site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 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.

What level of evidence do you require exactly? Will forum links from users who advocate HBD and then advocate for segregation/expulsion/etc of disfavored groups be sufficient? Or will they get No True Scotsmanned and Hey I Was Only Joking'd and Out of Context'd out of town? Will examples of more public advocates of hbd holding spicier takes in private go? What level of substantiation would lead you to consider this proven for some subset of people using the phrase HBD?

My patience for sitting around waiting for people to admit the obvious is sort of wearing thin when we've all watched Just-Skeptical caterpillars bloom into anti-Semitic butterflies in this meadow. Holocaust denial isn't anti-Semitic was an objection I'm supposed to address one moment, the next Catholic doctrine is the protocols of the... Well you know the rest.

The existence of radicals in all areas is not disqualifying for plainly true ideas. From my experience on themotte the majority of HBD proponents simply want to use it as a counter theory to widespread racial discrimination being the source of disparate outcomes. There exist some people that want to use it to justify horrible policies, just like there exist people who want to use all sorts of facts to advance terrible policy that does not necessarily follow from those facts.

My patience for sitting around waiting for people to admit the obvious is sort of wearing thin when we've all watched Just-Skeptical caterpillars bloom into anti-Semitic butterflies in this meadow.

My patience for needing to address this accusation every single time that people want to plug their ears and blind their eyes to the plain truth wears even thinner. You can't actually contest the truth so you instead attack motivations. To what end? The peace is already not holding. We are running out of possible interventions and the demand for an explanation for disparate impacts grows only stronger.

I would be very interested in your examples of "public advocates of hbd holding spicier takes in private", with the added conditions that

  1. they be public advocates with some legitimacy and following (specifically: published on hbd/genetics in a peer-reviewed journal, or >1000 followers on a social media platform, or similar credentials)
  2. their "spicy take" specifically includes "how they actually advocate for treating individual Blacks", and that advocated treatment involves some actual harm beyond hurt feelings or missed socioeconomic opportunities.

I predict you won't be able to find anything about denying individuals human rights based on race, only about assuming individual blacks are more likely to commit crimes and be poor at high-g loaded tasks than individuals of other races. I commit to making a personal bayesian update of my worldview if you can fine 2 or more examples that meet this criteria, since you used "advocates" plural.