site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Preserving a nation enables trust and strengthens the benefits of meritocracy while limiting the weaknesses. You can trust that the other guy isn't lying about his exams, that he won't screw you over and steal your IP because you share a background, you're of the same tribe.

There are quite a few low-trust ethnostates in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, while places like Singapore and the UAE sit near the top of the corruption perception indices, so preserving one's nation does not appear to be necessary or sufficient for maintaining trust.

What happens when you bring in a million smart people from a foreign ethnic group and they start working together to infiltrate your institutions and build up their own power base, bootstrapping their merit into corruption?

They win a bunch of Nobels and found companies and institutions in your name, making major scientific and literary contributions to your society, before losing their internal cohesion and assimilating into the broader population as their ethnic and religious solidarity is eroded by the overwhelming tidal forces of modernity?

"quite a few"?

Serbia (>80% Serb and ranked 104 out of 180 by the CPI), Belarus (85% Belarusian and ranked 98 out of 180 by the CPI), Albania (>90% Albanian and tied with Belarus by the CPI), Kosovo (also >90% Albanian and ranked 83 out of 180 by the CPI), Cambodia (>95% Khmer and ranked 158 out of 180 by the CPI), and if we feel like stretching the definition of Southeast Asia we can throw in Bangladesh (99% Bengali and ranked 149 out of 180 by the CPI) too.