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 -
Sort of tangential to your main point, but IQ doesn't have a known zero anchor point, like temperature or height do. The figure of 100 as the average was arbitrarily chosen, as was the figure of 15 points to represent one standard deviation. It is therefore theoretically possible to have a negative IQ (though that would be as unlikely as having an IQ over 200). That also means that if you are anchoring your mean and your SD to the population as a whole, some subgroups will end up not only with average IQs higher or lower than 100, but also with a larger or smaller SD if their cognitive abilities are more or less widely distributed than the population as a whole.
Perhaps it would have made more sense to set the average at zero, then it would be simple to see that negative IQ just meant below average, and the number of people with X points below average would be mirrored by a comparable number of people with X points above average
Alfred Binet created a test of cognitive ability for French school children. IQ was previously a quotient of scores that correspond to mental age over chronological age for children times 100. That doesn’t work well for adults. They changed it to the standard deviation method where the norm was just 100. I think the reason was likely that 100 was already the norm for a child of perfectly average mental age. I’m not certain though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link