Gaashk
2d ago
The other famous case recently was teachers in NYC schools. They proved that the test was fine to one judge and then lost on appeal and had to shell out $2 billion.
What was their test like?
It seems trivially obvious that a high school math teacher should have to pass a math test slightly higher than whatever they'll be teaching. Or that a bank employee should be able to do whatever kind of math they might use for their job.
It seems unlikely that the extra friction and expense of requiring kindergarten teachers who can pass even Algebra II is worth it, as long as they're literate, patient, enforce social norms, and willing to stick with the phonics and counting curriculum. I vaguely remember having to pass an algebra test as an adult, some years after taking the course, in order to continue teaching a subject that involved no algebra at all, but a lot of enforcement of social norms and some design stuff. It seemed a little silly, and I do think I would have been pretty pissed if I had failed and needed to both re-learn algebra and pay a fee to re-take the test.
Gaashk
2d ago
That's interesting, though not directly related to the community I was thinking of.
One of the things I like least about the current BLM iteration of ethnic strife is the way it read ADOS Black/white dynamics into completely different ethnic histories and interactions in regions very far from the areas affected by slavery. Even entirely different countries are adopting it! European countries, with utterly different ethnic histories! But the American West Coast wasn't centrally racist against blacks more than, say, Chinese for much of its history.
Anyway, I guess I was thinking of crafts and community gardening as a stand in for the kind of traditionally human things that most people who are average for their own group really can do, the community is happy to have, and the government likes to encourage, but for Seeing like a State reasons once they are Jobs, or even just Volunteer Positions, they become administratively complex, such that the people who are perfectly able to do the thing itself cannot administer the permits and grants, where most of the money ends up going.
Gaashk
2d ago
I think you meant to respond to @non_radical_centrist directly
Gaashk
2d ago
I just looked this up, since I had never really noticed or thought about height all that much before. Turns out I've been spending time with all the tall ethnicities by accident. I didn't know the Balkans and Southern Slavic people were noticeably tall before, TIL.
Gaashk
2d ago
There may be something to the accusation that some jobs have been set up in a way to favor people who are very good at showing up with to the minute timing, writing emails and reports, and other things that are convenient for managers but not exactly about the work being done, such that it's more convenient to manage a small white woman moving a few boxes than a strong black man moving many larger, heavier boxes, because her m in general office skills and agreeableness are higher. This seems to happen a fair bit in government positions, where there might be several support white women writing grants for some minority local agricultural program or something. I've seen it in politics, with full time non-minority positions devoted to "centering minority voices" in marketing materials.
I'm most familiar with education, and do sometimes see this happen. People often talk about the degree barrier, and schools being organized like mid-century factories. Recently, I saw a situation where a minority community is required to hire an art teacher. The specific community is rich in professional artisans, that and views of nature is all they're known for. But they have to hire someone with a college degree, additional education classes for certification, who can run classes that are cleaned up and ready to leave exactly when the bell rings, do a moderate amount of accurate paperwork, and write some reports. So they get an outsider. They are not allowed to exchange this position for a business or finance teacher, which they might be more in need of. This is a bit silly and wasteful. The skills for m, training the next generation of artisans is not the same as m fitting into a tightly scheduled, interlocking education system that's stressed about specials teachers providing "preps" for the homeroom teachers, and the bureaucratic money goes towards the latter.
That isn't to say that I generally agree with the woke take that surely if you removed barriers we could achieve "equity," especially in high education and prestige positions. But the structure of at least some jobs (probably the kinds of jobs the average woke activist is most familiar with) are not very tightly linked to their ostensible goal.
Gaashk
4d ago
I don't, it's very hard to learn, and I am not much good at languages. I learned enough to do things like go shopping, hire a cab, or give an extremely basic toast.
It wasn't too bad -- most communities have at least a couple of English speakers, and will go find them. Most older people know some Russian, and younger people know some English. We were part of a government volunteer program specifically to provide English speakers for people to practice with. The latter goal had mixed success in my case, since I'm more introverted than ideal for the role. I went to a lot of occasions where I just didn't know what anyone was saying most of the time, but didn't really mind it.
