This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is the most wonk I've seen in a while. Please never work at an influential think tank or come near the levers of power in a country where I plan on spending any real length of time. I don't mean this to be offensive, and I mean this in the kindest possible terms - people like you terrify me.
First off the bat, your headline is full of assumptions that immediately set off the calibrations on my suspicion meter. Definitions of "We", "should", and "probably" that I find questionable aside, especially if they're in the same sentence as five-year-olds, the "why" is the first question I zero in on.
Your argument, plainly put, is that to be the best in the world at anything, you need to start young, and that track should be decided by the age of five. Your evidence of this is that most prodigies start young. Even disregarding the massive sweeping implications of A=>B=>C=>D and Therefore E you've made in the above argument...
What do you think that world looks like?
The world already has massively disproportionate rewards for the prodigies (and by comparison, massive amounts of shit for those who can't reasonably compete with the prodigies to eat). I also doubt prodigies are fungible, I could do with one less YoYo Ma and one more Einstein, but stuffing YoYo Ma in a reasonably fantastic virtual reality simulator where he's force-fed the sum of Einstein's life experiences and education will not produce a directly comparable Einstein.
I'll tell you what that world looks like. It's China, a country where the disposable people are fed into relatively metaphorical meat grinders and second place might as well have not tried. It is a country where most parents with the means and ability have shipped their children overseas to avoid the life-defining national state exam, the Gaokao, and cheating on all metrics to try and demonstrate your exceptional nature is rampant. It is a nation of immense human capital, of the tiny fraction of hyper-talented overachievers and a vast, forgotten achievement slum valley of the 99.9999% who have decided lying flat is the best answer to this hellish existence. The stress cost, on both the people in this achievement slum valley and the prodigies alike, is immense.
You finally get at the real meat of your objection, and why you've come up with this argument in the first place. What disgusts you is waste. Wasted potential. You are convinced that the waste of human potential directly equates to a waste of what could be spent on social improvement, and that mandatory skill training (i.e. public schooling or mandatory education or whatever) is highly inefficient. You're not alone in this thinking; I also despise waste. But given how literally everything in our world naturally optimizes for money, I'd rather there be less prodigies be turned to the effort of gaslighting me into buying more knicknacks or signing me up for more subscription services. The fact that they were trained to do it from age five isn't something I personally will care about when they're convincing me to pay for the air I'm breathing.
In fact, I am regularly surprised that mandatory education is not less efficient. Left to their own devices, state-sponsored education initiatives regularly come up with "improvements" to justify their own existence that decrease the efficiency more over time. We know how children learn math and how to read by now, it's well documented and studied, at this point "improvements" are about squeezing more blood from the rock or well-meaning but ideologically blinkered initiatives like No Child Left Behind. It's amazing that a teenager can even put together a complete sentence these days, to say nothing of their ability to navigate the digital panopticon that passes for the internet.
TTBOMK China's more "are you good at passing this inflexible multi-subject exam or not", not "are you especially good at this specific thing", which is almost the opposite of his point. @coffee_enjoyer's scheme reminds me far more of the Soviet Union's gifted-ed programs.
More options
Context Copy link
I would never waste my time doing something so ineffectual, so you have nothing to fear. Spending two dozen pages and sixty-nine citations saying something uninteresting, read by fewer people than an average post on the internet, which could be better summarized in a few paragraphs if the evidence is based on compelling common information? I’ll leave that to more grandiose minds. Someone should do a study to see whether think tanks or 4chan have been more influential in shifting political views in the US (was it a think tank that influenced Elon Musk and his influence?) — a perfect study for a think tanker, if you know anyone.
No. The evidence for this is that most elite performers start young across competitive domains. Chess and instrument performance are the most well-known and competitive. Children can learn more efficiently than an adult, so I’m surprised that you disagree with that.
I’m glad you asked. We should be focusing on making a world with less stress. If everyone hones their professional skills in childhood, everyone will be less stressed. We should also be focusing on a world with less mandatory working hours. If everyone hyper-specializes, we could get away with reducing working hours due to increased efficiency, entering the workforce at a younger age, and fewer required schooling hours. We also want a world where things work well, which requires experts experting.
Only for comparatively worthless skills, and then also like, 0.1% STEM performers. But my proposal is that whichever career we can reasonably predict you entering, we should train you in those skills at the youngest age. Whether that’s construction, retail, technology, teaching, etc. If you are most likely going to be a waiter your whole life, then we should train you in all possible skills related to that and then send you on your way. Waiting isn’t skill-intensive, but there are still skills (social charm, physical endurance). When trained, why shouldn’t they begin to work at 13? That’s four extra years of work, four years cost reduction in schooling (not counting college), it’s better for the waiter himself, and it increases likelihood of family formation too.
If anything, our current system is based off the Chinese imperial examination method of schooling. Every Chinese kid regardless of career destiny is made to study way too much across way too much material. There’s no specialization at all until much later.
I agree but I consider this an ancillary topic. But I’ll give my opinion because you brought it up. I think, if every worker is trained in their specific work, that we will actually have time to instill them with practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is vastly more important than knowing biology, phys ed, history, or even lots of maths you don’t wind up using. And practical wisdom would be all about spotting deception, knowing the dangers of consumerism and the hedonic treadmill, knowing how to spot someone trustworthy, knowing how to find a good deal. If there is one universal skill-set for training every human, it would be this. So something like “hyper-specialization plus universal practice wisdom” would be ideal.
I'm interested to see why you think making more domains more competitive will lead to less stress.
If you’re increasing everyone’s skill across the board then you haven’t made any domain more competitive. It would just be that everyone you come across is more competent. There would be the same amount of competitive within an industry, though it would definitely be harder to break into an industry in adulthood.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link