This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Revealed preferences in the real world: black doctors.
I wonder if anyone has studied this? What is going to happen to all the black doctors who are being admitted to med school with inferior credentials and who will likely be socially promoted through residency/licensing as well.
I'm sure a large degree of affirmative action has already affected the supply of doctors, but the post-Great Awokening world seems to have taken that to a new level. Apparently rates of test-failing have increased by nearly 10x in some subjects at UCLA's medical school post 2020.
https://x.com/aaronsibarium/status/1793657774767022569
This is obviously forbidden information. I wonder how many schools will simply cover it up and graduate people as normal despite failures.
I hate to say it, but if I or a loved one was seriously ill, I would try my best to get a non-black doctor. If I wanted the best, I'd probably follow Peter Griffin's advice. I imagine others have similar revealed preferences that we would never admit in public. In the future, will black doctors magically have tons of open appointments while the cue to see Dr. Rosenblatt grows ever longer? I think probably.
Every field has bad apples, the way medical education is structured it is very hard to get through without a certain floor level of competence.
When I think about "bad" doctors the ones I run into are generally lazy/burnt out types, or outright malicious/unethical types. Traditional incompetence is rare, because those people get kicked out of medical school or residency....unless they are a favored minority group.
In my career I've run into a handful of white/Asian doctors who are truly incompetent, while I've run into plenty of great URM (underrepresented in medicine) doctors, a noticeable percentage of URMs should never have been advanced through training. It's not a lot, but it's way way way more than the near zero for other demographics, and all of the absolutely catastrophic idiots have been URMs.
From asking it around it seems like the attitude is that it's easier for a programs reputation to advance an incompetent URM student than deal with the flack from trying to put the person through remediation and/or termination (in part because medical education now includes a lot of mandatory education in toolkits these students can use to complain).
The problem is about to get much worse.
If professors were afraid to fail an underperforming URM in 2010, imagine how much more afraid they'd be in 2020. Once the new crop of doctors hits the market, it's going to start looking pretty bad.
A friend of mine recently went to a specialty conference, she described a lecture she saw that was talking about the difficulty in giving feedback to students these days, a student at the end asked "wait is that why all of my friends and I are told we are doing great the whole rotation and then get a 3/5 on our evaluation at the end?" Everyone just nodded.
Good teaching requires being able to safely give feedback and that just isn't possible anymore. The problem isn't limited to minority students.
Okay fine this a bit of an exaggeration but still.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link