site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Low effort but CW so it goes here. Its the end of the week anyways.

https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/115vdud/looking_for_recommendations_on_sources_for_why/

It seems to me the slatestarcodex subreddit has been fully normified. Of all those comments only 1 mention (hint) of group average IQ on why sub saharan Africa is poor??

Then theres the "woah how did you get here, you dont belong here" as a response to the guy who hinted at IQ. Does that guy even know whose blog he is in the subreddit of.

All I am saying is for those of you who still say /r/ssc is "smart", update your priors, this post is not an isolated case.

E: Ill remove if consensus building.

Most people who got to know about HBD didn't look for it, myself included. I stumbled upon it. It did change my view on a lot of things, but I still think liberals have the correct take on a large number of issues. Plus I suppose it's just a matter of socialisation. As a lot of "intellectual heretics" have either departed or been banned off reddit, there is less pushback than ever there. I suppose the same can be said about this place. Ultimately, we're all worse off for it, because intellectual diversity keeps everyone on their toes rather than fragmenting into echo chambers.

Same here, only learned about HBD thanks to the long (long) discussions about it back on the old place. Hasn't changed my mind, since I think there's a heck of a lot of bad data floating around there (and Richard Lynn should be put in the pillory for spreading it around), a lot of environmental influences, and a certain degree of racism to be cleared out of the way before we can get onto "do some populations have lower/higher IQs?"

I think it's possible, indeed. Can we increase IQ by interventions? Once we get things like pollution, malnutrition, lack of access to education, etc. out of the way, if there still is a gap, then we need to think about genetics and how alterable (or not) they are. But the big problem remains a moral one - some people will indeed use HBD as an excuse to be persecutors, to keep people down, because "it's inalterable genetics, they're just inferior by nature, they have to be treated like sub-humans, I don't make the rules".

a lot of environmental influences, and a certain degree of racism to be cleared out of the way

How will we know when it's cleared out of the way?

we can get onto "do some populations have lower/higher IQs?

This is something you do actually have to ask yourself though if you want to reason about these things. If you choose to discard you still have made a choice.

How will we know when it's cleared out of the way?

Probably when we've got to the point of worrying about the Oompa-Loompas.

Who is 'we' to because it seems like we got to that point years ago.

Reddit ban is fairly easy to get now. You have to be quite careful-

I forgot myself for a while and caught a ban on reddit just like that, for mentioning the 30x difference in homicidality in the US between Asians and blacks.