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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32906 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Just a quick point which has been bugging me in several of these Motte threads about the issue...

Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration? That's just flat out wrong!! Objectively! I don't know why all the comments seem to conveniently gloss over this. Even if we're playing the counterfactual game, which is always epistemically suspect in the case of individuals, the debate would be about immigration policies 18 years ago, not current immigration policies. Now, given, the PM at the time was Tony Blair, who was Labour, so maybe there's a connection there, but still (it's not like Labour has been in charge for long enough to meaningfully affect immigration policies themselves, and instead it's the Conservatives who were in power for much more than a decade). The situation also pretty much requires asking "how well does assimilation work in the UK"? Answering that is pretty much required context if you're going to connect it to immigration, because otherwise the local UK culture is presumably just as much "to blame" as his parent's upbringing.

But yeah, Taylor Swift being repeatedly brought up is a little odd. But if your goal is to create maximum media attention to an act of terror, choosing as your target a bunch of sympathetic young people and even kids at a Taylor Swift event ( a figure who has a ton of built in attention already) is probably close to the "ideal" target. Now, of course, this kind of terrorism is consummately counterproductive, but to the more delusional kind of terrorist (such as a 17 and 19 year old) it might seem attractive.

When it comes to women being able to open a bank account on their own, 1974 is 'shockingly recent'.

Recency is contingent on the subject.

Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration? That's just flat out wrong!! Objectively!

Feel free to believe it, feel free to argue for it, but this is consensus building. If you're one generation away from your family being in the old country, that's pretty recent.

I'd even say that insisting on your definition of "recent" implicitly makes the argument that is explicitly disproven by these incidents - integration is possible, but it takes more than being born on a particular patch of dirt, as pro-immigration advocates kinda-sorta implied, and sometimes stated openly.

Even if we're playing the counterfactual game, which is always epistemically suspect in the case of individuals, the debate would be about immigration policies 18 years ago, not current immigration policies.

Uh... ok...? If you're saying the current immigration policies are better than they were 18 years ago, you're free to argue that, but I think this instance supports the claims of current immigration opponents.

Now, given, the PM at the time was Tony Blair, who was Labour,

Please, none of this is about partisan politics.

Answering that is pretty much required context if you're going to connect it to immigration, because otherwise the local UK culture is presumably just as much "to blame" as his parent's upbringing.

Yeah, the "local" UK culture that assumed integration is going to happen automatically, and anyone opposed to immigration must be motivated by bigotry.

argument that is explicitly disproven by these incidents - integration is possible

There's also the issue that 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants frequently have worse outcomes and lower integration.

From the point of view of the Britons, the Saxons and the Normans are recent immigrations, recent meaning in the last thousand years. The Romans only get a pass because they immigrated before the time of Christ.

The British upper class are Saxon and Norman, who violently invaded the isles and won through conquest. If you’re implying that the brown migrants to the UK are invaders, then just allow for mutual combat.

Right, of course context matters, but in the realm of politics two decades is almost never recent. You usually mean something within the last few months to a year, and sometimes 5 years at most, 10 if you really stretch. This holds true virtually 90% of the time, probably even higher, 99% wouldn't even surprise me. A simple search of literally any news article will demonstrate my point quite succinctly. Or even books.

If you use "recent" to mean 20 years ago it's almost explicitly dishonest.

For example, if I tell you that I "recently" moved -- even if I am catching up with an old friend I hadn't seen in like, 40 years, you'd still probably assume recent = last 5 to 10 years at most. I struggle to even come up with any sort of comparable example outside of literal world history where recent would acceptably mean almost two decades ago.

And in terms of ethnogenesis, centuries pass in the blink of an eye.

There's an unfortunate saying that goes something like this: 'a dog born in the stables is not a horse'. I am Chinese in origin, and I can confidently say that if outsiders moved in and learned and spoke Chinese and did so for a thousand years, they would still be foreigners. (No one thinks that Mongols are Chinese.) That is the problem when creedal New World colonial nations cross-pollinate their civic nationalism into the old. They simply do not understand that a nation is more than a mere economic zone of free association.

