sorry if I went off track a little. I aimed to give some context and ended up rambling about my personal take on the matter. It's part of a subject that's been on my mind a lot, and I've been meaning to find ways to write more about it.
While I am completely unfamiliar with anything related to SSC or its CW thread and I do sympathize with much of what the author puts forward, I think there is a pretty weak spot in this whole...
While I am completely unfamiliar with anything related to SSC or its CW thread and I do sympathize with much of what the author puts forward, I think there is a pretty weak spot in this whole post. The sampling of random comments when discussing any left/right lean is absolutely pitiful. Only 10 comments (that are not shown so as to show just how left/right they are)?
I counted up all the mentions of transgender on three weeks worth of Culture War threads: of five references
Now I do not know exactly how this was sampled(which is an issue itself), but it seems to imply that it searched for the word "transgender." Even if you filter out all slurs with the widest of nets, I would imagine that the word "transgender" would be used significantly less by those who would view transgenderism in any sort of negative way.
Now I do not doubt that claims of the thread consisting largely of right extremists was based on confirmation-bias, being guided towards disagreeable comments, and other effects. That said, I also doubt that such an seemingly infamous thread would not rack up more hateful comments (and maybe even a few more kind comments as well).
This is the most entertaining answer. I don't know if it is right or not since I have only read two articles on SSC, this being one of them, but it made me smile.
This is the most entertaining answer. I don't know if it is right or not since I have only read two articles on SSC, this being one of them, but it made me smile.
Slate Star Codex is the name of the site that Scott Alexander writes essays on. It also has a busy comments section and a subreddit. There's some great posts listed on SSC's About page:...
Slate Star Codex is the name of the site that Scott Alexander writes essays on. It also has a busy comments section and a subreddit. There's some great posts listed on SSC's About page: https://slatestarcodex.com/about/.
Scott used to be a prolific poster on the site LessWrong.com. SSC's initial userbase came from LW, especially as LW became less active. (LessWrong is a site that primarily focuses on learning about how rational thinking and human minds work, for personal growth purposes and AI design purposes. The site has been mainly known for the writing of Eliezer Yudkowsky and the Sequences. SSC is much more variety focused than LW, but retains some of the focus on rationality.)
It's a personal blog that has a decent following. Since it's just written by one guy, the topics are just whatever he's interested in, but for the most part it focuses on rationalism and viewing...
It's a personal blog that has a decent following. Since it's just written by one guy, the topics are just whatever he's interested in, but for the most part it focuses on rationalism and viewing current events/patterns through its lens.
They tend to be long reads with in-depth analysis. Here's a good example post (that stands alone and doesn't need any other context) about 90s environmental movements.
To a greater or lesser degree, that's sort of become all of us, hasen't it?
As a result of some of what I’ve described, I think I’ve become afraid, bitter, paranoid, and quick to assume that anyone who disagrees with me (along a dimension that too closely resembles some of the really bad people I’ve had to deal with) is a bad actor who needs to be discredited and destroyed
To a greater or lesser degree, that's sort of become all of us, hasen't it?
I don't think he deserved what happened to him. I feel sympathy. I think he was mostly at fault for it playing out just so badly, though, and his reasoning is pitiful, almost. I may be biased,...
I don't think he deserved what happened to him. I feel sympathy. I think he was mostly at fault for it playing out just so badly, though, and his reasoning is pitiful, almost.
I had a longer post written out but re-read his article and realized I can't really side with a lot of his decisions but think you are unfairly suggesting that he is somehow biased against...
I had a longer post written out but re-read his article and realized I can't really side with a lot of his decisions but think you are unfairly suggesting that he is somehow biased against progressives and therefore deserves what happened to him. Even in this article, he makes a pretty strong case for his history of voting democrat and having liberal views. I had never heard of the subreddit or culture war threads either but I've started reading his other articles and he seems, if anything, moderate with a very strong liberal bias. I just want to point this out because your comment comes off as if to using potentially alt-right ties to discredit him. I don't agree with how the community was run but I think experiments like this are neat to watch, and it makes me a bit upset to see someone demonized for trying something like this out. I guess I just want to point out that a good portion of the post goes into detail that he was being painted as some sort of alt-right sympathizer and your comment proves to further this narrative. I think that if he had some sort of a history of alt-right sympathies, I'd agree that he was guilty of giving the alt-right, and other fringe groups, a platform. But it's pretty clear this isn't the case and he really did intend on trying to create a diverse discussion group, regardless of if it was or not.