Gaashk
4d ago
Second this, and also plenty of places are still very nice to travelers even when they don't have much money, either because it's fun, or because their culture demands it. Perhaps both. I've wandered around the Republic of Georgia as an average looking young foreign woman, and they were universally both extremely hospitable (impromptu BnB in their house for cheap, free wine, show me around town, introduce me to their local English speaker), and fairly protective. People would think it very shameful if a foreigner got in any kind of scary situation in their town. Kind of the same ethos as Abraham and family, or the Odyssey -- you deserve the wrath of the gods if you aren't hospitable to wanderers.
Gaashk
5d ago
I used to do intermittent fasting and part time veganism for Orthodox fasts, and generally liked it. Their feasts are more fun after fasting as well. At some point when I'm not pregnant/with small children, I'd like to get back into it.
Gaashk
5d ago
I feel doubtful about this strategy, though of course it depends on specifics.
My husband is both taller and more hyper than me. Sometimes, he would cook a pound of bacon, and suggest that he should eat it all himself, since it doesn't really affect his weight. I was not happy about that, and did in fact eat the bacon. If he were to suddenly start doing a bunch of pull ups, then making extra food for himself, I don't think the aesthetics of a better looking chest would make up for the annoyance of eating meals together with him consuming twice as much food as me.
You might get farther by taking over dinner more and cooking things that are hard to overeat. I lost a decent amount of weight before by just living with people who would eat beans or lentils for dinner instead or burgers or piles of pasta. Inconveniently, my husband lost too much weight doing that, and making two different meals is annoying enough that I've mostly given up on it. Or taking up an outdoor hobby together that involves fairly basic packed foods.
Gaashk
6d ago
It seems likely you've had some bad relationships or experiences with people who behave in that way, and haven't completely gotten over it.
The scenarios in the Kindness article, especially, strike me as weird.
Sure, it's pretty lame to just be vague and open about what to do with a friend when they visit. But it's also kind of weird for the friend to just kind of passively expect you to play tour guide, rather than just asking about a good restaurant or museum or something, and if you want to join. When I've shown up places with vague expectations, I'm not at all surprised if we just have tea and I'm left to wander around the city or follow them on a grocery trip or something.
The second one is also odd. A man has gone to a woman's house, is there late at night, just the two of them, and is planning to stay until she kicks him out? So he's, what, going to either fall sleep or make a move, but it basically indifferent as to which? Or he likes her so much, but as a friend, he'd be interested in staying up all night together platonically? None of that has much to do with "kindness" or lack thereof on his part. And this is in the same category as lighting up a cigarette in a group of people, as long as you ask how annoyed they'll be first? Isn't the convention to announce you're going around the corner to smoke, and offering one to anyone who wants to join?
I'm pretty sure the convention for gas is to wait until they stop for gas, and then buy the gas?
Umm... giving game. Right.
Anyway, everyone described sounds so foreign that interacting seems like it would be an interesting cultural experience.
Gaashk
6d ago
So I guess looking at Coffee Enjoyer's list:
-
media restrictions -- common and generally seems like a good idea. Even secular academics like Jonathan Haidt are now advocating for this. I'm unsure how much I want to apply it personally, though -- so far very little.
-
simplicity -- I'm not sure that I've seen this seriously attempted, or what exactly it means in most contexts. For instance, look at a grown up homeschooler Paula at the Cottage Fairy Youtube channel. In general, I like her, and she likes to talk a lot about simplifying her life and home, and about "simple living," but actually, she's always buying craft kits off of Etsy, filming complex shots from multiple angles, moving her artwork around, and dusting the bundles of dried herbs artfully decorating her wall space. I sort of get what she means (contrasted with a complex social and work life in a city, more or less), but also somewhat don't (contrasted with playing DnD with friends once a week in the city? Going to bars? I'm not actually completely sure) People in Bronte novels sometimes advocated for it seriously, and they seemed to mean only owning three dresses, all of them grey, keeping one's hair in the same basic bun every day, without curls or lace, and only leaving the house to go to church. This has been found undesirable and left untried in my circles.
