site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have heard this but I don't really know how to tease this out. Also isn't it unfair to only let the US filter out its underclass? Why can't Sweden do that too in this conjecture and really break some records?

Because in truth the means are a justificatication for the end.

Sure, but once we remove the bottom 20% from both countries, I think they will look much more similar.

Notably, Sweden doesn't have a large population of people of sub-Saharan African descent. (Although they are busy working on that apparently).

I am not saying that 100% of the difference can be explained by demographics, only a majority of it. The US will still have more car deaths because our cities were built after cars were invented.

It's kind of hilarious watching people bend themselves into knots trying to figure out why Vermont and Hawaii have such high life expectancies, and Mississippi does not.

Here's a fun fact. The lifespan of Chinese-American women is 91.3 years.
https://asamnews.com/2021/12/23/immigrants-asians-live-healthier-lives-than-those-asians-in-the-country-longer/

run the numbers and find out. My understanding is that Sweden's underclass is (or was, before mass immigration) much, much smaller per-capita, so filtering it out wouldn't change the outcome much. By contrast, the US underclass is very large, and so it swings the numbers. This matters because the standard claim is that Swedish policies would fix things, but there's no reason to believe that Swedish policies made the underclass small rather than not having an underclass being what allowed Sweden to adopt its policies.