site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33507 thread views

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
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.

For context, OP (Matt Lakeman) is an old ex-regular who has an amazing blog dedicated mostly to international travel, reading on historical stuff and self-experiments. He's been to the Dominican Republic, among other places. He was not impressed. As one can expect, there's a section on the Haiti, with passages like:

Haiti was my first destination choice for this trip. But when I Googled “Haiti,” the top news story was about 17 American and Canadian missionaries being kidnapped by a Haitian gang and held for $17 million ransom. So I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to go to Haiti at the moment.

I don’t know why the two countries have diverged so dramatically. Noah Smith says no one knows the cause of the split, but it’s probably some combination of Haiti starting its independence with enormous national debt (as part of a settlement with former colonial master France), terrible land management policies, the ongoing toll of the U.S. occupation for twenty years (the Dominican Republic was invaded too, but only for eight years), constant regime change, and generally abysmal macroeconomic policy. One Dominican I talked to attributed the country’s success to mid-century dictator Rafel Truillo, who was authoritarian and oppressive (and renamed the capital after himself), but allegedly brought enough order to the country to attract foreign investment and jump start the modern tourist economy. Also, for geographic/climate reasons, Haiti gets hit far more and far harder by natural disasters than the Dominican Republic.

By chance, I spent some time with two European aid workers stationed in Haiti. Their strong consensus was that Haiti was even worse than I had imagined. Worse than anyone imagines. And it has no viable recovery plan. A few interesting things they told me:

[...]

Law and order is non-existent in the cities. There is no point in reporting crimes. The cities are essentially in a state of anarchy.

The lawlessness has gotten worse over the last few years. The two used to be able to go to restaurants and jazz clubs, but now they don’t leave their homes at night.

Taxes are not paid in Haiti (duh). But if for some reason someone wants to pay taxes in Haiti, they first have to bribe the security guards at the doors of the tax offices.

When the Haitian people get pissed off at the government, their only viable means of protest is to block roads. So they’ll cut down trees or light tires on fire and cut off major highways. There is literally no process in place for the Haitian government to clear these blockages.

The Haitian people are consumed by “fake news.” Rival political factions run radio stations and Whatsapp groups, and spread fake news to vilify the opposition and/or foreigners. The fake news is so rampant that the average Haitian seems to have a completely deluded view of politics and the world at large.

It's a mystery indeed!

By the way, Scott's trip to Haiti was what opened his eyes to biodeterminism. (this reminds me of that old text of a guy who became racist after going on a humanitarian mission to Africa, there was an incredibly parable-like bit where he helped some local set up a food stall with baked bread, but his relative came and said «you have bread! My family needs bread!», took everything – you can't deny your family – so the guy went bankrupt and never did business again; lost it again and search engines are... uncooperative). Maybe Matt should've gone after all and written something in his usual manner.

...But also.

IQ is not a mechanistic explanation. All the politically correct stuff he asks about – governments, [inability to make use of] climate, culture – are in the end products of IQ but can be studied separately. IQ only tells us why it's so inescapably and consistently bad. But then an informed person would ask: why is Russia or Ukraine or Belarus like that? Why is China like that? Why is Iran like that? Sure it's not Sub-Saharan Africa, but aren't these people clearly smart enough to at least do better than what they show? And why are they worse than, like, Portugal? So IQ can't be the full story; and so long as this is the case, one has enough wiggle room to not notice the elephant.

As I've just argued, tabooing HBD destroys a great deal more than understanding of stuff that pertains directly to HBD. It lowers the effective IQ of the group, and much faster than dysgenics. Regarding the normiefication of the sub, you're obviously correct, but barely-challenged mentions of Jared Diamond, who is an utter fraud and a just-so storyteller, are even more telling. AskHistorians link is okay. Here's a good discussion of his GGS by that Russian biologist who wrote a Tolkien fanfic from Mordor's perspective, if anyone is interested, I can... proofread Deepl/ChatGPT translation.

