domain:cafeamericainmag.com
07mk
7d ago
It absolutely is. [White privilege] was called white guilt in the 60's and a moral blot in the 18th century and so forth. White privilege is just a fancy academic term for already existing feelings.
This, too, is just false, though. White guilt, according to Wikipedia, "is a belief that white people bear a responsibility for the harm which has resulted from historical or current racist treatment of people belonging to other ethnic groups, as for example in the context of the Atlantic slave trade, European colonialism, and the genocide of indigenous peoples." This is a different concept from white privilege, which is the notion that modern society (due in large part to the legacy of overt racism) provides privileges to white people that are denied to people of other races, especially black people, in subtle, often unnoticed ways. It's a fancy academic term that builds on already existing feelings like "white guilt," but it's clearly something new that academia developed.
It's not a chicken and an egg here. Feelings lead to rationalizations. Academic thought is rationalization. Ergo academic thought is ALWAYS downstream of of feelings. Feelings trump facts always. That's why you can punch holes in someone's arguments (their rationalizations) and they still will not change their mind. Because the rationalization is downstream of their internal sub-conscious feelings.
From what I can tell, you appear to have a near dogmatic belief in this. As long as you believe that arguments can't change someone's mind, I don't see why you would want to argue anything ever, such as in this comment thread. I think real-world evidence clearly shows that people tend to manipulate their logic and perception in order to flatter their feelings, and that whatever logic and perception they come up with also cycles back to affect their feelings. That is, even if feelings trump facts always, in the most literal sense of the word, it doesn't change the fact that beliefs about facts change feelings, and academia is and has affected people's beliefs about the facts. Especially for people who were already predisposed, via their feelings, to trust certain facts.
If academia did not exist, these parents and kids would still feel the same it just wouldn't be described in academic language. Academia is not as important as it thinks it is. So don't buy into it's own rhetoric.
"Feel the same" is sufficiently vague an idea that either this statement is meaningless or wrong. Without the development of concepts like "white privilege," many modern Blue Tribe people would still feel "white guilt" or believe that white people ought to feel "white guilt." They would not feel that each and every interaction between any white person and any black person in any context is tinged with injustice due to the subtle, imperceptible patterns and biases that we practice due to growing up in a "white supremacist" society that causes us to inevitably treat black people worse than white people which thus justifies explicit, overt treatment of black people better than white people. Some might, but there's no reason to believe that everyone would just spontaneously develop these ideas on their own based on their pre-existing feelings, not without some high status institution like academia telling them that there's something Correct about these developments of ideas that build on their pre-existing feelings (in this case white guilt).
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
7d ago
Amazing news. I will pray for your marriage.
ZanarkandAbesFan
7d ago
it's ignored unless you're a US adversary.
Surely it's the other way around? If you're not meaningfully dependent on the US then the opinions of the educated elite there don't matter. Azerbaijan and Armenia would seem to be an example of this, as well as your example of the USSR.
US backed forces ethnically cleansed parts of Iraq and Syria.
I don't know enough about this to comment.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
7d ago
Stop, stop, Sidney Sweeney was already attractive enough.
Yeah, no kidding. "Busty blondes are fascism!" Well, if them's the rules, then I guess I know which side I'm joining.
UBS estimated that in 2022, 96.6% of Lesotho's population had a net worth of less than $10k.
https://rev01ution.red/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/global-wealth-databook-2023-ubs.pdf
In 2017, 89% of Lesotho's population lived on less than $10/day:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-living-with-less-than-10-int--per-day?tab=chart&country=LSO
Edit: Also, top n is less informative than top x%. The poorest person in Tuvalu is in the top 10,000 richest adults in the country. Top 100k in Ethiopia (pop 132 million)? Sure, probably richer than the average American. But Lesotho's economy just isn't productive enough or large enough to support 100k genuinely wealthy people.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
7d ago
Probably 18 or 19 in 20 ‘blonde’ American women have dyed hair, something especially true when you leave the handful of places that still have a lot of Anglos and Nordics (Upper Midwest, Utah).
