site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

16
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Indeed, at the time I didn't understand why she failed to do exactly this.

My best guess is that Warren has pretentions of being an academic lawyer-economist as well as an Amerindian, which put her between a rock and a hard place. She couldn't rubbish "white man science" DNA testing without getting laughed out of the academy, but she couldn't accept "white man science" DNA testing without getting laughed out of the Black Hawk tribe. Faced with a stark choice between her two identities, she chose to keep the one that pays her $400,000 per teaching semester (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elizabeth-warren-400k-teaching/).

How noble.

She couldn't rubbish "white man science" DNA testing without getting laughed out of the academy, but she couldn't accept "white man science" DNA testing without getting laughed out of the Black Hawk tribe.

She could have denied that cultural heritage is located in DNA, I suppose, or at least refused to engage with measures of heredity. All of that seems strategically preferable to publishing the data that proves that she's just a white lady.

It might be relevant that any Indian tribe would tell her to stuff the ‘white man science’ bits until she had the goods to prove descent from actual natives anyways, whether the white man science bit was producing a dna test or going on a rant about the colonialism of western ways of knowing.

Indeed, at the time I didn't understand why she failed to do exactly this.

Apologizing is a strong norm in her circles, despite the clear problems with non-acceptance of apologies (or apologies even potentially intensifying things).