site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 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.

5
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

For a few decades Medicine has felt angsty about claims of bad bedside manner in practicing physicians (never mind that this is as much about inherent pressures in the field and foreign trained doctors as it is about individual physician temperaments). The solution was to deemphasize grades, MCAT, and other traditional measures of academic success (and also research prowess). As we've pushed into the woke era this has turned more into looking for students to be engaged in specific types of volunteering and political advocacy. About ten years ago the MCAT was heavily updated to include woke content (although obviously this was pre "woke" era).

Additionally affirmative action* has gotten more and more egregious - troublesome given drop out rates and early retirement/exit from the field in some of those demos. On a less official note you'll schools pushing for "does this student match our mission" behind closed doors in admissions committee meeting. Of course this primarily impacts people from less affluent backgrounds and less prominent schools, since people with good backgrounds manage to slide in as usual.

Between affluent American children naturally becoming more woke and deliberate fingers on the scale with respect to who gets admitted theirs been less complaints about explicitly woke curriculums (sometimes removing traditional educational content and replacing those content hours on more trans health or whatever) some of which gets to the point where even the supporters are like...eesh man that's a lot.

The first part of the medical boards (Step 1) was also made pass/fail, which was sold as a way to increase diversity since minorities didn't do well on it, but was basically a move by top tier medical schools to make the bottom of their class look better, which absolutely worked leaving talented people from mid and low tier medical schools unable to differentiate themselves and move up a tier for residency. Anti-meritocratic bullshit.

*I'm going to throw women in here even though they are better candidates by most metrics but the problem is that they have a tendency to eat a training slot and then get pregnant a year or two into their career and then never return to the work force or work reduced hours, which is a huge issue with doctor allocation and shortage problems.