-
social competition predicated on virtue -- I'm not very clear on this one, either. It seems to depend somewhat on the virtues that are most focused on. The people I most genuinely respect seem to be the "beauty will save the world" sorts. The ones who were eventually disgraced, their daughters prostitutes, their wives divorced, focused very hard on controlling other people in their household, to get them to act virtuous for social credit. Mostly, the men seemed fine and stable, but often boring and bored. There were a few years where several of them got really into Wild At Heart, with not only book studies and conferences, but also a salmon fishing trip and beating on drums in the forest. Our church bought the pastor a claymore sword. The men occasionally got a beer together, despite mostly not drinking. It seemed interesting sociologically, related to contemporary alienation. Several of these men worked a engineers at a missile company, and came home every night to their two to six basically fine children and an expectation to "give everything to God," but it's still important to provide for the children, so nothing too wild is on the table, really.
-
emphasis on tradition -- I suppose that the people I grew up with were mostly in the American Evangelical tradition, where it is traditional to talk a lot about the unimportance of following traditions of man, and then there are traditions like giving testimonies and going on mission trips. I did traditional to my family things like reading George MacDonald and complaining about Calvinism. Then I was Orthodox, so of course there are general traditions, much talk about Tradition vs traditions, and some people went around checking out the different cultural traditions and cobbling things together. This is all a worthy project, but fairly complex in America, in a way I don't think Coffee Enjoyer is representing realistically.
Gaashk
6d ago
I always ask why don't they just clean up the place and rent it out and it's always a "eh, I guess I could do that, but eh, Im fine".
Being a landlord in the US generally seems somewhat high risk and high responsibility. Better not to if you don't need the money.
Gaashk
6d ago
It's certainly possible to have too little space. My first daughter was born in a 500 sq ft section of duplex, and that was too small. My current house is something like 2,000 sq ft, and that is larger than necessary. 1,000 sq ft seems like an alright amount of space for a family of four if it's well designed. All else equal, I would rather a slight smaller place with thicker walls, a better layout, or architectural details than a larger space built as cheaply as possible, but when house searching in America, all else was never equal.
I have trouble telling other people's preferences because all else has never been equal for anyone I've ever known well enough to ask -- there's always a school they want to go to, something about the yard or neighborhood, a subsidy, or something else involved that's more important than the square footage.
Gaashk
6d ago
Sure, I suppose I was mostly responding to the first two items on the list being "patriarchy, gender norms." I grew up in a conservative homeschooling community, and the families that were more serious about patriarchy and gender norms (also very heavy on "cheerful obedience") than about the other items experienced some poor results. The families that were more serious about the exposure to nature part through small agricultural operations run by the mother and children generally seemed happier.
Gaashk
7d ago
My understanding of the progressive position is that it isn't necessarily the case that the same social constraints will make different groups happy, hence the stuff about "white culture" like following strict schedules and reading a lot or whatever the things were, and that it isn't necessarily a good idea to pick the most stable happiness producing white Christian social system and try to get everyone else to progress towards it. Hence, tossed salad theory replacing melting pot theory.
That doesn't seem completely unlikely. I'm basically willing to believe that different groups have slightly differentiated teloi. I realize that isn't necessarily compatible with Disparate Impact, but I would also strongly prefer a telos oriented way of thinking about social groups to an Equity based one. Everyone knows it's silly to ask why Amish aren't producing their fair share of programmers, and I would prefer a world where we talked less about demographically proportionate FAANG jobs, and more about who the best adjusted, happiest, best liked members of a given group are, and how to get more of that.
Gaashk
7d ago
Patriarchy, gender norms, media restrictions, simplicity, social competition predicated on virtue, increased exposure to nature and an emphasis on tradition can all be emulated
What if those aren't really what make the Amish special, and you've invested all that energy, but your daughter turns out to be Aella, or the lady who wrote Quivering Daughters, or Samantha? It's not like traditional, strict, "umbrella of protection" patriarchal Protestantism has not been tried recently.
