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New epstein files stash released - search here: https://www.justice.gov/epstein
Trump is mentioned lots of times though some of the more lurid accusations (I was gangbanged by Trump and a bunch of other rich dudes) seem to be non credible. Epstein emailed himself about how he was annoyed that Bill Gates needed medicine from banging underage russian girls - probably fake blackmail. He also got banned from Xbox Live, shared coomer FNAF 4chan threads, talked with Chomsky about racial intelligence differences, getting advice on silencing a girl trying to expose his friends. For our global-intelligence-conspiracy friends, there are some connections to intelligence agencies.
Mods, remove this if it's a crappy post. It's hard to come up with a through line for this, other than "WOW he knew a lot of people".
Now this is slightly interesting. "at least some of them know what they're doing and are just lying" is a thought that doesn't normally cross my mind not because it's not true, but because it's pointless to speculate about. I just provisionally assume that any given 'anti-racist' is a true believer in universal humanity. But of course they aren't. The "lore" after all, is fairly accessible for someone reasonably intelligent and curious.
I wonder how this looks from inside their own heads. Brave holders of esoteric truths vigilantly guarding the demos from dangerous knowledge?
As a True Believer in Universal Humanity, I hold the following Views on race/genetics/intelligence:
The null hypothesis is that racial intelligence differences do not exist.
There is not, currently, sufficient evidence to refute the null hypothesis.
It is possible that sufficient evidence could exist in the future; however, the existence of such differences, even if proven, would not justify the conclusions drawn by the far right.
If such differences exist, they do not make members of the less-intelligent groups less deserving of human dignity, any more than someone born to a more-intelligent group would become less deserving of human dignity upon suffering a head injury.
The existence of a racial intelligence gap would mean that Nature herself is a racist, and those born with greater intelligence thus bear a disproportionate duty first to alleviate the immediate condition of those thus victimised by Nature, and second to develop and deploy some method of repairing the damage done by nature to those individuals.
This duty is not penance for having been born a member of a privileged group; it is the principle that If You Have The Means At Hand, You Have The Responsibility To Help.
How long in the past do you prolong 'universal humanity'? Is Homo erectus same intelligence as us? Homo habilis? Homo heidelbergensis? Do you assume that evolution stopped at some point?
To the first point at which apes became capable of hosting immortal souls made according to Tzelem Elohim; 50,000 years as a lower bound.
Note that the distinction is academic absent the general resurrection of the dead, whether via divine intervention or, per Nikolai Fyodorov, human agency; in either case, the question would be answered by the same changes that made it practically relevant.
It might be a nitpick: resurrection of dead means resurrection of individuals. It's much more probable that we'll get enough-complete genomes for other species of hominids.
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Ok. Thanks. What is some archaic population (say, flores hobbits) would have survived somewhere?
In that case, (assuming we have not discovered a method of directly measuring souls) we would have to examine their capabilities to make a determination.
(Some have hypothesised that the Pirahã might be such a population. Sometimes I wonder how Pokó's daughter would have grown up had she been adopted by a Brasilian family.)
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This hypothesis is equivalent to what could be called the "Egalitarian Hypothesis"
The Egalitarian Hypothesis is that genes (technically alleles) which influence intelligence are distributed equally among all racial and ethnic groups.
From this perspective, it is more easy to see that you are unfairly privileging the hypothesis you like. The default hypothesis should be that intelligence is no different from any other measurable human attribute, such as height, eye color, and so on. Given that other human attributes are clearly NOT distributed equally among all racial and ethnic groups, the null hypothesis should be that it's the same for intelligence.
The need for an agreed-upon null hypothesis is one of the common criticism of frequentist statistics by Bayesians...
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'Null hypothesis' does not mean 'most likely hypothesis'; it means 'the hypothesis that the thing for which we are looking does not exist.'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis
I agree that's not the definition of "null hypothesis" and I have never claimed otherwise.
Here is a thought experiment to demonstrate my point:
Suppose that a previously unknown species of bird is discovered; 6 members of the new species are exposed to a high dose of radiation, a level that is known to kill roughly half of birds which are exposed. After the radiation exposure, 2 of the six die within a few weeks. There is a debate over whether or not this new species is invulnerable to radiation. There is no special reason to think that this new species is different from any other species of bird, but for some obscure political reason, there are people who insist that this new species is invulnerable to radiation.
