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professorgerm

You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart

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joined 2022 September 12 12:41:49 UTC 

				
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professorgerm


								
								
									
								
								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 12 12:41:49 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 1157


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it's always possible OpenPhil is actually bad at their stated mission for whatever reason, including design flaws.




OpenPhil might be the 800 pound gorilla funding EA, but it is useful to remember that OpenPhil is not particularly EA.




Scott has addressed this kind of thing--how much altruism is mandated or what is sufficiently pure--multiple times.




While in the past Scott has written about the burden being easy and the yoke light, he went on to donate a kidney and wrote that one should keep climbing the tower. I am skeptical that his past writings on addressing the questions of purity are, uh, pure.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I don't know whether the article only asked him about the race part or only used his answer for that part




I'm starting to feel like some Motte two-buttons meme: "who is worse, the journalist or the public health expert?" Just joking. Well. Maybe 50/50.


Now that the conversation has run its course, I'll say one last time how much I appreciate your patience and thoughtfulness. We don't always agree but I always enjoy our conversations here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That's good when the numbers are directionally correct, not when they're completely wrong


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I expressed my anger and still you replied; I appreciate that and will strive for a more even tone this exchange.


Perhaps you're right and I find the whole concept so odious that I am unable to extend charity that they deserve. I also think charity can be a trap when one extends it well past the point one should.




He even says it, the white populations are healthier so they live longer, so if you just take into account age, you will miss out on morbidity increasing factors




Age was by far the number one predictive factor in covid mortality; controlling for the most significant factor has some... questionable limits? I will extend enough charity to say that I'm saying this with years of hindsight instead of months, so perhaps Schmidt was merely misinformed.


I understand what you're saying about not focusing solely on age, and I agree other factors matter, but the way Schmidt and Lipsitch discuss it sticks in my craw.


The more I read back and rewrite this response, I am regretting introducing the metaphor because it's too one-dimensional, and the more I think about this the more it's the same old issue with intersectionality being nonfunctional. The "correct" matrix of ideal vaccine distribution would be horribly complicated and likely politically impossible.


Why should teachers be deprioritized for whiteness when they're going to be in high-risk environments, and spreading it to black kids who will then spread it to their higher-risk families? So one would assume given Lipsitch says most teachers are white. Excluding them is a strongly racist proposition if one is considering second and third order effects of vaccinations and spread.




The equity cartoon isn't a one to one description of how equity would work in the real world when carried out by real people, nor do people always mean the same thing when they say equity.




It is a notoriously slippery phrase from a notoriously slippery ideology. It means everything and nothing, and no one knows how the equity eschaton would be immanentized.


So is the phrase just useless, an applause/boo light? As a writer I think one should pin down whatever they think it means, and let the chips fall where they may in the degree to which that does or does not match sources they may be citing.




At worst they believe the boxes version of equity, while you believe the machete version of equity.




I know what you mean but I would still like to clarify I don't believe in equity at all; I think the concept is far too slippery, a la "true communism has never been tried."


I do not trust people that claim to believe the boxes version to not, whenever convenient, turn to the machete. That is the fundamental assumption of ideas rooted in disparate impact: it doesn't matter how you get to the same outcomes. There is more than one way to skin a cat, more than one way to equalize heights and health outcomes.


Or less violently and more realistically, they resort to indifference. That is, Schmidt has built a career on the 'marginalized,' and that seems to displace concerns about "how do we save the most lives" and "maybe age is the number one factor in covid mortality." He has chosen populations he cares about, and populations to which he is indifferent.




The vaccine is the boxes or ladders. If you didn't give them to anybody, the tall person would still be tall and the short person would still be short.




Hmm. Action/inaction questions are such a sticky problem. While withholding vaccines from a particularly sensitive group because of their race isn't as actively making them more vulnerable as, say, sending sick people to nursing homes or infecting them all with an autoimmune disease, I am less than confident it's a valuable moral distinction in this case.




The Equality vs Equity cartoon a woke person is likely to point to doesn't involve any machetes at all.