It's always shocking when I go back home (to one of those places) to visit after being in my heavily Hispanic area and I'm once again surrounded by blondes.
Turkey is an ally and military/economic partner to Israel and has always been, regardless of what politicians on both sides like to say in public.
You know better than me, but that's... not the impression I've gotten. Hosting members of Hamas doesn't look like what a military partner to Israel would do. I've also seen reports suggesting Turkey is involved in financing Hamas activities (they're Israeli sources, though I don't know what they'd stand to gain by lying about it).
Also I live and pay taxes in a country that does send the direct/indirect aid.
You live in the US? I'm not aware of any other country that sends aid to Israel.
TowardsPanna
7d ago
Stormveil:
Totalitarianit
7d ago
Well put. The bias in "neutral" spaces is something I've unsuccessfully argued with the common redditor and open leftists about for years at this point. Trying to focus in on this issue by having your average left-of-center person acknowledge it in these discussions is virtually impossible. The most condensed and easily deliverable version of this argument that I've come across is to present to people the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart. If they're the average dug-in redditor, they'll either claim the site itself is biased and unreliable or they'll pivot and say something like, "Left leaning views are just more inline with reality," and the discussion/argument is essentially over at that point. It's the same tactics over and over. They'll either grasp at something to discredit the source or demand you endlessly provide additional sources to corroborate it, or they'll implicitly admit to the bias and justify why it is this way, all while never actually admitting that it is.
It's like the scale of it is so large and ubiquitous that it's nearly impossible to recognize for some people, and for others it's The Celebration Parallax: That’s Not Happening and It’s Good That It Is.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
The thing that pisses me off the most about these Epstein conspiracy theories is that seemingly none of the people putting them forth have bothered to read the Inspector General's report of the investigation into his death. Hence, these people, yourself included, cite the "official explanation" without knowing what the official explanation even is, and go off half-cocked on theories of how Epstein could have been murdered that contradict the most basic facts of the case. To wit:
come on how hard is it to strange someone and wrap some cloth around him afterwards. Are you going to say that it would leave evidence of murder? The evidence was literally already examined by a pathologist claiming it's more indicative of murder, and summarily ignored.
The pathologist you're referring to is Dr. Michael Baden, who said specifically that Epstein suffered a hyoid bone fracture which is more indicative of manual strangulation, and that he'd never seen such a fracture occur in a case of suicide by hanging. Dr. Baden's personal experience aside, it is well-documented in the medical literature that such a fracture indeed does occur in a minority of hangings, particularly among older people. In any event, Dr. Baden didn't bother to address any of the other findings from the autopsy that indicate a hanging: The fractures in the other neck bones, the ligature pattern, the petechial hemorrhage, the plethora, the lack of lung muscle hemorrhage, and the lack of defensive wounds. None of these were consistent with manual strangulation.
Faking a hanging so that it fools a medical examiner isn't simply a matter of strangling the guy and wrapping a cloth around his neck afterwards. You have cause a number of specific injuries while not causing a number of other specific injuries, some of which won't manifest until time of autopsy. And, as far as Epstein is concerned, the murder would have had to accomplish this without Epstein fighting back at all.
The rest of your post just wanders back into the fever swamps where we go from Epstein being murdered by two compromised prison employees to there being an entire systemic effort to get rid of him involving practically everyone in the Department of Justice, plus various state and local officials as well, at which point I don't know what to tell you. Actually, I do know what to tell you: If you want to go on with this, read the report. The whole 120 pages. Tell me what you think is accurate and what information you had that the IG's office didn't bother considering. Then we at least have a basis for conversation.
The goblins are allegedly Jewish caricatures. A lot of the bits of evidence that are brought up - like a Star of David on the floor of Gringotts - are either coincidences or issues caused by the adaptation (the location they were filming in had them already).
On the other hand, they do run the banks, hounded at least one person in canon over debts and do have a different understanding of property (anything wrought by goblins is seen as only leased for the lifetime of the wizard who bought it which...you can see how that could lead to misunderstandings) that leads to at least one goblin betraying the team for treasure.
