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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33502 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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Why does making a slip in complicated research result in "are you saying Chinese people can't be trusted with advanced technology?" but pointing at the widespread popularity of wet markets does not result in "are you saying Chinese people can't be trusted with distributing food?".

Because the latter can be explained as being from differing rates of adoption of universal culture (see comments below on western farmers' markets), whereas the former places the issue in one of the aspects of universal culture which the Chinese have already adopted.

This might raise uncomfortable questions regarding whether all peoples are equally capable of practising universal culture.

The latter is literally invoking a racist stereotype against Asians.

The former also links to racist tropes in that the 'lab leak' hypothesis is adjacent to, and often conflated with, a 'deliberate bio-weapon' hypothesis, which pattern-matches to the history of 'yellow peril' rhetoric involving underhanded tactics by Asians.

However, given a slightly different fall of the dice, I could see the 'wet market' hypothesis being the one denounced as racist, and all the (pre-Musk)* bluechecks endorsing the 'lab accident' hypothesis.

(*Or could Mr Musk's purchase of Twitter also be butterflied away...?)

Because the latter can be explained as being from differing rates of adoption of universal culture (see comments below on western farmers' markets), whereas the former places the issue in one of the aspects of universal culture which the Chinese have already adopted.

This might raise uncomfortable questions regarding whether all peoples are equally capable of practising universal culture.

I'm not seeing it. You can just as easily say the former shows they haven't adopted "universal culture" fully yet, or that it was an honest mistake that could have happened anywhere (and did! someone had a list of pan-/epidemics originating from a lab leak), while the latter raises uncomfortable questions about whether all peoples are equally capable of practising universal culture ("they can't even do something basic as running a food market in hygienic conditions").

The former also links to racist tropes in that the 'lab leak' hypothesis is adjacent to, and often conflated with, a 'deliberate bio-weapon' hypothesis, which pattern-matches to the history of 'yellow peril' rhetoric involving underhanded tactics by Asians.

Yeah, but it only makes sense if you conflate it with the bio-weapon hypothesis. Without it the whole idea falls apart.

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