But he even has data to back up that it wasn’t “full of” racist right wings, they were just a vocal minority. And you can’t say you’re sorry he was harassed but also say you’re not sorry his brand...
But he even has data to back up that it wasn’t “full of” racist right wings, they were just a vocal minority. And you can’t say you’re sorry he was harassed but also say you’re not sorry his brand was associated with hateful things because they are one and the same. The harassment is him being painted as a bigot even though he’s not one and that being used against him outside of the context of the discussion he was trying to create.
One thing I was going to mention in my original post was that he did not praise these people for being smart as you’ve pointed out. He said that some of them were smart enough to sway the conversation to be favorable of their view just as entire cultures have been duped in the past (another point that was cherry picked that I think is an unfair representation of his post.) he gave his reasoning for not removing fringe comments and was even more detailed than a “cuz free speech” he realized his experiment in national dialogue wasn’t working and as you said he distanced himself from it. If you think that should amount to him being branded as a racist then I guess I don’t know what to say.
This is a point I've seen brought up a number of times (in r/slatestarcodex and elsewhere) which I find really frustrating. It's not a counterargument at all against "the CW thread (or SSC)...
The harassment is him being painted as a bigot even though he’s not one
This is a point I've seen brought up a number of times (in r/slatestarcodex and elsewhere) which I find really frustrating. It's not a counterargument at all against "the CW thread (or SSC) attracts and platforms bigots".
But he even has data to back up that it wasn’t “full of” racist right wings, they were just a vocal minority.
He omitted that only 5% of the people polled said they comment in the CW thread. And the poll wouldn't account for the possibility of power users heavily influencing the thread. It's misleading to imply that the dominant politics of the CW thread would match the overall userbase.
Yeah, I guess the data argument doesn’t exactly hold up. I can agree this is a bit iffy but taken into context of the rest of the post, it’s clear he does view these things in a negative way and...
Yeah, I guess the data argument doesn’t exactly hold up.
I still think its fair to criticize the fact that in his next line he says some half hearted but about not wanting to be too hard about pedos, islamophobes, and bigots, that reasoning on these things is somehow hard and that other options are obscure and full of pitfalls.
I can agree this is a bit iffy but taken into context of the rest of the post, it’s clear he does view these things in a negative way and is just trying to see why someone may hold these extreme views. I try to have the same mentality because I personally believe the only way to change minds is to understand where they are coming from (which is why I’m so quick to attempt to defend his goals, maybe not so much his actions.) I agree that he definitely comes off a little too pandering to these groups in the post though.
Please let me know where I called him a racist.
Sorry, that sounded like it was direct at your comment, but was more directed to those painting him as something be most likely isn’t. I don’t know much about him other than through his blog now that I’ve been reading a few of his posts, but he seems like pretty genuine person. I don’t agree with how they moderated but I get what they were trying to do I guess.
This is a really good post that discusses a lot of topics very relevant to Tildes, and helps explain why moderation isn't nearly as simple as "just let people discuss anything, as long as they stay civil".
Perfect illustration of why containment doesn't work, and attracts more and more of the people you don't want to be dealing with - who then continue to pollute the rest of the place with their nonsense (and it is nonsense). On a place like reddit it's hard to track these people and banning them has no effect, either. When assholes crash your party, you don't give them their own room. Once you're on to them you kick them out of the house.
I think the example set by /r/neutralpolitics shows that you can make progress in this area. It's in framing the discussion, and yes, it does require more moderation. Perhaps the better question is, do we need the headache, and can it even be avoided? I don't know. Plenty of politics here already in various threads, but I think what's missing is we don't have many/any of the people who make grinding away on that millstone their daily purpose on the forums they visit.
Edit: I think it's worth noting that a key part of /r/np's success is in what they consider to be a valid qualified source. You'll notice that since the alt-right mindset is not based in facts, they have no qualified sources to cite, and are so at a rather key disadvantage in any discussions.
I was hoping that once we have a wiki here and a $shortlink mechanism to the wiki pages, records might arise that 'settle' various topics in a once-and-for-all manner with hard facts and solid sources. These can then be linked easily from memory whenever those conversations rear their heads. Anyone trying to weasel in bullshit then has the unenviable task of refuting the entire body of evidence, which only gets updated and more immune to bullshit as the topic gets continually linked over time. People who want to refute said bullshit only need to remember the link's short name, not type out a new chapter of war and peace every single time.
