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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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The poster I was responding to was specifically declaring to be unAmerican some Indian guys who wrote a blog post about SCOTUS minutiae in flawless English, and who another poster claimed to have met and argued about baseball with. The average immigrant is irrelevant to this argument, as he very specifically excluded a non-average one, implicitly asserting that this non-averageness does not matter to him.

(Incidentally, I think demanding +4SD for 130IQ etc. is excessive. The set of Indians who immigrate into the US is already biased towards the smarter, more looped-in with US culture set; the criteria you lay out are maybe +2.)

The poster I was responding to was specifically declaring to be unAmerican some Indian guys who wrote a blog post about SCOTUS minutiae in flawless English, and who another poster claimed to have met and argued about baseball with. The average immigrant is irrelevant to this argument, as he very specifically excluded a non-average one, implicitly asserting that this non-averageness does not matter to him.

There's a broader point to make here that deserves a top level.

(Incidentally, I think demanding +4SD for 130IQ etc. is excessive. The set of Indians who immigrate into the US is already biased towards the smarter, more looped-in with US culture set; the criteria you lay out are maybe +2.)

+2SD would get you to just the 130, with a 100 baseline, which is a fairly generous assumption AIUI. "Intelligible English" alone is another +2, and I'm sorry, but if you think otherwise then you are experiencing a powerful selection effect. Go try to have a five minute conversation with the kind of guys who own motels, or talk to random strangers in a grocery store.

Or take a summer job at a T-Mobile store in a diverse area.