atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
No bio...
User ID: 2162
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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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
1yr 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.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Thanks for the excellent reply, this helps a ton with understanding the other point of view---and maybe the way you describe it isn't too costly to values of fairness and meritocracy anyways.
Specifically, I guess we're in a world where the countries with most lucrative opportunities people would want to immigrate for are also the ones where ancestry might matter the least. As long as this is true (well, it's not perfect given how hard legal immigration is to the US), then it's really not a big deal if other places stay the way you want in case that's necessary to preserve these ineffable other values. So maybe I'll have vehement disagreements with other Americans asking for things to be more ancestry-dependent but not people elsewhere.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
The way I see it, countries should follow a general "[insert country here] first" framework, and people with deep roots should have relative priority over newcomers.
Do you mind clarifying or giving a justification for why things should be like this? Specifically, what does "deep roots" mean? Is that things like like involvement with local community wherever they live and civic engagement or is it more like having ancestry in the country going far back? I would totally agree with you if its the first and vehemently disagree with the second---for the same reason that personal connection is what's important, not ancestry (see again the comparison between a close childhood friend vs. cousin you've never met before).
supporting race blindness makes a comment one of the most controversial in your posting history
We can trade examples all day long, but I don't know how else to interpret even a moderator (who I think should be more aware of the general pulse of the forum than either of us) saying this:
Looking through my own "top" and "bottom" comments I am not surprised or offended by their placement. My "bottom" comments are often my controversial mod decisions, or times when I have decided to defend viewpoints that are unpopular here on TheMotte (like race blindness, or open borders)
(adding emphasis)
I don't think everything should be meritocratic, though. I wouldn't let some random dude take the place of my cousin in my family, just because he's more competent, and/or more pleasant to be around, for example.
Right, so this is a good point that needs to be addressed. However, I don't think that the cousin being related to you is the key detail here---for example I would say the same about a childhood best friend but not about a hypothetical cousin whom I just met and never knew existed until then.
The principle here is really about close personal relationships, whatever might cause them. These come with an obligation of strong loyalty that overwhelms many abstract notions of fairness. The loyalty should be there when the close personal relationship is there even if there's no hereditary connection and doesn't need to be there if there's a hereditary connection with no close personal relationship.
Yes, this isn't purely meritocratic, but there's no one value that determines what you should do in all situations. We have a pretty good system of rules and expectations around professionalism---like how you should act differently in public-facing roles---that help us balance society's needs for fairness and meritocracy with personal needs for loyalty. It's ok to invite your cousin to a party over the other person, but not to hire them for a job.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Not exactly an invitation to “reconciliation”.
It's a point that can actually be argued---if you don't agree maybe you can describe why instead of pulling out about 150 words of debate-team kritik?
On the other hand, this:
However, I would caution that I’m not confident the posts alone will be persuasive to you, since they will not be in combination with the specific and non-transferable life experiences I’ve had which caused me to be more sympathetic to these ideas than I likely would have otherwise.
is not something that can be argued or lead to any kind of reconciliation. I either have the same life experiences as you or there's no way that I'll ever understand why your values are valid?
That would be difficult, simply given the lack of any effective search function in this site’s design. I have been meaning to put together a master spreadsheet of links to some of my more successful/important posts, such that I would be able to supply those links when prompted, but I have not gotten around to doing so
This is a frustratingly long post that somehow manages to dodge every possible chance to give a concrete argument on the actual value issue in favor of making meta points. I guess the most productive thing to do here then is wait until there's an actual substantive point to discuss. I mean, there hasn't been much in 3 years of trying, but maybe something better will come out of this.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I think quite possibly the largest contingent of people here are in favor of colorblind meritocracy, roughly. But in the absence of data, then your priors would be affected by race.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I think the most prominent writer fitting the view you describe is Richard Hanania. I'm searching through comments to see what this place thinks about his writings on racial issues---here's something sitting at +28 against it, though here's another at +14 possibly in favor though it's hard to tell what they would think in the perfect world where colorblindness was possible. (I'm not super good at searching for things, maybe you can do better?). Somehow this still leaves me with the impression that the voting population here is further towards racialism that Hanania.
I also think the link I gave above about what one of the mods thinks about the general attitude towards colorblindness is also very strong evidence.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
The first is a point I haven't seen anyone make here
See the discussion here.
and the latter already a step down from your original claim, and still want to know who you're talking about
Sorry, let me clarify---I also think there are a lot of people here who "honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". I think the strongest evidence for this is what I linked above: one of the mods of this place saying that their posts supporting colorblindness tend to be very controversial because those posts are against the prevailing attitudes here.
