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.

If I started talking about ‚The so-called 'scientific' theory of evolution‘, what does that imply about the truth of the theory?

‚I just mean some kooks misuse it.‘

Charitably, I could buy that.

However, you, @FCfromSSC and the ‚don‘t tell‘ crowd are so uncomfortable with the truth that you defend white lies/lies by omission on this subject. You do not want the truth known, you have aligned yourself with liars, so when you repeat their lies, I find the charitable explanation lacking. When people tell you they might lie, believe them.

Let me rephrase: you reluctantly believe that HBD is true, but you really want to say/justify saying that HBD is false. So when you say something that looks a lot like ‚HBD is false‘ , I suspect a gap between your words and your beliefs. That is not unreasonably uncharitable on my part. Whoever excuses lies, voids their right to charity.

Whether HBD is true or not(although I believe it is obviously true), whatever Jim said, what if anything is to be done about HBD, those things don‘t concern me nearly as much as lies.

However, you, @FCfromSSC and the ‚don‘t tell‘ crowd are so uncomfortable with the truth that you defend white lies/lies by omission on this subject. You do not want the truth known, you have aligned yourself with liars, so when you repeat their lies, I find the charitable explanation lacking. When people tell you they might lie, believe them.

You are projecting many sentiments onto me that I have not expressed or defended. I do not want "the truth" hidden, I have not aligned myself with liars, and I do not (knowingly) repeat lies. Apparently you have assumed that I support the "Noble Lie" ("we all know HBD is true but we should pretend it isn't because it would be bad for society"), and that is not what I advocate.

Let me rephrase: you reluctantly believe that HBD is true, but you really want to say/justify saying that HBD is false.

Incorrect. At most, you could say that I wish HBD were false, but have reluctantly concluded that it is true (but the extent to which it is true is still unknown).

So when you say something that looks a lot like ‚HBD is false‘ , I suspect a gap between your words and your beliefs. That is not unreasonably uncharitable on my part.

No, it's flatly false.

I hope getting that rant off your chest felt righteous and vindicating, but it was completely misdirected.

Come on, I disagree with all my friends.

Nybbler, Dase and I have asked you in other threads what your position is: lie, self-delusion, silence, or truth, but you refuse to answer. Going off heuristics, you have a propensity to attack the motives, associates and preferred policies (or lack of policies) of one side (which you believe to have the truth on its side) while defending the other. You just lament what you know to be true and the negative consequences that would result if this truth became more widely known. Honestly, what does your position look like to you?

Okay, just for calibration purposes, here is an example of an HBD comment from this thread. Do you think this is a good example of an argument well-founded on facts, solid evidence and intellectual rigor?

[EDIT] ...This thread turned into a bit of a free for all, but this comment and this one might be relevent.

The comment is of low quality, and wrong. But that is no more a discredit to HBD than it is to right-wing ideology as a whole. Should that be banned and demonized?

I'm not interested in banning or demonizing anything.

What's the proper way to refer to race-essentialist people who explicitly use HBD as a fully-general explanation for all behavior and outcomes? As an example, this post from a bit ago:

We know what the root cause is for classroom indiscipline, poor nutrition, bad (cultural?) traditions, bad (parental?) literacy, unstable home life and one-parent households.

If people are smart and capable, they won't find themselves in situations where they're having more children they can support with unhelpful partners, won't have a culture glorifying crime, won't be illiterate, won't disrupt classrooms, won't create or maintain food desserts or fail to provide nutritious food.

...So that's a claim of straight bio-determinism, isn't it? It seems to me that these sorts of posts are most of the HBD posts I see, mainly because the more rigorous conversations got mined out years ago. Now, maybe my impression is wrong, and I think that sort of post is more common than it actually is because it stands out to me in a way more rigorous HBD posts don't. But this low-quality and wrong posting is what I'm actually objecting to, and not the rigorous version that confines itself to the evidence.

How about "your average far right mottizen with more concepts than sense"?

Although I may be unfair to them. Given the disconnect between how suppressed HBD is, and how scientifically well-supported it is, it’s no wonder that people try to “put HBD on everything”, just for the novelty. What other puzzling questions can be easily answered with something like HBD when the lies are exposed and the censorship lifted?

How about "your average far right mottizen with more concepts than sense"?

That's a possible option.

What other puzzling questions can be easily answered with something like HBD when the lies are exposed and the censorship lifted?

...This is the problem, though. The comment I linked is a person saying "it's all genetics", in response to a situation that we know for a certainty is environmental. Teachers used technique A, got good, verified results, but switched to technique B that gives very bad results instead, because the teachers find technique B more personally fulfilling. HBD has no plausible role in this conversation, but here it is anyway, because people find it easy and fun to apply.

Then when our grumpy friend drops the hammer on this obviously bullshit argument, which he predicted would be made in advance, more reasonable HBD people appear to interpret it as an attack on reasonable, evidence-based science.

If HBD leads to the proliferation of irrational, obviously bullshit racial hot takes, I think that's a problem. I think the best solution is to push back against those hot-takes, and the core logic behind them, and "put HBD into everything" is definately part of that core logic.

Sure, push back against those specific takes all you want. I have a problem with you saying things like ‘nothing good can come from [discussing HBD]’, not you taking apart flawed arguments. You'd immediately recognize your statements as indicating a wish to hide the truth if a progressive said it about one of your hobby horses.

I’m not going to condemn all hypergamy, cathedral, or anti-enlightenment talk (for example) because some take it too far (despite those concepts being a lot more dubious than HBD). We don’t even draw the line at things that are clearly false, so why here?

More comments