site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 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.

20
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

As a leftist who believes in IQ heritability; ya'll need to clean up your argumentation so I can come at it from the other side.

The leftist debate bro rat types who actually engage with HBD topics have all debated HBD types, and complete, utterly smashed them on the rhetoric and the facts when it comes to racial IQ gaps, but have all retreated on the heritability of IQ.

The thing is, the (! MAJORITY OF !)argumentation by the right HBD crowed is so rickety and echo-chamber adapted that it instantly falls apart under any amount of hostile attention and also looks really bad, so it drags down my beloved IQ heritability by making dumb unsupportable racialized arguments instead of sticking to easy population arguments.

  • -17

utterly smashed them on the rhetoric and the facts when it comes to racial IQ gaps

Uh, what ? Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, please link at least one such 'smashing' that isn't the blank-slater just declaring IQ is fake and refusing to address the gap merely waving around vaguely.

Yeah, Ezra Klein embarrassed himself in his discussion with Sam Harris who isn't even that well versed or even slightly ideologically committed. Same with Raj Chetty last time I saw him in the wild.

The leftist debate bro rat types who actually engage with HBD topics have all debated HBD types, and complete, utterly smashed them on the rhetoric and the facts when it comes to racial IQ gaps, but have all retreated on the heritability of IQ.

I've yet to see this happen even once.

As someone who believes that the racial IQ gaps are innate but who is wondering just how deep the rabbit hole of HBD incompetence goes, I would be interested in hearing more. What's the best case that it is due to environmental factors?