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 -
Regression to the mean is tough, but not that tough.
Intelligent, honest, and hardworking people are generally good beyond the direct economic benefits of their current careers, and foreign affinities, cultural mismatches, and racial differences aren't necessarily enough to counteract that.
One question is: why not just take an Egyptian Copt instead?
Islam is disproportionately represented in terror attacks, and the European experience is that illiberalism doesn't dissipate in a couple of generations. How do we make it so those aren't concerns besides favoring non-Muslims?
It's a serious problem for me personally, and for any country with a mass migration program that must skim from 2 billion Muslims.
El-Sayed is obviously whatever Hannania liked to promote as Elite Human Capital. If you are filtering for talent he’s the far right tail of Egyptian ancestry people and there probably are not many Egyptian Copts above him.
So he fits perfectly with America should take in the top .1% of shithole third world country people.
So that is why you take him. Culturally though America is always going to be a weird fit for him. The uncultural fit for people like him is to completely drop religious identity and join the global homo NYT reading blob. A lot of America still has a lot of Christian influence and being Muslim or atheists doesn’t weld very well to those places.
This is a great point because it illustrates how stupid Hanania's EHC ideology is.
I've mentioned before that the median suburban dad is probably more EHC than Hanania in most ways that matter. He's able to work as a team. He can think on his feet. He has practical knowledge. If I'm on a military mission, I'd take the median suburban dad over Hananian every time. The extremely narrow EHC that Hanania favors is only useful for a few things and is probably actively harmful when it comes to politics.
A person from Egypt with a 120 IQ might be a rarity, and is definitely better at math than the average American, but it's hardly worth taking into our country if they bring toxic politics with them. We know what a nation of people led by El Sayeds looks like. No thanks.
More options
Context Copy link
Is he? What makes him ELITE instead of "fairly smart Muslim boosted like hell in the DEI era".
My understanding is that med school is still difficult enough that he has to be genuinely smart to get through it, even with DEI.
I've always heard that getting into med school is much more difficult than the program itself. El Sayed, AIUI, never did a residency or practiced medicine. I doubt the man is an idiot, but what would make you think he is more ELITE than, say, the 10th ranked student at an average American high school?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
DEI complicates it. Did he qualify for DEI? As far as I know he would be a white male bucket. I believe in the American system Egyptian counts as white.
On the plus side I have him for: Double engineer parents, charismatic, above average looking, Columbia Med School.
Rhodes does do too much individual DEI and is meaningless in modern day.
Mid: UMICH. This is my midtwit line between EHC and Average. The smarter grads are fine especially as a white male
If he got into Columbia as a white male then he’s 100% elite EHC. If not he’s probably just smart.
Nope. I personally know Egyptians roughly that age who had academic career ending scandals swept under the rug and then were given massive career boosts by the Obama admin. "Muslim outreach" was a huge deal during his years.
More options
Context Copy link
I've seen Coptic-types get boosted on African-targeted scholarships, and hard to know the inner machinations of KPIs with DEI scoring. Most DEI systems will happily take the least-African type of African to get them over the line, which is part of the absurdity of DEI.
More options
Context Copy link
This seems naive. The racists at Ivy League schools are much more sophisticated than you give them credit for and are able to go well beyond broad U.S. Census categories.
More options
Context Copy link
The census counts Middle East as white but that doesn't govern Columbia admits. Any lib-managed DEI pipeline would have had plenty of options for AES to specify Muslim and brown.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah but their less-talented Children are at their best Night Club Promoters and at their worst become the most annoying type of Radical Islamic person who has a 110 IQ, a chip on their shoulder about 'Islamophobia' or w/e being the reason for their downwardly-mobile social status compared to their Doctor parent who got into the West and has a good chance of pivoting hard towards Fundamentalist Islam and seems to be massively overrepresented Phenotype for terrorism. AI and the increasing scale of the Welfare case means that the bar for 'net contributor' rises every year that passes plus the size of drains gets ever-larger as medical technology improves.
The best case scenario societally is to give them a bunch of sinecure-lite pathways for 'affirmative action', but why would you do that for a totally foreign group that isn't really that oppressed at scale and who when they're in a position of power takes enormous shits upon foreigners and the underclass.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link