site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   37105 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 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.

13
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Not Culture War as such, and not à propos of anything, just "in defence of the 1Q 95-100-105 normies" that often get a bashing on here 😁 Or the often discussed topic of 'what is the purpose of schools' and the waste of education that holds back the Smart Cookies because the less smart are being taught alongside them.

From a 60s letter of J.R.R. Tolkien:

As to your last paragraph! I am wholly in favour of the 'dull stodges'. I had once a considerable experience of what are/were probably England's most (at least apparently) dullest and stodgiest students: Yorkshire's young men and women of sub-public school class and home backgrounds bookless and cultureless. That does not, however, necessarily indicate the actual innate mental capacity – largely unawakened – of any given individual. A surprisingly large proportion prove 'educable': for which a primary qualification is the willingness to do some work (to learn) (at any level of intelligence). [This willingness usually connotes some degree of humility. In Yorkshire its first impulse was the desire to 'get on'. But that does not remain the sole objective. Cupboard-love is a frequent preliminary to actual love.] Teaching is a most exhausting task. But I would rather spend myself on removing the 'dull' from 'stodges' – providing some products of β to β+ quality that retain some sanity – a hopeful soil from which another generation with some higher intelligence could arise. Rather – rather than waste effort on those of (apparently at any rate) higher intelligence that have been corrupted and disintegrated by school, and the 'climate' of our present days. [Not to mention 'drugs'.] Teaching an organized subject is simply not the instrument for their rehabilitation – if anything is. Give me one little stubby root, which possibly in a better soil will send out some leaves, and even eventually produce some seed, rather than a large pink root rotten with carrot fly! Amen. But I am old, and probably unable to envisage the appalling situation now existing. Worse even than the soft roots rotten with disease, are (I imagine) the inferior ones that in my time would have been probably sound, but are now equally rotten, but meaner and nastier."

Yay for us dull stodges! 😁

I don't usually find much value in these "old universally celebrated intellectual said things that seem to agree with my position decades ago" takes. Sure, J.R.R. Tolkien, back in his mostly ethnically homogenous home before any real science on intelligence was done had a take on education that doesn't fit with some of our current understanding on it. Einstein and many 20th century geniuses spoke quite favorably of socialism, what of it? We've since run the experiments. Many of the geniuses of antiquity undoubtedly thought foolish things about currently undisputed elementary science as well.

J.R.R. Tolkien, back in his mostly ethnically homogenous home before any real science on intelligence was done

In the 60s, when this letter was apparently written, real science on intelligence has most certainly already been done. This was already decades after Galton, Spearman, Cattell, Terman, just to name a few. Just read the Jensen’s seminal article of 1969, and observe that by then, most of our current understanding of intelligence has already been established. We already knew about positive manifold, g-factor, heritability, polygenicity, impact of assortative mating, inbreeding depression, adoption studies, twin studies (including twins reared apart, he quotes a study from 1937), and, ultimately, race gaps and the fundamental constant of sociology.

In fact, I can scarcely come up with something that’s really material to our today’s understanding of intelligence, but has not been known already and mentioned by Jensen in 1969. Only thing that comes to my mind is Flynn effect, but this one is, arguably, quite irrelevant for most intents and purposes (because Flynn gains are hollow, so they do not represent material differences in intelligence, and are rather mostly indicative of the deficiency of our research tools). Really, since then we have mostly just been filling the gaps using better data and better statistical methods.

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