The opposite of these pages would naturally arise over time as well, the 'fairy tale' equivalent full of opinionated sources and astroturfed, unsourced bullshit masquerading as real evidence claiming to refute the real page's hard facts. Being a record of its own, however, it's just exposing itself to attack and rigorous dismantling of the bullshit, as well as serving as a warning what 'fake science' and 'fake news' actually look like. It's exposed.
It's as if the conversation becomes a pair of warring pages instead of a war that appears in every thread - instead the links to those pages appear, and force the conversation to start off right where it last left off every time.
That's if we don't take steps to excise the bullshit and the purveyors of bullshit when they lose their shit after being called out, which we would. I don't know how well this would all work out but it's interesting to think about, and the wikis have other advantages.
I don't see much value in having a dedicated space where people are freer to be jerks to one another, if that's what a politics space would be taken as. Any political space would have to have trained, dedicated people making sure that conversations start with a good frame that isn't unreasonably hostile to opposing views. From there, they'd need to be carefully tracked in the comments, and that's where things can get tricky because it's where tempers are most likely to flair over genuine miscommunications and glib presentations.
Passion is a form of emotional investment, and so this sort of content will be highly engaging for its participants. It's an open question on whether you can reasonably restrain that passion all the time.
Sometimes I wonder if much of the problem with discussing politics (online or elsewhere) isn't the participants' insistence and desire to make sure everyone else agrees with them. Starting off with a culture of acknowledging and accepting that people are going to disagree (and that there will be some conservatives, and no, holding conservative views is not the same as engaging in hate speech), and that there's a way to disagree without trying to bite each others' heads off may do some important work for laying the groundwork of potentially positive exchanges on political discussion.
I used to moderate a very large politics and religion subforum within a very large gaming forum. In my experience, I don't think this is really possible.
There is naturally going to be a span of what we consider "acceptable views" and where you draw those lines will depend on where you stand on those issues yourself. And generally, a fair minded liberal or conservative is going to have their rulings undermined by partisans who don't view their "rulings" as legitimate. What winds up happening is endless toxic arguments about the moderation in addition to endless toxic arguments about politics.
Part of the problem is that on truly polarizing issues there isn't really a way to clarify that in an unbiased way. You either think Charles Murray is onto something or you have a basic understanding of what the Ecological Fallacy is. There is no way to frame that discussion that's fair to opposing views. Half the point of even having the argument is to frame the other side as being bad. It doesn't even have to be in bad faith, if you are on one side of an argument odds are that you already internalized a framing that makes you hostile to the other side.
You can moderate to guarantee that all discussion is fact based, but your moderators are human and fallible and some political tribes that are largely not fact based may still have something useful to add to the discussion. For example, anti-GMO activists are generally motivated by a tenuous understanding of GMOs from a standpoint of consumer safety. If you shut down ALL anti-GMO arguments on the grounds of it not being scientifically factually accurate you're going to wind up shutting down the handful of arguments that are actually tenable.
Once upon a time flame wars were the biggest problem with arguing politics, and this sentiment you've expressed seems like a relic of that era. Unfortunately, that time has passed and biggest problem now isn't just that people are mean to each other, it's that social media has literally weaponized/gamified rhetoric to take advantage of moderation standards in ways that shut down discussion unfavorable to their views. They employ techniques like JAQing off, sea-lioning, gish gallops, and dogpiling specifically to overwhelm and frustrate people who disagree with their point of view. This is done primarily by alt-Right/GamerGater types, but you also see it sometimes from Anti-Vaxxers and certain quarters of the "Dirtbag Left."
On some level, once you let a critical mass of people like that in there is no saving your forum. They're wholly toxic to discourse because they're not interested in discourse. They're interesting is pretending to engage in discourse in order to get exposure for their views. They're playing Debate: The Gathering. You need to have some decent EQ as a moderator to actually be able to spot this happening at scale.
I've rarely found this to be a problem in discussion forums. If people weren't going to disagree the forum wouldn't have any discussion in the first place. You could do some slight things to encourage people to be open to changing their minds or "agree to disagree" more than they do now but that's it. I think the bigger impediment is the temptation to try and be fair to everyone and letting in bad actors. Many progressive/liberal forums work quite well and are able to have productive discussions that span members from the center right (like, Mitt Romney types) all the way to "Breadtube" Socialists and Communists. People might get mean or unfair or even nasty, but as long as a moderator shuts down threads that devolve into unproductive sniping and personal attacks it's fine overall.
