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 -
How to fix the Ivy Leagues: require every student to have held a non-intern job earning no more than 2x minimum wage for their locale for no less than six months.
The generation of elites currently in charge and screwing up (Boomers and early Xs, except in Silicon Valley where success comes younger) were teenagers in the 1980s when it was expected that young PMC members worked menial jobs. (I am younger than that I didn't because I wrangled an engineering summer job - and even that involved shop-floor work - but the majority of my contemporaries at one of the top private schools in the UK did). This is still the generation where more CEOs have worked for McDonalds than any other company.
The Silicon Valley elites who being touted as more competent than other elites were more likely to have been hacking on their startups (or ideas that didn't pan out before they started their startup) at the age when the parents would have been waiting tables. So I don't think "elites didn't wait tables in university any more" is the problem.
The thing that has changed is that elite careers are increasingly unlikely to involve leading non-elites. My grandfather was an officer in WW2, and his father had been an officer in WW1. (Even my working-class maternal grandfather had been an NCO in India). My father's first graduate job was as a shift manager in a factory. The only people I have had to manage are younger versions of myself, and when I was on the graduate job market there was a major ugh filed attached to jobs like manufacturing industry or commercial banking where you would have to be a hands on manager of line workers (with the military seen as an exception, but almost nobody from Cambridge went into the military). You can go through 6-9 months on the burger line (split across three summer jobs) while only developing a superficial relationship with co-workers who are unlike you and you both know it. You can't command a platoon and only develop a superficial relationship with your troops.
More options
Context Copy link
My parents in the Soviet Union were made to spend the summers of their university years helping out with the potato harvest somewhere down south, for a similar purpose. Funny how the valence of these ideas evolves.
More options
Context Copy link
Just accept the top student from every school in the country. There's about 20k high schools and the same number of admissions each year.
Failure modes:
The biggest failure mode is that any legible policy like "one student from each school" makes it harder to cook the books to admit affirmative action students.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The silver spoon people from what I have observed are sometimes more humble or nicer than the pulled-myself-up people. People have it reversed for some reason, maybe due to pop culture. The silver spoon people know they are already at a big advantage starting out in life, so they understand that luck plays a huge role. A McDonald's stint will not change this. The pulled-myself-up people already had stints in bad jobs. It's quite common for people who start at the lower rungs and then move to the top to become detached, not those who start at the top.
I agree about old money being nicer, but, well, a big chunk of it is just selection on people hard enough to succeed.
Also, as a tradesman, I can say that very wealthy people are generally pretty nice(they don't get where they are by making people hate them, after all), often quite generous, and usually understanding and intelligent. Their professional servants are... not. Butlers, high end restaurant managers, country club highers up, high end chefs and hotel managers, etc are typically awful. Whether this reflects the very wealthy behaving differently in private and shit rolls downhill or the personality type that goes into this stuff I don't know.
I would guess that those jobs (butler, housekeeper etc.) need a lot of strictness and attention to detail, to produce the appearance that everything just sorts itself out. Like putting on makeup very carefully to look like you aren’t wearing makeup. It would make sense for them to be sticklers.
I think there are also social dynamics involved. If you’re working those kind of jobs, you can’t socialise with your employers because that’s not how it works, and your underlings don’t want to socialise with you because you’re their boss and a stickler. So it can be very isolating.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree with the observation, but not the reason. I'd say it's more like: it's easy to be nice when life is nice and easy. That, and while the hypothetical job pays few dollars, it comes with a chance at Harvard per six months worked - an excellent hourly rate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
A better way to fix the Ivies would be to ban legacy admissions.
But really, that would just eliminate the Ivies, as the whole point of them is for the children of uber-elites to network with other children of uber-elites (and a few token minorities so the brochures don’t look too white) in the company of experts who can connect them to major industries. They’re not looking for smart people, specifically, they’re looking for high-IQ go-getters who are so type A that their type A-ness is literally more pronounced than their IQ. They’re not looking for nerds, they’re looking for chads. That’s why they cling insistently to “holistic admissions”, because it’s important to them that their admits aren’t just smart, but gifted in many other ways.
I would much rather we separate the finishing schools for elite children from our institutions of knowledge, but things are they way they are for the simple reason that knowledge isn’t power; power is knowledge. Everything is kayfabe and the humanities are word games, which is why the only fields who have major institutions that are looking for nerds lay in STEM, where “reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.”
I've heard this phrased as something like "merit laundering". Harvard et al. reserve part of the class for their primary clientele (uber-elites) and part of the class for the actual best students (IMO medalists, etc.) to maintain their legitimacy. They grade inflate and then everyone's resume line looks roughly the same coming out.
In this context, their aversion to non-holistic admissions makes sense. The intelligent, motivated, but not particularly exceptional kid with perfect SAT/GPA and a list of strategically selected, exaggerated extracurriculars who goes to Harvard only to eventually settle down as a private practice dermatologist in the suburbs contributes minimally to their true goal.
More options
Context Copy link
or even better, companies should stop requiring degrees for everything unless the job necessitates it , like being a doctor
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wealthy parents will gladly have their kid work at McDonald’s for 6 months to go to Harvard, that wouldn’t stop anyone.
McDonald's would build a restaurant near Harvard in a wealthy area and the manager (probably an elite who would usually not actually be present at the restaurant -- some middle class schlub would be hired as assistant manager to actually run things) would in practice only require well-connected prospective Harvard student employees to show up on a single day in their 6 month shift and excuse all other absences. It would just become another node in the elite influence and favor trading network. You would need a powerful sovereign of some sort to actually impose this on the rich and well-connected.
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t think the idea is to stop anyone, but rather have them do non abstract work like flipping burgers and learn the culture and average intelligence of the public and fast food coworkers rather than remain in their high IQ bubble
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link