site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 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.

I think this is false. Every idea that ever mattered didn’t start out with political power. The American Revolution probably started out in pubs before it became a mass movement. Same with the French Revolution. Communism started out that way and academically does have some appeal but fails in the real world. CRT was a bunch of professors in academia before it owned everything. The origin of the gay rights movement I believe was a bunch of gay men in bath houses in San Francisco.

HBD is a quant discipline so I don’t think it’s going to be popular with most of society or a store clerk. I do think it’s fairly popular in the mainstream in a different form. For instance the movie “White Men Can’t Jump” everyone just accepts the premise. That’s as blatantly hbd as anything.

I'd actually go even further - if you do not take the knowledge gained from HBD into account your society will fail or otherwise incur significant costs that can only be papered over with extravagant amounts of energy or plunder (i.e. the modern era or historical empires). But more than that, the idea that HBD isn't going to play a role in the future is just flat out wrong. As you've noted, there's an instinctive understanding of HBD baked into most people and most of popular culture(as long as you're talking about acceptable targets), but there's actually a far bigger nexus for HBD thought - China. HBD et al (or whatever the Chinese term for those theories are) is commonly accepted at all levels of society and factored into government policy, and China is one of the largest and most influential countries in the world right now - urquan isn't just wrong about the future, he's wrong about the present.