I guess I'm neutral. Being smart helps with a lot of shit, but at the same time, it doesn't take book smarts to do the right thing. People in the distant past managed to build functioning societies without necessarily being able to rotate shapes in their heads or even being able to play all that many word games.

As to Haiti, I suppose that, besides the genetic stock thing, there's just too much misery in its history. You'd think that being basically the first country made of slaves who freed themselves the hard way would be a sign of something special, but the reality is much darker.

Perhaps, indeed, the Haitians are suffering for lack of a uniting narrative to point to; we Americans get the Revolution and Democracy, Haitians got out from under a European thumb only to find themselves boxed in by the rest of the hand.

People in the distant past managed to build functioning societies without necessarily being able to rotate shapes in their heads or even being able to play all that many word games.

This is a really uncharitable interpretation of what intelligence (IQ tests) actually is.

It's not the shape rotating or word games, it's the ability to do those things. Modern people might deadlift an Olympic bar instead of lifting up a log into a wagon, but the ability to do both those things is identical. Similarly, the ability to internalize the principle of modern civil engineering is the same ability to internalize that the columns in the Pantheon are not only there for the aesthetics, it's the same thing as shape rotating ability.

Do you really think if Homer were alive today he couldn't fill out a crossword? Or Al-Khwarizmi wouldn't be able to do matrix multiplication? The amount of intelligence difference to understand something and invent something is the same difference between an ant and a human. I might know more math than Arcemedes, but I am an ant compared to him. Don't confuse standing on the shoulders of giants with being taller than them.

I think Homer would have trouble with a crossword, considering he was blind.

Don't be so confident! He might have required external help, but I still would expect him to give @f3zinker a run for his money.

In general, blind geniuses may have much less of a problem with spatial reasoning than one naively expects.

Antoine’s Necklace is not a mere curiosity and has very interesting properties. One would suppose that constructing such a structure would require considerable visualization, which is indeed true. However one of the most interesting things about this knot is that it was formulated and studied by Louis Antoine, who was blind. After he lost his eyesight, the famous mathematician Henri Lebesguesuggested to him that he study topology.

I have noticed (it is a common observation) that it is almost a rule that mathematicians who are blind are usually geometers/topologists. Such a correlation can not be mere coincidence.

Before reading Sossinsky’s book which also mentions G. Ya. Zuev as another influential blind topologist, the two best examples that I was aware of were L. S. Pontryagin and the great Leonhard Euler. Pontryagin is perhaps the first blind mathematician that I had heard of who made seminal contributions to numerous areas of mathematics (Algebraic Topology, Control Theory and Optimization to name a few). Some of his contributions are very abstract while some such as those in control theory are also covered in advanced undergrad textbooks (that is how I heard of him).

Pontryagin lost his eyesight at the age of 14 and thus made all of his illustrious contributions (and learnt most of his mathematics) while blind. The case was a little different for Euler. He learnt most of his earlier mathematics while not blind. Born in 1707, he almost lost eyesight in the right eye in 1735. After that his eyesight worsened, losing it completely in 1766 to cataract.

“It is not surprising at all that almost all blind mathematicians are geometers. The spatial intuition that sighted people have is based on the image of the world that is projected on their retinas; thus it is a two (and not three) dimensional image that is analysed in the brain of a sighted person. A blind person’s spatial intuition on the other hand, is primarily the result of tile and operational experience. It is also deeper – in the literal as well as the metaphorical sense. […].

recent biomathematical studies have shown that the deepest mathematical structures, such as topological structures, are innate, whereas finer structures, such as linear structures are acquired. Thus, at first, the blind person who regains his sight does not distinguish a square from a circle: He only sees their topological equivalence. In contrast, he immediately sees that a torus is not a sphere […]”

I imagine, in my mediocrity, that crosswords are in fact much easier solved using a visible 2D grid as the foundation. Who knows if that's true. Maybe «seeing» some modular-alphabetic arithmetic, or word embeddings rotating through each other and locking upon letter matches, would make for a faster solution.

Learn something new everyday indeed.

Learn something new everyday. In that case, any other great author or poet could do the hypothetical crossword.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats