site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35217 thread views

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

If you want to read about turn-of-the century Italian homicide rates, Jeffrey Adler's First In Violence, Deepest in Dirt talks about the Italian community in Chicago which had murder rates upwards of 40/100k in the 1910s. This was a pattern that extended to other cities. IIRC it was Philadelphia where one-third of prisoners were of recent Italian background in the 1910s or 20s but I can't remember where I read that at the moment. Notably southern Italy where the great majority of Italian-Americans came from also had a very high homicide rate in the 19th - early 20th centuries, and when you remember that crime data in 1850s Italy was probably less than complete, it was likely even higher. Southern Italy of course no longer has homicide rates like this. They're still higher than in the north but it's like 0.7 vs 0.5 or something like that.

When I have tried to engage with the 'HBD' controversy in the past I always run against a wall of statistical and mathematical arguments that I don't think I'm smart enough to evaluate, but this huge and rapid drop in criminality would seem to me pretty difficult to explain through any framework where criminality is mostly a function of genetics.

Coleman Hughes is a big advocate for the idea that African-American culture (as distinct from African-American DNA) is deficient in ways which makes young African-American men prone to criminality, and IIRC he's repeatedly drawn the parallel with mid-twentieth century Italian-Americans.

To be fair, that hypothesis isn’t incompatible with HBD. African American homicide rates are shockingly high by stable first world country standards and there can be multiple ingredients in that recipe.

Absolutely.

No. I found Handwaving Freakoutery's (also known as /u/beej67) analysis very persuasive. TL;DR: the US's high murder rate can't be caused by guns alone, as murder rates by county don't track guns per capita by county and black Americans commit far more murders than white Americans despite owning far fewer guns. It can't be just HBD, because black Americans commit murders at almost double the rate of sub-Saharan African countries. Rather, the true underlying factor is "rate of single motherhood". Reintegrate the black American family unit at scale, and the murder rate will plummet accordingly.

I was talking about this exact topic with my girlfriend the other day, and she was curious as to how it came to pass that black Americans have such a high rate of single motherhood compared to other ethnic groups. I admit I don't have a great answer to this, but I find the "slavery separated mothers from their children" explanations unconvincing and ahistorical, given that high rates of black single motherhood only appear to date back to the sexual revolution and were similar to white rates prior were vastly lower in the 1970s than today (29.5% of black children in 1970 vs. 45.6% in 2022) despite the 1970s being fifty years closer chronologically to slavery than 2022.

this huge and rapid drop in criminality would seem to me pretty difficult to explain through any framework where criminality is mostly a function of genetics.

Another argument is often the difference between Mexicans living in border towns between the US and Mexico. The same people, culture and genetics yet murder rates are often vastly different.

Sure, I'll grant you that this seems to be evidence against HBD. However, I think it's still a highly effective theory, and certainly more parsimonious than bullshit like systemic racism and the like. The evidence, at least IMO, seems to be pretty net positive overall.

Maybe there's something interesting going on here, like the lead ban and decreased criminality in all demographics but didn't close the black-white gap. I'm waiting for that effort post myself!

Something I’ve never seen accounted for in discourse about the decline in criminality is the shift towards firearms using smaller bullets being the default available in America- when criminals used magnum revolvers and sawn-off shotguns their victims were less likely to survive than they were from a 9 mm round.

Not sure the difference is that significant for handguns even if it's only a single round -- and one should probably take into account that popular nines tend to hold ~3x as many rounds as a magnum revolver. (which would probably be on the expensive side for a fifties criminal anyways? The stereotypical crime gun from the era for me is a "Saturday Night Special" in .38, max)

Shotguns are probably still used quite a bit in crime? And if one were to replace a sawed-off shotgun with something with more gangster cred, that thing would probably be a MAC-10 or something, so I wouldn't really say it's necessarily less destructive.

Criminals use larger bullets nowadays- most gunshot wounds pre 1990s were from small caliber pistols like a .25ACP or .22. Very few crimes were committed with a .45, which is very common today.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/GUIC.PDF

Relative to shootings involving small-caliber firearms (reference category), the odds of death if the gun was large caliber were 4.5 times higher (OR, 4.54; 95% CI, 2.37-8.70; P < .001) and, if medium caliber, 2.3 times higher (OR, 2.25; 95% CI, 1.37-3.70; P = .001)

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2688536#

That's a fair point, but I don't know if historical records are that granular, but if anyone wants to dig into it I'll be looking on.

I don’t see it. One, there was an exogenous shock in the reduction in lead exposure. Second, isn’t the problem somewhat self correcting in that the really violent often end up dying young and thereby decreasing the odds of passing on kids

I would assume that the kind of violent people with low inhibition and self control would be more likely to reproduce due to a propensity for unprotected sex.

Of course, that's the case today, but perhaps fertility rates were high enough back then that it wasn't significant.

And we have a very different idea of what really violent looks like now compared to back then, just to add another confounder to the mix.

Do we?

Did you mean to respond to my comment?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats