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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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If STEM grads decided to spend all their time advocating for policy instead of getting real things done I'd hazard that STEM grads per capita would be significantly more effective at advocating for policies

I wholeheartedly agree, but sadly STEM grads seem very uninterested in engaging in the broader culture aside from business regulations. Musk is an outlier in this regard, which is why he enrages the established powers.

What Conservative STEM lovers need are more people willing to do activism for no or little pay, not a better appreciation for mid 1600s era poetry.

People who are into 1600s era poetry already display a low preference for monetary rewards, which is why they are good at slogging through thankless tasks like low-pay activism. I suspect these two are correlated.

The lesson, if any, conservatives should take from campus SJWs is to be as active as possible and be absolutely unwilling to allow any nuance. I hope they don't take that lesson to heart.

I don't think lack of nuance is the secret behind the success of the wordcels so much as them caring. Dogged determination always beats a shrug of the shoulder. It's a hard problem to solve because for most people, disengaging with culture cars and just focusing on doing your thing is the more rational life decision. It's certainly the advice I would give most people. Yet cumulatively, it also allows the loud and shrill minority to dominate the cultural space. People over time get influenced by the zeitgeist and thus the Overton window has shifted. Not an easy puzzle to solve.