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 -
Must? To the extent that having more engineers and computer scientists is better, it seems weird to complain about having more of them. You're starving your competition of the best intellectual resources after all and enriching yourself.
Dunno about China, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for India to catch up, unless the country literally bans emigration, which is not on the cards.
Leaving aside that even in the absence of transformative AI, most wars as far in the future as you're assuming will be fought with drones, obesity is the least of your concerns. Maybe you might get better drone operators if they're all chubby gamers.
I'm bullish on ozempic and co myself.
I’m not complaining about too many engineers. My complaint is that we aren’t producing our own engineers. I’ve gone to lots of graduations, and the engineering department in most schools is graduating far more Chinese and Indian students than native born American students. This is a problem because they’ll only stay here so long as our lifestyle is substantially better than what’s possible in their home countries or in other countries. If European countries are a better “get rich” location for them, we aren’t going to keep them. And thus having a good enough education system to create native born engineers is critical to our future as a civilization. Unfortunately our K12 system is so bad that most graduates of that system are simply too far behind to go into engineering.
To quote myself, see table 5. Also table 6.
Europe is moribund, having taken up leveling and socialism to a much greater extent than the US ever did. The more likely danger is that the US follows Europe down that path, not that Europe somehow becomes a better place to get rich.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link