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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   23240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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They look like bureaucrats. They look like people that have spent their entire professional lives pushing paper around and playing office politics. I can only imagine what skillset it takes to advance to leadership in the federal government, but it seems unlikely that they’ve been selected for competence at responding to emergency situations.

I think it’s worthwhile for people to look at that page and assess for themselves what type of person is responsible for the hurricane response.

People should ask themselves, does this group look like the type of people that would prioritize Ukraine, “migrants”, or rural Americans. There is a well known trope that coastal elites seem to hold rural people in contempt. I’m willing to make the leap that the people on that leadership page are part of that group.

They look like bureaucrats. They look like people that have spent their entire professional lives pushing paper around and playing office politics.

They look like every person I see with a professional headshot on LinkedIn, from sales managers to software engineers.

I can only imagine what skillset it takes to advance to leadership in the federal government, but it seems unlikely that they’ve been selected for competence at responding to emergency situations.

Actually, being an adept bureaucrat is very important for people in charge of managing and funding a disaster response. These are not the people who will actually be wading through floodwaters to bring emergency supplies, which is of course an entirely different skillset.

People should ask themselves, does this group look like the type of people that would prioritize Ukraine, “migrants”, or rural Americans.

I would ask myself that about the politicians who determine policy, not try to divine someone's innermost loyalties based on a picture that reveals only sex and race.

There is a well known trope that coastal elites seem to hold rural people in contempt.

"Well known trope" = "Thing that lots of people are happy to believe because it fits their culture war priors." In fact most civil servants (and these people, while fairly high up in FEMA, are pretty low on the fed food chain) are no more or less diligent about their duties and responsibilities than the average corp wageslave, and I would argue generally moreso. You don't join FEMA because you have a seething hatred of "rural people" and think this is your best avenue to hurt them.

I’m willing to make the leap that the people on that leadership page are part of that group.

Again, I am asking why you think you can be so confident about this based solely on their photographs? If you just assume that anyone in a government agency leadership position is a "coastal elite" who holds rural people in contempt, then it wouldn't really matter what they look like. You could have just said "I'll bet FEMA hates rural people." I think you have a very unsophisticated inductive reasoning chain.

They look like every person I see with a professional headshot on LinkedIn, from sales managers to software engineers.

Tomayto, tomahto. It's not a pure demographics thing: https://www.stevesailer.net/p/prima-facie-leadership

I'm autistic enough to dislike this observation and to not be particularly acute at picking it up myself, but not autistic enough to pretend it isn't real.

I am very skeptical of this kind of phenotyping, which is often little better than phrenology. "You can just tell by looking at the strong-jawed white chad that he's a superior New Soviet Manalpha male." A lot of people claim they can detect "soy face" when it's just a guy making a goofy expression. Really, do you think you could pick Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower out of that West Point photo without being told who they are?

In this instance, it seems pretty clear to me that the judgment is purely based on the fact that the OP saw a lot of women and blacks.

Really, do you think you could pick Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower out of that West Point photo without being told who they are?

No, but I'm probably <1st percentile at facial recognition in general, and I'm reasonably willing to believe that normies would do better than chance (and that the entire West Point football team was already pretty strongly selected for Chadly leadership ability.).

phrenology. "You can just tell by looking at the strong-jawed white chad that he's a superior New Soviet Manalpha male

I mean, yeah, pretty much. I'm seeing a lot of pointing and sputtering at the idea that facial features and appearance are correlated with personality and aptitudes in unsurprising ways, without much actual convincing evidence to the contrary.

Skepticism isn't the same as "pointing and sputtering." Of course I am speaking for myself; I don't know if you mean me or if you have seen other people "pointing and sputtering." (I haven't, at least not here.)

The thing is, you can make inferences about someone's health and genetic gifts based on their appearance, sure. A tall, well-proportioned man with a strong jaw probably is a more fit physical specimen. So I, at least, am not claiming that you can determine nothing from appearance.

My skepticism encompasses the following points:

  1. Being a handsome strong-jawed chad may have some statistical correlation to also being smart and possessing natural leadership qualities, but the two don't automatically go hand in hand, so picking a "leader" because someone looks like Captain America in a headshot is probably at best a flawed heuristic. Yeah, given no other info, I'd pick Captain America over soy-face too. I would not agree that you can, as a general rule, pick people for their leadership qualities and competence based on their photos.

  2. A lot of what you see in photographs is superficial presentation. Any stylist, photographer, or couturier can tell you that you can make a strong man look weak or a weak man look strong with the right outfit and angle and lighting. (Same with women; turning a 4 into a 8 or a 8 into a 4 is not hard.)

  3. Going back to the OP, there wasn't even any discussion of specific characteristics of the people in question, just vague hinting that they aren't white men and therefore are inferior.

Which is why I am pushing back, because I'm totally interested in well-presented arguments about how you can correlate specific physical characteristics to positive traits (and anyone who's been around for a while knows I am not afraid of HBD arguments), but the OP's post was lazy. If all you have to say is "Look at all those women and blacks, obviously incompetent garbage!" what are you expecting, sober head nods and clapping at your well-reasoned argument?

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