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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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Anyone upset about the impacts of DEI on competence should also be upset about this.

I think there's a distinction elided by the word "competence" here.

Skilled immigration being hard reduces (average) individual competence. DIE reduces institutional and societal competence, because those institutions and society are using false models of the world. Being upset at one (either one) does not necessarily imply being upset at the other.

I will also note that it is possible to believe that something is important and also believe that it is outweighed by other important things in certain specific cases. The obvious case with regard to skilled immigration is "skilled immigrants from the PRC are considerably less valuable to Western countries than one might expect from their level of skill, because a large chunk of them are sleeper agents either by brainwashing or by having family in the PRC that can be used for extortion".