atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
No bio...
User ID: 2162
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
There's no necessary link between the two.
I agree that in my original post there was no clear link between the two and apologize for the bad writing. I hope the edit I made clarifies things more.
I think the parent comment I made was bad writing and left out a lot of context. So the complaint from this particular segment of the far right is that there is something essential to modern, western culture (they'll use a term like "globohomo") that destroys something aesthetic. I'm currently a little confused about what exactly their aesthetic complaint is---people's living environments, public buildings and spaces, people's bodies, some sort of missing abstract search for glory? However, as far as I understand them, they think that this aesthetic issue cannot be fixed without changing the foundations of western culture. Usually, they argue it necessitates some kind of ethnostate.
I wanted to make a point---even accepting their premise that the aesthetic issue can only and will be fixed by getting rid of "globohomo" culture, it's not actually that clearly an issue. I personally think that the modern, western physical environment is adequate, even though it could be better---airports and suburbia, for example, are moderately ugly to beautiful (visit Changi or walk around Palo Alto to see the good side) depending on how rich the area is. However, in this trade for adequacy instead of greatness (again accepting the questionable premise that culture change would actually lead to greatness!), we get greatness in another place: beauty coming from scientific and technological advancement.
The hypothetical was meant to ask if people think this trade is ok. Obviously there are also other aesthetic benefits from modern, western culture. I just thought this one was most compelling (though obviously I was wrong here).
So earlier this week I tried to have a discussion about the common complaint here that modern, western culture is deficient and should be overthrown because it is extremely bad at creating beauty. I tried to argue that this particular judgement depends on aesthetic preferences that aren't as universal as its makers seem to think and gave a particular example of one of my own preferences (that is shared by many I know IRL) that actually judges it as exceptionally good.
The response was pretty shocking. There are some topics here that I know will provoke a lot of heat---immigration, racial identity, trans issues, etc. I never suspected this to also be one of them. The sheer amount of anger in the replies and the subsequent to emotional arguments and strawmanning was crazy--I really did not know it was this controversial. On second thought however, this aesthetic judgement really is the core objection a lot of the far right has towards the modern world and a lot of their policy suggestions to fix it that otherwise seem bizarre to me make a lot more sense when viewed as based on their particular aesthetic preferences. Therefore, questioning these preferences is really questioning the foundation of their political identity, much more than talking about immigration might be.
I'm therefore interested in polling this forum on the issue. I think it helps with the strawmanning to be very precise and try to clarify it into a dilemma. Pretend god offered you a trade: all future advances in science and math that aren't directly useful for technological advancement will stop. In exchange, the supposed squalor of the modern, western physical environment will be fixed---think replacing all of suburbia with stuff that looks as nice as your favorite ones of these. Would you take the trade? [Edit: maybe a better option would be changing all brutalist buildings to things that are as nice as cathedrals?] Now I know that "directly useful for technological advancement" is a very fuzzy, but please try to answer the question in its spirit---we're trading away only the aesthetic value of these advances, not their material and practical effects.
I would also be very interested in the correlation between the answer to this question and people's political views. I personally would be strongly against the trade (the same as most people I know IRL) and I'm a pretty standard American liberal.
(EDIT: on second thought this was a very unclear post missing too much context. See here for clarification---hopefully this helps to anyone still looking at this).
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Come on, you know that's a completely skewed, exaggerated, and not-at-all fair representation of the choice. What about this instead:
You stop the flow of all future ideas in math and science that aren't directly useful for practical technology. In exchange, all of cookie-cutter suburbia looks as nice as these instead of whatever they look like now. I agree that some people would take the trade, but I think this would be extremely controversial. I would think that taking it would be a horrible decision.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I've decided to abstain from responding to you the last time you wrote it, because – as before – I did not recognize you as a good faith interlocutor.
You are under no obligation to reply to anything, though you also have no justifiable reason to claim that I'm not a good faith interlocutor. It's like clockwork, every time you reply to something I post here it needs to include at least one unjustified personal attack. Please stop.
