site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I recently heard an interesting explanation for why East Asians are more likely to wear masks than other ethnic groups that doesn't rely on broad claims about culture or personality (or maybe is just upstream of those factors): smaller noses. The claim is that because East Asian noses are typically not as large as those of other races and a lot of the discomfort of wearing a mask comes from pinching or restrictions around the nose, East Asians physically feel less discomfort when wearing masks and therefore are less likely to object to doing so. I'm not sure how much explanatory power this holds vs being a cute story, but it does strike me as being a bit more parsimonious than alternative explanations like "Mongoloids are naturally subservient because <insert evopsych narrative>" and it is something most people wouldn't think of immediately because they only have first-hand knowledge of one nose size (rhinoplasties notwithstanding) and implicitly assume that everyone else has roughly the same facial-topographical experience.

The HBD explanation for Asians not minding masks as much already exists- Asian babies notoriously don’t struggle when a cloth is placed over their face, while White and black babies do. It’s fair to assume this generalizes.

I haven’t heard this before. Do you have any link about this?

Dan Freedman's babies. There's also a video.

There was a poster who got banned for yelling about this over and over again in the last couple months. His conclusions were pretty unhinged, which made me more skeptical that his sources were high-quality. But you might have some luck if you can find them.

I think he was on about black babies not trying to remove a spot from their forehead in a mirror or something like that.