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What would you consider to be sufficient factual evidence to shift your views on HBD in various directions?
In order for the question to make sense, it is probably helpful to think of one's position on HBD along two axes, as in the Political Compass test, and one discrete parameter that would make less sense on an axis. You're also welcome to point out omitted positions.
x-axis, ranging from 0 to 10, where moving right indicates agreement with the statement: Human populations have significantly different average levels of intelligence, and this becomes far more pronounced in the right tails of the distributions.
y-axis, same range as the x-axis, but measured as 10 * perceived percentage of genetic contribution to the difference above. If you attribute some of the difference to the interaction of genetic and environmental influences, give that half the weight for simplicity.
Parameter z: How does intelligence correlate with the moral worth of a person? This can take on one of a few values:
(-1) Negatively
(0) Not at all
(1) Positively
(i) The moral worth of a person is dependent on their actions or beliefs, and intelligence only provides bounds on their culpability or merit.
I mean I think near zero on the z-axis? While my x and y answers are probably non-zero, and I do think maybe a rough 60% genetic contribution to individual heritability of g, for lack of a better term (I don't know how exactly to mathematically adapt this to populations in a fair way) but I appreciate z being its own axis. In essence, I don't think it's of any worth to spend a ton of work to evaluate x at all. Like, let's say there are in fact large but not enormous population differences. What am I supposed to do with this information? Am I supposed to be aware that I treat some populations differently than others, and do nothing about that? That's just stereotyping, which I think is morally wrong. Even if say 2/10 of Green candidates for a job are suitable vs 8/10 Blue people, individual respect and concepts of fairness matter more. I'm not gonna toss all 10 Green candidates to save time. Even if the job is important.
It's just stereotyping with extra steps, and is frequently the case. In practice many racists I see are using correlated but generally only semi-accurate indicators to judge group affiliation, and then do little follow-up. Like name, dress, skin tone, things like that. Sure, maybe they make sense on average, but on an individual level? Forget about it. I lived in Miami for a while, and I can tell you first-hand that a lot of people are far more than their upbringing, but more to the point, there's a huge difference in someone from Argentina vs Brazil vs other part of Brazil vs Peru vs Colombia vs Puerto Rico vs Mexico vs Cuba and somehow I'm supposed to believe that either they are all the same, or that other groups happen to be special and uniquely stupid, or something like that? Or that the only thing that matters is the exact percentage of some vague notion of "whiteness"?
And then even going along that note, genetic groups do NOT correlate 1-to-1 with skin color, for example, not as neatly as many would have you think. It brings to mind the craziness of one-drop policies in the antebellum South. What if someone is half-Blue half-Green? Their skin doesn't always average out or something. Africa is a big continent and not all of them are Black and not all Blacks are from Africa and again for the love of God genetics literally doesn't have a notion of race as these neat, immutable boxes, and history doesn't either. (Ancient) Egypt is a great example of how modern looks at racial groups and skin tone are often anachronistic. Maybe the whole white vs Black as a dichotomy or single slider is a straw man, but that tends to be the actual end result of a lot of this discussion.
In fact, someone just last week said on this very forum and I quote word for word:
Which I don't even know where to begin. I love reading and talking about history, and this just reeks of presentism. Look it up. On top of implying some one-dimensional scale of whiteness. Like, if you're going to use it that way, at least say WASP or something. And he didn't stop there, oh no. Of course, a discrimination step comes next. We didn't mention Hispanics or Asians, but that's another often awkward conversation rarely brought up because there isn't a clean and clear answer.
Anyways the end goal of this whole (disorganized, sorry) rant is basically, the whole HBD discussion is orthogonal, almost completely, to morally permissible practical applications. I apologize if I dragged both orthogonal arguments into the same thread. The whole idea of human rights and human dignity fundamentally involves the idea that a person's worth and treatment should, within reason, not depend on instant snap judgements. Were the American Founding Fathers hypocrites for writing words about equality and God-given innate rights when they didn't want poor people to vote, or enslaved people, or non-landowners, or certain foreigners, or women? Yes, at least a little bit. But that didn't make their words and ideas wrong.
Edit: edited intro to address OP's axes more directly.
People stereotype all the time, it is so ubiquitous that people hardly notice. I find it hard to believe you never stereotype.
If you are walking home at night in an isolated area, you would not be more cautious if you encountered a man vs a woman? If you need to move some heavy object, you would not be more likely to ask a man vs a woman? If you are trying to find the best local sushi restaurant, you would not be more likely to ask your Japanese friend vs others? If a customer walked into your place of work speaking Spanish, you would not be more likely to ask your Hispanic coworker for help vs others? If you are looking for a healthy lunch, you would not be likely to ask your fit coworker vs your fat coworker for a recommendation?
