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 -
There are two strong arguments against mass-migration for a smart liberal they need to consider provided they are open to HBD:
They want a European style welfare society. That doesn’t work if you have a large population with significantly lower productive and potentially higher crime rates ruin the commons to enjoy your European style welfare state lifestyle.
The Indian conundrum. I think at this point it’s obvious there are a lot of smart Indians. But domestically no innovation. Can having a society that’s 20% Einstein and 80% much lower productivity innovate? Or does dealing with social dysfunction sap a lot of a societies surplus to do tech/external things?
I don't think you need to believe in Human BioDiversity to see those as significant arguments, you just need to believe in Human Diversity. When one city full of Hispanics can have 100 times the murder rate of its immediately-adjacent city full of Hispanics, it's hard to blame that (and harder to blame that wholly) on genes, but it's also impossible to claim that that's just a wacky happenstance and what's a Central Limit Theorem anyway? There's obviously some kind of strong society-level condition at work here, one that can have effects on the scale of thousands of corpses per city per year created or avoided, and even if it's just cultural attitudes or social support for good institutions or whatever rather than genetics, it's still probably something that isn't entirely discarded and replaced when a member of that society crosses a national border.
If social outcomes were mostly or entirely non-genetic then there would be less of a worry about low levels of immigration, because the immigrants might then completely assimilate to the host culture. But, paradoxically, that might mean we aren't worrying enough about higher levels of immigration, because the ability to avoid assimilating is likely to be superlinear (the more similar immigrants you have around you, the less affected you and they are by the host culture) and will definitely have hysteresis (culture isn't just based on the demographics at the moment, but on how gradually those demographics were changed in the past), so observation of immigration at lower levels from a particular culture wouldn't extrapolate cleanly to predict the effects of higher levels from that culture.
More options
Context Copy link
I'd also argue that the incoming AI reduction in employment rates is also something you've got to refute before you can justify importing bulk bodies
That I think would be fairly easy. The migrants would benefit from better rule of law and the higher productivity from robots would make giving more people American level wealth trivial.
But I’ve never seen a leftist deal with racial productivity differences mentally. They just yell racists.
Depends on the degree.
Infinite luxury communism robots sure, but any sort of half-grade solution where human labor isn't particularly cost-effective but also it's not infinity surplus for anybody and you can get wedged.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link