There's another sort of of-topic interesting point: I'm not really sure that "people should be treated differently based on how far back their ancestry goes in the US" is significantly different from "people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as". The cardinal, anti-meritocratic sin of judging people by their descent instead of their own accomplishments appears just as strongly in in both cases.
I think I wasn't very clear---I totally agree that values differences are in principle reconcilable. I've even on record in this sub saying that values can be derived from other concerns and can definitely be argued.
My point was that I've found that specifically my values difference with most of the racialists on the Motte is irreconcilable. I've been bashing my head against this since my first post in this sub and basically consistently gotten replies that are unmoderated personal attacks instead of any substantive argument, particularly from a certain poster who believes only Russians have souls and his following. Again, one of my very early interactions with this community was someone ban-evading and calling me a slithering rat just for having the temerity to try and argue value points. I guess a lot of racialism is just motivated by idiosyncratic aesthetic preferences that are too strong to be overwhelmed by any other consideration---how is this anything but not irreconcilable?
This experience has not meaningfully changed in the last three years, although I will say that you have been much more reasonable. So trying again, do you mind explaining/linking to some place where you've explained these specific facts?
We have the policy preferences we do because we disagree about important facts regarding humans and what they’re like
Political appointees are picked for ridiculous reasons all the time. This isn't the most objectionable thing that's happened in VP or Supreme Court choices. I also don't think these choices really made a policy difference over the alternatives. The only material impact was to the other people who could've been chosen otherwise---like 5 people in the whole country who are doing pretty well in life either way and purposefully chose a career where they knew they would be judged in bizarre and unfair ways.
Do you have other examples that are a little more materially impactful/out of the ordinary? Maybe you can try for same level of material impact as Trump's policies on legal and skilled immigration that were very plausibly motivated by Stephen Miller/Motte-style explicit racialism?
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I honestly thought that most of the complaints about racism in the US were mostly caused by unconscious bias---things that the perpetrators would feel very guilty for and stop if they realized what they were doing. Otherwise, I thought the stories were some combination of exaggeration, cherry-picked bad luck, or very special circumstances---being in a certain part of Idaho or in a circa-2002 airport.
but I don't remember seeing anyone say an intelligent black people shouldn't be treated as intelligent, because they're black
People maybe don't say this---they'll question whether there are intelligent black people in the first place or say that people should be treated differently based on how far back their ancestry goes in the US. The first is a factual point that can be pretty quickly refuted, but the second is a values difference.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I don't really like either extreme. I have lots of evidence already of one side existing, its depressing to get evidence of the other extreme existing as well.
Here's one person's experience that might make at least part of it not so depressing: I've spent a lot of times in universities in extremely left-leaning areas (Like Jill Stein beating Trump extreme). There are routinely literal communists in my circles. I've never not been able to pull an IRL political argument back from extremes through tying everything back to core ideals like egalitarianism (and playing word games to avoid certain triggering phrases)---no standardized testing isn't a white supremacist plot, which alternatives do you think are going to be less biased? Rent control isn't as obviously good as you think it is, you have to be careful not to screw over people trying to move in, have you looked at what the actual minority groups you're speaking for think about police funding? Do you really trust elite college admissions committees to implement a non-transparent, "holistic" affirmative action policy without sneaking in a bunch of details that turn it into something mostly benefiting the privileged under the cover of tokenism? etc.
I therefore thought that both extremes were basically covered by the Lizardman Constant. Reading this forum has been one of the biggest shocks I've experienced to my beliefs about the world in the last 5-10 years (second to the Ukraine invasion I guess)---here are a large number intelligent people I share a country with who actually just have irreconcilable value differences; people who have such crazy policy preferences to me not because they disagree about facts like the far-left people I meet, but because they honestly believe that people should be treated differently solely because of the race they were born as.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
too many people that share their opinion vote
Why do you think that there is any chance that there are lot of people who share this opinion? This part:
Doubt if I’d buy that piece of land in [Small Town, Southern US State] for fear of the ancestor’s spirits, Native and African slaves wandering around looking for descendants in 2024 to be released from their bondage and inequities thrashed upon them for wealth by its oppressors.
really makes it sound like a fringe crazy---the left variant of the people screaming about adenochrome. As pointed out below, people who care about racial equality suddenly saying that judging others for their ancestry is ok are preemptively giving up their entire argument.
