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 -
Like I said, addressing the hypothetical in OP. You want to explain why smart people are so dumb, go ahead, but that's the real world. I would bet IQ would have a near perfect correlation with vaccination rate, especially among young people, based on proxies we can see.
Every college in the country you'd actually want to go to mandated the vaccine as far as I can tell, the military required it, and in general educated professions seem to have higher uptake with lawyers and doctors high on the list and fitness instructors and retail sales staff low on the list, the unemployed lower still.
It would have a profound effect to kill 25% of anyone who attended classes at every selective college in the past six years. Which given that you had to be fully vaxxed to attend, it would be pretty damn near the full quarter. We'd be losing a disproportionate number of future start up founders, political leaders, scientists, academics etc. Throw in killing 25% of serving military members, that's a massacre of a huge portion of young people who are going to amount to anything in this country. That's a sci-fi dystopian scenario. Probably destroys the country.
UT Austin becomes the best university in The World
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not disagreeing with the figures and what happened.
Maybe a lot of these high-achievers really didn't have the time to do their own research and just went with the flow out of habit.
And maybe they are high IQ, but that would suggest to me that they need to add a few questions to IQ tests similar to the Voigt-Kampff test
'The tortoise lies on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.'
'Why aren't you helping?'
Well it seemed to help when The Wave magazine gave all of San Francisco's mayoral candidates the vk test (not really a spoiler - Gavin Newsom is a replicant.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link