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 -
This isn't even true though, is it? Almost everyone knows that black people are faster sprinters, that Kenyans win marathons, etc...
People understand how genetics works, observe it in their own life, and comment about it frequently. There are almost no people who truly hold the absurd "tabula rosa" worldview.
It's all post-hoc rationalization. Social signalling comes first and then people work backward from that. They'll claim a tabula rosa viewpoint when pressed, but when the subject of which race has the biggest dongs comes up, they'll have a bad case of amnesia and revert back to the HBD thinking which they know to be true.
This why you can't convince any of these people with correct arguments about HBD. It's not about HBD. They already believe in HBD! It's about social signalling, and by saying politically incorrect things you are being impolite and low status.
I don't think that most of them are consciously deceiving others by secretly believing in HBD but not admitting it. Many of them simply never think about any kind of HBD to begin with. They have literally never noticed that most of the best sprinters are ethnically African. Others have noticed HBD when it comes to physical skills, but have literally never thought of the idea of applying it to intelligence or behavior. And there are some others who have thought of applying it to intelligence or behavior but have decided that it does not apply. Which is not even necessarily such a crazy decision to make. I personally think that, while, HBD is definitely somewhat applicable to intelligence and behavior, the arguments in favor of it are not as air-tight as many people around here believe. For example, typical HBD views do not neatly explain how the Germans went from having no scientific achievements or large-scale civilization around the year 0 AD to being world leaders in math and science, living in one of the world's most complex and organized civilizations, by about 1900 AD, and they do not explain why I should assume that black people will not be able to do the same thing at some point.
They obviously notice. A sprinter like Dafne Schippers got a lot more attention because she won despite being 'different.'
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think that most people think about Kenyan runners at all, but if they do, they can surely also chalk this up to something non-genetic like life in some parts of Africa just happening to involve really good running training.
A... pink slate?
You mostly can't convince religious people with correct arguments either; if they (or, more commonly, their children) are persuaded at all, it is usually precisely by status gradients. To the extent your argument works for progressive antiracism being fake, it seems that it would do likewise for religions - but then that fakeness is surely moot, since smart people have lived, killed and died for it in droves.
Lol. My bad.
Great analogy. Wokism is similar to a religion in many ways. The beliefs of wokists are fake. Similarly, the religious disputes between Protestants and especially Catholics during the Wars of Religion was fake as well. Do you think the average person cared about doctrinal disputes? Of course not. They might have pretended to care. But not enough to actually learn enough about religion to adequately explain the differences. These were, after all, mostly illiterate people.
So why were they fighting? Tribalism.
”Man is born gay, and yet everywhere they are marrying their beards.”
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you'd be surprised how many people simply wouldn't even get that far. I've been told by a lot of people that it simply has to do with the elevations of those runners' countries of origins or something. That's all it takes to wave it away, and if that fails, they can always just suss out that you're trying to prove a broader wrongthink narrative, AKA "arguing in bad faith."
Many people won't even believe that male and female humans have different physical performance in sports for any reason but different socialization. Whether they were thinking backwards is an irrelevant question now, because the firmware is now complete and they just have trouble accepting genetic differences being real in general.
While I find this plausible, I haven’t seen this myself. Could you link me to any actual instances of this argument being made non-ironically?
One time I got into an argument with a woman who would not concede that men have a higher sex drive.
I've seen that on Reddit (from men, even!) and it makes me laugh every time. Granted, it's Reddit so what would one expect, but still. I've seen more than one person unironically try to turn "men have a higher sex drive than women" into "haha these loser virgins think women don't have any sex drive". It's so bizarre that they are dedicated to denying what every generation prior accepted as a basic fact of life (that while women want sex, on average they don't want it nearly as much as men do).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I obviously don't have a transcript, but I've had this argument with my sister many times. She's even gone so far as to deny that men become more muscular than women when both lift weights.
I have dated several girls who refused to believe there are any innate differences between men and women. To the point of melting down a bit when they tried to play wrestle with me and discovered that their exercise regimen of an hour at the gym every day doing cardio and weights was no match for my exercise regimen of lying on the couch every night inhaling chips ahoy.
The Williams sisters at the height of their career versus the 203rd ranked tennis player was a big eye opener for me, he smoked them both with basically no issue.
"Height of their career" is not accurate, neither had won a major title at that stage. They were emerging players. I think Serena was 17 at the time.
Not to say the result would have changed if they had played a few years later, but still.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Invite her on here.
Sorry bro, she's married.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In my subjective experience here in Sweden this has almost entirely gone away. It used to be fairly prevalent in the late 90s/00s but then both statistics and young teenage boys comfortably beating elite professional women over and over again got media attention and the narrative went away.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link