site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   27856 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 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.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

In his latest link roundup, Scott links to (a pre-print?) of a paper claiming to show that "Black families who were enslaved until the Civil War continue to have considerably lower education, income, and wealth today than Black families who were free before the Civil War".

Here is Scott's commentary:

New study finds that black people whose ancestors were enslaved on the eve of the Civil War, compared to black people whose ancestors were free at the time, continue to have lower education/wealth/income even today. If true, this provides strong supports the ”cycle of poverty” story of racial inequality, and boosts the argument for reparations. But I’ve also seen studies say the opposite of this. I would be much more willing to accept the new study as an improvement on the old one if not for, well, things like the link above [1] - I have no evidence that anything like that was involved, but at this point it’s hard not to be paranoid. Does anyone know a good third-party commentary on this analysis?

[1] Here Scott talks about "the trend to bar scientists from accessing government datasets if their studies might get politically incorrect conclusions"

I'd be very interested in learning what you make of the study and how you think it links to Scott's conclusions. What evidence would it take to convince you that the "cycle of poverty" hypothesis is true / explains a large portion of the black/everyone else disparity across a number of different life outcomes?

I was going to post my analysis, but this guy already did a much more in-depth analysis than I have the patience for:

https://cremieux.substack.com/p/black-economic-progress-after-slavery

TL;DR: As noted in the abstract of the paper itself, the gap appears to be driven almost entirely by state of residence, with southern but not northern blacks having been exposed to Jim Crow (the main analysis is in 1940, and the extended analysis only goes through 2000). There's also likely some selection bias, with more productive slaves being more likely to be freed.

In short, this provides basically zero evidence for the effects of truly exogenous poverty persisting for more than a generation or two once the impoverishing forces are removed.

As I understand it, the general pattern was for lighter-skinned mulattos to be freed, in a way which swamps any tendency to free more productive slaves.

If you believe in hbd wouldn’t lighter skin mulattos by definition be on average higher productivity?

I've got a little epicycle of a theory that the whites who were messing around that way generally weren't of the highest quality (Thomas Jefferson perhaps excepted).

I wouldn’t necessarily expect that- AFAIK, overseers, skilled plantation workers, and other ‘poor whites’ with access to the slave population were mostly from the ambitious upper working class(which we should expect to be towards the top end in intelligence, if not necessarily geniuses), and the majority of mulattoes born in the antebellum south could trace their ancestry to master in some way(albeit as often through a son as to the master himself).

They would probably on average be higher intelligence, but that doesn’t necessarily equal higher productivity given that slaves were doing manual labor.

Macnamara's Folly showed that higher IQ soldiers were more effective than lower IQ ones, even at manual talks like loading shells in a mortar.

Even manual labour requires people to follow processes, learn from mistakes etc.

Slaves did all sorts of stuff. This guy was a contractor who managed construction crews building giant mansions:

https://www.destrehanplantation.org/history/the-building-of-a-plantation

Ironically his payment included a slave.

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