site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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.

11
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If there is a group of people who are natively less intelligent, does that mean they are destined to have worse lives? Is it right that they should have worse lives?

We accept this for other groups. For example, we accept that people from the Congo are probably going to have a rough go of things compared to Swedes. People born with deformities are going to struggle. And what of the extremely ugly? Why are we not guaranteeing them sex and partnership? Do they deserve it less than the beautiful?

How does one who wants equality deal with these questions? There are two ways.

  1. Yeschad.jpg. We need to institute a totalitarian society to remove all inequalities, whether wealth, national, or genetic. Rich people will be taxed and money given to the poor. No borders. Fat chicks on the cover of every magazine, and beautiful people deformed. Communism but for everything.

  2. People can be unequal, but groups can't. It's okay that some people are stupid, fat, and ugly. But it's not okay for a group to be these things. It's very important that all races are equal, because race is the most important thing in the world.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ev373c7wSRg

Equality is impossible. Doubly so because HBD is true. But to fix the problem involves resorting to the extreme ideology of leveling or race-based nationalism. Better to just deny HBD.

I think the true YesChad option is outright transhumanism.

Don't cut off the the nose to spite the face, give everyone better nosejobs. Or gene editing and cybernetic enhancement such that the playing field is leveled.

In a world of absolute genotypic and phenotypic freedom subsided by the government, everyone has true equality of opportunity, and if we somehow don't get equality of outcome, I guess everyone being better off makes it hard to cry too hard about it.

You know, a third way would be to simply eliminate the malformed. Not endorsing that but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Societies have been practicing some form or another of this basically forever.

Dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator is not the only way to achieve leveling; it's just the easiest. We could instead choose to uplift those among us who were born unlucky: subsidize cosmetic surgery for the ugly, ozempic for the overweight, and embryo selection for those traits that can't be altered in a single generation.