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 -
Intelligence isn't related to moral status at all according to most people's moralities. Almost everyone is an explicit egalitarian. Denying intelligence differences ironically seems more to be rooted in unintelligence. It's a complex topic and unintelligence people say silly things about complex topics all the time. They know intelligence differences exist, almost everyone I know intuitively understands that the Arby's employee and the MIT Physics professor are at two completely different levels of intelligence, most even like to call the latter genius and could be prodded into describing the former as dull, not very bright, learning disabled, or whatever. They just can't wrap their heads around how a 1 hour test of vocabulary and puzzles is supposed to measure that. Proving that to them actually requires them to be maybe in the top 10% of intelligence, because they need to know a decent amount of math and statistics. But regarding the intelligence differences they know to exist, they're just egalitarian so if you suggest that the Arby's employee should lose the right to vote or to have children or to own property which is more than personal, they will say that is wrong because everyone has equal moral worth independent of their intelligence. You might say this is inconsistent with how people treat animals, but normal people are not very bright and don't notice inconsistencies, and rarely reason at the level where they would notice them or care. That's probably why they think perfect moral equality happens around their own level of intelligence, even if they admit Einstein was smarter than them by a lot. They're simply almost blatantly self-serving.
I don’t think this is true. We make the appropriate noises, but Theres just no way to say that we treat the Arby’s employee as an equal to the MIT professor. The latter is given all sorts of deference in most situations.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link