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 -
I just want to chime in to register myself as a HBDer with no "racial ill-will" I'm aware of - unless it axiomatically counts as racial ill-will if I tell a hypothetical poor and stupid $american_protected_group person something to the effect of "you are probably poor and stupid because your ancestors were", even if I would tell the same to a poor and stupid Caucasian-American - who finds this repeated attempt to associate us with white supremacists to be slanderous. The case that white supremacists are no true HBDers is very easy to make: the core blogs that defined HBD as a "movement" were generally obsessed with ethnic groups that outperform American whites, no doubt in a conscious effort to distance themselves from white supremacists, and I doubt you could a more unexpected cluster of people with detailed knowledge on the differences between the ethnic groups of Nigeria. The actual white supremacists on the Motte are easy to spot, because even if they borrow some HBD vocabulary for spice, they will always argue, as it says on the label, for the superiority of "white" ethnicities, making up fuzzy metrics like "creativity" or "morality", as happened in those anti-Chinese posts we kept getting for a while, to justify it on the fly. There is a good case to regard theories of group differences that seem optimised to flatter the speaker's group with skepticism, but for most speakers, HBD is not one of those.
More options
Context Copy link