site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34336 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 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.

15
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

While I disagree with Freddie deBoer on a lot of things, especially his ongoing war with his commentariat about gender, his thoughts on education seem pretty solid. His new post https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is-dominated is no exception, though he puts in a bit of boilerplate declaring on faith that of course groups can be equalized somehow, even if individuals can't, despite giving no reason to believe that of any particular group or groups. This seems a pretty paltry fig leaf, but oh well.

I suppose if I want to get more of his view on a way forward, I should read his book, The Cult of Smart, but I don't want to just now. Based on his blogging, he seems to think that moving money from smart, productive people to stupid, unproductive people is the best solution, but this doesn't solve the fundamental question of allowing people who can't contribute much economically to live in a worthwhile fashion that allows self respect.

My state legislature has been debating plans to fiddle about with small levers at the margins to make up for Covid losses and "improve education." The levers are very small indeed. An extra half hour in the day? More private bathroom stalls? The only topic that made some sort of sense was career and technical education. I've been thinking about one side of this, trying to help my husband fix a leak this morning, and reading some thoughts from Internaught at DSL lately about crumbling infrastructure. Every time I interact with a Trades produced physical object, I realize that they are made for the large, strong hands of a young man who has been working on manipulating physical objects with weight and mass for years and decades. This probably makes sense from a materials engineering perspective -- assume that a mechanic or tradesman will be interacting with the object, and it can be heavier, with a tighter seal, probably more durable. But it seems like something of a hard sell, getting people to work with these heavy, sturdy objects for decades at a time when they don't have to, and don't get much status out of it, and most people can't afford . Giving out money doesn't seem all that helpful when we're all living in a crumbling, unfixable physical environment, and the computers can do 80% of the writing, calculating, and art, but can't keep the utilities repaired.

I would like to see more emphasis on humans as embodied, physical, tool using beings, but am not sure what steps might lead in that direction. I was listening to a podcast the other day by a Waldorf kindergarten teacher who had started taking his classes on walks to the park all morning, every morning, and that it worked out very well for them, but this was a nice, safe forest park in a place with decent weather much of the year. I don't really know where to go with these thoughts, though. It seems like kids need more physical, sensory experiences, but it seems like a hard pitch, perhaps something to do with laptopping being high status and easy on the body, as is mentioned in the thread on class.

I find deBoer very frustrating.

He's a smart guy. He clearly articulates a lot of problems with leftist ideology, and he can speak to those problems more authentically than most critics because he is a leftist. An unapologetic, literal Marxist, not an "anti-woke ex-liberal" or a "disaffected gray triber" but someone who actually thinks most leftists aren't leftist enough.

And yet I feel like he circles around the truth and will sort of vaguely gesture in its general direction, but will not confront it because he cannot stand what he will see.

I say this as someone who has reluctantly concluded that HBD is largely true, and wishes it wasn't. I think that's where Freddie is at, except he can't make the leap from "It would be really unfortunate and sad if this were true" to "It's true."

A lot of his solutions are actually practicable even (especially) if HBD is true! He has a humane and realistic vision of a world where some kids just aren't ever going to be capable of doing higher math or engineering or much beyond basic literacy. But he cannot force himself to consider a gap beyond "individual differences," and we'll never be able to realistically adopt a model that accepts that some kids, by virtue of "individual differences," are just not college material, and also that by sheer unhappy coincidence most of those kids are non-white.

On the other hand, I don't see a realistic path towards acknowledging a reality - if it is reality - that not by coincidence, most non-white/Asian kids aren't cut out for higher education. So we are stuck. But Freddie seems particularly stuck. I wonder if in his heart of hearts, he doubts what he says publicly, or if he really is a true believer.

I think he's very similar on the trans issue. He can very accurately point out all the problems with trans ideology and the logical fallacies displayed by trans activists, except the central one. Maybe he really, truly believes TWAW, or maybe he just believes that the harm of denying TWAW is greater than the harm of admitting they are not.

In liberal countries, I am not sure that it really should matter much on the political level whether HBD is true. Even if it becomes widely accepted as true, in liberal societies that should not lead to any significantly different political policies. HBD being true would not justify race-based discrimination. Even support for affirmative action does not need to rely on the belief in racial equality. It can be supported on the grounds that certain groups of people were oppressed in the past, which leads to modern-day consequences for them.

As long as society stayed liberal, I think that probably little would change if tomorrow HBD being true became the dominant opinion. Now of course we have plenty of authoritarians here on The Motte who will be happy to argue that HBD being true is yet another good reason for why society should stop being liberal. I like living in a liberal society, though, so my ideal would be that people could argue about whether HBD is true or not while decoupling it from the idea of what political policies society should follow. Being a liberal, in my view the truth or falsity of HBD should have about zero impact on political policy. At most, if HBD became widely accepted as true, it would lessen the degree to which people would support race-baiting political programs which depend for their support on the notion of the white boogeyman. But I already do not support those programs, HBD being true or not changes nothing for me in that regard.