As for the rest of your comment, this is just a very poetic way to express what it feels like to be confronted with aesthetic preferences different from your own. The point of my original comment is explained in more detail here and the way to argue against it is to discuss why your personal aesthetic preferences are actually universal enough, not post a bunch of poetry about why you think they're superior.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
(This is also a reply to @5434a)
I don't think I want to argue that there aren't any aspects of aesthetic preferences that are held universally enough to be objective. I just want to make the narrow claim that the common condemnation of 21st-century Western culture that it is particularly bad at producing beauty is questionable enough that it is completely dependent on idiosyncratic personal preferences that lie on top of these more universal considerations.
To do this, I gave an example of an idiosyncratic preference that I thought was within the bounds of reasonable that also judges modern, western society as exceptionally good at producing beauty. There are others that also suffice, some based on more earthy considerations that may feel more compelling to you. For example, it's not implausible that many medieval peasants may be more in awe of the Manhattan skyline or the Ground Zero memorial than a Gothic Cathedral. It's also not implausible that many might think the dramatically increased accessibility of natural beauty---Banff, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Iguazu Falls, things medieval peasants can't even dream of---is worth the cost of having cookie-cutter suburbia everywhere.
Not every field in math and science is as abstruse and inaccessible as higher category theory. For example, look up any recent breakthrough in biology: MRNA vaccines, techniques for neural imaging, etc. You don't need to be an expert to be in awe of the clever things people had to come up with to make these work. There's also a ton of beauty being created in recreational math---see for example the elegance of something like this. Anyone can understand that! Even better, popular science/math exposition is also getting better and better so even the "serious" ideas are more accessible than they ever were before---even aspects of your example of higher category theory are open to way more of the population than you claim these days.
Sure not everyone is capable of appreciating every aspect, but this is like saying that novels are a super elitist form of beauty because only English professors have a hope of understanding everything in Ulysses.
Who is building beautiful things these days in the public realm?
I'll keep making the same reply whenever I see complaints about beauty---any judgement like this depends on your own, idiosyncratic aesthetic preferences. Personally, I find new ideas in math and science to be the most beautiful thing in the world and the quality and amount of this that is being discovered/made publicly available has never been greater. I am extremely happy to have this even at the possible cost of whatever's going on in our physical environment. I also don't think similar aesthetic preferences are that rare, especially in a community like this one.
So I completely disagree, by a very reasonable definition of "beauty", we are in a golden age of people creating beauty in the public realm (you just have to go beyond physical things).
Your model is nice as far as it goes, but the whole thing is built on the presumption of the successor ideology's innate correctness and legitimacy. Remove that assumption, and the pleasant portrait curdles.
I didn't say anything in the previous post about this being a pleasant portrait, though maybe this is moot since you're correct in assuming that I think so. For the current technological environment, the culture that I described is correct and legitimate because it's the one that best motivates and mobilizes human talent into solving the scientific and mathematical problems necessary for prosperity---see details here. In a different technological environment, this can change I and will happily accept that.
How do you distinguish this model from one where a minority culture imports sympathetic clients until it establishes itself as the new majority, then tells the previous majority to get fucked?
I am not trying to. By the above, I think this is the culture that made the US the successful and powerful country it is today. Therefore, if what you say is correct, good for the new majority that they found a way to drag the old majority kicking and screaming into prosperity!
Are they? Can you point to a place where these cultural commitments form a strong, uniting national identity
There was a great 4th of July post on this forum poetically describing exactly how these cultural commitments can form a positive, uniting national identity. I've heard similar sentiments very frequently from friends and family (that are US citizens).
I think a lot of people commenting here are very confused about the idea of what "assimilation" into American culture means, how arduous it actually is, and how strict Americans are in requiring it. Most correctly identify that American culture is exactly the universal culture described here. However, they completely miss that assimilating into universal culture can be quite difficult; it's very much not anything-goes-and-you're-racist-if-you-disagree!
