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 -
Don't you arrive at these desires merely by adopting meritocracy as a core value? (In addition to different beliefs on the object-level question of whether or not racial differences in outcomes are primarily the organic results of natural differences in group abilities or primarily the result of societal oppression)
Are you suggesting that meritocracy is fundamentally a dishonest viewpoint? Or are you suggesting that most proponents of blank slatism vs HBD are not arguing as a result of an innate desire to see people justly compensation for their work? (If so, why? Isn't it just as infuriating to see people being unfairly elevated/oppressed from either point of view?)
If merit is heritable, then at some point we are rewarding the luck of being born to the right parents. There's nothing wrong to owning up to it and saying we are rewarding people based on how much their existence benefits the society, but the other side of the coin means there are people who are a net drain on the society.
Would it be any less a matter of luck if intelligence and personality was entirely determined by your kindergarten teacher, your pregnant mother's folate consumption, the people you happened to make friends with in school, and whether your parents read to you as a child? It seems like the only advantage of environmental explanations in this matter is obscurantism, it seems less like luck if you can't name the exact mechanism. But regardless of specifics the kind of person you are is going to be 100% luck by definition, because the only things we don't define as luck are the products of the choices you make, and your choices are in turn determined and preceded by the kind of person you are.
Even if the way personality worked was at the age of 18 you pressed a button to choose either "I want to spend the rest of my life intelligent and highly-motivated" or "I want to be stupid and lazy", it would still be 100% "luck" determining the social/genetic/coincidental factors that made you choose one button or the other. It would be good due to more people pressing the first button and all the very real benefits that would bring to humanity, in the same way that a successful genetic-enhancement/embryo-selection/sperm-donation/lead-abatement program would be good, but it wouldn't stop your nature from being a matter of "luck".
More options
Context Copy link
'rewarding' puts a moralistic spin on it, when really it's just about maximizing efficiency.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I would make this argument.
Here's a trope of environmentalist interventions. There's a hypothesis that some part of a selection process is preventing people from being justly compensated for their work. Then we directly fix that process by modifying it so that bias can't enter, and it has no effect or even makes the gaps bigger. The blank slatists then get angry and, if it turns out bias went the opposite way, advocate against fixing it.
Examples:
Gender blind hiring in Australia is scrapped after it turns out people were biased in favor of women rather than against.
Similar results in tech, and now gender blind hiring is out of favor. Ideology tests during the interview are popular, however.
SAT was originally meant to (and did!) nullify the bias inherent in high school grades. What if teachers were biased against lower classes, colored people, Jews, etc? They might give lower subjective grades and the SAT could find hidden talent. It worked great, but the hidden talent is predominantly Asian so now they want to scrap it.
Leftists oppose civil service tests of by the book firefighting skills, because blacks don't pass them. Instead they favor an oral exam where bias could creep in. ("By the book" means "according to the firefighter manual, which saw blade should be used to cut concrete". To be fair, the test in New Haven was badly copied from the NYC test and included a few questions about NYC geography which I guess is racist and invalidates the test somehow?)
There are a huge number of cases where leftists directly oppose changes that result in people being more justly compensated when that results in selecting fewer members of their favored groups. I can't think of any cases where they support it. Can you?
More options
Context Copy link
Well so here are two models:
People start with meritocracy as a value and then try to figure out the factual questions about how abilities work.
People start with some policy opinions or alliances or something and then work to rationalize those.
Model 1 is debunked because if people were trying to figure out the factual questions, they would take basic concepts like the phenotypic null hypothesis into account, and they would be upset about having signal-boosted terrible studies like the IQ/effort one. It's possible that there is some alternative to model 2 that people follow, in which case you should feel encouraged to share what that alternative is.
No, model 1 isn't "debunked" and shouting "phenotypic null hypothesis" isn't the argument winner you seem to think it is.
The phrase "phenotypic null hypothesis" captures a point that is critically important to understand in these sorts of discussions. It can definitely be misused, shouting "phenotypic null hypothesis" is definitely necessary in contexts where people aren't taking it into account. If there are any of my tweets where you feel like I've abused it then feel free to point at them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link