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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35353 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.

Some tests are meant to distinguish object-level ability. Take for instance, becoming a fireman or infantryman. It would be sexist to deny a qualified woman these positions because she's a woman. Furthermore, mumbling something about oppression or double standards is stupid, because you want your positions staffed by qualified applicants.

Whether or not something should be test or a competition can be contentious. For example, those college orientations where they say, "look to your left and to your right. One/two of you won't pass." Those always angered me because I figured a certification should be a test and not a competition.

Competitions are a little different than tests because it's not really about object-level ability. If it was, you would never have weight classes in boxing. After all, being heavy is simply part of the ability in boxing. And I think this is the primary argument for sex-segregating sports. But it's unclear what to do about a female (XX) who happens to somehow be naturally stronger. Why reward her, because she was born stronger than her peers? (I'm trying to sidestep any trans issues, that's a different issue).

As far as I can tell, the entire idea of rewarding winners in a competition has to do with spiritual merit, like determination, or how hard someone practiced.

Or something else I had issue with is how a lot of online games use "time played" as a kind of bonus, and let players grind up more powerful equipment to offset differences in mechanical ability.

Do people construct competitions that they'd be good at in a bid to win status for being good at them? Does TheMotte try to push "effortposting" as a spirtual virtue so that society rewards us?

But it's unclear what to do about a female (XX) who happens to somehow be naturally stronger. Why reward her, because she was born stronger than her peers?

Being stronger is a kind of merit that takes into account genetics and effort. To be the best at anything you need a combination of effort and luck, with genetics being a portion of luck.

For an individual, their genes are luck, but his/her parents did some selection by choice of mate, and it will be stronger in future when PGS becomes meainstream.

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