Let’s suppose in this theoretical scenario that an investigation reveals that despite making up 13% of the population, African-Americans comprised only 3% of all new hires at, say, IBM in the last fiscal year. When accused of racial discrimination, IBM rejects this and claims that their hiring practices are based on merit. They produce a bunch of paperwork to prove this etc. Since HBD is no longer tabooized in this scenario, a bunch of journalists, pundits etc. side with IBM and claim that their argument is sound. They provide a bunch of statistics, surveys etc. to prove this.

Then what? How do the supporters of liberal democracy react?

They react by saying "Oh, I guess you are not discriminating based on race, you are discriminating based on merit. Carry on then!".

Supporting liberal democracy is completely compatible with believing that HBD is true.

Only in theory.

The theory behind affirmative action is that the formerly oppressed group needs a helping hand to start but it isn’t permanent. The race (as in marathon) example is used. If someone starts on mile 5 it isn’t a fair race. But implicit in this analogy is that the racers are generally the same. If the racers aren’t identical, then it might not be that someone starts on mile 5. They just might be faster.

So instead of corrupting everything by hiring substandard talent maybe we just end affirmative action and make direct financial payments to the “disadvantaged.”

This was the justification for affirmative action 1.0, and is occasionally still evident as a first line of defense, but aa 2.0 is based on two completely different ideas:

  • That diversity makes organizations stronger in a variety of ways.

  • Proportional representation is required for organizations to be "democratic", in the somewhat novel sense of engaging the whole population.

The first one also falls under HBD. Only the last one, that diversity is necessary for race-based democratic representation, remains. Which makes affirmative action into a race based spoils system.

Even if it becomes widely accepted as true, in liberal societies that should not lead to any significantly different political policies.

The entire affirmative action policy regime depends on the assumption that group disparities are a problem that can be rectified. You say that affirmative action can be justified even with belief in HBD, because some of the disparities could be the result of discrimination. Disparities being the result of discrimination would be hard to falsify in a world of HBD-believers, but more importantly I think the same incentives to play the victim would exist as they currently do. I suspect few people will be satisfied accepting that they're innately less capable when they can easily and unfalsifiably claim to be victims of discrimination, systemic or otherwise.

You're also missing the most important policy that would change in a world of HBD-believers: immigration. Once you accept HBD, it seems to me to be straightforwardly horrifying and despair-inducing to witness what our society is doing to itself with its immigration policies, and to contemplate the implications of extrapolating these trends a century or two into the future.

The entire affirmative action policy regime depends on the assumption that group disparities are a problem that can be rectified.

I think there's a redistributive justification too, as well as a representational justification, as well as a justification premised on the purported instrumental organizational benefits of diversity. I happen not to find any of those justifications persuasive, but affirmative action supporters do not have all of their eggs in the remediation basket.

A liberal society that accepted HBD would not be arguing over whether or not to impose race-based immigration policies because such policies would be clearly illiberal. It would instead, just like it does now, be arguing over whether or not to impose immigration policies based on the prospective immigrants' level of intelligence and/or civilizedness. Arguing for race-based immigration policies is very unpopular in current Western society and in a liberal society that accepted HBD it would still be very unpopular because race-based immigration policies are clearly illiberal and unfair in the sense that they would discriminate based on group characteristics rather than individual characteristics. So in a liberal society that accepted HBD, the conversation would still revolve - much like it does in actual modern Western society - over whether or not society should make immigration policies that discriminate based on prospective immigrants' level of intelligence and/or civilizedness (roughly speaking, actual modern conservatives are in favor of such and actual modern progressives are opposed to such). HBD acceptance would not change immigration policies unless society as a whole significantly began to give up liberalism to an even greater degree than current anti-white policies represent an abandonment of liberalism. The anti-white policies at least pretend to be justified by liberalism, whereas a society in which immigration policies were being directly driven by HBD awareness would be a society in which there was not even the pretense of liberalism at least when it comes to this issue.

I don't see why restricting immigration based on group identity is antithetical to liberalism. People who are not lawful residents of a country are not owed the same treatment as that country's lawful residents. We discriminate amongst would-be immigrants all the time and in all manner of ways that liberalism would rightly demand we not treat our own lawful residents. For example, a categorical ban on immigration from people who believe in certain ideologies or who have illnesses likely to make them a public charge.

And while selecting based on individual characteristics rather than group characteristics is ideal in theory, in practice it runs up against the problem of regression to the mean - children of people at the high end of their group's bell curve end up closer to that group's mean than their parents' giftedness would predict.