The key point is the section on Noahide laws later in the article. While it does allow anything that doesn't conflict with them, universal culture has some very strong Noahide laws. Some are meta-laws that are necessary for melting-pot-type things like universal culture to even function: a tolerance or even celebration of diversity that doesn't otherwise conflict with these laws (this last bit is important!), not caring about/judging what other adults do too much if it doesn't directly affect you, extreme openness to new ideas and ways of doing things, comfort with change and a weaker attachment to the superficial aesthetics that you may have grown up with, etc. However, there are a few that aren't meta-laws: particular to the US, a very strong commitment to freedom of expression, greater comfort with deserved inequality in the upper tails, and a rejection of any kind of hereditary hierarchies in favor of meritocracy ("people's fates should be decided by their choices instead of the circumstances of their birth", "content of your character instead of the color of your skin", "all men are created equal", etc).
These are very demanding cultural commitments to live by! They are definitely enough to form a strong, uniting national identity. Immigrant groups can fail to assimilate into them very easily---most recently mentioned here, recall the example of the city in Michigan with a lot of recent Muslim immigrants that passes anti-gay laws that were intolerant by this standard. Most Americans, even very progressive ones, will agree that this failure of assimilation was a bad thing (though they won't literally use the word "assimilation" because many on the left have weird complexes about certain words that can make discussion very confusing). However, the rarity of these stories shows that the US even still does successfully assimilate most immigrants.
Summarizing for emphasis, assimilation into these Noahide laws is very strongly desired by almost all Americans, is actually a serious requirement, and does happen for most immigrants.
I think a large part of the confusion is that a lot of ostensibly American posters on this sub do not themselves abide by these Noahide laws (if I am allowed to be a little glib, the tolerance of diversity and rejection of hereditary hierarchies seem to be particular sticking points). These posters should realize that yes, immigrants are assimilating to the culture of the country in which they live, just not assimilating into their culture. From the inside, this will of course feel like like assimilation isn't happening or isn't required.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I don't think I understand. Can you explain why that's a relevant difference instead of just no-true-Scottsmanning? Whatever the super fine details of the exact specific type of German he is, if you want to follow the tradition of dramatic, operatic German music like Wagner to the modern day, Hans Zimmer is probably the best example.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
....an internationally acclaimed piece of contemporary German art (something I've previously claimed barely exists, to my chargin)
This depends on your idiosyncratic personal preferences about what counts as art, meaningful, or beautiful. As far as I'm concerned, Germany contains arguable the world's premier center for producing beauty and meaning. I personally think it's crazy to judge a country producing ideas like these as not producing internationally acclaimed contemporary art just on the basis of video games, paintings, or music (even this example is questionable since this German produces quite a bit of internationally acclaimed music).
This is the general problem with basing your morality too heavily aesthetic preferences. These vary too much from person to person, are really hard to reconcile, and therefore produce unresolvable differences in judging which places are successful/which policies work/etc. It just leads to an all-against-all war between 100,000,000 orthogonal value systems.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Would you be willing to recognize this as a fair choice, or would you support work to undermine it as covertly racist?
Is this supposed to be a trap? I would definitely recognize any accurate judgement like this as fair! Race can't mean you refuse to judge people as bad in certain ways the exact same way it can't mean you refuse to judge people as good in certain ways. Now, the way the human brain works, there's a very strong bias towards seeing more of a stereotypical negative trait in a member of another racial group than actually exists. Therefore, for this judgement to actually be accurate, some care needs to taken to account for this bias in the exact same way you account for any other cognitive bias if you actually want to be right about the world.
Any legible meritocratic evaluation immigrants can and will game, Goodharting the hell out of it and wrecking themselves in the process.
Goodhart's law isn't an overwhelming force that overwhelms everything else. We still accept legible measures in deciding who gets positions in every other aspect of life and, while obviously not perfect since nothing is in the real world, they work far better than just deciding based on race. Your argument here seems to be a generalized counterargument to any kind of meritocracy at all. Even if you accept some worst-case, all-powerful Goodhart, you can just change the measure when you notice it's turned into something harmful---make it a moving target to keep ahead of Goodhart.
