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 -
As someone that lives in Brazil I wouldn't wish the world to become more like it at all. Yes we somehow manage to go on and not utterly fail (we still fail) at civilization like certain places in Africa or Middle East (for now, because dysgenic trends also keep going on here), but it involves an insane level of subsidy to lower IQ groups and therefore high taxation that lowers life quality for the middle and upper middle class. It's easy to see how deep the subsidizing goes in Brazil because we've a visible ethnic spectrum going from North-to-South (less euro/more euro), and this is the result (the ridiculous mere 10% return to São Paulo is partially because of how our tax system works but you get the idea, you should expect less than half of what your group pays to return to you, sometimes even as low as 25% or 10%, some northern states literally turn into Africa if we stop sending them free money).
This free money subsidy is repaid with crime, hate, jealousy, etc. I severely doubt that by this point any lower IQ group will simply come to accept that they're getting a bad deal in life because of biological determinism rather than a conspiracy of some other groups keeping them down, even whites aren't that different in this aspect when it comes to the "Jewish Question". No group wants to accept a perceived "inferiority" unless reality kicks them in the face as it happened during the colonization period.
Brazil (especially some parts of it) could be a much better place if we dropped democracy and were tough on crime in similar style to Singapore or El Salvador, along with a new moral system that stops the "everyone is equal" noble lie and lowering the amount of subsidy we engage in, but until then it's nightmare fuel honestly.
At the very least you should assume that if the average IQ decreases, even if assertive mating preserves higher IQ groups, it's a society with a big IQ-gap which will create huge inequality and therefore make democracy pretty much non-viable in the way we do it now (I can see how decentralized democracy could still work but that's a different topic).
Was the situation markedly better during the military dictatorship?
Safety-wise? As far as my parents and older people tell me, yes. Economy-wise? Not really, because the military dictatorship still consisted of a bunch of midwits. Good warriors aren't necessarily good kings.
They were still doing pretty okay until the 1973 oil crisis though (that fucked up the economy).
You would need something more like a deeply patriotic high IQ aristocracy with a good ideology for the country to not only function but substantially improve over time...more or less a return to Monarchy or a Technocracy imo. Every improvement would come with great sacrifice though, such is life ever since we were unicellular organisms.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link