Concerning our experiment, what should the null hypothesis be?
The null hypothesis would be that the value of X (in this case, susceptibility to radiation) does not differ between group A (previously known birds) and group B (the previously unknown species).
Notice that this does NOT agree with your previous definition of "null hypothesis":
Here, the thing we are looking for is a relationship between (1) exposure to radiation of members of the new bird species; and (2) death.
By your own reasoning, the null hypothesis is that this new bird species is not susceptible to radiation. Yes, this is a silly conclusion but that's the point: There's something very wrong with your reasoning.
The 'thing for which we are looking' is usually 'a difference in variable X between group A and group B.
X can be 'rate of disease progression/recovery' with A and B being patients administered a new medication vs. a placebo.
X can be 'susceptibility to radiation' with A and B being species of bird.
X can be 'biological capacity for intelligence' with A and B being human ethnic groups.
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H0 (null): no difference between populations
H1 (alternative): radiation resistance of the new population > radiation resistance of the reference bird population
This is the typical formulation. Null typically assumes no effect or no difference between the populations being considered.
I tend to agree with you as to this particular example, but consider some of the formulations which have been floating around. Such as the "hypothesis that no relationship exists" Given that we are looking at (1) radiation being administered to the new bird population; and (2) deaths among that population, one could argue that the null hypothesis is that no relation exists between the radiation and the deaths.
I think that your formulation does not necessarily work either. For example, suppose there is an obscure un-contacted tribe of people in some remote rain forest and for whatever reason, the question on the table is whether the male members of the tribe are taller than the female members. Suppose further that we meet (and measure) only 4 members of the tribe -- 2 males and 2 females -- and that both of the males are significantly taller than either female. What's the null hypothesis here? Is it simply "no difference between the populations being considered"?
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Yeah but "intelligence is equally distributed among all human races" is a positive hypothesis of it's own, that's why you are effectively doing what he said.
The null hypothesis is indeed one of a set of competing hypotheses, but it’s typically the one that assumes no difference between populations.
If I want to show that two distributions are statistically different then I start with the assumption that they are not and then set out to disprove that.
Similarly, if I believe the populations are not actually significantly different, I believe it’d still be common to set up a null hypothesis that they are not different and then either confirm or reject the alternative hypothesis.
And what assumption do you use when you want to show that they are the same? It's just a matter of how you formulate your question.
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I would tweak that just a bit: "Intelligence is a unique human attribute in that unlike other heritable human attributes, the alleles for intelligence are distributed equally among all races and ethnic groups."
From this perspective, one can see that the "thing we are looking for" is evidence that intelligence is fundamentally different from other heritable human attributes.
In any event, as suggested by another poster, there is a more serious flaw with the argument, which is that we are being presented with an isolated demand for rigor. For example, there are people out there claiming that underachievement of Group X is largely due to historical treatment of Group X. Using the "null hypothesis" argument, this type of claim should fail even harder.
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As a matter of technical statistical terminology, the null hypothesis when testing two groups for equality is that the relevant average (usually the mean, but median tests exist) is the same for both groups.
The whole point of frequentist statistics is that the test doesn't care about what you believe or what the results mean, its just a handle you can turn and get a publishable paper out 5% of the time (if the null hypothesis is true) and rather more often (if its false). A null hypothesis and a prior are different things that exist in different paradigms.
In this case we know for a fact the averages are not the same, the debate is over the causes.
By stubbornly insisting the averages are the same and there's just something wrong with measurements which show otherwise, the debate over causes can be avoided. As I said, a defense in depth. It's not happening and if it is it's due to racism and even if it's not, we should take from the able to subsidize the unable.
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There's an interesting contrasting series one could draw.
I know this sounds sarcastic and dumb but if you take the premises and run with them under utilitarian human-dignity logic, that's where you end up. If white genocide raises world happiness by destroying the racism field and thus raising more black and brown bodies to high standards of living and achievement, isn't that then good? Revolutionaries in the 1960s debated this, some proposed the necessity of killing white babies to stop them growing up to continue the oppressive racist-capitalist system.