There's also the additional problem of the possibility of HBD being applicable to group personality differences. We might not want a substantial portion of our population to belong to groups that, for whatever reason, differ in personality in ways that are at odds with our culture (e.g., individualism vs collectivism, work ethic, intellectual curiosity, and so on). It can be hard to test for this sort of thing, and it also probably involves some amount of regression to the mean. We may rightly decide that's just not a risk worth taking for a bit of a boost in GDP.

In the old model of striving for a colorblind meritocratic society, I would agree with you. Individuals would be judged as individuals, and if some individuals fall short, well, them's the breaks (but a robust social safety net should make sure nobody starves).

Unfortunately, the current model of racial justice is based on equity, not equality, and very broad and constantly expanding indictments of "whiteness." Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo are the most visible and oft-cited flagbearers of this model, but when people talk about "CRT" this is usually what they are talking about.

The problem with this model is that it excludes any possibility of differential outcomes except as a result of white supremacy. Thus, if blacks don't make up 13% of Harvard grads, 13% of doctors, 13% of Congressmen, 13% of company CEOs, etc., the cause cannot be anything other than racism.

Obviously, if HBD is true, this would present a problem, as such a model would be based on a false premise, and "equity" could only be achieved by artificially promoting less qualified people.

One could argue, as you do, that we should do that anyway, that AA isn't just about correcting systemic bias but also reparations for past injustices. (Incidentally, this isn't how AA was originally sold - the premise was the Ibram X. Kendi one, that everyone is equally talented and it's only white supremacy keeping black people down, and if you correct for racism, then black people will rise to their correct level.) But if HBD became widely accepted as true, I think you would have a growing problem of people Noticing what presently is impolitic to notice.

I actually do not support affirmative action, I was just pointing out that one could still make rational arguments in favor of affirmative action even if HBD was widely accepted as true.

I also dislike the equity model of racial justice. I am one of those liberals who wants the model of color-blindness, judging each individual by their individual characteristics, and free scientific inquiry unhampered by the fact that the discoveries might make some people feel uncomfortable.

that not by coincidence, most non-white/Asian kids aren't cut out for higher education.

You just went from "some" to "most" here.

There's a reason why HBD has bad associations and it's not all "progressives like to call people racist". You really need to avoid going any farther than you can support, because making mistakes has big consequences.

I have no idea whether it's some or most. That is why I do not embrace the Repugnant Conclusion as readily as hardcore HBDers do.

Most humans are not cut out for higher education. 120 IQ which I think is the minimum for a "real" degree is like 90th percentile of IQ.

Sorry for not counting gender studies and "entrpreneurship" majors.

I say this as someone who has reluctantly concluded that HBD is largely true, and wishes it wasn't. I think that's where Freddie is at, except he can't make the leap from "It would be really unfortunate and sad if this were true" to "It's true."

Every other page of his book is basically him insisting that believing in hereditarianism doesn't compel you to believe in the racial element of HBD.

At a certain point you just have to take him at his word or you'll drive yourself crazy trying to parse how much is just throat-clearing amongst lefties trying to redpill their fellows without alienating them (since you mentioned Jesse, I also often wonder just how much of his "charity" is tactical or not)

You might even be correctly detecting noble lies rather than just anxiety that Someone Could Reach The Wrong Conclusion(!!!) but it's still a crazymaking exercise.

He also is pretty stubbornly wrong about new construction raising rents in adjacent properties. The body of academic research in the last 5-10 years has produced results that range from “maybe only a little” to “not at all”. And the one study I know of that even attempted to use a control group backs this up. But “new development bad” is a DSA shibboleth he can’t seem to shake.

read between the lines. He makes so much, you think he is gonna piss that away to please people like us.

He makes so much, you think he is gonna piss that away to please people like us.

I don't think anyone would say they don't understand why he refuses to admit certain truths even if he believes them. But I also think it's fair to criticize him for it. Dissembling because the truth would get you in trouble is not the worst wrong ever, but it is still wrong.

It is fair to criticize, but he makes an argument in which the only explanation is HBD, but he cannot just say it outright. By excluding the other possibilities or solutions for academic and wealth inequality, then it logically follows it must be HBD. He's indirectly making Steve Hsu or Steve Sailer arguments but with leftism sprinkled in to please the right people. He is a leftist, who also believes in HBD, so this is a combination that is harder to cancel.

There is a lot of 'I also like Borscht' about his writing. I think he is writing for a lot of the heretics forced to wear masks in his readership.

Oh, I know he has a lot to lose if he came out pro-HBD or anti-trans. I just wonder to what degree he really is a true believer. Some people you can pretty much tell are skeptics even if they won't say so openly (example: Jesse Singal). Freddie I am not so sure about.

I can't see him not being a true believer in trans stuff, his pro-trans posts are very forceful and he's a consistent cultural progressive, but 'has suspicions but doesn't look into them' is plausible for HBD

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