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 -
Physical therapy is gated by a doctoral degree in the US, although it historically wasn't and almost certainly shouldn't be. In the UK physiotherapy (which Wikipedia says is the same thing) is a bachelor's degree, mostly offered by "new" universities (in American terminology, community colleges that were upgraded in the 1990s) or specialist healthcare colleges whose main programme is nursing. Less than 50% of British 18 year olds will complete a first degree, so getting a bachelor's at all strongly suggests IQ>100, and healthcare-related degrees tend to be the more rigorous degrees at low-end universities. A 100IQ physiotherapy student would be at the bottom of their class and would struggle to graduate.
In other words, if you think the average Westerner could do the job of a physiotherapist, I suspect you are living in a bubble and don't understand just how dumb most of the lower-middle classes are.
A lot of us found the Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong/Slatestarcodex comment sections because (metaphorically, I hope) we couldn't deal with our local Mensa chapters being full of involuntary retards, and then moved from those places to here to get away from voluntary retardation due to wokeness. Those retards in Mensa - they're still the 98th percentile of the bell curve.
Although it’s likely a highly non-central example of a doctoral degree (most people would likely think of an MD or PhD), this is technically true.
Yeah, it’s a point I made back a few weeks ago when we were talking about Trans TA vs. Thot Undergrad. Despite how dumb OU Samantha might sound in her essay, it’s very possible she’s closer to the average Mottizen in IQ than she is to the average person, so one can imagine how dumb an average person might be like.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link