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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A part of me is nervous about the off chance someone reads the examples I'm about to give and goes "Heeeeeeey, what a minute!" So I'm going to scramble and anonymize them to some degree. Hope you don't mind. Take them as illustrations instead of data points if that helps.
There is a guy who as a kid, had a stepdad constantly bitter towards him, because he was overachieving anything his step dad ever did in school. The step dad was utterly incapable of helping with homework after grade 9. The step dad vastly preferred his own children, and treated his stepson suspiciously because he was paranoid the stepson was trying to "trick" him.
I know a couple that is half black. Their kid has, to one parent, profound behavior issues that are totally "normal" to the other parent. Issues that are bad enough that he can't be in regular, achieving, upper middle class suburban school. Would fit right in at a DC school though. It's.... not a good situation. For anyone.
I know another couple where both parents are ostensibly very extroverted. However there is another kid from another relationship that is very introverted, because that partner was very introverted. Once again, it causes constant problems in the family, because not a one of them understands the needs of introverts, and the one that did is out of the picture. Every time we see them, that poor kid is so fucking depressed.
Sounds like things are working out great for you. Congrats. I don't really have a "Greater Theory of Why Racing Mixing Always Results in Broken Families". I've just seen enough to have a confident guess as to why not a lot of people jump at the chance.
To be fair this sounds like a culture thing more than a race thing per se. My wife is black, but if we were to have children neither of us would accept it if our kids started acting stereotypically black (which is what it sounds like you mean?). But that's because we both have similar cultural values about how to behave properly.
Well that is the $64,000 question, isn't it? Is it more of a culture thing than a race thing? We know intelligence is heritable, along with alcoholism, propensity for various mental illnesses or personality disorders, religiosity, and many, many more dimensions of temperament. You take it for granted that either these things are uncorrelated from race, or "culture" which is mutable. I'm unconvinced.
My understanding is that "heritable" refers to both traits which are innate as well as those which are acquired from one's environment. So I don't think that your argument need be opposed to my observation.
More generally I think the HBD hypothesis is nonsense, so yeah of course I believe that this sort of thing isn't genetic. But even if we take it as a given the the HBD argument is true, surely you would not try to argue that there are literally zero behaviors which are learned rather than innate. So really we are talking about the degree to which race is a factor versus culture, not whether culture is a factor at all.
In biology, "heritable" specifically refers to differences due to genetic variation. Confusing name choice, right?
Nah that actually makes sense. The confusing part is that (again, to my understanding) there are many people using "heritable" to mean something other than that.
Can you blame them? It means something other than that, if you're using it in a legal sense rather than a biological sense. And the lawyers called dibs first, several hundred years ago; the biologists should have come up with a different word ... but they didn't, so here we are. When a scientist says something is heritable they generally mean "we found these genes" or "we did these twin studies" or something much stronger than just "we measured this correlation".
I must confess that I find it perplexing that this is a problem. My reflexive definition of “heritability” was something like “what proportion of a trait is inherited rather than due to chance or environment”.
Noting that my background is from biology/medicine, what other ways are people using “heritable” for? I really can’t imagine any other interpretation that remotely makes sense. Or say from @SubstantialFrivolity’s reply:
Is this a serious definition used by people? Is that the legal definition?? Doesn’t that just mean “traits” if we combine “traits that are innate plus traits that aren’t”? Is there no linkage or any association with words of similar etymology like inheritance or heredity or hereditary or heir?
Sorry if I sound angry or upset or anything, I am just extremely confused.
I think the implied meaning in context wasn't "heritable refers to every member of A and B" but rather "heritable can refer to members of both A and B".
The typical breakdown is "genetic" vs "shared environment" vs "non-shared environment", isn't it? The shared-environment part would be considered heritable in the colloquial sense but not the biological sense, the genetic part would be heritable in both, the non-shared environment part in neither.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link