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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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Does this mean you think black people are more genetically predisposed to violence?

I think American blacks are culturally (strongly) and genetically (not as strongly) predisposed to violence, and that those genetic predispositions are to some extent shared with southern whites i.e. not from slave ancestry, but from slaveowner ancestry. Black people elsewhere would have to be analyzed independently, as they don't share all of these characteristics. In some multiethnic countries like Mali, the black agricultural population is less violent than the lighter-skinned desert pastoralist population.

Can I ask what your politics are? I think you're consistently one of the best commentators here.

Thanks, I appreciate it. I have a mixture of Asian-style social conservatism and more classically American liberal beliefs i.e. on a personal level I follow the typical "immigrant parent" line, on an intermediate scale I think of Tocquevillian-style local democracy as an ideal, and on a larger scale I align more or less with Hobbes or Xunzi. When I'm feeling witty I call this Confucianism with American Characteristics.

That seems messed up.

This is not really sufficient effort for engagement on the matter. "That seems messed up" signals your disapproval ("that view seems low status") without explaining why you disapprove, or how the observed evidence might be explained in other ways.

(It may help to sub a different ingroup/outgroup to grasp the dynamic here. For example, if the other user had suggested that men are naturally more violent than women, would you say "that seems messed up?" Or imagine they had suggested that young people are naturally more violent than old people, or that people with cognitive impairments are naturally more violent than cognitive normies. Whether any of these claims is actually true or false, you can hopefully see why someone might make such claims, and think of the kinds of evidence that would strengthen or weaken your tendency to endorse or reject such claims.)

I'm not engaging you on substance here--I was just providing examples that might help you understand why you were being moderated on inadequate effort.

I mean, I don't want to believe this. I take no pleasure in it, but it is simply what I have concluded given the available data and a lifetime of observation. It is as unlikely that every group of humans would be equal in their propensity towards violence as that they would have the same skin tone, the same average height or IQ, or be equally capable of running marathons. Moreover, the difference between any two ethnic groups in terms of aggression will be nothing compared to the difference between men and women, and we have (mostly) managed to accept and internalize the latter.