atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
No bio...
User ID: 2162
Do you disagree with that?
Given all the complaints people have made here and in other places, the SAT data etc, I can't disagree that this likely seriously goes against value of the most qualified person getting the job in lots of cases.
However my experience in all highly-selective settings I've personally been in has been that DEI/affirmative action policies in practice didn't actually do this. Specifically, members of the groups that benefited from it were not on average less competent than those that didn't. On particular group of affirmative action beneficiaries, women in math, were actually consistently more competent on average (specifically they were completely absent from the lower tail in competence).
It lined up exactly with the steel-man justification of affirmative action---that it was a necessary corrective to un-meritocratic biases. I can definitely believe that this doesn't hold in less selective settings, but it still makes me skeptical about the true magnitude of its material impact on meritocracy. Actually, I wish people here would talk more about personal experience with anti-meritocratic outcomes of DEI of just focusing on whatever cherry-picked, hot news story happened recently---studies/good statistics > personal experience > media reporting
Meanwhile, my perception of the racist right is that it's not the largest, and in large part online
Conversely, I'm not just focusing on skilled immigration as a hypothetical here. I've had many very competent friends (including two literal IMO medalists!) who have had to leave the country because they couldn't get work visas. The anti-skilled-immigration policies that forced them out seemed to be a direct consequence of the---I'll use a slightly different word here to be more specific---hereditarianism on the right (which they're doubling down on if you saw the end of JD Vance's acceptance speech when he started talking about immigration and national identity). Sure, there are a lot of crazy extreme policy preferences online that don't have a chance of being implemented, but the underlying hereditarian ideals really do cause significant material harm.
Of course neither is good, but we don't get to pick none of the above.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
This is extremely valid criticism so please make it---it's very important to police the extremists even when they're on your side after all. To speculate, I think a lot of the US left was a little arrogant that most of the crazies who would shoot a politician were on the other team (despite the congressional baseball game shooting earlier...). I think people popularizing hyperbolic rhetoric like equating Trump to Hitler should take some minor amount of blame for this, especially in light of the meme that the first thing you should do if you build a time machine is go assassinate Hitler.
I think it should be indisputable that racism on the left currently has a far greater impact than racism on the right.
I think the crux here is that I'm really at a loss for a better way to make this judgement than what I described. I think we can both agree that trying to get a sense from media reporting is not really a good idea. The next level up in credibility is trusting anecdotal evidence from your own life experience. Mine have made the judgement very clear in one direction and assume yours have done the opposite. Again, anecdotes are pretty weak evidence, but I really do not have anything better to base my votes/political support on---it's not like there are good surveys or studies. I would actually really love to be convinced of your judgement. At the very least, it'll at least make the next election feel a lot better. Also, who knows, maybe I'll be cynical and burned by something and feel differently in 5 years---having to base these factual beliefs on personal anecdotes really sucks!
For the other points:
but is an unusual way to do so.
It's more natural when you think from the perspective of the policymaker deciding whether to let someone in or not. Maybe skilled is a bad word here---"merit based", or something else might be better where "merit" is some measure of how much you can "contribute" to the country by being competent at a difficult but important job, assimilating well and building community, not corrupting important values, etc. The upshot is there is are many, many potential immigrants around the world that most Americans should be delighted to have come over, especially given how popular western liberal values are everywhere.
like if people care about the American people (the current set of people) more than foreigners.
Again, I think with the right selection, there should be lots people that benefit the country even if you just measure the benefit to current citizens. I'm going to risk being concrete---I think giving green cards to every international student graduating from a top-20 undergrad who passes a security clearance, English proficiency test, and civics/values interview should be a win-win for everyone who doesn't care about racial considerations.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
(@4bpp too) Values come in conflict a lot and you need to make trade offs. The cost of allowing theft for sake of children to be ok is much more than that of allowing birthright citizenship. The same holds for the massive wealth distribution equalizing inheritances would require (I think this is another related example people bring up a lot). In particular, the anchor baby problem has been and can still be mitigated in a much more morally acceptable way by tightening border security than by outright getting rid of birthright citizenship---if you make the moral hazard hard enough to actually take advantage of, it'll happen infrequently enough that the cost is an acceptable trade-off, I think for almost everyone's relative weightings of the values. (For full disclosure, I weight the values in way that, for example, much more dramatic redistribution of inheritances than we have today would be a good idea, but I'm trying to make sure this argument works even if you weight differently).
By the way, it's also important to emphasize that most people's morality is actually ok with some level of theft for the sake of children in extreme circumstances---Jean Valjean is the hero of the story after all.
