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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   28509 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 2, 2024

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An endless and unnecessary rat race when heredity / “nepotism” (ie children of doctors becoming doctors, children of actors becoming actors and so on) is a perfectly effective way of sorting people into an occupation in life.

I replied to @erwgv3g34 that had a similar way of thinking and would also be interested to read what you've to say to that if you're willing. In regards to "children of doctors becoming doctors" especifically, how would that work out over generations? Would families of doctors only be allowed to marry other doctors? If the family of doctors married to a family of actors should the kid be able to choose between becoming a doctor and an actor? Would the children of mixed occupation families really be that good in either of their "original" occupations?

Even if we assume that over a long period of term those families wouldn't potentially stagnate or atrophy due to progressive genetic mutation and lack of competition/adversity, it still seems like either a very rigid system (families of a given occupation can only marry their offspring to families of other similar occupations) or a looser system that I would question the efficiency (families, even if only in "high prestige" positions, could mix with not necessarily similar occupations like doctors and actors which may not bring out some of the best doctors or actors especially in the long-term). I'm not sure making the process of selection easier would be a good thing when balanced with my perceived negatives of this system.

It's like, eugenic and functional enough but prone to be overthrown by a system that ensures long-term improvement more assuredly?

Even if we assume that over a long period of term those families wouldn't potentially stagnate or atrophy due to progressive genetic mutation

To my recollection, it doesn't take much of an effective population size to prune out deleterious mutations. Something on the order of the square root of effective population size, just like how a portfolio of 10,000 stocks by market value yields little diversification benefit compared to 1,000 stocks, and surprisingly little diversification benefit compared to 100 stocks.

You misunderstand. I’m not proposing some kind of ultra-authoritarian society in which a caste-based profession system is legally mandated and in which people are required to marry within a profession.

I’m proposing a society that looks a lot like our own, with the sole difference that the expectation of heredity is the default principle in employment. That is to say that there is no law barring children of non-doctors from medical school, but that it would be normal and expected for, say, 80% of medical school students to be the children and/or grandchildren of doctors, and it would be seen as peculiar and strange for someone with no family connection to seek to join the profession, and they would face a tougher time applying (because the 80% would mostly go on to practice in the same areas as their parents, joining their hospitals and practices).

That highly ambitious and smart people of humble origin will make their way in the world has always been true, and it’s a great thing. There would be nothing to prevent someone smart starting a business, making money, and then paying or persuading someone in the professions to take on their child as an apprentice banker, or corporate lawyer, or doctor for that matter. Maybe your childhood best friend comes from a family of engineers, and becomes one too, so you send your own that-way-inclined child to follow that path with his (official) recommendation. These things are all good and normal. What is not normal is the masses being forced into the rat race for no real reason, forced to become grasping, desperate people in search of a profession.

Most people are happier with a path in life than with the endless (and mostly unrealized) possibilities of meritocracy. And they matter more than a few ultra-ambitious psychos who we have geared our entire society around allowing to ‘ascend’ to MIT and then Wall Street / FAANG via two decades of sorting.

I see, that sounds much more reasonable, apologies for misunderstanding.

I still can't quite get behind the idea due to details that I won't bother explaining too much (the most important one being that I would hate having "a path" laid out to me, especially if it was my father's), but I can certainly understand why someone could think like you. Either way, thanks for explaining!

No problem, it’s always an interesting question.

That's a real problem when new job categories appear or old ones vastly shrink. I mean, my father was a computer programmer, but nobody in his father's generation was. And the 2500 or so ditch-diggers who built the Delaware Canal... well, their descendants would have been out of luck thanks to Caterpillar.

It’s not like there’s a permanent prohibition on changing jobs, or even that highly capable and ambitious individuals can’t make their own luck - that’s always been the case. In 1650 it was hardly unheard of that a blacksmith might not be the son of a blacksmith; perhaps one required an extra apprentice and took on a boy from the village, or an orphan. Jobs were still created and destroyed. But the presumption of ‘career choice’ didn’t really exist, even for the urban artisanal and nascent middle classes.

Even if we wanted to sort most efficiently (something I would oppose for many reasons), we would be better just giving everyone an IQ test and sorting them into a future profession aged 10 and being done with it.

How can you not select for efficiency and not be defeated by an enemy that selects for efficiency unless we all agree to not be efficient which is a classic case of a molochian trap? Unless you don't think being defeated in the long-term is a big deal?

Maybe you think it would be "efficient enough" I guess?

Hear me out, you could group jobs into categories by the mental requirements, which would also allow associative mating between professions with similar skills.

Even better, you could have dress codes for the different castes to reinforce the division. And you could solve the rapid scaling problem by growing babies quickly in hatcheries.

It would be a world of Community, Identity, and Stability

Right, this is where it once again becomes clear that Huxley utterly failed to write an actually dystopian world, and had to resort to the cheap tactic of making things gratuitously and unnecessarily ugly to make sure readers understand that the Brave New World is supposed to be bad, actually.

You have it backwards, he was writing his utopia and had to cover it up with the thinnest veneer of criticism, so people don't show up at his door with torches and pitchforks.

I love you man, but you're never beating the closeted leftist allegations

At this point I no longer care whether people think I’m right-wing enough. As this recent post of mine probably makes clear, I’m getting increasing disillusioned with a number of trends that I see congealing on what passes for the “intellectual Right” these days, and I’m searching for a sphere that’s far more akin to the early-20th-century “Progressive” intellectual movements that inspired works like Brave New World. Thinkers who had a profound optimism about humanity and technology, instead of the dour, overly-cautious naysaying of the Christian conservative right - a movement I’ve explicitly distanced myself from many times. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I’m a techno-optimist who wants to live in a hyper-modern mega-city on Mars surrounded by effete Hapa urbanite aesthetes, because I’ve said that openly more than once.

Authleft and authright are always going to have more in common with each other in certain ways than with many small-l liberal ideologies.

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