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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28234 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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Most broadly, it's just scary to have someone in power delusional enough to make a mistake like believing young-earth creationism after being given a modern education. What other insane things might they do? It's worse than if someone who constantly talks about how they were abducted by aliens were elected speaker---that's at least a harder belief to refute than creationism.

I'm really not seeing it. It's really not any worse than various progressive ideas that are currently being pushed by academia, and which progressives are actually succesfutlly pushing through legislature.

It's really not any worse than various progressive ideas that are currently being pushed by academia

Exactly. Someone who believes the Earth was created in 7 days, 6000 years ago is substantially less dangerous (and, indeed, I would argue is substantially less delusional) than someone who believes whitey's oppression of minorities is the source of disparate racial outcomes.

EDIT: Apparently the new speaker believes both, so, heh, touché.

Exactly. Someone who believes the Earth was created in 7 days, 6000 years ago is substantially less dangerous (and, indeed, I would argue is substantially less delusional) than someone who believes whitey's oppression of minorities is the source of disparate racial outcomes.

As a former obnoxious internet atheist who, unlike many such former obnoxious internet atheists, doesn't particularly regret that phase of my life or think I was particularly wrong about it, I find myself agreeing with this. On the one hand, YEC is absurd and idiotic, and it truly boggles the mind that an intelligent adult with a modern education could even entertain the idea. And someone buying into the whole oppression narrative while being intelligent is understandable in a way someone buying into YEC isn't, because the former is the dominant hegemonic narrative that gets reinforced in almost every sphere of public life.

And this results in that giving political power to someone who believes in YEC certainly seems far less dangerous than someone who believes in that oppression narrative. YEC is almost fully marginalized now, basically only brought up to be the punchlines of jokes. The idea that someone's belief in YEC could have some truly meaningful and negative consequences for the policies they put in place seems rather absurd given that marginalization of YEC. On the other hand, again, that oppression narrative is the dominant one in our society - if not the dominant one, certainly one of the top contenders. It has the backing of many massive political, economic, social, and even religious institutions, ready to steamroll whatever stands in the way of the policy changes they want to implement. These policy changes tend to have direct, measurable, noticeable effects on people's everyday lives. Someone who buys into this narrative is clearly much more capable of doing harm with their power. Hence, more dangerous.

Of course, things can and will likely change. The pendulum and all that. I'm just reminded of an essay I read back in 2002 or 2003 when some neocon was outlining his opposition to Bush in some policy, saying that when you're driving on a narrow bridge and you see the steering wheel is turned all the way to the right, the correct thing to do isn't to put the steering wheel back to the center, it's to sharply turn it to the left.

Less delusional how? The way I see it, it should be blindingly obvious that however small the influence of whitey's oppression on racial disparities is, it is larger than 6000 years compared to 4 billion. Not to mention the whole god thing.

Affirmative action means Whitey's oppression is not small, it's negative. Young Earth creationists at least have the valence of time correct!

I've seen the idea that affirmative action does keep minorities down by giving them positions but not the skills to grow. Some of those people, I assume, were even serious about it.

"Act white/the correct type of black and you can too get into Harvard" and all that.

"Act white/the correct type of black and you can too get into Harvard" is a source of skills and growth. Except it's not particularly acting "white"; my white ancestors used to be literal barbarians. "At some point Thor might have been involved. That civilization is dead."

The harm done by affirmative action comes from mismatch theory, the idea that "the fundamental problem created for black and other minority students admitted to elite colleges and postgraduate programs under affirmative action preferences is not that those students are "unqualified" to be in colleges and universities, but that they are far too often mismatched with the particular colleges and universities that admit them". I'm pretty sure Thomas Sowell is serious about that (as are the authors of the book he's reviewing here), and with at least some reason:

The empirical data presented in Mismatch shows that black students admitted to colleges and universities where the other students have higher academic qualifications do not graduate as often, graduate with much lower grades, and, when they start out trying to major in difficult subjects like mathematics, the natural sciences, engineering, or economics, they end up majoring in much easier subjects with much less of a payoff in terms of their careers in later life. Moreover, black students with very similar academic qualifications who attend predominantly black colleges succeed in graduating with degrees in the natural sciences, mathematics, engineering, and economics far more often. Nor is this simply a matter of their being granted college degrees while having less knowledge of their subjects. Predominantly black colleges are 17 of the top 21 colleges whose black graduates go on to receive Ph.D.s in scientific, mathematical, and technical fields.

...

When racial preferences were banned by the voters in California, there were dire predictions that this would mean the virtual disappearance of black and Hispanic students from the University of California system. What in fact happened was a 2% decline in their enrollment in the University of California system as a whole, but an increase in the number of black and Hispanic students graduating, including an increase of 55% in the number graduating in four years and an increase of 63% in the number graduating in four years with a grade point average of 3.5 or higher.

EDIT: Apparently the new speaker believes both, so, heh, touché.

Strong evidence for "Republicans are deliberately throwing the election" theory, isn't it?

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