Gaashk
7d ago
Probably that it's not super relevant to other groups, like noticing that Bhutan is doing well on some indicators. It's not like either joining the Amish or replicating their community structure is a real possibility for most people at this point.
Gaashk
10d ago
- Pick up the kids and drive them home
- Make something for dinner, or talk to my husband while he makes something
- Eat the dinner
- If the weather is nice, look around the yard. Otherwise, read online message boards and talk informally with family who are also watching or reading things.
- Put the children to bed.
- Have alone time -- write, read, meditate. I am very much an introvert.
Theoretically, I would also like to paint, but I never actually have enough energy after working, so I suppose I should just accept that I paint during the summer, when I'm on break.
Gaashk
11d ago
All I saw of it was Self Made Human casting shade on Pakistan, the title didn't make it very appealing to actually click through.
During the times when I did have a good social life, I participated in a lot of church activities.
Right now, I'm a bit overwhelmed with young children, a gestating baby, a full time job, on Saturdays we go on a family outing and possibly shopping, maybe see another family we're friends with; on Sundays we're mostly tired. Now it's spring, and the weather is finally warm, so we've started getting the yard in order a bit, and should work on some brush cutting and assembling a swing set someone gave us. Sometime we'll probably have enough energy to go back to church; I like the people well enough, there are soup suppers, ladies teas and what not going on that I could participate in.
Edit: Something else that occurs to me is that many of the good social situations I've found myself in have behind them a full time pastor, his wife, perhaps a deacon or other designated minister, and several organizationally capable women who do not have young children or a full time job (perhaps retired or a former housewife without much of a job). The ladies tea I could attend is run by an older but not yet elderly woman with grown children, who makes a dozen beautiful tea foods every month for fellowship purposes. Or educational settings with actual staff getting food for ongoing get-togethers that keep going as the student population changes.
People have noted before that these roles are undervalued in most modern communities. People mostly won't tith to support full time ministers, the "two income trap" will force women to work full time outside the home, and everyone will come home to reheat a frozen meal together, so there's less social infrastructure in place for anyone else to participate in.
Gaashk
12d ago
I'm not sure that I've noticed more anger than in other internet discussion spaces. There's more anger on my local Nextdoor about the proper prosocial speed to go in relation to the speed limit than most Motte threads.
Are you thinking of anything in particular?
Gaashk
12d ago
Maybe that's why I didn't really care for it. I already prefer very low stimulation, and things like meditation sitting alone in the dark.
Gaashk
12d ago
I got involved in an argument on the Nextdoor platform with someone who's working on opening a cannabis and dog gift shop in our very small local shopping area, that currently only has three things in it, despite the nearest town (6 min drive) already having about 8 dispensaries. Mostly, I want an ordinance saying they can't have giant green flags in an otherwise beige setting, huge leaves on their signs, and other attention grabbing street side signage. My opinions aren't very strong on the substance itself, other than I tried it a couple of times and it did nothing for me. I don't care for getting drunk, either, but drink a cocktail occasionally for the aesthetic presentation.
This is not a small scale question...
The small answer is to apply state force to the defectors regardless of any sympathy inducing specifics. Crush them into dust under the massive boot of Leviathan instead of shaming others for complaining about them. Let some people starve to death. Reinstate an earnest belief in hell. The question of why that's not possible is large.
Well at least this involves individual choice, not massive government bureaucracy. There are probably people who do in fact spend a lot of money eating out. There seem to be a surprising number of rather pricy restaurants, even in not terribly well off towns, so I suppose people are going there. It's doubtless more entertaining to find and talk to those people than the ones who are in debt because of health problems, or because they want to live in a big city, and are paying 60% of their income in rent. It would be quite the downer to have to tell someone to move to a much cheaper, duller city far away, choose a small apartment near public transportation, sell their car, and get rid of their pet.
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