site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Lots of Hispanic blood in a future American population isn’t an HBD-wrecking catastrophe.

But you just acknowledged that the Hispanics are underrepresented among engineers and doctors. If the broader population becomes more Hispanic, would you not also expect that population to produce fewer people who are capable of becoming engineers and doctors?

An immediate corollary of HBD is that a Brazil-like population leads to Brazil-like conditions.

White and mestizo citizens of Brazil are mostly productive. Brazil’s dysfunction is due to a very high black population(the USA’s is shrinking in relative terms) and institutional factors. We have better institutions and can function with a lower average IQ than we currently have because not everyone needs to be a doctor or an engineer.

Brazil’s dysfunction is due to a very high black population

Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.

We have better institutions

But institutions are made of people. They can only be as good as the individuals that comprise them. There's no magic dirt, no magic paper.

If you import the population of Central/South America wholesale, the people who staff your institutions will increasingly resemble the inhabitants of Central/South America, and they will begin to reproduce Central/South American conditions.

and can function with a lower average IQ than we currently have

But why would we want to?

Institutions have some weight - the difference between North and South Korea isn't their genetics.

I do also think that nations have some ability to absorb foreign migrants without dramatic change. America remains America, and I believe retains some fraction of it's original spirit, despite the native WASP stock having been diluted severely by Irish, Italians, and even G*rmans. But that capacity isn't unlimited and was founded on assumptions that no longer exist.

and I believe retains some fraction of it's original spirit

can you define its "original spirit"?

Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.

But Brazilian pardos have much more African ancestry than mestizos elsewhere in latin America, including many who would be called black in the USA. Only those with entirely black ancestry- which isn’t the majority of the AADOS population- are considered negros(the Brazilian term; ‘black’ is considered offensive there).

There’s no magic dirt, but mesoamericans assimilate much better than anyone else does. Culture matters. Just go look at Russia- high average IQ, culture that inhibits fixing institutions.

Wikipedia says their black population is 10%, i.e. a smaller percentage than what the US has.

Going deeper into this, the Wikipedia article on the Demographics of Brazil makes it seem as though only those with almost entirely African ancestry are counted as black (at 7.6% of the population) and then indicates that 42% are classified as Pardos (with a mixture of white, indigenous, and black ancestry). The article on Pardo Brazilians includes some genomic analysis that indicates between 10 and 30% African genomic ancestry for Pardos in most areas, and that in many areas, those classified as black have at least 40% European genomic ancestry.

I'm not sure I understand if HBD has some unified perspective on this. While I see darker hispanics, most hispanics I see are majority European. Is the idea that having too many different races in a country will cause division? Brazil would support that hypothesis, but if it's just about skin color, Chile is reasonably dark and doing pretty well for a LatAm country. Better than Argentina, which is 90% white. If hispanics are underrepresented among engineers and doctors, I'd guess they don't go to college as much, probably because they are poor when they come in from their home countries.

I'm not sure I understand if HBD has some unified perspective on this. While I see darker hispanics, most hispanics I see are majority European.

It's because Hispanic is a linguistic category, not a racial one.

But simply having too many cultures, too many languages, religions, ethnicities in a country (to the point they, put together, outnumber the former dominant group) is bound to make it weaker, IMO, because there will no longer be a consensus on values. There will no longer be anything to hold the country together and it will essentially cease to be a nation in any real sense at all. Every group will have its own shibboleths and taboos which it will lobby its political representatives to codify in law - which will probably get shot down except in all-Muslim (or whatever) towns, but the time and energy wasted on this stuff is time and energy which cannot be used to work on the nation's real problems.

I, for one, would rather euthanize myself than live in such a corpse of a country.

(This situation, multiplied by a million, is also why I firmly believe that no world government can ever work.)

But simply having too many cultures, too many languages, religions, ethnicities in a country (to the point they, put together, outnumber the former dominant group) is bound to make it weaker, IMO, because there will no longer be a consensus on values.

I mean, this has been the reality in American urban areas for the past 150 years at a minimum.

Also, "consensus on values" happen after lots of arguing and sometimes blood over what that consensus actually is. Go ask a WASP on the Upper East Side and and a Italian in Brooklyn in 1869 if there's a consensus on values in New York City.

If that makes America corpse of a country, it's been one since the 1850s

Now I know the response to this from some is, "well, we stopped immigration for forty years," but I don't think that's the reason for what people think happened. If there was truly this massive assimilation, it's more due to the Depression followed up by World War II than a lack of new immigrants from Eastern Europe or China showing up in 1934.

And Americanization programs in public school systems.

I'd make the argument that there 3rd generation woke immigrants and 3rd generation far-right immigrants proof that Americanization still works, just not the same way it worked in 1959.

Basically every Muslim politician of note in the US is uniformly left-wing on social issues. Sounds like those people are assimilating into society just fine.