For the British, they still haven't gotten over William the Conquerer (the difference between the posh and chav class distinctions in England is largely how much francophonian loanwords each uses). Anyone else is an outsider to this culture-struggle. Their cosmopolitan rootlessness precludes them from partaking of a nation's blood and soil, of which nearly all Old World states are in their essence.

I can confidently say that if outsiders moved in and learned and spoke Chinese and did so for a thousand years, they would still be foreigners.

I'm pretty sure nobody can tell Manchus apart from Han anymore without looking at the ethnicity listed on their ID, and they were assimilated less than 300 years ago.

I've heard (anecdotally) that the Manchus are still something of an upper class in China, sort of like the Normans in England.

I remember an incident from a Chinese culture class in college, where the professor was Han, and talking about how Han are the majority... then asked a Chinese student, assuming he was also Han. Surprise: he was actually Manchu. Unless there was some subtle unstated communication going on that I missed, I'd call that at least one thorough assimilation.

I am Chinese in origin, and I can confidently say that if outsiders moved in and learned and spoke Chinese and did so for a thousand years, they would still be foreigners. (No one thinks that Mongols are Chinese.)

Yes but no one thinks the Mongols immigrated "recently".

The point here is that it's not people saying "we don't like foreigners" but rather criticizing policies that are not 20 years old.

You say context matters and then proceed to ignore the context that this is a discussion of immigration to Britain and that "recent' in this context is a lot longer than you seem to assume.

Recent for a tiny sliver of Anglo ethnats, perhaps. 99% of the British public certainly don’t consider the Normans or Saxons ‘recent immigrants’. They don’t even consider the royal family recent immigrants lol.

Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration?

Replying to both of your comments here--I'm not wed to the word "recent." But the consequences of immigration can surely take decades and even centuries to play out, depending on the details. As I noted to FiveHourMarathon,

The children of recent immigrants are often targets for radicalization; indeed, crime rises among second-generation immigrants as they assimilate, though I've seen some recent (I suspect politically-motivated) attempts to muddy the waters on this.

As for whether it's really Labour's fault, I'm not sufficiently keyed in to British politics to say much about that. Very generally, I suspect that people who are broadly anti-immigration will often be the sorts of people who also use words like "uniparty" or "globalist" to describe the way that progressive and conservative elites always seem to be able to set aside their differences when it comes time to screw the average nobody.

Immigration has often been recognized as precisely this sort of thing. Bernie Sanders' opposition to immigration is grounded in the idea that it hurts poor Americans, and the people who disagree with his take tend to just be so globalist that they're willing to accept the tradeoff. From the linked article (emphasis added):

Maybe such harm would be justified if it prevents a major harm from befalling native-born Americans. But immigration does not harm native-born Americans on average. It helps them.

Immigration is indeed good for Americans (economically), on average! But if you're one of the millions of Americans for whom it is actually bad, how should that make you feel? Personally, if I were working class, I cannot imagine being happy to hear that, thanks to increased immigration, people already better off than me were going to, on average, benefit more than I was going to suffer.

If someone can't protest the direct result of immigration policy twenty years after the fact (old news! proximate cause!), and can't protest the immigration policy proposed today (racist!), even when the same party is in control today as was in control twenty years ago, then where does that leave them? I am myself somewhat ambivalent about all this; I know enough about economics to know that trade and immigration are big contributors to prosperity in much of the world, but I also try to be empathetic with people who are clearly harmed--whose well being is being consciously sacrificed by government actors for the "greater good." So I've been a little stunned by the apparent absence of anything approaching sympathy in the UK counterprotests, particularly considering, you know, the murdered children.

But yes: the Taylor Swift thing is weird!

