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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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Trust The Experts

'Trust the Experts' is usually said in relation to descriptive statements, not normative ones. So you should 'trust the experts' to work out whether and by how much affirmative actions improves minority economic outcomes/affects levels of competence in an organisation, but that doesn't imply any particular position on affirmative actions.

'Trust the Experts' is usually said in relation to descriptive statements

Nonsense. Whether vaccines or lockdowns are effective is a descriptive matter, and yet people who were making ethical objections to either on moral grounds were routinely admonished with this mantra, because in its rote scientism it smuggles in materialist utilitarian ethics under the guise of descriptive inquiry.

Science is about descriptive claims. The Science is a justification for normative ones.

In this case, as anyone who has seen the last half century, the benefits of affirmative action have never materialized and the sounds the Experts are making about why we should do it have not had anything to do with effectiveness for about as long as people stopped debating Thomas Sowell about it.

Yet the legitimacy of it is still grounded in this same elitism. AA has never worked, but DEI experts tell me that the best way to run my company is according to the latest principles of race Marxism draped in sociology's clothing.