Because you actually want it to test your merits – namely, opportunism and ability to manipulate bureaucracies to your benefit? See, this is exactly whom people who are arguing for racial criteria would like to not let in.
You really can't resist the personal attacks can you.... This one I'm completely confused by, are you mixing me up with someone else? I'm very curious to hear what possibly gave you the impression that I'm particularly good at manipulating bureaucracies. Is this just your "vague prior" based on perceived race?
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
No, it wouldn't because Western countries need all kinds of workers not just high skilled ones. And culture is intrinsically tied with race to a greater extent than even religion
This is not too hard to fix---just do the salary sorting independently for each position after you've decided how much of each you want. Furthermore, I don't think it's so hard to do some cursory test for cultural compatibility that again, would be much better than the weak proxy of race. Again, saying the first thing that comes to my head just to emphasize how close it comes and how easy the problem is, even just English proficiency might suffice. Knowing nothing else, would you prefer a natively English-proficient Christian Nigerians over random Muslim Indonesian? Seriously trying to come up with a filter would do dramatically better than just looking at race. Immigration officials have so much more information about prospectives and this completely overwhelms any evidence provided by race.
Saying this another way, filtering by race doesn't make sense unless you can somehow argue that race is actually a strong proxy for merit/cultural compatibility/whatever you want from immigrants. Even the most extreme HBD positions don't deny a huge overlap in distributions of whichever characteristic you care about, so such a position would seem ridiculous.
You do have to select from pools of people. Where do you think immigration authorities are getting their data from? People are pooled together into races and countries by birth. If authorities choose to accept data from both pools they have to sift through the 90 IQ pool and the 100 IQ pool. If they just flat out refuse every single person from the 90 IQ pool on the basis of very easily identifiable characteristics they don't have to do that and can as a result be more efficient in their search through a higher quality pool.
I'm sorry but this is complete nonsense. Imagine you had a list of 1000 numbers and wanted to find the top 100. What you are proposing is randomly splitting the list into two halves with a very slight weighting so that larger numbers go into the first half, and then picking the top 100 from the first half. It is blatantly obvious that this is not going to give a very optimal outcome.
I don't insinuate that you suffering from some psychological ailment because you seemingly favor immigration from Africa.
(Edited) This topic more than any other seems to produce nonsensical logic like the above that I know people here (including you) would immediately catch talking about anything else. I don't know what else I'm supposed to conclude except agreeing with the progressive point that discussions about racial differences are always going to be ruined by the mother of all cognitive biases.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Arghhhh!!! The entire point is that it's not justified. If I needed to choose 1000000 workers I wouldn't arbitrarily straitjacket myself into needing all of then be from the same country/race---I would just pick the million best from everywhere the best way I can. There are so many other much more useful ways to distinguish people from each other. I am completely dumbfounded why this point is so hard for people to grasp.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I think Europe should be a bit "pragmatically racist" in selecting groups from countries that have a track record of integrating well, e.g. I'd give preference for South-East Asia, but it appears that such a moderate policy is too racist even for the "far-right".
Again and again, why do people keep on jumping to race as the most accurate way to filter for being able to integrate? I will keep repeating, it's at very best just a weak proxy for anything that actually matters. It's really not hard to construct a better proxy: just as literally the first thing that comes to my head, selecting people for a work permit based on the salary of the job they're getting would be a much better way than race/country of origin to pick out immigrants Italy might want (even if it's still not even close to perfect).
This is exactly why immigration concerns are so often dismissed as motivated mostly by literal racism. Such a crazy and bizarre logical jump happening this consistently is really, really suspicious.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Ok, I think we have two different standards for what assimilation means. To me, assimilation is just adapting well enough to the host country that you provide more benefits than harms. If I'm not mistaken, you seem to require something more: a level of conformity to the culture that's already there in as many ways as possible---dress, food, religion, etc.
Benefiting more than harming of course does not mean completely ignoring whatever the native culture is at the time. There's a good example brought up on SSC here.