Once you let Fox News conservatives, tea party types, or tankies into the party though, it goes downhill fast. In small numbers they're manageable, but once they achieve large enough numbers to where they feel like they have a base they will rapidly wreck the place. They can't help themselves, it's baked into who they are and how they think. They're authoritarians at their core, and authoritarians don't believe in persuasion or deliberation, they believe in dominance and imposing hierarchy by force.
When they engage in "debate" it's not an exercise in moral suasion, it's as a form of dominance posturing which is why their go-to strategies are committing the fallacy fallacy, playing civility/tone police, or generally hunting for excuses to disqualify your opinion. Once they get involved, everyone else, even the liberal types who DO believe in discussion, get put on the defensive and get out of the habit of listening to each other.
I will point out, none of that stuff above is exclusive to the alt right. Lots of "woke" progressives fall into the habit of looking for excuses to disqualify you from participating rather than listening to or engaging with what you're saying. What differentiates them from the alt right is that it's a bad habit borne of laziness with the "woker-than-thou" crowd, but it's a weaponized strategy among the alt right. You can train and moderate the "woke" person to be a better poster. You can't fix an authoritarian though. Not on an internet forum anyway, they need to work out shit in their personal lives first.
I'm going to go all meta again - I've deliberately avoided places like /r/scc and don't have direct knowledge of the topic under discussion because I've seen way too many of these metastasizing malignant disputes elsewhere.
Naming the forum "Culture War" might have been a tip-off that malevolent tactics of "warfare" wouldn't be punished.
Based on experience, I've found that people with honest intentions and different value sets can look at the same set of facts objectively, come to opposing political conclusions, and still live together. [I'll do an "I Married a Goldwater Republican" AMA sometime.]
The intrinsic problem is that even with the best of intentions, the only way to "win" is to attack the underlying values of the opposition, not come to a consensus on which shared values can be used to sustain a community.
The whole formulation of "culture war", in the U.S. at least, was the opening salvo in an ongoing attempt to destroy liberal pluralism. The noteworthy thing about Buchanan's "culture war" speech is that it endorsed intolerance of the liberal viewpoint and dog-whistle racism in superficially logical, civil language, employing a slew of dishonest rhetorical tactics; it's the rock that right-wing America is currently standing on.
Among the tenets of liberal pluralism is that we can agree to disagree.
As shown in the /r/scc "Culture Wars" debacle and others, unrestricted tactics in political forums are weapons intended to destroy the ability of an opposing viewpoint to dispute at all. As you said, that's at the heart of the authoritarian undertaking.
It's hard to fight against this without running headlong into the paradox of tolerance. Efforts to do so get weaponized as "Waah, you don't care about free speech!". Scott Alexander was incredibly naive, at best, to believe otherwise.
In addition to the people "winning" by destroying any recognition of shared values among opposing viewpoints, there will be debaters fully armed and well-practiced with the tools of dishonest rhetoric, willing to distort and lie unceasingly for purposes of constructing a new reality, or simply masturbating to fantasies of their own importance.
It's not enough to spot this action and call out the aggressors, but rather, just post a sign on the gate that says, effectively, "We are pluralists, we don't tolerate intolerance" and enforce that principle firmly regardless of which political position uses damaging tactics.
I don't think neutral politics is an improvement. Many studies suggest that the facts don't particularly matter in changing hearts and minds. Moreover neutral politics further exacerbates the mentality of "spectator politics" - that we are not participants of the political system but merely observers.
For example, I'm not allowed to ask a question there about the merits of a particular political ideology. I'm not allowed to advocate for anything I believe in as a top comment.
the post itself is fine, but boy do the comments (ironically enough) demonstrate why "culture war" containment bullshit is an awful idea and why internet debate in general is fucking terrible. you've got people in there sympathizing with actual nazis for getting fired from their jobs for being nazis because they're being "subject to injustice" and holding up this idea that if we just debate with all people we can come to an amicable compromise, which is laughable and in my opinion, probably one of the dumbest fucking conclusions people have come to in modern times.
like, jesus, can we please, please, please as a collective stop acting like all viewpoints are created equal and should be debated equal, or that being able to shit out a technically competent defense for hitlerist genocide or stalinist purges or anti-vaccination or whatever the fuck suddenly means we need to actually entertain those ideas or validate them instead of combating their rise and telling their adherents to go fuck themselves? i know there's this notion that doing that is essentially leaving people to their own vices, but if even this place doesn't generally lead to people changing their much less extreme viewpoints when there is an incentive to do all of the things that theoretically would convince someone of your viewpoint, what hope do you think you have of convincing a fucking nazi or a tankie or an anti-vaxxer (who all have likely rejected the overwhelming scientific or historical consensus to reach their viewpoint) in a way that won't ultimately facilitate the spread of their views to other people?
