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 -
I’ve yet to be convinced that college admissions are a problem for people who belong in college. Community colleges are open admit and north podunk tech- bumfuck nowhere campus, will admit anyone with a high school diploma and a correctly filled out application.
I think this is instead an argument about selective schools, but for a normal job track does it matter? I mean law schools do, but individually making the choice to go to Iowa A&M to become an accountant or a teacher or an engineer doesn’t matter a lot unless the alternative is, like, Stanford. And you can totally take your student loans from woke.EDU to go to podunk state. Whether it’ll do any good I don’t know, but it’s entirely doable.
It matters . They are competitive for a reason. But of course, it is possible to be successful graduating from a lesser ranked school.
More options
Context Copy link
Maybe I don't want to ideologically concede all future lawyers (who also tend to become future lawmakers and judges). I think society as a whole suffers from this DEI bottleneck, even if some people for now can get decent jobs as nurses or plumbers from going to a community college.
More options
Context Copy link
Unless your job requires some kind of accreditation, there's probably no serious reason to get a 4 year degree from ANYWHERE when you could just start working in your preferred field, get paid, earn accreditation and experience right off the bat.
None of this really excuses that requiring social justice courses for those attending a public university is very much aimed at ensuring that students who graduate hold the 'correct' set of beliefs, even if those beliefs do absolutely NOTHING to enhance their job prospects, education, or value to larger society.
It partially comes down to what, exactly, you think the role of the public universities actually is. And whether they're suited for that role. I think they very much function as 'gatekeepers' for elite society, to ensure the 'right sort of people' ascend to the soft aristocracy that runs things, and thus they want to filter very heavily who is even admitted.
Again, 'voluntary,' except you don't have any way to register actual dissent, and you're paying for it anyway.
Sort of. The number of jobs that de facto require degrees is pretty high. Basically anything not a “trade” is going to require college. Which is exactly why schools have gotten away with indoctrination for decades. If you want a PMC job, you need a 4 year degree. They can do anything they want because the alternatives are poverty wage jobs in the service industry or the trades.
Yeah, college is not that great, but the alternatives are even worse. 4 years and some debt is a small price to pay for a lifetime of extra earnings and low unemployment rate (plus additional $ from compounded returns by investing said earnings in stocks and real estate, lower insurance premiums, etc. )
More options
Context Copy link
Largely because they're not allowed to filter by basic IQ and because degrees have become so ubiquitous that they CAN demand them.
See:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/
And for bonus points:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-19/thiel-s-unicorn-success-is-awkward-for-colleges
Regarding IQ, there is the Wonderlic, which is used by many employers and is implicitly understood to be an IQ test (and produces a Bell Curve like a real IQ test) , and a lot of people on Reddit can attest having to take it. A full-scale IQ test would take hours to administer and req. a professional psychologist to proctor, which would be impractical for employers. The Wonderlic takes 12 minutes and can be administered and scored by the employer, and the Wonderlic also shoulders the legal burden of the test, which has resisted legal challenges, what few there have been. Also, it's not like employers ever used IQ tests even before credentialism become nearly as rampant as it is today. The degree solves many things at once: it filters for IQ, work ethic, and political correctness-all in one.
IQ tests for employment are unambiguously legal in the UK (I took a double-figure number of them over the course of my time on the graduate job circuit, despite having a degree in physics from Cambridge which pretty much guaranteed that my IQ was beyond the range of the tests). There is less pointless credentialism around degrees in the UK than in the US, but not that much less, and it is almost entirely in areas where there is an explicit requirement for a degree imposed by US regulatory bodies or trade associations (e.g. the 150-hour rule for accountants). The phenomenon of "you need a 100 IQ to be a secretary and nowadays most young people with 100 IQ and any degree of conscientiousness have degrees, so we are going to advertise for graduate secretaries" absolutely happens in the UK as well.
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
More options
Context Copy link