An actual woke believer will not choose the edited version of the cartoon, no. Mao thought the Great Leap Forward was a good thing, et cetera and so forth with history's other examples of horrors spawned by "good intentions."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Never thought before about how culturally informative it might be to ask what kind of beans go with rice or that you have for dinner.




it wasn't as good as half a can of tomato soup made with milk and a bunch of crackers




Mmm, a little margarine on the crackers when you can? Delicious.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So maybe because I've worked in public health this is not particularly bothersome.




I considered it for a time, but was put off by many prevailing attitudes. I regret that now; I should've went into the field to try and counterweight the worst of those attitudes. I didn't and don't have the thirst for attention to do so, though.




Are you sure that it would be the wrong decision to push more vaccines that way, even if all we were looking at was deaths prevented?




This would be one of those times where how you discuss a problem is incredibly relevant even if the downstream effects are approximately the same, and I should've quoted the offensiveness instead of leaving it (for once!) unquoted.


So I would like to say you have convinced me there is a way that the different prioritization is actually defensible. I can see why one might, especially early on, distribute vaccines in a racially biased manner. As is so often the case, the pseudonymous rando is a much better advocate for a given cause than the credentialed experts cited in the Paper of Record.


Unfortunately, that is not the way the credentialed experts in the Paper of Record described it and so, I present the source of my everlasting hatred for them:




Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. “Older populations are whiter, ” Dr. Schmidt said. “Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.”




What a putrid soul it must take to think and speak that way.




Marc Lipsitch, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, argued that teachers should not be included as essential workers, if a central goal of the committee is to reduce health inequities.






“Teachers have middle-class salaries, are very often white, and they have college degrees,” he said.




Their goal is, as they stated themselves, not to save lives. It is to "reduce health equities." In the way of that equity cartoon, you can hand the short man a ladder or machete the tall man at the knees. Their choice is to machete the tall man at the knees, and for that they should be condemned. They are the primary reason I have an immediate and vehement distrust of anyone using the phrase "health equity."


I see no viable defense and, frankly, have no interest in a defense of such people, any more than I would have interest in a defense of King Leopold's actions in the Congo. For better and worse, people rarely receive the fate they deserve.


For what it's worth, the article taken as a whole is interesting, and the author was clearly deliberate in positioning the back and forth of good argumentation versus abject horrors.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the way you articulate it significantly affects how it goes on to be perceived and thought about.




Yeah, that's a good way to put what I was trying to get at elsewhere with a Ghostbusters reference. Choosing the form of the destroyer is a meaningful step!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


the term would be gibberish to him




Indeed, and it continues to be! I think we're talking past each other a bit and/or you're underestimating the degree to which academia shapes a thing by naming the unnamed. It is not The Way, but in describing it they hem it in from it may otherwise have been. The thing that existed before is not the same that exists after, and in some sense can never be again.


At any rate, I appreciate the input and your general tendency to remain calm and forthright.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't expect us to come to agree on much of anything but I always appreciate your input.


This particular example enrages me because it was much more direct than what I think you're suggesting- it was about withholding vaccines from older, high-risk populations and distributing them to young, low-risk populations by virtue of race. I think the people that suggested this should've been first in line to Seven Pounds for health equity, if they believed it so strongly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, I phrased it poorly. I definitely don't think the ad agency was explicitly saying that. I do think they were consciously courting the outrage machine as a turbo-booster on the ad. Maybe I'm overestimating the Onlineness of marketers but I'd expect them to be second only to journalists in paying attention to the outrage machine. If they didn't play it like a fiddle deliberately, that's some great luck or great astroturfing.


It's an easy pun that's been done before, as Iprayiam shared downthread JC Penney doing it last fall, no reaction. Of course, that ad had a group, reasonably attractive and diverse but no major standouts. Sweeny stands alone.




her race is only relevant to the extent that you think white girls are/aren't hot.




We live in a weird culture that made race extremely relevant again after a relative low period; positive statements about certain races are treated as vastly more suspicious than positive statements about other races, and vice versa.