On the other hand, it would be much easier for the people with all the H-bombs and MIRV'd ICBMs to do the genociding... Or a transhumanist fix nowadays, I suppose. What does it even mean to make someone smarter and more capable with a transhumanist fix, is this ego-death, overwriting a personality, overwriting a whole racial group?
The exact mechanics of the racism field deserve much more study. This is an extremely important effect, if it's a real thing. Spooky action at a distance, across vast spans of time, very potent effect! And it seems to only 'work' when white people do it - Ottoman and Algerian slave-raiding and Japanese conquest/genocide doesn't seem to have the same effect white racism has on black and brown communities.
If the ambient racism field is just made up, then those who've been promoting and proposing the theory should be treated very seriously. After all, they would have overseen and promoted the waste of tens trillions of dollars, the misallocation and the miseducation of hundreds of millions based on a lie.
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How does the null hypothesis have a place here and why do you get to decide what it is? We aren’t approving drugs here, we’re just trying to weigh two theories, it’s completely unfair to arbitrarily privilege the one you like more.
That’s kind of like asking how does algebra have a place here, we’re just trying to solve for a variable in this equation.
A hypothesis test is a method to provide evidence for or against two competing theories using data and the way that they’re commonly constructed is to assume a null hypothesis as being the one where the data are not from significantly different distributions.
A standard hypothesis test is not the only method and its use in science is sometimes over stated but it’s by far the most common approach to address such questions, and that’s just how it’s structured.
It’s kind of Occam in the end. It’s simpler to assume that there’s no difference between how fast this group of monkeys climb trees vs that one. If I wanted to posit that the second group climbs faster, I can collect data and argue that it backs up my assumption, but the null case is null because it makes less assumptions.
Sure, sure, but the anti-racist monkey has been sitting at the bottom of its tree for generation upon generation now while increasingly bitter and haggard progressives glare at me like it's my fault it won't climb.
Oh but here come the anti-HBD guys, the biggest internet forum debate jobbers this side of flat-earthers, and today they're saying "null hypothesis" a lot. Like if they play this game about who has to prove their hypothesis well enough, we'll suddenly forget that their monkey is never ever going to climb that fucking tree.
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It's been a while since I took a science class, but IIRC every scientific investigation has to have a null hypothesis. Wikipedia says that the definition of "null hypothesis" is the hypothesis that no relationship exists—i. e., intelligence has no correlation with race.
You can set the threshold for rejecting the null hypothesis at any significance level you want. You have to set it quite high (by social science standards) to not reject it in this case, but if you're starting with the conclusion you want, that's what you do.
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When it comes to people in general who hold this position, you know, fine, it's not my business what they believe. But I absolutely do not want to hear from them their own (inevitably far more tenuous) theories regarding racial achievement gaps and the like. They can just sit back and be baffled, and if anyone asks them what to do about it, throw their hands up in the air because they have no idea.
I think that's an excellent point. If, as another poster stated, the "null hypothesis" is "the hypothesis that no relationship exists," and we are going to apply this kind of analysis, then there is zero basis to look at achievement gaps and blame white racism, "patriarchy" "colonialism," "the legacy of slavery" etc.
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You've certainly got your soldiers lined up in an impressive defense in depth. But reality does not care.
Rejected. The able are not the proper slaves of the needy.
Alice is 5' 2"/157 cm. Bob is 6' 3"/190 cm.
Expecting Bob to get something off a high shelf for Alice does not make Bob Alice's slave.
Rejecting the notion that the more able ought to help the less able is rejecting civilisation itself.
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Alice has a womb and Bob does not, but Bob wants to have a genetically-related child. Since Alice is "more able" than Bob, does she therefore have an obligation to provide Bob with a genetically-related child?
No, because the cost to Alice is far greater in that case.
You never said anything about the cost, merely that "the more able ought to help the less able". Now you are putting up guardrails. Fine. Define them. Exactly how "costly" must an action be to make it no longer required for the more able to help the less able?