Except that the US as a country has specifically rejected that blood and kinship ties are important since it's founding---I feel like I repeat this so much here but no one ever seems to remember "All men are created equal". This is what enlightenment, classical liberal, or whatever you call it values means! And yes, they are drastically different from any values anyone had before the 1700's---this is why the enlightenment was such a big deal and why we think of older civilizations as morally hopeless and barbaric. We definitely don't think of places like Dubai that are blatantly not onboard as reasonable.
It's also funny to get this reply when I've just had a bunch of discussions here about the prevalence of explicitly racialist values on the Motte. @Felagund, Let's see how much the peanut gallery supports this.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
It's a bizarre custom which seems to only exist in the Americas for some reason.
Do you mind justifying this statement more? Here's the standard defense for birthright citizenship: two kids who grew up in the same neighborhood and are equally connected to their surrounding community, equally adapted to the local culture, etc. should not be treated differently under the law just because of who their parents are. Not doing this is extremely inegalitarian---it's not about "rewarding" the parents, it's about not capriciously punishing the kids for something they have no responsibility for or control over.
Given all this, it might even be justified to claim that it's bizarre that it doesn't exist in other countries (particularly European ones) that pretend to buy into classical-liberal ideals. This is in fact my goto counterargument when the inevitable America-bashing discussions start with European or progressive colleagues.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
And yet I'm posting this from a country where the literal first founding words are "All men are created equal" and whose founders hated hereditary privileges so much that titles of nobility are constitutionally banned.
I agree with you that support of restricting immigration as a whole isn't incompatible with valuing meritocracy. While I definitely support increasing all immigration, this depends on lets just say many much less certain moral and factual beliefs---it's not really something I'm prepared to defend on a forum like this.
My specific claim here is that as far as I can tell, opposition to specifically legal, skilled immigration is blatantly incompatible with valuing meritocracy to the point where I think people claiming to hold these contradictory beliefs either haven't thought very carefully or are being disingenuous---usually making bad-faith arguments in support of policies motivated by either hidden anti-meritocratic racialist values or anti-meritocratic selfishness to protect themselves from competition at the cost of the rest of the country. I don't think any of the 4 reasons you gave contradict this, right? 1 is the closest, but I think that unless your definition of "American culture" includes most people looking white (in which case you're back in the racist camp), it's pretty easy to include ability to assimilate in your definition of skilled.
I also consider opposition to cross-border meritocracy just as bad as opposition to within-country meritocracy. The main benefit of meritocracy is to make sure that the most competent possible people are doing important jobs and both versions get in the way of this. I guess Bannon is basically admitting to this justification so at least he's not being disingenuous. There are of course lots of reasons to not like meritocracy---someone recently pointed out to me idea of having non-meritocratic "reserves" to be super careful about avoiding homogenization and keeping ineffable, hard-to-measure values from being optimized do death. However, engines of progress like Boston, NYC, or SF should not be these reserves.
This is why I feel that Bannon/Miller-style anti-skilled immigration beliefs being represented at the highest levels of the federal government is much more of a threat to meritocracy than DEI. I do however, have to address the other side of the comparison---I've spent a lot of time at universities in extremely liberal parts of the country and even the most extreme DEI people I ran across were very purely motivated by factual claims that DEI policies would lead to more meritocracy instead of less by counterbalancing systemic discrimination. In particular, they could be convinced away from many damaging policies---anti-standardized testing, anti-math acceleration, "gentrification" justifications for NIMBY, elite-college "holistic" affirmative action, etc.---by arguing these factual claims. Despite stereotypes of "woke" closed-mindedness, these discussions were also far more pleasant and polite than anything here that wasn't buried deep in reply chains (though caveat, my time was all in math departments, and many people here have pointed out that the situation may not be so rosy in other situations).
Checking for yourself how much a threat something is seems like much stronger evidence than relying on dueling cherry-picked media reporting from both sides. The comparison between discussions in my departments and posting here made the "which is worse" judgement feel very clear.
Sorry, I should have taken more time with the reply and qualified what I was asking for more---specifically, an argument that is plausible enough to be the true reason for support for a significant number of people in this forum. Also it's not always just whiteness---many times it's just a preference for people with a deep ancestry in the country (which is just as bad for meritocracy!)
The competition argument is not plausible. It's naked selfishness asking that the rest of the country sacrifice to protect a well-off class from competition, not to mention very anti-meritocratic. Also, since the competition relevant to posters here is likely to be for tech jobs, it's almost certainly not even true given how many tech founders are immigrants. Probably Sergey Brin and Jensen Huang by themselves more than make up for any wage pressure in tech from skilled immigration.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
They may be mistaken, but the goal always seemed to me to maximize competence, and let the racial makeup fall where they may.