If it had been Halle Bailey in the jeans, the backlash would be limited to one dark corner of twitter and would never reach Good Morning America.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


it's obnoxious how much you're ignoring actual material impacts.




Thousands of extra murders? Billions in property destruction? The renewal of abject racism being acceptable as long as it has the right targets? Tiers of justice based on identity? Explicit discrimination in hiring and education?


What have been the benefits of wokeness if you consider these costs acceptable?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So again yes I would suggest that those ideas would in fact have spread absent academia, because race particularly is a fundamental issue within America.




Absent academia those ideas look more like the Black Panthers and Nation of Islam, and less like Robin Diangelo and other NYT bestsellers.


To borrow from an esteemed set of cultural artifacts, the psychic energy would be the same 35 foot 600 pound twinkie, but wouldn't select the same form of the destroyer.




You absolutely do not need a high status institution for this. It's noticed because it is true. Previous actions have in fact shaped the present. It doesn't require high brow thinking to realise.




It takes a certain kind of mind that didn't exist before to think maybe people shouldn't be policed or punished based on race.


Letting people die for "health equity" is so high brow it's left the head entirely.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Remember just because academia creates a term for a thing it doesn't mean that's where it came from.




I might be low human capital an idiot but this sentence is sailing over my head in whatever point you're trying to make. How is creating a thing not where it came from?


Streetcorner shizos don't come up with multisyllabic nonsense like "cisheteronormativity," you need the carefully nurtured Ivory Tower Hothouse kind. Gotta be real smart to be that dumb, as the saying goes.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Can you imagine if suddenly everyone started dressing in blue and someone writes an article about how concerning it is that young women are dressing in blue en masse? The only people who would care would be those who were against blue.




If the proportion of people wearing blue multiplied by an order of magnitude or more virtually overnight, that would be weird to not notice.


If wearing blue also resulted in a lifetime of medicalization, I would like to think people should care!


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
There's also an extensive study out of The Netherlands on native, Western, and non-Western immigrant costs over time. The results are probably about what you expect but interesting to see documented.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In a similar spirit to conservatives being liberals 20 years behind, the morphing from tits-and-beer liberalism (RIP) to barstool conservatism- yes.


Now resisting to do another dive through the Kontext archive. Some good commentary in there before he (probably) got that brain tumor.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


She seems like a decent-sized Hollywood star but not particularly big, and in terms of her physical features, she's definitely very attractive, but not in a way that would stand out compared to other Hollywood actresses known for their beauty or some popular Instagram model.




She's the current it-girl, and it's been a little while since one was blonde and non-apologetic about being herself. At least that's my sense; I don't follow acting particularly closely.




As far as I can tell, she hasn't made any particular political or ideological statements,




That may well be a significant factor- relative political silence codes as conservative (ish) in a field overflowing with people eager to make unnecessary statements. Plus she does MMA and restored a vintage Bronco.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's far and away the most high-budget professionalized "It's okay to be white" phenomenon.


Trolling feels too generic for this; is there a term for this kind of "the backlash is the real signal" thing?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What incentive does a university currently have to go against that in any concrete way?




Principles? Intellectual virtues? Fulfilling the ideals of a university rather than a 4-year vacation?


Okay, once you've stopped laughing- not running the risk of Trump (and possibly Vance) continuing to gut their funding and harass them with lawsuits for as long as they can?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Refusing to step on a trap isn't incompetence.




The only way to win was not to play. Given that the question would surely come up in cases shortly after her nomination, too, it was an unfortunate fumble.


Also seconding Arjin that a simple question becoming a trap is a symptom of a much larger problem. It might be a loaded question but it's hardly "yes or no, have you stopped beating your wife?" The culture that loaded that question by hollowing out language created its own issue.




But that's something I'd frame as a failing of charisma more than intelligence.




I didn't say it was a failing of intelligence either; the implication is that it was a failing of skill defined generally. Charisma is a good suggestion for a narrower term; I'd also accept wisdom or to be playful, dexterity.