(one more hypothetical, to clarify what I’m talking about – imagine a culture where the color of someone’s clothes tells you a lot of things about them – for example, anyone wearing red is a prostitute. This may work well as long as everyone follows the culture. If you mix it 50-50 with another culture that doesn’t have this norm, then things go downhill quickly; you proposition a lady wearing red, only to get pepper sprayed in the eye. Eventually the first culture gives up and stops trying to communicate messages through clothing color.)
I do count immigration breaking a norm like this as causing harm. Similarly, I would usually only count immigrants who learn English as fully assimilated.
Why do I think my standard for assimilation is better? The short answer is first that western countries, in particular and even more so the US, haven't had a homogenous culture to conform to for a very long time. Talking again about clothing, people aggressively refusing to conform through fashion is one of the most central things in American society---like how much do you remember from high school? Why does it matter whether they stand out by wearing all black and spiking their hair or by wearing traditional East African clothing?
I really think the article linked above is the right way to think about it---"western" culture is just a bunch of the most compelling parts of all cultures in the world mashed together into one plus some overarching "Noahide laws" to optimize it for assimilating others. I would in addition claim that this culture is superior to all others because it's the best we have for promoting technological and scientific development. Therefore it's good that this is what dominates the country and we shouldn't return to whatever there was before.
More specifically, extreme tolerance for non-conformity and diversity is one of the most important part of the Noahide laws that make it work. You need a broad spectrum of weird and unexpected, and possibly even threatening ideas for there to be innovative breakthroughs---simply put, innovation can't occur unless there are enough people that are actually thinking differently. I don't think it's a coincidence that Silicon Valley grew out of the most non-conformist part of the US. Any requirement that immigrants assimilate by conforming breaks this important part of the greatness of western culture.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Can you be more specific about what exact differences you see between East Africans in San Diego and the general population? The one example you gave---dress---is pretty superficial and doesn't really seem relevant unless you have some very strong and idiosyncratic aesthetic preferences. I'm also not going to count examples where East Africans do better than the general population since these would be examples of successful assimilation.
What are the non-superficial/non-appearance-based points where East Africans immigrants in San Diego are significantly worse than the general population?
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I think the more interesting comparison is between MENA immigrants in France and Mexican/Central American immigrants in the US. The US also has significantly poorer, more violent, and less stable countries to the south that send a large inflow of unfiltered, not always legal immigration. However, these immigrant populations assimilate well and do not cause nearly the same problems as MENA immigrants in France. Clearly something is working with the American system that is not working in France. Even other places in Europe do better than France---Vienna seems to assimilate immigrants just fine for example.
One possible explanation is that the French idea that you can just by law declare that everyone is the same and then forget about race is hopelessly naïve. However much you claim everyone is equally French, some people are going to just look dramatically different. The way human nature is, unless you take serious effort to educate people about the reality of race and discrimination and actively pass explicitly race-based policies to counteract it, de facto, social discrimination is going to make it impossible for immigrants to assimilate no matter what the laws from up high actually say. However well the law treats them, civil society is not going to treat them well. Who cares if you have the same access to welfare and schooling if no one will hire you or rent you an apartment in a nice neighborhood? If the teachers are horribly biased against you when grading?
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I see a qualitative difference in willingness to assimilate, or at least be good citizens in Latin immigrants to the US versus the ones going to the EU. Latin America is still far more stable than Africa or the ME is at any rate.
Are you certain that this is an intrinsic quality of the populations? You can just as well argue that this is because the US is better at making immigrants want to be good citizens and assimilate because of the differences between the way it deals with race and the way France does. I also don't think it's that obvious that Mexico/Central America are more stable than the Middle East and North Africa. Murder rates are way higher for example. I'm not saying there isn't a difference in populations, but I've never really heard a convincing argument that there was. I have on the other hand seen many arguments and plausible theoretical justifications for why the US method of assimilation is better.
I struggle to see how it's even possible to falsify this
There's a sort of meta point here. This is sociology, not science and you can't really ask for rigorous things like falsifiability. Talking way outside my field here, but from whatever classes I took, it always seemed the best you can do is try to fit a bunch of examples into a narrative and just argue about which one is most compelling, maybe using whatever it is sociologists call "theory".
