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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   26175 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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It's like Vivek read this and said, "hold my beer"

https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1872312139945234507

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.

A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.

“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.

This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.

That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸

Seems like he's torched his political career, or at least presidential ambitions, in one post.

Does he really think sports culture doesn’t celebrate achievement? It might not celebrate a particular kind of achievement but competitive sports are in fact meritocracy.

I do think Vivek has a point that Americans have gotten soft (eg participation trophies) but the point is that softness influences everything; not just math.

Seems like he's torched his political career, or at least presidential ambitions, in one post.

On an unrelated note, It's funny, surprising, and interesting how much of Trump II politics is taking place before he even got inaugurated.

Seems like a dumb argument. In Indian popular culture the hot male action hero who saves the girl is no less a Bollywood trope than a Hollywood one. I doubt that in Indian colleges the math Olympiad champ is more popular than the person who has drugs and money and throws big parties.

I also don't know how "nerd representation" is in any way lacking in recent US media.

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