site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 17, 2024

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.

8
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'm not posting it to convince people of Turkheimers viewpoint, I'm posting it to demonstrate at what level the debate is being had. It doesn't matter what the science says. Race science is ugly and offensive. This is a fact and anyone who disagrees can be invited to explain the hereditarian viewpoint to a kind and caring black person without feeling gross.

Or to put it another way: We object to it on the same grounds we object to excavations of alleged mass graves from Nazi death camps: The holocaust happened, there's no reason to desecrate graves of its victims. The end!

If you want to argue in favor of science and knowledge... Why here, why now? What drives ones interest towards race or the holocaust? There is no answer here. You're just a racist nazi.

If there's a genuine position that can meet progressive ontology head on I'm willing to hear it. So far the only competitors I've seen are racists or people who either willfully or ignorantly ignore the glaring issues that lie between blacks and whites.

If you want to argue in favor of science and knowledge... Why here, why now?

I don't know how many more times this can be repeated, I'm sure everyone with your position who posts here has had this explained but then you go on to ask these questions again so I will explain to you again. The reason it matters to many of us is because White people in America and the world broadly are being accused of a grievous crime of holding entire races of people down. Of perpetrating massive and distributed systems of racial discrimination. The proof is the outcomes from claimed to be meritocratic processes being unequal along racial lines. Everywhere that explicit racism can be found has been rooted out by ever more hysterical people who have gotten to the point of calling the idea of meritocracy itself to be racist.

This calls out for a search for an alternate explanation. And there are some pretty obvious places to check.

If not HBD and our attempts at rooting out explicit discrimination what's the progressive's actual endgame? Permanent and continuous transfers along racial lines with the agreed understanding that white people are just incapable of not discriminating against black people? You think that's a stable solution?

I don't disagree, but I'd argue that your position is not scientific/knowledge seeking. You want to protect white people. According to the progressive oppression stack white people rest pretty low. That's where your problem with the progressives begins.

If you're a supremacist you want to protect white people no matter what. If you're not, why protect white people when there are so many others in need? Surely whitey can wait. And if you want to challenge that aspect of progressive ontology you will be so far outside the Overton Window that they can easily just call you a racist nazi and move on. And I don't think they would be all that wrong in doing so, technically speaking. I mean, we did storm the beaches of Normandy for a reason, right? We depict those guys as heroic for a reason, right?

I don't disagree, but I'd argue that your position is not scientific/knowledge seeking. You want to protect white people.

What a trick this is! Ask why someone might be motivated to seek knowledge "why here, why now?" to imply racial hatred as motivation and then when some other motivation is reached for you say "See!? I knew no one could just value scientific knowledge!". From how you've constrained the options no path can lead to a genuine motivation.

If you're a supremacist you want to protect white people no matter what. If you're not, why protect white people when there are so many others in need? Surely whitey can wait. And if you want to challenge that aspect of progressive ontology you will be so far outside the Overton Window that they can easily just call you a racist nazi and move on. And I don't think they would be all that wrong in doing so, technically speaking. I mean, we did storm the beaches of Normandy for a reason, right? We depict those guys as heroic for a reason, right?

Being somewhat username blind it's not clear to me if you're merely trying to demonstrate how tightly hermetically sealed the progressive outlook is or if you find yourself caught in it. But in the interest of trying to unravel this nut either way. I will say I care about avoiding the pitfalls of impugning a people with the blood libel of unfalsifiable racism from the same parable the jews were famously put through and in a way that ought resonate deep in the western psyche. It is enough for me that it is cruel, unfair and a violation of our national aspiration to hold whites culpable for a crime they have not committed. But if I must appeal to the progressive stack, that loathsome concept, then I will say that it did not serve the nazis well to place the blame for all their troubles in the jews, nor did it serve Lysenko well to place the soviets on the other side of genuine scientific inquiry. History is replete with people and peoples who thought they could, this time, let resentment and catharsis take priority over truth and the hatred will not serve you. There is nothing to gain from this willful ignorance and much to lose.

Surely "permanent" is an exaggeration.

I think there's a fundamental difference between the sides here in terms of intuitions about social processes.

Assuming no genetic racial variance in relevant traits, and assuming no other policy or social interventions of any kind, how long would you expect it to take from the day that there is zero race-based discrimination anywhere in the country, to the day when all racial wealth and achievement gaps have been completely eradicated?

My answer is 'probably around 300 to 500 years.'

I don't even really think that's the end of the problem most unstable. The gaps will continue to exist among people with the same background so we're really going to go ahead with the belief that in 100 years when progressive thought is no longer fought at all that we're just going to let the obviously discriminatory leaders continue to do their harm?

This is a fact and anyone who disagrees can be invited to explain the hereditarian viewpoint to a kind and caring black person without feeling gross.

Is there bulletproof glass between us?

Ah, I see. In that case I agree that it demonstrates the discussion well.

I’m a bit confused by your last paragraph though. The obvious answer would be to judge individuals on their merit, no? That’s explicitly opposed to progressive race-based judgement, aligns well with classical liberalism and HBD views, and already has a wide acceptance society-wide.

It works up until you need to answer why their literacy rates are so low and why there are practically none of them in higher education.

You can't tell the black people the truth because that's ugly and no one has the stomach for it, so where do you go? The exact same way our modern western society has gone: Towards progressivism. Because progressive ontology actually has a beautiful answer: ordained equality and racism.