site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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.

20
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Sorry, didn't check your Twitter, as I'm not on it, and don't like it (and don't like following links just to know what someone's talking about; I do like them for references).

I think it would be best to read what people are saying before responding to them.

I guess if you stated clearly what you think contributes to IQ scores then perhaps we'd mostly agree. [...] What I read from your initial post is that effort was more important than everything else, which seemed clearly wrong. You gave this impression by not specifying how much effect you thought that it had, and by saying people claiming it didn't have an effect "obviously massively contradicts common sense," which is a very strong formulation.

Sorry, the point about how it "obviously massively contradicts common sense" was not meant to be interpreted as a measure of effect size, it was meant to be interpreted literally: as an expression that if I went out and told people that IQ tests don't depend on effort (as HBDers wpuld have me do), then people would conclude that I am delusionally worshipping IQ tests - and as I showed in the thread, it appears that they wpuld be right to conclude that.

That still seems quite a bit too high to me, and I don't really see how you clearly quantify 'effort'

🤷‍♀️ I just went with whatever quantification chosen by the leading IQ researcher whose study got signal-boosted. It's quite possible it's bad as I didn't look into it in detail, but if it is bad then I feel like that also reflects badly on HBDers for signal-boosting a study that uses a bad measure.

sorry, to me 8% really seems too high, I'd think how well I slept, the questions I got, my mood, time of day, my pencil, and a bunch of other things would play a larger role than nebulous 'effort'

Those might be correlated with effort. Mood in particular seems likely mediated by effort.

I don't really agree that effort is particularly nebulous of a concept. Have you never had the experience of just quickly marking down your first thoughts without wanting to bother thinking them through and not double-checking that they are right?

If that's not what you're implying, what is your point in bringing up effort?

My point in bringing up effort is that I was scrolling through my twitter timeline that is filled with social science, and then I saw all the HBDers I followed praising this guy for debunking the notion that IQ is affected by effort. And then I thought, hm, that sounds implausible, I should double-check the statistics, and it turned out the statistics were wrong and actually effort is affected by IQ.

I don't want to replace leftists lying to me about racial difference in g in order to rationalize racial equality with rightists lying to me about effort in IQ tests in order to rationalize racial inequality. I don't think I need special justification for wanting to know the truth about each question in a decoupled way from everything else. But if we absolutely should justify it by practical means, then a straightforward justification would be that this directly contradicts people's experience when filling out tests, and therefore looks delusional to insist on, presumably on the margin reducing the number of people sympathetic to HBD.

Sorry, didn't check your Twitter, as I'm not on it, and don't like it (and don't like following links just to know what someone's talking about; I do like them for references).

I think it would be best to read what people are saying before responding to them.

Write it here, clearly, and I will. Don't send me to Twitter, or your blog (or do, but realize you've lost much of your audience). Reading this, I think you would be better off if you spent less time on Twitter (well, I think that goes for just about everyone...)

I guess if you stated clearly what you think contributes to IQ scores then perhaps we'd mostly agree. [...] What I read from your initial post is that effort was more important than everything else, which seemed clearly wrong. You gave this impression by not specifying how much effect you thought that it had, and by saying people claiming it didn't have an effect "obviously massively contradicts common sense," which is a very strong formulation.

Sorry, the point about how it "obviously massively contradicts common sense" was not meant to be interpreted as a measure of effect size, it was meant to be interpreted literally: as an expression that if I went out and told people that IQ tests don't depend on effort (as HBDers wpuld have me do), then people would conclude that I am delusionally worshipping IQ tests - and as I showed in the thread, it appears that they wpuld be right to conclude that.

I don't think people would conclude that, and I don't think you proved that in this thread. You remind me of the XKCD about using language in a very non-standard way and then feeling clever that they didn't understand you.

I don't really agree that effort is particularly nebulous of a concept. Have you never had the experience of just quickly marking down your first thoughts without wanting to bother thinking them through and not double-checking that they are right?

I get the concept of effort, but I think it's difficult to turn into something where you can say you're giving 20%, 50% 80% effort. But it's a minor point.

I feel like you're not listening to me, and I assume you're feeling the same about me. I think we've both reached our limits of what we think we can convey to the other. I wish you luck and success in better understanding g, IQ tests, HBD, and conservatives in general. My final two requests: work on writing more clearly, and listen more with the intent of understanding, rather than proving why you're right. (I will try to do the same!)