I think KBJ is quite smart, less of an institutionalist than ideal but I liked the KBJ/Gorsuch pair-ups from last term.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I’m not aware of many even on the far left who advocate to kick people out of America if they don’t share the principles?




A bit slippery and perhaps deliberate on Vance's part, I'd read at they want to deny right of representation to people that don't share their principles. They won't send Vance (for example) or people like him to a prison in El Salvador, but they would do everything in their power to deny that he's a "true American" and prevent him from ever having a position of influence.




And does a disdain for America, where it exists, also directly translate to weaker social bonds, his original concern? No, there’s no real link




I want to say citation needed but I don't know what evidence I'd accept here. I do think that's a pretty fair correlation but other things occurred over the last few decades that also affected social bonds.




He’s underestimating, ironically, America’s own extremely strong assimilation forces.




Historically speaking, with a 70 year pause and a few wars between big waves.




He’s not considering immigration as a potential strength.




His wife is an immigrant and he explicitly says the country is better with her in it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I think even the worst 2020 wokeness was better for getting skilled people into positions




Indeed, irreconcilable differences of opinion here. The FAA scandal, nominating a Supreme Court justice who can't even say what a woman is, choosing a VP on similar grounds who failed hard at everything she tried, and countless other attempts to put identity over skill or even mere humanity, like highly-credentialed psychotic freaks that suggested teachers deserved to die for "health equity"? Lipsitch and Schmidt should be scourged and sent to the salt mines.


The worst of 2020 wokeness was violent psychopathy and promotion of the unskilled, unwilling, and in some cases just plain evil. While I do not approve of much that Trump has done, he has not done and I predict will not do even 1/10 the damage.


Whatever you think got skilled people into useful positions, it was due to whatever liberal remnant that hadn't completely rotted its brain out with wokeness.




the stories like this that keep coming out every few weeks and the chilling effect they create.




These individual cases are quite bad, though I suspect there's a major attention component to your noticing. I continue to think they are nothing in comparison to the vast racism propagated by wokeness against whites and Asians, and Jews on alternating weeks.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Specifically, whether this disagreement is real or just against a strawman, and if it is real, what are the best reasons why the disagreement is not serious enough to justify conclusions like "despite all their craziness, I would rather the woke have power than people with TheMotte-like views".




If you put any value at all into individualism and meritocracy, then there are very few groups you should rank as less deserving of power than "the woke." Even if you find The Motte undeserving, you're still betraying those values.




even though they line up with a many widely-held intuitions about fairness




Strongly disagreed, they are almost entirely counter-efforts to what many people would consider "fairness" for the last 30-50 years.




And I happen to think that it’s absurd, and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this, to saying, you don’t belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025.




It's disagreeing about what the creed of America is. The people who fought in the Revolution and the Civil War (charitably, one could think the North; being a Borderer, Vance undoubtedly had ancestors on both sides) stand for one set of creedal ideas of America.


Progressive liberalism, to the extent one can call it liberalism without choking on their words, rejects everything that came before and represents another- IMO murky, and to the extent defined at all completely unworkable for a multicultural society- set of creedal ideas.




Is this statement actually anti-individualistic and anti-meritocratic as defined above?




5-10% anti-meritocratic at most. Liberalism isn't a suicide pact, don't have a mind so open your brain falls out, yada yada. Rephrased, "we want useful, competent people- so long as they don't hate Civilization."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Do the inherent population and cultural differences between Canada and the US really justify that?




Yes, and Canada has recently reduced punishments on particularly harsh criminals so that they can't be deported. Victimizing your own people to protect criminals is not a policy to be admired.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I would argue that if you pick door 1 in this thought experiment, you are a bad person. Almost certainly from a utilitarian perspective (life in prison vs small annoyances * some number of people, unless the number of people is ludicrously high).




Only if you lean towards a negative utilitarian perspective. The steady worsening of aspirational cities has incredibly high utilitarian cost from my perspective.


What's your take on something like Wireheading City? It seems no less feasible than any other proposal to force people off the street.