"You can lead a horse to water..."
Honestly I kind of agree with you that if someone is that far gone, how can we save them? But I think the value in online discussion isn't for them as it for the majority of people that generally who don't have those extreme viewpoints. I'm having a discussion with you and with others on this site and generally I've learned a lot of new stuff. I definitely think it's a real shame that it seems that a super-minority of highly prolific posters have managed to take over what seems to be large swaths of the internet and even significant chunks of our culture as well, but I feel like fear of the discussion with others is just as bad if not worse alternative. Idk, I'm not sure how to solve this aside from ignoring the extreme ones and seeking out real discussion with real individuals. Still, I'm not saying I have answers, but I just feel that people not talking to each other is feeding this problem as well.
there's probably not one catch all solution to the problem, really, nor do i think it's one we'll ever solve definitively. i recognize the value in reaching out to people and communicating also--because, i mean, a decent number of my comments on tildes are in that vein. realistically, though, i haven't really seen productive results come just from reaching out to people and communicating anywhere on the internet. it's a step for certain, but it obviously can't be the only step, because mere exposure to other people with opposing perspectives unto itself (on the internet anyways) usually just devolves into partisan arguing that goes on for hours but breaks no new ground (or actively creates more division in some cases)
No your honestly right. At least you can say that you tried?
In some ways I can kinda see it, the romantic idea that if everyone had access to all the information they required and a pleasant disposition, you can all arrive on the same page and map out a universal morality. But for enough people, logic and reason are mere tools for the ego, and we all can't just get along cause they want to run the place.
For some context on the issue, I really like sov and nullc's posts in the HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19230282.
In the r/slatestarcodex and HN threads, there was a lot of discussion about this as if it was another stock example of deplatforming, but I think the issue is more subtle than that. I see the issue less like "Do we want to be in a world where CW is allowed to exist?" and more "Should CW be part of SSC?". It attracts its own users and brings a different standard of discussion, and that doesn't stay contained.
I'm not very active in the SSC community, but I've been a fan of Scott's articles for years. It was stuff like the CW thread that made me stay away from its community. I wish there would be more self-reflection there about the standards of the community, and I hope the CW thread removal causes some change.
Though I wonder if it's my place to push for change as an outsider. Then again, if this problem is caused in part by progressives there feeling like they're outsiders there and leaving, should I try to compensate against that feeling? Then again x2, maybe it's an uphill battle:
-paanther, https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/atfbhe/comment/eh118az
I think community is defined more from the top than people generally admit. Maybe I have fundamentally different ideas than Scott about what makes a good online community, and I should find and foster a different place.
Sorry if I went off track a little. I aimed to give some context and ended up rambling about my personal take on the matter. It's part of a subject that's been on my mind a lot, and I've been meaning to find ways to write more about it.
While I am completely unfamiliar with anything related to SSC or its CW thread and I do sympathize with much of what the author puts forward, I think there is a pretty weak spot in this whole post. The sampling of random comments when discussing any left/right lean is absolutely pitiful. Only 10 comments (that are not shown so as to show just how left/right they are)?
Now I do not know exactly how this was sampled(which is an issue itself), but it seems to imply that it searched for the word "transgender." Even if you filter out all slurs with the widest of nets, I would imagine that the word "transgender" would be used significantly less by those who would view transgenderism in any sort of negative way.
Now I do not doubt that claims of the thread consisting largely of right extremists was based on confirmation-bias, being guided towards disagreeable comments, and other effects. That said, I also doubt that such an seemingly infamous thread would not rack up more hateful comments (and maybe even a few more kind comments as well).
Can somebody explain exactly what the slatestarcodex is? I've run into it once before, but I really couldn't figure out its deal.