It's definitely not like a very active forum where merely supporting race blindness makes a comment one of the most controversial in your posting history. I would be much more worried that there are lot of people voting with this opinion.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
but plainly, that hasn't happened so far, certainly not on any appreciable scale
I don't think this is generally accepted---certainly not to the point of "plainly". There's a very prevalent narrative that the rise of the alt right in Europe/US is exactly the widespread social instability you would see because of this---for example see here:
"One in three young men in Germany has never had a girlfriend. Are you one of them?" Krah asks and continues with advice: "Don't watch porn, don't vote green, go outside into the fresh air. Be confident. And above all don't believe you need to be nice and soft. Real men stand on the far right. Real men are patriots. That's the way to find a girlfriend!"
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Does this make me a conservative?
Yes it does! Specifically, the vision you describe appears to be one of boring stagnation and endless, cozy mediocrity (it's also so stereotypically European). I would much prefer the world to be like the SF Bay Area that despite (there are enough arguments that this is actually "because of") its many flaws, produces amazing things like Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, OpenAI, and the general research output of Stanford and UC Berkeley. The average person would definitely be much worse off, but the greatness it produces would be worth it, both for making the future nicer and for making society feel like it has an actual soul.
This part in particular:
who prioritize friends and family above work, but who work hard
would grind technological and scientific progress to a halt since it dramatically underestimates how much hard work and obsession is needed to make breakthroughs. The architectural preferences also suggest an aversion to experimentation which, while it can produce a lot of short term ugliness, is necessary in the long run to avoid boring homogeneity and settling for not-so-great local optima.
I don't know how properly to argue that my preference is better than yours---your vision is extremely cozy and comfortable. I would start with a worry that your world would collapse through not being able to progress enough to keep up with population growth, resource depletion, or unexpected disasters. You're settling for the good that we have right now instead of taking the risks necessary to either improve it or protect it in the future.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
I don't know the situation in your country so that very well might be true. However, it is definitely not relevant in California where there actually is huge space for building more housing without much disruption (as many other posters have given various arguments for).
In addition, people tend to overestimate how full their cities/countries actually are. There are very few places in the world that are as densely populated as Somerville, Massachusetts which is a super pleasant place looking like this on Google streetview. No skyscrapers needed and with that density, the countryside can be kept clear too. I suspect that your country could build housing for hundreds of thousands of more people while still only looking like Somerville and avoiding what you want to avoid.
"the outgroup" in this comment is pretty clearly referring to contemporary people, not the Confederate slavers.
This is not clear at all (except for literal neo-confederates who want to bring things like slavery back). The confederacy is a completely different culture from the modern south and making the connection from destroying a statue of a confederate leader to somehow teabagging modern southerners is almost a non-sequitur! Sure, some people mistaken about who actually represents their values might be upset but this is an unfortunate side-effect and really the fault of those people. It's definitely not anyone's intention in melting down the statue and really confusing if it's referred to by such a motivated word as "teabagging"---to the point where the most natural thing is to immediately dismiss that as a possibility.
Again, the far-and-away most reasonable interpretation for which group is being teabagged by a statue being destroyed....is group the person led/was part of.
I'm clearly missing something here that made modern southerners an at-all reasonable interpretation for that group: which of the following is it?
- Most modern southerners somehow still identify with Confederate leaders even though Confederate values are completely antithetical to their own and everyone here just buys that this is a reasonable thing for them to do.
- There's some weird politics bubble thing going on here where it's just accepted that lots of things are some sort of "liberal elite" or whatever attack against people who don't live in the Northeast or California
- Because the above two are too uncharitable to possibly be true, something else?
He's talking about one thing, you respond with a line that makes it seem like he's talking about something else
Like maybe it was clear to you he was talking about one thing, but that's completely opaque to anyone who doesn't share the politics of this place.
I find it doubtful that you were actually confused by what he meant by "moderate".
I thought he was referring to neo-confederates as moderates and trying to double-check this because that isn't really a reasonable definition of moderate.
atokenliberal6D_4
Defender of Western Culture
1yr ago
Do you think there are no Indian or Chinese, bay-area tech workers on this forum? I thought part of conceit of a public forum like this is that you are talking to some notion of "everyone". Either way, I'm definitely sure there aren't any antebellum southerners on this forum (they're all dead), so it's still super confusing why my linked comment wasn't also not antagonistic by this standard.
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.
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