EDIT: I forgot to say! There is a joke: what is the difference between Americans and the British? Answer: Americans think 200 years is a long time, and Brits think that 200 miles is a long way. "Recent" immigration could be a hundred years ago, depending on your culture. Americans of European ancestry are sometimes accused of being recent immigrants even if their ancestors arrived on the Mayflower...

So I've been a little stunned by the apparent absence of anything approaching sympathy in the UK counterprotests, particularly considering, you know, the murdered children.

Directly calling for the murder of [your opponent's] children with impunity is a fantastic way to demonstrate power so long as the people you're demonstrating to aren't intelligent or serious enough to do anything about it. Sam Hyde's observations about the people calling for this appear to be trivially correct.

And sure, doing this increases the chance someone serious enough actually does something; judging by the last time the government was directly responsible for high-profile child murders (though in the UK it's "just" murder by proxy, which probably changes the calculus some) in a Western country they apparently needed to murder 30 children before a kulak revolts and goes after the bureaucrats. Granted, the UK in 2024 is not the southern US in the early '90s so it'll probably take a few instances of that, if they're even permitted to hear about them, that is.

While the OKC bombing probably had a bit of a deterrent effect on federal law enforcement going forwards, it was widely perceived as retaliation for ruby ridge and not the Waco cult(which most people had little sympathy for).

Directly calling for the murder of [your opponent's] children with impunity

He was almost immediately arrested and charged.

How stern do you expect his sentence to be if he is convicted? Versus, say, that of someone calling for his execution on social media?

Very lenient, of course.

Modern western secular humanism is meant to be an anodyne soup appealing to everyone, further diminishing the power of traditional religious and socioeconomic gentry. That the recent immigrants fins secular humanism unappealing and continue finding succour in retrograde political beliefs is inconvenient and ignored by pro migrant class aspirants.

In aggregate, cheaper consumer goods and cheaper services results in net utility increases. That said utility increase is uneven is ignored and the common response from urban professionals is to sneer at the stupid proles who dare display unhappiness with their imported replacements.

Urban professionals have made it clear that importing migrants for their personal comfort matters. So what if tens of thousands of girls are raped or dozens of girls blown up by muslims, or stabbed by imports that never contribute economically. These stupid proles should know their place beneath the benevolent auspices of the professionals, and anyone who objects is a wrongthinker whose throat should be, as white-sounding Ricky Jones said, slit in the name of antifascism.

To the cheers of Free Free Palestine, for good measure. The presence of that damnable slogan with all manner of terrible activities conducted by the protected classes is something to consider too.

Urban professionals have made it clear that importing migrants for their personal comfort matters.

I think this is unrealistically conspiratorial. I am an urban professional, and it's clear to me that refugees and anyone coming from say, Haiti is not a net contributor to my or any of my countrymen's comfort [EDIT: on average]. But I don't talk about it often for fear of being fired or ostracised.

Having access to very cheap labour makes my life more comfortable even as it rots society.

Well yes, but as a blue collar and not bottom of the barrel worker- it does mine too. There’s a reason for the massive class based divide in immigration and it isn’t whether roustabouts benefit you, personally- a plumber knows that the existence of roustabouts means he doesn’t have to dig his own trenches.

I know some definite positive contributors from Haiti. Doesn't mean I'd invite the whole island (or even just the Haitian half) over of course.

Whoops, edited for clarity. I meant on average.

I know some definite positive contributors from Haiti.

Huh?

Edit: see below.

There are, in fact, Haitian immigrants to the US who aren't cannibal gang members, mud-eating Voudon practicitioners, or the like.

I misread your comment as "positive contributions", my bad. I'll also point out that the OP was specifically referring to net contributors.

Participation in a conspiracy of silence means consenting, if not encouraging, this state of affairs.

Failure to hold peers to task when they advance false utopias is wrong when it is white supremacist, why is it wrong to state that importing millions of Indians to be Tim Hortons staffers or Guatamalans to pick fruits illegally has a net negative effect, much less bringing in islamist mirpuris or MS13 salvadorans.