My point was that Ayn Rand and Peter Singer are both wrong; If Alice needs help, and Bob has the means to assist, I reject both the notion that 'Bob has exactly zero obligation to help' and the notion that 'Bob is obligated to contribute even to the point of self-destruction'.
I have discovered a truly marvelous definition of one person's obligation to their neighbour, which this forum is too narrow to contain.I don't have a *complete answer', but there are some useful heuristics.For the most part, mind > body > personal possessions > non-personal property (idiosyncratically referred to by Marxists as 'private property').
The genitals and reproductive system ought not be subject to the dictates of the community, provided that everyone involved is a consenting adult.
If you do not live or work in the same place as someone else, in a modern society your obligation to them can usually be discharged by financial support, allowing them to purchase whatever they need from someone else.
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Sure it does. Bob's got his own things he'd prefer to do. Alice's need is no call on his ability. She can go find a ladder. Or offer Bob something of value.
No, it's just rejecting Communism ("From each according to his ability..."). And Margaret Mead, I suppose.
And if there aren't any ladders around, and Alice doesn't have anything Bob wants?
Then I'd say that Alice should perhaps make an agreement with a particularly scarce resource she is statistically overwhelmingly likely to possess, so that she can get all the things on the high shelves she wants in exchange for allowing [a] Bob exclusive access to that particular resource.
In other words, this is why marriage exists.
Genitals and reproductive systems are not a resource, and making women's survival contingent on marriage has often given abusive men the ability to inflict terrible suffering on them.
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I guess she doesn't get what's on the shelf then, unless Bob is feeling magnanimous.
And if 'getting what's on the shelf' is a metaphor for survival? Maintenance of human dignity?
Can you be certain that the precedent that you set won't come back to bite you in the hindquarters?
I would rather live in a world where the sink-or-swim, devil-take-the-hindmost, law-of-the-jungle social-Darwinist mode of organisation is left in the past and remembered as one of humanity's many mistakes, even if it means that if I become extremely wealthy my taxes will support people who are not useful to me.
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In addition to Corvos' point, civilization has also historically required the less able to defer to the more able. It's a two-way street; The able help and do a disproportionate share of the work, and in turn, get status and power, the less able give up status and power in exchange for being provided for.
Modern societies' insistence that you can get one half without the other is partially a sham, and partially the thing that is killing it.
People have historically done lots of things that they ought not to have.
Almost, but not quite.
If you have the ability to help someone, and you help them, you deserve appreciation. In extraordinary cases, you deserve prestige. You are not entitled to dominance, and you sure as hell aren't entitled to dominance over the people you helped.
I assume you are familiar with the phrase "with great power comes great responsibility." Do you recognize that it runs the other way as well? With great responsibility, comes great power? If so, what's the difference between power and dominance? If not, why not?
I am familiar with that phrase. Part of the responsibility is to not use that power to do bad things. Reducing someone else to a state of subjugation, for no other reason than that you can, is a bad thing.
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It seems to me that a tall man who isn’t allowed to decide when and where and if he fetches things for shorter people is just a step-ladder made of meat.
What if there are 10 Alice’s who genuinely need things fetched down on a constant basis?
What if there’s only one Alice but she abuses him and makes her dislike of him known on a regular basis?
What if Alice and her fellow shorties have subjected Bob to a constant campaign of psychological manipulation since birth explaining that his tallness is a privilege to be used for the benefit of the short, or indeed that his tallness is actively oppressing them by causing shelves to be built which they can’t reach, for which he must repent by serving them in the manner they demand?
In many of these scenarios Bob appeared to be… let’s not call him a slave to avoid the noncentral fallacy, but certainly slavelike. Similar to an indentured servant.
In practice, what seems to happen is that ‘we’ or ‘society’ determine how much labour Bob is required to do for the underprivileged (in our benevolence). In which case Bob is not only their servant but even more so ours.
Civilisation does require this to some degree but the scales have tipped far too far in the last hundred years and the racial version has finally tipped far enough that all of us are Bob and we’re sick of it.
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Yeah, I didn't get that either. The moral claim that the strong must help the weak is just that...a claim.
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