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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
When I discuss Critical Race Theory with leftists, I often make the point that, while I'd rather public schools not encourage students to speculate on the causes of racial disparities, I'd be amenable to a compromise where systemic racism is taught as one possibility, alongside cultural and biological explanations.
The response to this (when it's not an accusation of racism on my part) is that I'm just like the creationists who wanted their psuedoscience taught alongside evolution. This is kind of true, in that I am asking that ideas I like be taught alongside ones favored by the academic establishment. However, when you take social desirability out of the equation, HBD is more similar to evolution because it literally IS just applied evolution, and systemic racism/CRT/disparate impact/wokeness/social justice/anti-racism/whatever label we're using this week is analogous to creationism in that we have little direct evidence it exists, but we assume it must exist because the current state of affairs would make sense as its outcome, even though it would also make sense as the outcome of other processes.
I doubt that I'm the first person around these parts to say that the Pastafarian explanation for gravity (an invisible, non-corporeal Flying Spaghetti Monster physically pushes us onto the ground) has no less evidence supporting it than the woke explanation for half-Asian, half-white children having a mean IQ between that of Asians and that of whites (stereotype threat impacts them half as much).
I also doubt that I'm the first person around these parts to draw a comparison between creationists who acknowledge microevolution while denying Darwinism to leftists who acknowledge within-group heritability while denying between-group heritability.
However, a thought occurred to me today that frightened me, and my hope is that when I voice it, you will unanimously dismiss it as ridiculous, because if it's in any way true, then I'm going to be devastated.
What if the truth value of Darwinism had little, if anything, to do with its acceptance by the academic establishment, and the falsehood of intelligent design had little, if anything, to do with its rejection by the academic establishment? If truth was that important, we'd expect CRT to be seen as equivalent to creationism, but it's not.
You know the Schmitt meme about how all disputes can be reduced to friend vs. enemy? Well.. maybe that's what happened with the debate over evolution in public schools. Maybe evolution was pushed specifically because the religious right objected to it, and not because it was real. That evolution actually WAS real was incidental at best.
Promote evolution and CRT because they hurt the right. Eliminate intelligent design and HBD because they hurt the left. This is how a Schmittposter would describe what happened, and maybe that literally is what happened.
Please tell me I'm just mindkilled. I'm not being rhetorical here. I would find that reassuring.
I find myself going back and forth between "you've been mind-killed" and "IQ doesn't actually measure the thing that IQ fetishists like to pretend it does". I won't go so far as to say "IQ doesn't exist" but I do believe that an inclination towards academics is not the same thing as being smart or competent. I've had way too much first-hand experience with "switched on" boys from the hood and retards with advanced degrees from prestigious schools to buy either background as a reasonable proxy for intelligence.
Meanwhile the cynical bastard in my wants to believe that Id Pol is what people resort to when they are not secure in their own identity, which is why it's loudest advocates always seem to be some sort of sexual deviant (IE Gay, Trans, Furry, Pedo, Antinatalist, Etc...).
Is this about IQ? IQ doesn't measure "inclination towards academics." The relationship is confounded by all sorts of things, like agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Good IQ tests are inductive reasoning problems that can be given to naked spear-wielding tribesmen in savage jungles who have never heard of a school or university, without cultural bias, because they are testing aptitude in cognitive skills that are (a) common across humans and (b) correlated with capacity for other cognitive skills. An Amazonian wild man might not be able to read, but we can estimate his ability to quickly learn to read based on his IQ score in pattern-recognition problems.
Yes. Im saying that i dont think IQ measures the thing IQ fetishists think it measures. IE intelligence. I think it measures academic aptitude.
I think that there is very little that is scientific about the social sciences and view your claims of what a "good iq test" does with extreme skepticism.
"Intelligence" is a very vague term. It's like asking "Do changes in price indexes measure inflation?" Well, the ordinary concept of inflation is vague, both in the sense that people often are unsure what they mean by it, and in the sense that different people use the term in different ways.
We can compare this with terms like "length", "temperature", or "weight", which are vague when taken out of their usual contexts (e.g. into the more alien parts of physics or into continuous mathematical spaces) but pretty clear in a particular context.
Since "intelligence" itself is vague and ill-defined, even in simple contexts, there is a case for thinking of IQ as what Rudolf Carnap called an "explication" of intelligence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explication#Carnap's_notion_of_explication
IQ matches a lot of things that we'd expect from general intelligence, such as the ability to learn concepts, manipulate relatively large numbers of abstractions at the same time, or solve familiar types of reasoning problems quickly. It also extends into applications where "intelligence" is too vague a notion, such as quantitative comparisons and predictions. However, since IQ has more precise content than "intelligence", it's wrong to say "IQ = intelligence".
Ok let's put it this way.
I have known people with ostensibly room temperature IQs who were simultaneously astute observers and efficient problem solvers. I have also known people who supposedly had IQs in the 150+ range who were effectively retarded and incapable of functioning without strict supervision.
From this one can draw at least one of two conclusions. either IQ tests are not nearly as reliable and universal as they claim to be. Or IQ is not measuring the thing its advocates like to claim it does.
Did you measure the IQs under controlled settings in either case?
No, I didn't, and it is readily apparent that the so called "social scientists" didn't either.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link