site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31649 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 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.

9
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I want to whine about weakly upvoted comment https://www.themotte.org/post/109/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/15573?context=8#context

In a strictly genetic sense, the Mongols may be one of the most successful people groups in history; in terms of their culture, society, and way of life, they are largely extinct

The Mongol culture didn't spread because the premise (genetic success) is BS. Mongol conquests were due to better generals, discipline and ability to recruit non-Mongols into their war machine. They routinely beat numerically superior armies.

p.s:

So it's a very bad example of thesis 'genetic success doesn't imply cultural success', rather it's evidence in another direction.

Another thing I have with this that it looks poster is Western supermacist and imagines Mongols aka dumb zerg being strong only with their number.

Wouldn't mongol genetic success be determined by their original number, reproductive success, and direct descendants alive today?

Perhaps even normalised to total globe population at the relevant time, or even to comparable tech and econ development levels, etc?

Culture and supremacist thinking being irrelvant in determining IF they were genetically successful?

Maybe I am misunderstanding though.

If your descendants married out of your ethnicity for 32 generations and so there is about 1/(2^32) of "your" genes in them, have you really been all that genetically successful?

The Y Chromosome doesn't get diluted, and neither do mitochondrial DNA. The Mongols would be found in the former, not the latter, like every other conquering army in history.

If it doesn't get diluted and doesn't mutate, then how did it come to be different from another ethnicity's Y chromosome? If it does mutate, then it looks like there's the same implication as if it diluted.

I might as well skip to the logical conclusion of my view on genetic legacy: it's a scam. Its purpose is to preserve individual beneficial alleles, not anything as coherent as an ethnicity, let alone anything from one person.

Think of it like blockchain: we can trace the lineage of a specific modern Y chromosome to historical forms with fewer novel mutations. Thus, haplogroups can be represented as a branching tree.

There are many millions of living male descendants of Genghis, vastly more than for any other male of his era. Seeing the geographic distribution, they must have substantial percentages of his autosomal DNA too. Statistically, there should be plenty enough data to reconstruct his genome from theirs with >99.9% coverage. This is entirely explained by the fact that he was very sexually prolific and that his family, clan and society have been dominant for a long time.

I don’t think there was a claim that Y chromosomes don’t have mutations. They just don’t undergo reassortment.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats