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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I don't understand what your point is and want to clarify that the video part of your quote is made up and not the kinds of questions he is referring to.
Are you accusing Hsu of having an interest in HBD? If so, based on what?
I had hoped that it was obvious to everyone that the part in bold was added by me. Though that may be an error as I just assumed people would read the link given to Hsu's blog. People are obviously more quick to comment than that, sadly.
It's exactly the kind of question he is referring to. A different example of his, given in an interview were he was asked about his views and the characterization as being racist he says, paraphrased:
The point I'm making is that being open to everything obviously isn't allowed. You can't be agnostic on sacred matters and Hsu knows this. In my view he's just trying to weasel his way out since he's too proud to outright lie like Turkheimer or that he knows how ridiculous die hard environmentalism is.
Just casually scrolling through his blog. He did a fun interview with Razib Khan where they go over some of their shared interests together, population genetics included... I mean, yeah the guy is not a culture warrior and I think he very adamantly doesn't want to become one. But depending on your definition of HBD the guy is very interested in differences between humans. Just not in a way that's incendiary to his career.
What reason is there to think he is unsure that the Holocaust happened?
Population genetics is not HBD. That is not what is getting him called racist.
You're not getting the point, which is that there are certain things you are not allowed to be uncertain about. Claiming that you're a physicist and that you hold to some uncertainty principles isn't an excuse for the true sacred cows. To exemplify this I took a quote from Hsu and applied it to the holocaust.
"Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and among populations"
As I already said, and wish you would have read: "I mean, yeah the guy is not a culture warrior and I think he very adamantly doesn't want to become one. But depending on your definition of HBD the guy is very interested in differences between humans. Just not in a way that's incendiary to his career."
You're playing definition games here. Hsu himself says that there are people calling him racist. He does research into intelligence and has no problem with things like IQ. He has interest in population genetics and doesn't rule out a hereditarian perspective. Long story short, he's on a lot of thin ice. He's basically everything an HBD person would be if they were trying to hold down a job at a university. Now, is he? I don't know or care. It's irrelevant to the fact that he is doing too many suspect things. Which is why he is a good target for our fine folks in urbanite journalism.
As an aside: I'd appreciate if you stated your intentions here. I don't care to write every point twice. I also don't care to meet your personal definition for words after I explicitly state that there's an obvious issue with definitions of words going on.
Who uses that definition of HBD? HBD refers to socially relevant differences. Population genetics is based on possibly inconsequential differences that are nearly universally accepted. HBD doesn't even refer to differences in skin colour which are totally uncontroversial. Even if you want to define HBD this way, how is that relevant? No one is calling him racist because he's interested in population genetics.
I get your point. I'm just criticizing other things you've said.
I can tell you right now that no one uses your definition of HBD. HBD absolutely refers to differences in skin color. In fact, it refers to any differences between populations. HBD doesn't refer to just the controversial parts of human bio diversity.
As I went over in my earlier comment, he is catching flak because he's flying too close to too many different subjects that can, in the wrong light, be highly suspect. Population genetics is one of those. To study these fields in safety you need to deny certain things about them, like Turkheimer and co. Hsu doesn't do that so that gets him into a bad light.
I'm still wondering why.
More options
Context Copy link
The guy you are arguing with is a literal Nazi who wants to convince moderate 'race realists' that they are really Nazis too. It's why he plays these weird definitional games that mirror those of progressive activists.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link