It's sort of like pop-philosophy for cryptoconservatives who live in SF who would be labelled as degenerates by their average partisan compatriot.
This is the most entertaining answer. I don't know if it is right or not since I have only read two articles on SSC, this being one of them, but it made me smile.
After trying to seriously engage with r/TheMotte today, the description seems pretty apt.
Many an acquaintance who loves it, for whatever reason.
Slate Star Codex is the name of the site that Scott Alexander writes essays on. It also has a busy comments section and a subreddit. There's some great posts listed on SSC's About page: https://slatestarcodex.com/about/.
Scott used to be a prolific poster on the site LessWrong.com. SSC's initial userbase came from LW, especially as LW became less active. (LessWrong is a site that primarily focuses on learning about how rational thinking and human minds work, for personal growth purposes and AI design purposes. The site has been mainly known for the writing of Eliezer Yudkowsky and the Sequences. SSC is much more variety focused than LW, but retains some of the focus on rationality.)
It's a personal blog that has a decent following. Since it's just written by one guy, the topics are just whatever he's interested in, but for the most part it focuses on rationalism and viewing current events/patterns through its lens.
They tend to be long reads with in-depth analysis. Here's a good example post (that stands alone and doesn't need any other context) about 90s environmental movements.
To a greater or lesser degree, that's sort of become all of us, hasen't it?
I don't think he deserved what happened to him. I feel sympathy. I think he was mostly at fault for it playing out just so badly, though, and his reasoning is pitiful, almost.
I may be biased, though—I'm no fan of his.
I had a longer post written out but re-read his article and realized I can't really side with a lot of his decisions but think you are unfairly suggesting that he is somehow biased against progressives and therefore deserves what happened to him. Even in this article, he makes a pretty strong case for his history of voting democrat and having liberal views. I had never heard of the subreddit or culture war threads either but I've started reading his other articles and he seems, if anything, moderate with a very strong liberal bias. I just want to point this out because your comment comes off as if to using potentially alt-right ties to discredit him. I don't agree with how the community was run but I think experiments like this are neat to watch, and it makes me a bit upset to see someone demonized for trying something like this out. I guess I just want to point out that a good portion of the post goes into detail that he was being painted as some sort of alt-right sympathizer and your comment proves to further this narrative. I think that if he had some sort of a history of alt-right sympathies, I'd agree that he was guilty of giving the alt-right, and other fringe groups, a platform. But it's pretty clear this isn't the case and he really did intend on trying to create a diverse discussion group, regardless of if it was or not.
But he even has data to back up that it wasn’t “full of” racist right wings, they were just a vocal minority. And you can’t say you’re sorry he was harassed but also say you’re not sorry his brand was associated with hateful things because they are one and the same. The harassment is him being painted as a bigot even though he’s not one and that being used against him outside of the context of the discussion he was trying to create.
One thing I was going to mention in my original post was that he did not praise these people for being smart as you’ve pointed out. He said that some of them were smart enough to sway the conversation to be favorable of their view just as entire cultures have been duped in the past (another point that was cherry picked that I think is an unfair representation of his post.) he gave his reasoning for not removing fringe comments and was even more detailed than a “cuz free speech” he realized his experiment in national dialogue wasn’t working and as you said he distanced himself from it. If you think that should amount to him being branded as a racist then I guess I don’t know what to say.
This is a point I've seen brought up a number of times (in r/slatestarcodex and elsewhere) which I find really frustrating. It's not a counterargument at all against "the CW thread (or SSC) attracts and platforms bigots".
He omitted that only 5% of the people polled said they comment in the CW thread. And the poll wouldn't account for the possibility of power users heavily influencing the thread. It's misleading to imply that the dominant politics of the CW thread would match the overall userbase.
Yeah, I guess the data argument doesn’t exactly hold up.
I can agree this is a bit iffy but taken into context of the rest of the post, it’s clear he does view these things in a negative way and is just trying to see why someone may hold these extreme views. I try to have the same mentality because I personally believe the only way to change minds is to understand where they are coming from (which is why I’m so quick to attempt to defend his goals, maybe not so much his actions.) I agree that he definitely comes off a little too pandering to these groups in the post though.
Sorry, that sounded like it was direct at your comment, but was more directed to those painting him as something be most likely isn’t. I don’t know much about him other than through his blog now that I’ve been reading a few of his posts, but he seems like pretty genuine person. I don’t agree with how they moderated but I get what they were trying to do I guess.