I find it hard to believe that your (implied) answer to 'not stereotyping is hard' is 'give up', much less 'give up on purpose'! Especially when it comes to something important. If you have something to say, say it. Don't imply it.
Obviously asking someone for lunch recs is much lower-stakes than deciding on a job hire. Obviously there's also a risk-reward component that I think is just common sense, but we need to be careful about how much we allow this to be stretched. Avoiding someone on the classic dark road, it's kinda no harm no foul, we don't have a duty to talk to strangers there. Avoiding someone in broad daylight in a crowd by blatantly deviating your course might be more legitimately offensive. I think the dark road example is an incredibly bad faith argument.
But sure, I'd ask all or several of my coworkers for recommendations. A fat coworker has eyes and also a brain, and might take a different driving route to work that drives past different restaurants. They also might go to restaurants more often than fit coworker. All very plausible reasons to ask, that could have good outcomes, that I'd rob myself of if I didn't ask. Plus, you know, the respect aspect.
I worked selling flooring for a while and I tried to make it a point when someone came in to not pigeonhole them into a certain price point. Of course this would vary, and of course (I spoke Spanish better than some of my theoretically native-speaker colleagues) you notice patterns, like who is more likely to be a renter vs owner vs businessperson vs tradesperson. But I will say that it wasn't uncommon for me to talk to someone like a neutral adult, and it turns out their financial or job status was far different than my initial guess would have been. I do feel like this helped build an overall environment of respect, and also 100% got me at least a few sales that if I had instantly stereotyped, I would have missed. I think even someone with a limited budget would appreciate me not talking down to them and giving them all the options, and we have a conversation for the literal and explicit purpose of narrowing it down and finding something for them. Use your words, gather data via a conversation, and base your opinions on that! Don't excessively allow background judgements to apply to individuals. It's hard, but not totally impossible, and a basic societal building-block of respect. I'm sure I wasn't perfect, but effort counts. How is that even a point of debate?
Besides, half your examples are not actually stereotyping. Negative stereotyping is when you make an assumption about someone based purely on physical appearance, rumor, etc. and act on that in such a way it impacts your treatment of them in a bad, disrespectful, etc way (as an individual). Asking an established-as-Japanese coworker about sushi is not a stereotype. Visible muscles are not a stereotype. Asking a known Spanish-speaker for help is not a stereotype and is fine. Pointing a customer toward a Hispanic-sounding name coworker in hopes they speak Spanish is bad. Asking said Hispanic-sounding-name coworker directly if they speak Spanish is probably fine and expected, but there are variants on how you ask that might be more or less respectful and don't overtly make the same assumptions.
That's kind of what politeness and respect is all about. No one ever said that you had to genuinely 100% have true respect for everyone around you, but you are obligated in a general social sense to play the game of respect and politeness, and eventually some of that actually bleeds through into actual attitudes. Like the Good Place book title, it's all about "What We Owe to Each Other", a phrase that really stuck with me. Golden-rule type shit. Treat others how you want to be treated!! Is that so strange?
Yes, "stereotyping" was probably the wrong word for the concept I had in mind, "discrimination" is probably a better term. And by discriminate, I mean - to infer something about an individual based on the base rate characteristics of a group identity that he/she belongs to. I am interested in when, and when not, it is okay to discriminate.
I will return to the dark road example, I apologize if you think it is a bad faith argument but I think it is illustrative. In the days following the man/bear meme question, I saw many women say that they would much rather run into a woman rather than a man if walking alone in the woods because the risk of physical/sexual assault is higher with a man. This was considered good/smart/wise risk assessment as this perception is based in reality and backed by crime statistics. It was not considered sexist to treat this individual man based on the statistics of his group (men).
Now compare the same scenario except swap in asian man / black man. We apply the same statistical reasoning yet now it is considered unacceptable and racist. Can you explain why?
The other examples I listed in my previous comment were included merely to point out additional instances where it seems okay to discriminate. I could of course list many more where it is not. I remain unclear on what the underlying principles/rules are for how society arrives at this determination.
No, I'm going to stick to my guns and I absolutely refuse to use a dark road analogy. It's legitimately one of the worst possible hypotheticals/thought experiments for this discussion.
If you can't come up with a better example, it's probably because you don't have one (sorry).
Like, my actual real-world example of being a flooring salesman is much more typical. Some might defend giving disproportionate attention to perceived-as-rich people as a salesman because you do in fact have limited time, and you can get commission from higher sales, etc. I might even be wrong about being fair leading to more albeit less visible success/opportunities and maybe wasting time with poor people would hurt my sales. In either case, I'd defend the the moral requirement to treat people with a fair shake, and also defend the societal imperative to do and encourage the same.
Edit: Think I wasn't succinct enough in point #5. Made this description upthread which elaborates more:
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