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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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Could you elaborate on what specific harm showing an anatomically correct sculpture to sixth graders does to them?

The reasons we don't want to show actual pornography are varied. We don't want to encourage kids that young to have sex by showing it to them. We don't want them to conflate the exaggerated performance of sex in porn with normal sex and have them immitate it. And we don't want them to think adults showing them pornography is normal and prime them for future abuse.

I think a group presentation in the context of art history is distinct enough from some creepy dude showing you porn alone that it's not priming children for abuse. It's not a sexualized performance or a depiction of sex children are likely to immitate. It's possible 11 year old straight girls and gays boys will experience arousal at the sight of a naked male body for the first time and seek out other depictions of naked men, leading them to engage in sex too early.

I don't think David is so fake it's impossible to become aroused by looking at him, the healthy male body is normal site of arousal for women/gay men, but he's not designed to be highly arousing either. He also expresses the Renaissance ideal that the human body is a beautiful creation of God worthy of veneration and is undeniably important in art history. The school's policy of letting parents decide through permission slips whether the harm of potential arousal at the sight of a healthy male body outweighs the educational value seems wise and it's important to note that only 1 parent of the fifty kids actually objected to his inclusion, the controversy is that they didn't issue the permission slips like they did in years past.

Could you elaborate on what specific harm showing an anatomically correct sculpture to sixth graders does to them?

This is a wholly irrelevant question. I know it's what the pro-David side likes to focus on, because it makes their opponents look like aliens to the ingroup, but it fundamentally doesn't matter.

If we can agree that there are two groups who differ on the answer to your question: regardless of the substance of their answers, this is an issue of how a community has decided to navigate through this difference in opinions. Now, it may seem to some like the question is so stupid that the community process no longer matters, but this is a great way to destroy a community. This is the essence of a lot of culture war issues at the moment, a focus on terminal values above the process by which we allow competing values to co-exist peacefully.

Now, it may seem to some like the question is so stupid that the community process no longer matters, but this is a great way to destroy a community. This is the essence of a lot of culture war issues at the moment, a focus on terminal values above the process by which we allow competing values to co-exist peacefully.

I would disagree. The essence of many culture war issues is that our ability to stand up and say "this is fucking stupid" for most of these topics is broken.

Are you complaining about "Microaggressions" or how damaging the white culture of being on time is? Are you complaining about one of the most famous pieces of art being shown to kids in school?

Well, that's not worth anyone's time to even consider as an issue. You should scream into the void where nobody hears you.

I would disagree. The essence of many culture war issues is that our ability to stand up and say "this is fucking stupid" for most of these topics is broken.

YOU think they're stupid, but other people clearly don't. What happens to your community when you're done yelling "You're stupid!" at everyone you don't like? Do they agree and change into smart people? Do they grow to hate you? What has it accomplished? You have broken more than you were trying to fix.

EDIT: Also, I don't know what world you're living in, but the number of people saying "this is fucking stupid" seems to be at an all-time high. Have you seen Twitter? This the Daily Show-ification of public discourse. It makes the person saying "that's stupid" feel smug and makes everyone else hate them. Is it working?

Could you elaborate on what specific harm showing an anatomically correct sculpture to sixth graders does to them?

It's possible 11 year old straight girls and gays boys will experience arousal at the sight of a naked male body for the first time and seek out other depictions of naked men, leading them to engage in sex too early.

It's a violation of property rights. If I'm paying six figures a head for 18 years (well, on paper; in practice it's closer to 25) of latent ability to challenge me innocence, you better damn well believe I'm going to go after anything that threatens that. While I understand that I can't dictate society impose my standards- would that I could- it disturbs me that my property might be made to grow in ways that run counter to my interests.

I don't think it's more sophisticated than that. It's not maximizing the objective well-being of the kids we're worried about; they don't matter and are objectively worthless to society (a long-term net negative, if TFR is any indication) beyond the tasks their parents have for them.

The concept that society cannot violate parents' property rights over children are a socioeconomic wage in the calculus of having children- anytime someone says "but what if my kid grows up to be [undesirable thing]?" this is what they mean. If the wage is too low, society doesn't get kids, so society must defer to them or even the people arguing for these wages to be lower (for culture war reasons, or just rational ones) go extinct.

Are you sincere that parents’ interest in their children’s education is a property interest?

Yes; what else can it be? From the religious angle (which is typically used to justify this) it's maximizing the chance their property makes it to heaven- they'll phrase it differently, but this is how it functions. From the secular censorship angle, any "seductive misinformation" damages the chance the property has to accept a way of life conducive to [what is believed by the elite to be] the global maximum of desired social behavior.

Either way, it damages their property in the same way that ChatGPT output unflattering to Blue tribe damages OpenAI's brand- it's something that they might have to put in extra effort to deal with.

Unlike artificial NNs, though, natural NNs cannot be reset, so once they know it they can't ever un-know it- causing permanent damage. The conclusion of the NN may be different at best and counterproductive at worst, like (with no other political valence) a pet going feral. Bad for the owner, bad for the pet.

Or is this a slightly hostile summary of what progressives believe conservatives are actually mad about

It's certainly unflattering, but the progressives work the same way with respect to them learning traditionalist ideas and I don't think the underlying (biological?) mechanism is any different in either case.

Are you sincere that parents’ interest in their children’s education is a property interest?

It isn't outlandish to consider children the property of their parents. Prominent libertarian Murray Rothbard endorsed that framing to some extent, with the caveat that the "ownership" is merely trusteeship until such time as the child asserts self-ownership.

Ask the auditors of your employee benefit plan.

Bible says (or at least heavily implies; it's been a while) "children are property of their parents", extends blessings to children who obey this and execution to those that refuse.

The employee benefit plan of Christianity is mostly rear-loaded; the retirement plan can be accurately described as "out of this world".

Seems pretty cut and dry to me. I'd want to maximize the chance my child takes advantage of it, and we can start by covering up everything that matches the naturally-emergent sin disgust heuristic, starting with a fig leaf on this nude statue over here. Why gouge out one's own eye (a popular and plain-ish, though not necessarily correct, reading of the passage) when you can see no evil by less traumatic means?

Bible says (or at least heavily implies; it's been a while) "children are property of their parents", extends blessings to children who obey this and execution to those that refuse.

Do you mean Psalm 127?

It says that children are a gift from God (specifically, a reward) but that's not the same thing as saying that parents own their children. After all, a fully-grown child is supposed to be as much a gift from God as a child, but you presumably wouldn't say that fully-grown children are the property of their parents!

but you presumably wouldn't say that fully-grown children are the property of their parents!

Why not? Patria potestas and Confucian filial piety are not foreign concepts. The Honor commandment is a heavy burden, not merely one of respect.

Familial duties and owning other people are not the same thing.

More specifically, Rothbard says:

In the libertarian society, then, the mother would… have the trustee-ownership of her children, an ownership limited only by the illegality of aggressing against their persons and by their absolute right to run away or to leave home at any time. Parents would be able to sell their trustee-rights in children to anyone who wished to buy them at any mutually agreed price.

So, under Rothbard's formulation, a parent does not have any restrictions as severe as "fiduciary duty". Maybe trustee is an inaccurate description on Rothbard's part, and it's closer to ownership than trusteeship (but still not full ownership).