The "US is better at assimilating" narrative is consistent with all the examples (the claim I made above was that the ADOS example doesn't contradict it). It also has theoretical justifications---the whole thing about immigrants in the US actually being given a fair chance since the country isn't blind to unfair biases against them, for example. The "populations are different" narrative still needs some sort of justification why Mexican/Central American immigrant populations in the US are actually meaningfully, intrinsically different from MENA immigrant populations in Europe beyond just "I see a qualitative difference in willingness to assimilate".
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Middle Eastern and African migrants making it to the US are incredibly filtered as opposed to the dregs who wash up on European shores. Oceans tend to be handy in that regard.
I never really bought this argument. The US has also had a pretty big inflow of unfiltered immigration from Mexico/Central America recently. Previously, the US had an even larger (proportionally) unfiltered flow from Ireland/Italy/Eastern Europe. These immigrant groups seem to be doing pretty fine---definitely much better than MENA immigrants in France.
The one group that causes the greatest uproar is arguably the segment of the US population that has been the least successful at integration (still better than the EU! At least Ebonics isn't an outright different language) are the ADOS.
This particular group had been actively kept in poverty in deprivation until the late 60's and is still effectively (though not forcefully) segregated away from the general population. Obviously this group isn't going to be assimilated very well---HBD/culture are not the only plausible explanations! Furthermore, this in fact doesn't really contradict my original point. Groups that are treated as the US treated voluntary immigrants do fine and assimilate great. Groups that aren't don't.
Whatever the system, these periodic events happen in diverse societies and then they are forgotten until the next outbreak.
A key point you're ignoring here is that such racialized rioting doesn't happen nearly as frequently in the US. When it does happen it also never comes from any sort of immigrant group that failed to assimilate---it's not at all fair to try to fit summer 2020 in the US under the same framework and use it to make arguments about assimilation. Immigrants in the US tend to assimilate extremely well and usually do better than the native population in various statistics.
There's an alternate framing of the narrative that actually supports the liberal point of view here (I think you're aware of this?). Yes, the French method of forcing assimilation is silly and doesn't work, but this doesn't mean that assimilation is doomed and will never happen. Rather, we already have a model of assimilation---race aware and everything---that works extremely well in the US. The French should copy this instead of sticking their heads in the sand about human nature and ignoring the necessity of actively combating the insidious power of irrational bias against people that look different.
As other comments have pointed out, this is not such a painful bullet to bite and the idea isn't so novel that it hasn't already been more-or-less the thesis of a New York Times Bestseller. There's even an SCC article touching on these themes.
It's quite comforting actually---instead of stressing over confusing discussions about somehow justifying terminal values, there's an objective best morality and culture for any given environment/level of technological development. Right now, that happens to be egalitarian, individualistic, diversity-focused-melting-pot meritocracy. A modern society's most important resource is it's human talent, the more extreme-outlier the talent is---the Von Neumanns, the Einsteins, the Edisons---the more important. Therefore, the society's values should be focused as much as possible on developing this talent within and converting it from outside. Make sure it can rise from as large a percentage of the population as possible, make sure it's motivated and rewarded as much as possible, make sure that it's as attractive as possible for talent from outside to convert and join, make sure you're looking in varied enough places that you don't miss unexpected sources of talent, etc.
In the past it was different and in the future it might be different again.
I'm a little confused about what the original aesthetic complaint against the modern west is then. I always read the "Why can't we build anything beautiful anymore" from neoreactionary-types as being followed by a claim that this is caused by something fundamental to our culture and it can't be fixed until the culture is overthrown.
The examples you gave do not seem to fit this---both are very easily fixed by money and you can see this if you walk around any rich part of the west where there is very little squalor and much fewer fat people (well, San Francisco is it's own weird thing, but consider Bay Area suburbs instead---maybe more precisely any part of the west where poverty is excluded). I don't think any culture has done a good job of keeping its poorer parts aesthetically pleasing.
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