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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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Polygenic selection would take a lot more time, yeah. But it still isn’t clear to me if you’re just diminishing the normal signal an otherwise healthy instinct might have or would you succeed in eradicating it entirely, overtime?

I’ve seen evolutionary analyses (much more on the speculative end) done for other questions like, “Why are children in the west much more rebellious against their parents unlike in China?,” and people have seriously proposed explanations like, “The amount of wars and rebellions China has been through and put down over the centuries have produced a socially Darwinistic byproduct of executing those members of the population who revolted against the leader.” Meaning there literally isn’t a genetic basis for rebellion in China as there would be in a place like the US, because they were all killed off. That was the premise of “collective punishment” if you were disobedient, they wouldn’t just wipe out you, but also your family.

I mean thé obvious counter argument is the history of China, which is nothing but peasant rebellions.