Your peers being stupid is no need to make yourself stupid as well. Plenty of white people express relief when someone else speaks up to decry the obvious. Be the bigger man and speak what others dare only dream.

I have to pick my battles. I spent some political capital pushing back on the particular progressive rot infesting the institutions I'm part of. Bringing up immigration in professional settings apropos of nothing seems like a bad use of everyone's time.

I'm not proud of not bringing this up, but I'm saying that this is a very different phenomenon than keeping quiet because I'm secretly glad that my country is being ruined by mass immigration because it benefits me in the short run. And I think my colleagues who champion mass immigration are doing it mostly for altruistic or signaling reasons, not because it improves their position materially.

I realize I'm doubling down a little, but I feel it's justified. As an example, we can ask a LLM (here, Claude): "If I say "recent immigrant" what time-frame would people most expect that to mean?"

The term "recent immigrant" doesn't have a universally agreed-upon timeframe, but it generally refers to someone who has immigrated within the last few years. Most people would likely interpret "recent immigrant" to mean someone who has arrived in the country within approximately the last 1 to 5 years. However, the exact interpretation can vary depending on context:

In casual conversation, people might consider "recent" to mean within the last 1-3 years. For statistical or research purposes, "recent immigrant" might be defined more precisely, sometimes covering a period of up to 5 or even 10 years. In some government contexts or for certain programs, "recent immigrant" might have a specific legal definition, which could vary by country or purpose. The perception of "recent" can also depend on the speaker's own frame of reference or the immigration patterns in a particular area.

We're probably within the realm of "casual conversation" ranging to "research purposes" so lo and behold, exactly what I said. In politics, "recent" usually means at most the recent election which even in the UK is only at most 5 or 6 years in the past. Even a follow-up question to Claude about the UK turns up that some media would use the word to mean a decade, at most. I'm glad you can acknowledge that the word might not make sense but the fact you used it in the first place is, if not an indication of outright dishonesty and manipulation (which given you as a mod I'm going to say no this is not the case, let's be charitable :) ), at least a major warning light that should be going off in your head about bias creeping into your language. And bias to the point it's leading to what I still insist is objectively an outright and blatant misrepresentation. If your word means 95% of the time (or more! I think textual analysis would produce 99% or higher) something that is factually false, using it is just straight up bad, no two ways about it.

Stepping back from the brink a little, I suppose you could see the context as "is immigration writ large any good"? In which it makes a little more sense. I do quite like your point about being caught in a double bind between not being able to critique 20-year-old policy and also not current policy. And yes, I think the European model of combating racism has its clear drawbacks here -- my general observation is that Europeans like to pretend it doesn't exist and sweep it under the rug when possible, while Americans talk about it much more directly and often. I'm sure both have their merits, but (despite my bias) I think the American model is still better. In psychology, we've sort of learned that it's usually better to err on the side of "talk about your feelings" rather than "bottle them up" even if there are actual risks of talking problems too much (and there are). I think the same idea roughly applies to politics. So the UK approach of trying to keep things bottled up is fundamentally doomed.

Definitions. Who/whom.

"Recent" has very different meanings to different people.

To the Japanese, a gaijin who has been born, lived and died of old age in Japan will never, ever, ever be Japanese. This is understood by all Japanese.

To Americans, uniquely, everyone within their borders is American. This is understood by (nearly) all Americans, and even those who don't understand it assume American values are universal and extend beyond their borders, often with disastrous implications for their foreign policy.

The term "recent immigrant" doesn't have a universally agreed-upon timeframe, but it generally refers to someone who has immigrated within the last few years.

I'm not sure how much I want to go down this road. I have... let's call them vast and boring... objections to any use of statistical language manipulation, corpus linguistics, LLMs, etc. in arguments concerning law and politics.

And I did say I'm not wed to the term!

But FWIW, ChatGPT agrees with your assessment.

Until, that is, you ask it "Could an Indigenous American describe white people as 'recent immigrants?'"

Yes, an Indigenous American could describe white people as "recent immigrants." European settlement in the Americas is relatively recent compared to the thousands of years that Indigenous peoples have lived on the continent.

