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 -
You made specific factual claims about my views and motivations across four replies now. You have produced no quotes from me supporting any of them. The syllogism you've finally offered, even if it worked, would not establish that I "see caste as natural and correct," that my emigration is "opportunistic," or that I'm "chasing status among peers back home." Those were the accusations. They remain unsubstantiated.
Even granting some form of statistical discrimination as efficient on some specific measure, a caste system is not just any discrimination.
Why? Because it's hereditary, hierarchical, totalizing across social, economic, marital, and religious domains, and self-perpetuating across generations independent of individual merit. That is literally what caste means.
You're skipped roughly the entire content of what makes a caste system a caste system, and now you're calling the missing steps "from first principles." Perhaps you'd like to examine my debate with @2rafa where I advocate for meritocracy as pure as can be feasible? I'd like to see you reconcile that with accusations of casteism. Group differences, even if real, require additional values being injected to decide what to do about them. Balanced standardized testing would be the strongest form of Bayesian evidence against any accusations of inferiority wrt background. I'm all for it.
"Correct" not being normative? Pure sophistry, poor sophistry. Calling a social arrangement "correct" is necessarily a judgment that it is a proper way to organize society. There is no descriptive sense in which a social system itself can be "correct" or "incorrect." You can describe whether it exists, whether it produces certain outcomes, whether participants endorse it. The moment you call the system itself "correct," you have endorsed it as proper. And worse? This isn't just something you're doing yourself, it's something you've accused me of doing.
I'm out. I've asked for receipts multiple times. You've produced none, and have instead built impressively rickety scaffolding around the original claims while refusing to retract a word of them. Anyone reading this thread can decide for themselves what that pattern indicates. I have an exam to study for.
You accused me of "making baseless accusations", I tried to explain to you the reasoning behind (IE the basis) of my accusation, and you didn't try to refute any of my reasoning. You just reasserted that I was making making baseless accusations.
If you weren't looking for a better school or a better job why did you leave India? Why do you want to move to the US?
You say "Calling a social arrangement "correct" is necessarily a judgment that it is a proper way to organize society." and my reply to that is that for every complex problem there is a solution that is both "clearly correct" in the sense that it would remove the problem and also very "clearly wrong" in the normative sense. Maybe that's the disconnect.
I'm reading the "as can be feasible" qualifier as a major red-flag but I'd be interested in a link.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link