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 -
And what grouping usefully includes both dirt-poor Zeke from Appalachia and dirt-poor Malcolm from Alabama? You can see how blacks are a useful (if fuzzy at the edges) group; they've got sub-Saharan African ancestry. Same for Scots-Irish, or Cajuns or various other ethnicities. But "poor people" in America just don't work as such a group.
Sure, I could treat poor people as a whole as a group and maybe note that "Hey, people who are poor also tend to do poorly on standardized tests". And that would be interesting. But I don't think it falls within HBDs domain.
Likewise, what grouping usefully includes both the Namibian bushman, and the South African Zulu? Those are more genetically distinct groups than Zeke from Appalachia and Malcolm from Alabama? (I'm unsure whether you mean Malcolm to be blackâlooking it up, it looks like it makes up about the same proportion of each. It doesn't matter, though, as the Zulu is genetically more like you than like the bushman.) Further, HBD people seem perfectly fine talking about categories like "hispanic" which is itself a messy category, where different people have different portions of native american ancestry (and also, of course, different native american groups, depending on where the people are from), and sometimes black ancestry, making it less precise, than, say, "chinese".
But that's no reason to stop. If it yields consistent useful statistical information, that's good enough. You just have to be willing to recognize that your nice group there is actually more of a hodgepodge of different groups that might not all be the same, each of which themselves consist of a handful of non-identical individuals.
I'm not of course making any sort of claim at all like "poor people and rich people are as genetically distant as [insert two groups of your choice]." All I'm saying is that statistically they have genetic disparities along some relevant axes.
So what is HBD about, then, if not that some groups are genetically more capable than others along axes, or otherwise vary in traits?
Very little, but there's only about 100,000 bushmen in the world, so they don't really figure into much. Zeke (white) and Malcolm (yes, intended to be black), on the other hand, are quite common archetypes in the US.
Yeah, "Hispanic" is messy and I don't trust a lot of generalizations about that category either. Some of the HBD people do try to quantify things about percent of indigenous versus European ancestry among Hispanics, which seems more valid as a general approach.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link