When Indigenous Americans use the term "recent immigrants" to describe white people, it serves to emphasize the long-standing presence and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples in the Americas before European colonization. This perspective can underscore the impact of colonization on Indigenous cultures, lands, and societies, and challenge the dominant narratives that center European settlement as the beginning of American history.

Hmm, maybe there's a political bias here? How about "Could native Britons describe citizens of African descent as 'recent immigrants?'"

Native Britons could describe citizens of African descent as "recent immigrants" if they are referring to individuals or communities who have migrated from Africa to the UK within the last few decades. In this context, the term "recent immigrants" would be used in the same way it is applied to other groups who have migrated to the UK in modern times.

However, it is important to consider historical context and sensitivity when using such terms. The UK's relationship with Africa is complex, involving colonial history, migration during and after the British Empire, and the movement of people due to conflicts and economic opportunities. Describing someone as a "recent immigrant" can sometimes oversimplify or overlook these broader historical connections and the contributions of African-descended people to British society over many generations.

It's also worth noting that the term might not apply to all citizens of African descent in the UK, especially those who have been settled for several generations, or whose families have been in the country for a long time. The term "recent immigrant" is most accurately used for those who have migrated within a relatively short timeframe, typically within the last few years or decades.

(Emphasis added.) With no special prompting from me, ChatGPT spontaneously volunteered timeframes ranging from decades to centuries for "recent immigrants," and very specifically volunteered "decades" in a question about precisely the context we're discussing. While I do see some political bias (no reminder of "historical context and sensitivity" in the Native American version, no caveats about white people who have lived here for years or decades), these seem like pretty comparable answers. They also seem absolutely concordant with the idea that Africans who moved to the UK "within the last few decades" are "recent immigrants."

So like... if refusing to accept "decades" as a reasonable timeframe for "recent" immigration is not an indication of outright dishonesty and manipulation (which you have given me no reason to suspect), should "at least a major warning light . . . be going off in your head about bias creeping into your language?"

And really--I think no! I think your question was perfectly fair. Which is why I thought about it for a bit before coming to the conclusion that no--"recent" is probably a fine word to use in this context, and probably also a fine word to not use in this context. Ultimately I don't think the substance of my argument is significantly impacted either way.

I do quite like your point about being caught in a double bind between not being able to critique 20-year-old policy and also not current policy.

This is actually something I think about a lot, in a lot of contexts. It's weird to live in a world where perfectly good arguments often go out of style, simply because everyone has heard them before. The extent to which fashion so often drives philosophy is frankly maddening. But I don't know what else to say about it; it's not a fashionable observation to make, so essentially nobody wants to talk about it.

I had seen the phrase show up two times, maybe three, in the thread and it seemed a little too systemic for me not to mention it. It's all about the "context window", and yes it's true that LLMs are very sensitive to that (sometimes in a helpful, human way but not always) (and aside from of course the sometimes clumsy attempts at making the output PC). A fun example is I put your version of the question (which frankly I consider to be slightly more of a leading question due to the word "native" having strong connotations, but to some extent all LLM questions are leading, so what can you do) into chatbot arena. I got one answer that said not usually, but sometimes for individuals in "years and decades" maybe (and gave some context about the "Windrush generation" who came in the 50s and 60s), and a second answer that said it would probably be offensive, briefly mentioned it might be occasionally accurate, but then ended by saying that using the term would be a "microaggression". The first turned out to be a ChatGPT variant like you used, and the second was Gemini (lol). I still think my question phrasing gets more to the meat of the issue, but yeah, you can only get so far with LLMs. Asking "If we're having a conversation about immigration policy, and someone started talking about "recent" immigrants, what do you think would count as "recent"?" produced yet another answer that said usually 1-3 years and sometimes 5-10, and a second answer that basically said "bro that's actually super duper subjective, here's some things that might influence that". *shrugs*

I still think it's misleading. The news articles we're usually slinging around here usually employ the phrase to mean a few years at most. If "recent" introduces a significant misunderstanding, doesn't offer any advantages over the more generic "immigrant", and a better alternative "second-generation immigrant" exists, to me that's three strikes.