I put a longer reply here. Basically, I don't think this is at all consistent with the policies enacted by the US right---especially the US alt-right that is more in line with this forum.
What did you think of this comment from that discussion?
Well, I agree that if that were the prevailing view then my point about being worse on meritocracy would be much weaker. However, I do have a factual disagreement there---I think we all have a very strong cognitive bias to hyperfocus on racial differences over much more informative characteristics. For example, if you see another person walking on the street late at night in a somewhat sketchy area, I think the person's age, mannerisms, dress, etc. would give you much more information about whether you're in danger than if the person was white or black even though race is what everyone instinctually pays attention to first. If you don't correct for this bias---and maybe its so strong that you have to do something extreme like actively ignoring racial information all together---you won't get a very accurate picture of the world.
Furthermore, I think there is a real problem of people covertly arguing for policies that satisfy their actually anti-meritocratic racial preferences by exaggerating the evidentiary value of race, actively manipulating people through this cognitive bias. Part of this admitted paranoia is from extreme right-wingers explicitly saying that this is a deliberate strategy. Part of it is also since I just don't see how actually believing what the quoted comment claims can be consistent with opposition to skilled immigration---for example, Steve Bannon's stated policy preferences, which would be extremely bad for making sure the most competent people get the job:
What we should be doing is cutting the number of foreign students in American universities by 50 percent immediately, because we’re never going to get a Hispanic and Black population in Silicon Valley unless you get them into the engineering schools. No. 2, we should staple an exit visa to their diploma. The foreign students can hang around for a week and party, but then they got to go home and make their own country great.
Again, I was under the impression that Bannon is a pretty well-thought of figure here. Even worse, all attempts of mine of trying to ask here for non-racial reasons to oppose skilled immigration (to this Steve-Bannon extent) that aren't economic nonsense have been unpleasant failures.
I'll also note that you characterized the American right as being worse on this
On the left, we have DEI excesses and "extreme" affirmative action---i.e. going beyond just attempting to correct for bias that undervalues the qualifications of people in marginalized groups to make sure that institutions actually choose the most qualified candidates. However, I think this sort of extreme DEI or extreme affirmative action is very unpopular and gets shut down whenever it affects actual policy too much---like even in California affirmative action loses in elections.
On the right, you have Bannon/Miller-style drastic reductions in skilled immigration (I'll link this Cato article again). These do not get nearly as much pushback---Stephen Miller is still going to be one of the main influences on immigration policy if Trump wins in 2024. Furthermore, the right in the US is extremely deferential to inherited wealth. For example, cutting estate taxes seems to be one of the most important priorities of the republican party and I'm pretty sure if they were offered a chance to cut the top income tax bracket at the cost of raising estate taxes equivalently, they wouldn't take it.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
but one of the few remaining valuable aspects of this place is actually understanding how people whose views I despise really think, rather than assuming a mustache-twirling caricature of how they think.
Like, this is what I've been trying to do from my first post on this forum 4 years ago. It's worked pretty well with some topics.
However, specifically on the topic of skilled immigration or racialism vs. meritocracy, I never seem to get any replies that don't confirm the mustache-twirling caricature---and this was actually not at all what I expected to happen! Furthermore, the mustache twirlers have been generally been extremely unpleasant to interact with---even right now, I'm getting replies with bizarre false claims and misquotes. The mustache twirlers also have very long history of making unmoderated personal attacks (see especially the linked and endorsed reddit post there).
I would be very happy to be proven wrong here---for example, do you have examples of anti-skilled immigration posts that aren't the caricature of "we want to do this because it's important to us that the US stays more white"?
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
I think the consensus view here is that people should be treated specially for the sole reason of being white instead of any personal qualifications. This is very anti-meritocratic. I recall though that we just had this discussion on this right? I guess your comments didn't get into this point specifically, but do you not think a moderator saying that "race-blind meritocracy" is a controversial, minority viewpoint in the Motte is sufficient evidence?
Otherwise, would you agree that the Motte's seeming consensus against even skilled immigration (well, I get dogpiled pretty hard whenever I try posting in support of it at least) is pretty anti-meritocratic? I have the impression that the median poster here would prefer their doctors, engineers, pilots, etc. to be white/have far-reaching ancestry in whatever country (depending on the exact poster) than being the most competent people that can be found.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
11mo ago
I still think a place like this serves a very valuable purpose---if only that whenever you get too upset about some DEI overreach like the whole SF algebra saga you can find some very pointed reminders that the American right is somehow even worse on issues of meritocracy.
I mean, there's another pretty huge assault on meritocracy in how hard skilled immigration is---even IMO medalists have a hard time immigrating to the US. Anyone upset about the impacts of DEI on competence should also be upset about this.
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