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 -
Because race is an extremely noisy and inconsistent proxy for other things we might care about like culture and genetics. As I asked above, I'm genuinely unclear what OP means by "race" and what qualifies as interracial. This is because the concept is so un-rigorous.
It's like if I decided to separate all dogs into four "races" of dogs as follows:
Race 1: yellow labs
Race 2: black labs
Race 3: dogs with short tails
Race 4: all other dogs
Technically this is a valid way to classify dogs into 4 categories. And these categories are undeniably correlated with things like genetics. But the correlation is tenuous and arbitrary to the point that this classification schema has minimal utility.
Racial classifications aren't arbitrary. Even the folk classifications corresponded roughly to now teased out classification derived from DNA.
In 19th century, based on appearance alone, people theorised that native Americans and Asians shared ancestors.
Paleogenetics showed that to be true.
As to racial differences, David Reich who led the large-scale paleogenetic efforts wrote a book about the topic.
If you don't want to read an entire book, here's a blogpost by Jerry Coyne
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2018/04/01/geneticist-david-reich-responds-to-critics-of-his-views-on-race/
More options
Context Copy link
I can make up a nonsensical version of speciation too. That doesn't mean its relevant to anything. The reason I asked the question is that speciation as a categorization method is no more noisy or inconsistent than racial categorization in humans since racial categorization is just speciation by another name. In fact, speciation in humans is less noisy and more consistent since we have studied the humans a lot more than most other animals.
The only thing here that is unrigorous is your understanding of the concept of race.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link