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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35350 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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The triumph of the blank slate

an article in the Atlantic recently made the case that separating sport by sex doesn’t make sense, because it ‘reinforces the idea that boys are inherently bigger, faster, and stronger than girls in a competitive setting — a notion that’s been challenged by scientists for years.’

On a similar theme, a few weeks back the New York Times ran a piece arguing that ‘maternal instinct is a myth that men created’. In the essay, published in the world’s most influential newspaper, it was stated that ‘The notion that the selflessness and tenderness babies require is uniquely ingrained in the biology of women, ready to go at the flip of a switch, is a relatively modern — and pernicious — one. It was constructed over decades by men selling an image of what a mother should be, diverting our attention from what she actually is and calling it science.’

Just recently, Scientific American stated that ‘Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex — the male — and considered the female body an inferior version of it. The shift historians call the “two-sex model” served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body.’

Yet what is strange is that such ideas are triumphant, even as the scientific evidence against them mounts up, with the expanding understanding of genetics and the role of inheritance. The tabula rasa should by all rights be dead, indeed it should have been killed twenty years ago with the publication of one of the most important books of the century so far, Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate.

Rather than blank slate-led ideas falling to mockery and obscurity, the opposite has happened — they’ve proliferated and spread. Pinker was obviously right, yet seems to have lost.

i recently was in a seminar discussing fixed versus growth mindsets, and it was argued that believing in any innate/genetic component of intelligence was connected to a 'fixed' mindset. we were discouraged from using the idea of 'talent' as it implied that some people were just naturally better at some things than others. it seems like a core part of the 'diversity, equity, and inclusion' mantra that is finding its way everywhere - the idea of innate difference is anathema to the principle behind caring about equity versus equality.

On a similar theme, a few weeks back the New York Times ran a piece arguing that ‘maternal instinct is a myth that men created’. In the essay, published in the world’s most influential newspaper, it was stated that ‘The notion that the selflessness and tenderness babies require is uniquely ingrained in the biology of women, ready to go at the flip of a switch, is a relatively modern — and pernicious — one. It was constructed over decades by men selling an image of what a mother should be, diverting our attention from what she actually is and calling it science.’

I don't have data but I do have anecdotes. I have small kids and have been hanging out with lots of other small kids lately in multi-family campouts. One of my small kids is still a baby, and I get to see firsthand how other kids react. Here's how it goes: 100% of the other boys, of all ages, are completely indifferent to my baby, while almost all of the little girls look at the baby with glassy eyes and are clearly having their minds blown by adoration and maternal instinct. It's literally the centerpiece of their whole world on the campout. I'm surrounded by them the whole time I hold my kid. They look like they're on drugs.

Sorry, I just don't believe you can socialize this. It would be really convenient if it could be socialized, because my "potential babysitter?" options would double. Someone let me know if they figure out how to pull off this kind of deep brainstem reprogramming.

This is why it is relevant that so many of our would-be thought leaders are childless 30-somethings. It takes a gargantuan effort at doublethink to raise a few kids and see them interact with other kids, and not have your ape brain sort them into the glaring binary categories that apply 95% of the time.

I think the 95% idea is what confuses people. 'Men and women each have a bell curve on an attribute and there is some overlap' is just too difficult a concept for enough people to grasp that it we end up with 'There are exactly two points' versus 'there is one point'

IDK man. I'm a childless 30-something, and even I know perfectly well that women have a maternal instinct. It's patently obvious, I have no idea how these people can say otherwise. So I think there's gotta be at least some other factor at play here besides "has not watched kids interacting very much".

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