This is a little off topic, but along the lines of thought about how good arguments sometimes lose their power over time.... I actually do give good stock to the theory that CBT specifically as a psychiatric tool has lost a lot of its effectiveness because it's seeped into the water of the common understanding and provides almost a type of immunity to it.

Hey since you're a mod, can we get a rule banning "I asked ChatGPT about this" type posts? I don't guve a damn what some Chinese Room statistical regression engine "thinks" and I could ask it myself if I did.

The mod team has discussed this a little and while we've not arrived at a blanket ban, we have dropped "low effort" warnings on posts that were nothing but ChatGPT. I suspect our responses to generative AI will continue to evolve as technology and general use evolve.

If the discussion's about LLMs I think quoting their output is highly relevant. The "Gemini shits on historical accuracy when asked for pictures" issue, for instance, needed Gemini outputs to demonstrate.

Getting them to outright write arguments probably falls under "low effort", and certainly has the same if not worse effect on discourse quality.

Using one as an authoritative source, like here... well, it's dumb. Not sure it's worth banning in the general case, although in this one there was enough text that it starts to cross into the "you plugged me into an LLM, you contemptuous monster" reliable rage generator.

I'm absolutely opposed to this because the Chinese room statistical regression engine (and more specifically its HR manager shoggoth mask) is a priceless window into the mentality of our ruling priesthood.

And right now it's not capable of lying and dissimulating as well as they can in a conversation: you can get it to say the quiet part loud where even a Darwin would clam up and lie or ghost you.

Isn't it definitely worth mentioning that if he were born in the UK, it's not at all a "recent" immigration?

Location of ones birth being a factor on determing if a person is an immigrant or not, is a New World concept, not a universal one.

Even if we're playing the counterfactual game, which is always epistemically suspect in the case of individuals,

This proves way too much. Any crime commited by an immigrant, is a crime which wouldn't have happened had the immigrant been prevented from entering the country. Your general dismissal of "counterfactuals" leads to erasure of immigrant crime.

The situation also pretty much requires asking "how well does assimilation work in the UK"?

Assuming that the receiving state should invest in assimilation, is begging the question that people who require assimilation should be let in anyway.

because otherwise the local UK culture is presumably just as much "to blame" as his parent's upbringing.

If indigenous peoples if the British isles murder and rape children at lower rates than people who are of foreign ethnic extraction, it is ludicrous to blame the British values for the crimes of the latter. because the later will surely on average adhere to them les

Any crime [committed] by an immigrant, is a crime which wouldn't have happened had the immigrant been prevented from entering the country. Your general dismissal of "counterfactuals" leads to erasure of immigrant crime.

That is only relevant if one already assumes the ethnonationalist world-view; namely the propositions that countries exist for a select group defined by blood, that moral concern is rightfully extended only to that group, and that anyone else being allowed to exist in their territory is a supererogatory courtesy.

As someone with a more pan-humanist world-view, I don't see 'immigrant crime' as a category that carves reality at its joints; and excluding immigrants does not prevent the crimes a few of them would have committed, but merely moves them to another place; lowering the crime rate in England, while increasing it in Rwanda by the same amount, for no change in the total, at the cost of the stifling of opportunity (and infliction of indignity attendant on any form of discrimination) for countless innocent Rwandans, does not, in my view, seem advisable if one considers an umpteenth-generation Englishman and a Rwandan immigrant (or his son) to be equal in terms of moral worth.

lowering the crime rate in England, while increasing it in Rwanda by the same amount, for no change in the total,

This is only true if there's no change in birth rates downstream of immigration relieving/causing crowding. At the opposite extreme where birth rates/death rates totally compensate for the population transfer, then the cashed-out result is that instead of a Rwandan in England and a Rwandan in Rwanda you have an Englishman in England and a Rwandan in Rwanda, and if Rwandans in England commit more crime than Englishmen in England then there's less total crime.

