site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 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.

This is wrong for two reasons:

  1. Genetic determinism does not require a deterministic universe. At this point, I don't think many people who are aware of quantum mechanics think we live in a deterministic universe, and it is totally reasonable to believe in genetic determinism WRT intelligence anyway. While intelligence can be measured, it can't be measured down to the planck length. There's a level of precision that's just impossible to achieve, and so long as genetics determine intelligence closely enough, it's fine if the biological processes are a little fuzzy because of quantum uncertainty or whatever your preferred source of non-determinism is.
  2. A non-material universe is orthogonal to its materiality. There is no reason that non-material objects need to be non-deterministic. For a great example of this, consider the various "hard magic" systems in fantasy books that have clear and well defined rules for magic, but contain obviously non-material objects like souls.

To be honest, I don't much care for the term "genetic determinism" in this context. I have yet to encounter a serious IQ hereditarian who believes that the environment plays no role. In my experience the debate is between hard core blank slateists, who deny the impact of genetics at all because they understand that it would wreck the foundation of much of their worldview, and hereditarians who think that there is a mix of genetic and environmental factors. "Genetic determinism" is generally leveled as a slur against hereditarians because it's pretty silly to think that genes are the only thing that matters and that your exposure to lots of words and symbols as a kid has zero impact. Can you point to someone making a "strong argument for heritability" that really says things are 100% genetic?

Niether of those manage to refute anything ive said. Again i feel like you are mixing neccesary with sufficient and trying to control the conversation by controlling the null hypothesis. Asserting that because i have not shown x i must accept y but i am under no such obligation.

I have yet to encounter a serious IQ hereditarian who believes that the environment plays no role.

Then you must be new here (that or The Motte doesn't meet your criteria for "serious") because i have had precisely that argument multiple times here in the last 6 months, including with at least one user active in this very thread.