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 -
Gay people or gay men?
Aside from the problem of defining such a group, given the rank bigotry of the class of people who decide who is and is not an "intellectual" and "artist", could be selection effects as well. I suspect if you took academia's word for it, a disproportionate number of "the most prominent artists and intellectuals" would be POC as well. And communists.
That's certainly a valid point about selection effects, but it's easy to find examples of prominent gay intellectuals and artists from long before the Great Awokening: Foucault, Turing, Wittgenstein, Proust...
Wilde, Byron…
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I mainly had gay men in mind when I wrote my comment, but I left it open-ended because I am also curious about lesbians, bisexuals of both genders, transgender people, and so on. Also, for that matter, kinks. Are some kinks more highly correlated with intelligence than others? As I write the previous, I am aware that the difference between a sexual orientation and a kink is not well-defined.
It is a bit distasteful, but I guess that I should also mention pedophiles. My intuition is that the average pedophile is less intelligent on average than the average person, but it's possible that it only seems that way because most of the brilliant pedophiles are just really good at keeping their pedophilia secret.
In general, I am just curious about all possible ways in which sexual orientations, kinks, and interests are correlated with intelligence.
I would suspect the same about pedophilia, though this is such a strong taboo topic, that there is probably not enough data to investigate the question reliably. Anecdotally however, there are well documented brilliant pedophiles, for example, you can take a look into interesting story of Nobel recipient, Daniel Gajdusek on wikipedia.
He was one of the pioneers in the field of prion diseases, and he in fact did a lot to explain the transmission mechanism of kuru disease, but his sexual motivation and his scientific life are intertwined in an incredible way.
More options
Context Copy link
A lot of artists/authors in the colonial period were famous for running off to Morocco or some such place where pederasty was winked at. Borroughs, etc. Some overlap with gay.
Discovering Arthur C. Clarke was (probably) a pedophile was a big one for me.
Well, that’s my dose of disappointment for the day. :(
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link