Now, of course, there's not perfect compensation, particularly on the European end (on the African end there potentially is enough food scarcity to compensate). But I don't think it's zero on the European end either; housing prices would be lower with less immigrants, and housing affordability seems to be related to white birth rates.

Location of birth mattering or not is, yes, a unique cultural concept that differs across time and place. The simple fact however is that the parents did not give birth, move back to Rwanda, raise their child there, and then bring him back to the UK right before the murders. Much of the conversation in this thread makes it sound like this is the case. No, AFAIK, he spent all 17 years of his life in the UK. That's 100% of his life, and also, a pretty substantial chunk of time. So if we're playing the blame game, we have to ask about UK culture at least to some degree. That's why I bring up assimilation. You can't just ignore it. Insofar as it makes sense, there's a reason that sometimes in for example a legal examination of a car accident, we sometimes go so far as to talk about "percent of blame" due to different parties. That's the broad idea I'm getting at here. He, himself, is not an immigrant in most meaningful senses of the word. He must be understood as a second-generation immigrant, a term which exists as its own, different "thing".

Please note I was fairly careful in my wording, and for good reason. I talk about counterfactuals as applied to individuals, because there's a big risk of bias interacting with numerical/scientific issues in latching on to the wrong thing. We can still have a conversation about counterfactuals, but they need to be grounded in larger, more visible, and more real effects, perhaps using statistics. To say nothing of the fact that making conclusions about large populations from the actions of one or a few child murderers is already a bit suspect. Again, we can have this conversation. Your last paragraph even starts one! But it requires nuance. And it requires at least some degree of rigor which I'm not seeing. A point you make quite clearly when you dismiss counterfactuals so easily without an understanding of why they are problematic in any sort of evidentiary or logically consistent sense.

we have to ask about UK culture at least to some degree

There's nothing unique to the UK about Subsaharan Africans committing massive amounts of crime. It's true in the USA, it's true in Sweden, it's true in Brazil, it's true in France, and of course it's true in Africa and the Caribbean.

The rioters know this. They also know they are being ethnically replaced. Trying to muddy the waters by saying things like 'Axel was born in Cardiff' (as if he might be a Welshman called David Llywelyn) is asking them to ignore their own lying eyes, and all the crime statistics.

Do you think there is any meaningful difference between first and second generation immigrants from these countries, and do you think the median Briton would agree?

See ArjinFerman's answer basically. There can be a difference between second and first generation immigrants, and a difference between second generation immigrants and natives.

The fact that SSAs commit boatloads of crime wherever they are in the world suggests that the causes of this are genetic, rather than cultural. That is to say, whatever British cultural norms 2nd gens adopt, they clearly aren't enough to reduce their crime rates to the native average. British culture also seems incapable of causing Chinese people to drink as much and commit as much crime as the natives. The British-born Chinese stubbornly remain model citizens no matter how much integration they experience.

Of course, even that assumes that it is only possible for 2nd gens to adopt the culture of their home country. The existence of UK-born jihadis (adopting wahabi islamist ideology) or drill music (adopting African American hip hop culture) demonstrate otherwise.

As for the second part of your question, I think the answer the median Briton would give would depend on how you define 'meaningful difference'.

The reason I asked is because I feel that if the median Briton does agree, it makes it more important to properly distinguish between the two rather than lump all immigrants in a group. That means if the phrase "second-generation immigrant" is available, "recent immigrant" makes no sense to use, no matter if it's born from linguistic laziness or excessively biased language. At least here, because I know my limits and I don't actually know that much about the UK's overall relationship between culture/immigration/politics/etc, I'm definitely not trying to do any kind of persuasion in "the other direction" but rather just insist on precision of language where it makes sense. Ignoring the use of a relevant word and idea when most people would consider it important context only hurts the discussion. Frankly I don't really know how well or poorly integration goes in Britain, but it's worth noting that genetics still isn't the only plausible explanation. For example, it's possible that the British culture just sucks in the first place, or that it doesn't transmit well, or something like that. Again however if you put a gun to my head I don't know if I could quite express what British culture is, really.

