site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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.

10
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Colleges are guilty of negligent advertising” pro

I think it depends a bit on what you mean by this. Colleges are not being upfront about very critical information (from a student point of view) and especially where the quality of the programs on offer differ even across the same major in different colleges. A computer programming major in one college in one school can be world class, while another program can be utter garbage as far as educational value goes. The same is true of other programs. There’s simply no reliable self reporting of student outcomes for a given major at a given school.

This is a problem precisely because almost all students are going to college for job training and networking, unless they’re rich and well connected enough that their college experience doesn’t matter. This forces everyone to essentially try to use proxy measures: famous professors, prestige of the institution, famous graduates, or perhaps the beauty of the campus (an indication of wealthy donors). But these don’t really tell you much about the quality of instruction (yes, there’s a famous professor of physics at your college. You might see the back of his head once or twice, and your teacher is actually a harried graduate student.), thus making the process expensive. Most Americans spend decades paying off educational expenses, making the quality of the educational product extremely important. This likewise doesn’t help employers find qualified employees among recent graduates, forcing them to do things like hire based on the “name brand” of the school, or give pre-employment screening tests, or require internships— because they can’t know whether program X from Y university is rigorous and teaching useful skills, or garbage tier and graduating anyone who pays course fees on time.