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 -
Rare is the day I don't get tagged in a post that references India indeed.
That being said, I broadly agree with you, the prospects of fully decoupling from China are daunting, but I wouldn't say that it's an effort guaranteed to not pay some dividends.
Quantity has a quality all of its own, even if 50% of Indian kids are functionally illiterate, that leaves maybe anywhere around a hundred million more who are.
Now, I'm personally bearish on the country's midterm prospects, and while I can't claim to be able to entirely decouple my opinion of the country from my hatred of Modi and his ilk, I see great risk of the country imploding under pressure, likely from automation induced unemployment shocks that potentially stoke sectarian strife; which is why I'm departing post-haste.
As long as you have a massive pool, you can still dredge out a great number of qualified candidates, and even outstanding ones.
When I became familiar with HBD, I had to grapple with the fact that my previous implicit assumption that India was high up in the totem pole when it came to the quality of its people was skewed because the large number of successful Indians dominating foreign lands are a heavily filtered set, and not representative of how Indians in India perform.
After all, isn't the best counter-argument to claims that HBD is motivated reasoning and just a way to dunk on your outgroup to outright admit that the ethnicity you belong to isn't the best per capita?
The HBD framework suggests that India will never achieve the same kind of growth and success as East Asian nations, at least not without something fundamental changing. That's not to say that it's not an important player, just that the numbers are bloated, but not to the degree that they don't convey some advantage.
I'm not going to speculate on how well we can onshore manufacturing, because I consider myself insufficiently informed on the matter. But it looks to me that an India that successfully achieves even 30% of China's manufacturing clout would be a major buffer against blackmail through their manufacturing dominance, and even with my jaundiced view of the country I suspect it can achieve that.
You'd think so, but I've seen leftists make the argument "White supremacists' willingness to rate the intelligence of Asians higher than that of whites is just because they hate blacks so much that they're willing to do anything to insult their intelligence."
More options
Context Copy link
What’s India’s average IQ? Mexico has an average IQ in the 80s and has achieved significant economic growth and large high skill manufacturing sector.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country says 76.
I'm certain that the total number of Indians with an IQ above that of Mexico is probably double or triple the total population of Mexico, if there was plausible mechanism to find them, they should be able to do the same. I know education acts as a filter, but if you mean technical manufacturing labor that doesn't need a degree, I don't know.
We certainly have no shortage of engineers, quite the opposite in fact.
Damn that’s depressingly low. I really expected India to have an average IQ that’s at least way out of range for sub Saharan Africa even if it’s not particularly high.
Is it possible that there’s massive regional variations that allow an Indian manufacturing belt somewhere in the country even as, say, the Ganges is still a bunch of subsistence farmers?
I know there are large regions of India that to me almost certainly have dirt low IQs, at least as implied from standardized testing scores. Bihar, for one. The South is also likely a bit smarter than the average.
But from my limited understanding, it's more productive to go by caste instead, at least within Hinduism or recent converts away from it. Tamil Brahmins are notoriously intelligent, and massively overrepresented in maths.
More options
Context Copy link
I don’t actually think you need high IQ to have a manufacturing belt. You need a long tail of talent to design and implement the process, followed by a bunch of “good enough” labor that won’t burn down the building. With careful enough design, that bar can get pretty low.
But yes, I am under the impression that India does have enormous regional imbalance.
I mean there’s a reason that even stable with good infra parts of subsaharan Africa don’t have lots of manufacturing.
Obviously Latin America shows you don’t need an average IQ around a hundred, but lots of manufacturing is in fact skilled work that requires access to the sorts of people who can learn to do skilled tasks.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is it likely that various flavors of Hindus are going to fight over religion in an economically stressed situation ?
I think the most likely flashpoint would be Hindus versus Muslims, at least at the very beginning, but depending on how bad it gets we might get regional violence where it's one state against the other.
I don't think it's right to frame the latter as a conflict between "various flavors of Hindus", because as far as I can personally tell, most Hindus don't nitpick and form sects like Christians do, there's no massive turf war between Protestant and Catholic analogues, and most people just broadly identify as Hindu and leave it there.
It would look more like ethnic strife at that point instead of something explicitly religious. Perhaps North India versus the South, or the far more fractal breakdowns where neighboring states find themselves pitted in negative sum conflict for resources.
But my model, not that I have much hard data to base it off, suggests more like a widespread failure of law and order as the state simply runs out of money, can't automate in time to reap the dividends, and then while everything collapses the religious fighting begins.
I don't claim very strong confidence in this, but I do still think the country has a rather high risk of volatility overall.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link