I will concede that, on a meta level, I am more concerned with "precision of language" than the median person, of course :). I think it still makes sense here to insist on it. As an interesting aside, I think The Giver had it completely backwards -- rather than linguistic precision being a tool to hurt and restrict and direct thought, I think it actually helps communication when people say more precisely what they think and pay attention to the connotations words carry as well as being careful to select the word with the closest matching denotation.

The fact that SSAs commit boatloads of crime wherever they are in the world suggests that the causes of this are genetic, rather than cultural.

Just to be clear, that was not my angle. I was going more with: pro immigration people assume integration happens automatically, and that by the time you reach 2nd generation immigrants, they absorbed all the same cultural norms, to the same extent as the native population. I disagree with that assumption.

Sure, but there's also a meaningful difference between second generation immigrants, and the median Briton (with which, I think, the median Briton would agree).

So if we're playing the blame game, we have to ask about UK culture at least to some degree. That's why I bring up assimilation. You can't just ignore it.

This is not really an argument I think the pro-immigration side wants to be making: if even a second-generation immigrant raised-in-Britain can't assimilate (an uncharitable HBD-pilled poster might phrase it as "being unable to overcome his genes") then it's an indicator that there might be a deeper issue with the UK's immigration policies. First Google result suggests 10k-15k Rwandans in the UK (https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/mapping-the-rwandan-diaspora-in-the-uk.pdf), and while I don't know the rate of stabbing sprees among native white Britons, my suspicion is that this incident alone places Rwandans well above the base rate. Giving the surprisingly helpful "List of mass stabbings in the United Kingdom" Wikipedia article a quick look (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_stabbings_in_the_United_Kingdom), the perpetrators for the 2020s are:

n.b.: If the news article didn't mention nationality or immigration status, I assumed they were British. Now, I'm no noticer, and the Wikipedia article that I cribbed these cases from does state that it is an "incomplete list", so I'm not going to generalize. Nonetheless, if you're going to assert that we have to "ask about UK culture" then it is perhaps worth considering the demographics of these perpetrators and how reflective they are of "UK culture".

Thanks for bringing the receipts!

This proves way too much. Any crime commited by an immigrant, is a crime which wouldn't have happened had the immigrant been prevented from entering the country. Your general dismissal of "counterfactuals" leads to erasure of immigrant crime.

Here's one for proving too much: 99% of all crime is committed by descendants of Genghis Khan. Any crime commited by a descendant of Genghis Khan, is a crime which wouldn't have happened had Temujin been strangled before he was old enough to ride a horse. Your general acceptance of "counterfactuals" leads to a superexponential mess of hypothetical actions which would have prevented any arbitrary incident via the butterfly effect.

I understand your point but this is almost certainly not true- blacks(least likely to be descended from genghis) commit orders of magnitude more crime than orientals(most likely).

I thought only ~.5% of the world was estimated to be descendants of Genghis? Which is still a massive amount, but nowhere close to high enough for your argument.

I saw some content recently that contests the idea that the common Y-chromosome haplotype previously assumed to come from Ghengis Khan actually does. Apparently new reasearch can trace it back further than him and his direct descendants share a different haplotype.

Not that this is relevant to your point. Presumably, there's still some historical figure that you could slot into the same argument. Just a fun fact I picked up recently.

It almost doesn't matter. Anyone from that long ago who got around across Eurasia is most likely a direct ancestor of the bulk of the human population.

I don't think Genghis Khan is quite long enough ago; he was 12th century. If he'd been 500 years earlier I'd maybe believe it, but 12th century is AFAIK not long enough to get most of Eurasia (the base of the exponential drops below 2 at large generation numbers because descendants don't always marry non-descendants).

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