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 -
I think HBD is glaringly obvious and true, that's probably the biggest redpill I've swallowed since growing up.
I personally wish for us to do something about it. While I'm not outright against drastic measures like sterilization of the retarded, I think there are simply kinder and more broadly palatable options sitting there on the table and that Western society simply ignores by sticking it's head up its own arse.
HBD is a fact, what policy ramifications it entails is a statement about your priorities rather than about HBD. Some find it to be in violation of their heartfelt belief in fundamental equality, and being idiots, choose to ignore reality instead of reassessing their beliefs. Others leap up at the opportunity to be xenophobic, to expel the unsightly other given that they have a mildly defensible pretext for it.
Personally, I think the only lasting solution to the issue of HBD is going full steam ahead on genetic engineering or other forms of cognitive enhancement. It's a silly artifact of evolution that the color of one's skin should have anything to do with one's intelligence, and we should be uplifting everyone to be the very best they possibly can be, and where it's too late for somatic improvements, at least offer them the option of making sure their kids get dealt a better hand.
Leaving aside that there are a bazillion other excellent reasons to do the above other than HBD, it's a no brainer, and it fundamentally disappoints me that civilization as a whole fell prey to absurd taboos. We're leaving trillion dollar notes on the floor and then covering them up with our dung.
I'm not even calling for the establishment of a race of Ubermensch, I want everyone raised up to as close to equality as possible, but I don't want to rely on frankly stupid and unproductive endeavors like trying to spend billions more on educating the uneducatable.
Or at the very least, the US should realize that if they're in a hole, they ought to stop digging, or throwing trillions more into the money burning pit to absolutely no avail.
It isn't. And frankly even with gene modding the genetics of body features are so intermeshed whatever you do to enchance some one's intelect WILL have an effect on how they appear on the outside, indeed their whole body will change in subtle ways, some times only AI will be able to tell they were genemoded, some times you'll be able to tell yourself just by looking at them, wheather it will be entirely new skin colors, or facial features or hair distribution or whatever.
You can't just change one organ, it doesn't work that way with our genetics. Everything is masively horizontally integrated. You change one thing, you will change a dozen other systems and organs at the same time.
More options
Context Copy link
No it's not. Those who went away from ancestral environment are more likely to change. As color of skin is a proxy of going away from ancestral environment, it is no surprise is correlated with something else.
I don't mean it literally, of course I'm aware of the evolutionary pressures that changes in the ancestral environment might have produced.
Imagine if, like Orks from Warhammer 40k, painting an F1 car a different color made it faster. That would be an awkward state of events, and to the extent that the human body is a machine too, I want as much phenotypic diversity as possible with trading off something important like intelligence.
But it isn't what happens. In shop there are, say, professional photo cameras in black color and toy children cameras in pink but their color has no bearing on features that make them different.
Where would you stop?
What about, say, blue, green or purple skin? They are missing. And I want tentacles too.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I may be misremembering. I seem to recall a minor skirmish in the 90's culture wars around billboards in California that were advertising cash payments for volunteering to be sterilized.
It seems we pay the underclass to reproduce now, would we see better outcomes if we paid them not to?
More options
Context Copy link
I mostly agree with you, but I think if we do go the genetic engineering route it will be even more critical that we take care of the cognitively impaired than it is now. Because there is no way we figure out optimal genetics without fucking up a shitload of people in the process. And a world where you can get executed or neutered because you didn't want to be dumb, but were already dumb enough to trust a shady pharmaceutical company to make you an ubermensch, is definitely a dystopia.
More options
Context Copy link
Honestly sterilisation is not even needed, given how modernity is reducing the natural birth rates of the lower classes below replacement. Give it a few generations and they'll wipe themselves out of their own accord. All that we need to do is let it run its course among the lumpenproles while subsidizing better human beings to have more children (e.g. tax breaks as a percentage of your income for each child you have work to do this well, a woman who's earning $20k get $2k from a 10% cut, while a woman who's earning $200k gets $20k from the same level of cut) and work towards developing artificial wombs so that we can grow superior humans directly.
Lower classes are actually above replacement in USA. In middle class, income is correlated negatively with TFR and doesn't go up until top 3% in income. I guess if we take TFR vs IQ instead of TFR vs income then it doesn't have inflection point at the right.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I haven't given much thought to the idea, but I would probably be against mass involuntary sterilization of people with undesirable characteristics. A method of implementing eugenics which I find far more defensible, and I think many people would agree with me, would be to sterilize criminals. There is a lot of overlap between criminals and people who a eugenicist would want to prevent from reproducing. Objections that it's involuntary are inapplicable, because we already do horrible things to criminals like imprisoning them, or even, depending on time and place, executing them. You could frame it as just another punishment, or to prevent children being raised in abusive households, etc., without publicizing the eugenic effects.
In America, Black people would of course be disproportionately affected by this, which would upset some on the left, but it would also mean that the difference between Blacks and Whites would narrow over time. (And Whites would be affected more than Asians, and so on. All the racial differences would narrow.)
If this had been implemented, say, two generations ago, in the 1970s, we would already be seeing huge results. As is, however, it seems kind of pointless because by the time we start seeing results, genetic engineering will likely already be widespread.
The objection to that plan is that most criminals have already reproduced by the time they’re convicted, isn’t it?
More options
Context Copy link
You'd need to get them early. Offer vasectomies as the diversion program for first-time violent offenders, or accept nominations into the program from their high schools or truant officers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Why?
Seriously, why do you think it should be some sort of teleological objective of mankind to have everyone calibrated to be of equal ability?
Even if these abilities are high, this is still some kind of Harrison Bergeron dystopian shit.
It might be a bad idea to try to adjust every individual to be of equal ability, but I am not sure that it would be a bad idea to raise up every population to be of equal average ability if it could be accomplished through the sum of voluntary decisions made by each set of parents. Of course you would need to fix the definition of "population" (say, US census categories as of 2020) to prevent later complications.
More options
Context Copy link
My opinion is that there's a physical ceiling on how far it's possible to enhance one's capabilities, and everyone deserves an opportunity to get there.
I don't think a society of everyone with Olympian physiques and Nobel level IQs is in anyway dystopian, and that's lowballing it in terms of what's possible. If there are minor variations, so be it, but I don't want people to suffer needlessly from drawing the short straw in genetics, there's nothing else you have less control over after all.
To sum it up:
Offer everyone cognitive and physical enhancements.
Let them choose which ones to avail.
If it's even a remotely sensible society, you'll end up with everyone at Pareto optimal points, and the world will be a far better place. Anyone not taking up the offer is an idiot, and no tears should be shed for them.
The end result approximates almost perfect equality, but that does not mean that I want equality for its own sake. Let everyone be the best they can be, and it'll work out.
More options
Context Copy link
"Raising people up" is, in fact, the exact opposite of Harrison Bergeron dystopia.
The problem is that if equality is your primary goal and "raising up" is only a preferred method, you quickly realize there's not a lot of raising you can do, but lowering is a lot more practical.
Nothing in the grandfather post indicated the poster was in favor of lowering people down. Let's try taking people at their word.
The post said:
It's ambiguous as to whether equality is the goal and raising up the desired method, or not. But if it is, then the unsuitability of the method quickly leads to other methods of fulfilling the goal.
I'm sincerely baffled you find that statement ambiguous. I'm finding it really hard to take your reply in good faith.
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