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 -
It's only reprehensible because we have better alternatives, right? Say (tortured hypothetical) it's the year 1500, and you're picking crewmembers for your voyage in a week. You need a bunch, so all you have to evaluate them is a three minute chat, and they're not particularly educated so there's not much shared knowledge to go on. It's your experience from past voyages that jewish crewmembers are the best and africans are the worst, and this is still informative even after adjusting for your first impression. (Also, a bad crewmember might mean 'your ship sinks'). I think making the race-based judgement here is fine. The only other alternative is picking randomly to an extent. And if you have a moral issue with some people being deprived because they're paid less - how is 'not being chosen because you're black' morally worse than 'not being chosen because you're low iq'? Both are unchosen.
This, of course, isn't really true in the modern day. You can just give someone an IQ test or an interview problem or something.
Even in this scenario given a three minute chat and just observing behavior I think you could swamp race with other observations. But yes, if you're going to construct a scenario that amounts to "You need to select people knowing only the average stats of their group" (racial or otherwise - this same analysis applies to things like hair color of any other arbitrary grouping) then it would just follow that you should select the group with the highest expected competence.
I agree with the following implications and further think this implies some obligation of those who are more capable to help those who are less. Not on a group based level but just the mesh of all humanity.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link