site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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.

All this makes a good springboard for you to express your disdain for academia and rationalists, if it were true, but it's not. IQ correlates with achievement in the general case, up to +2 SD at least (I haven't seen good studies beyond that). It also correlates below the level you'd expect academia to have an effect. And there's certainly no evidence of a tipping point at which people start to appear dumber.

IQ correlates with achievement in the general case

What part of "it's primary role is to sort aspiring members of the chattering class into 'winning' and 'loosing' buckets" did you not understand?

If only we had some kind of example to use as evidence one way or the other. Like say a famous historical case where someone came into a non-academic setting where actual results really mattered, and lowered the requirements in regards to standardized intelligence testing.

That sure would tell us something about how this all works, don't you think?

What part of "general case" did you not understand? It is true even for non-members of the chattering class.

Why is that its primary role?

Why does the US military use it so heavily?

Even if that’s how it was being used, you’re not invalidating the massive amount of evidence that IQ correlates with performance.

And well beyond the things the “chattering class” have any direct interest in.