WhiningCoil
Ghost of Quokka's Future
7d ago
Indeed. I've been a proud Luddite since GPS. I look up directions, draw a map by hand if I have to, and commit it to memory. Although to my shame, I will use GPS for places I'm unlikely to ever return to on long road trips. LLMs inspire an innate disgust in me it's difficult to describe. Perhaps reading Dune as a child, and it's proscriptions against making a machine in the likeness of a human mind hit harder than it was meant to.
FtttG
7d ago
Out of curiosity, was she also Indian? If so, was she from the same caste as you?
In exchange, please tell me something useful about places to visit in London today.
I hope it's not too late, but the Barbican is pretty cool.
ABigGuy4U
7d ago
Unlike the movies, real life garrotes function by instantly crushing the windpipe, the killer doesn’t need to sit there for three and a half minutes choking the guy out. And controlling a resisting victim is pretty easy when you have three or four people.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
7d ago
sees box labeled "man-made horror (possibly beyond your comprehension)"
hmm, what could possibly be inside?
opens box
it's a man-made horror (possibly beyond my comprehension)
Yet another time I'm thankful my instinctive Luddism has spared me from such a thing.
comfortable
7d ago
There are people that believe that the goblins in the world of Harry Potter are a (racist) reference to Jews.
Gaashk
7d ago
Meritocracy is probably useful at very high, best in the world levels. Like I said, I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with an actually wise judge, who would look at a surgeon, or researcher, or entrepreneur -- how competent they are, who they're planning to bring with them, how excited they are to become American, etc, and let some number of competent, excited potential Americans over. On balance, I'd rather have Musk as an American than not. Or even Ramaswamy, despite having mixed feelings about some of the things he stands for. If there are 100 Von Neumanns out there somewhere, sure, let them in. If some of them are Chinese, let them in but watch them. If they start complaining about whiteness, or prom queens, or high school football, let them go back. Not that I even care for those specific things, but those are pretty bad red flags.
At the same time, no, I do not want Ramaswamy or Musk to be able to each import ten thousand compliant, desperate engineers from India. Even if they are marginally better than the locals (though I mostly doubt they are). They should have to work with Americans. If they're trying to do things Americans don't want to work on, for wages Americans are not willing to accept, while they should change their plans. I'm not so desperate for a Grok powered humanoid robot army in ten rather than thirty years.
While it's useful to have meritocracy at the top, I'm less convinced of its usefulness at the middle and bottom levels, especially with automation proceeding apace. I would prefer to live in a world where I work fewer hours, then bake, sew, and pick fruit with my kids. I already do that to some extent, and there's a lot of angst about how all the straightforward housewife tasks have been outsourced, and that it's not entirely a good thing. Like the communist Xitter about wanting to lead discussion groups and make clothes out of scraps. Things like sewing undergarments and picking strawberries are fine in moderation, and terrible as a full time job. Keeping a flock of chickens is fun, people will do it at cost. There are a decent number of tasks like that. American boys won't pull weeds for nine hours in the sun for $10/hr, while others might -- but the people who have accumulated nine hours of weeds are doing it wrong.
roystgnr
7d ago
he is arguably a Blue Triber who shares the values of Red Tribers
I'd say he's a Blue Triber who just has a soft spot for Red Tribers, which is even farther removed, and which makes the Red Tribe situation even more clearly sad. Although I admired the principles of Evan McMullin voters, I really feel for the religious conservatives who (perhaps correctly!) decided that their least awful electoral option in 2016 was Mr. "Grab them by the pussy". Many of them have since resolved the cognitive dissonance of all that by deciding that actually Trump is a good person, which is less sympathetic, but even more tragic, if only in the Greek sense.
Kudos for using "Blue Tribe" and "Red Tribe" accurately, though, not just as synonyms for "Democrat-leaning" and "Republican-leaning". TheMotte seems to be filled with Republican-leaning Blue Tribe folks so you'd think we'd slip up on that less often...
Supposedly the goblins who run Gringotts bank are reminiscent of antisemitic stereotypes. Your mileage may vary, I don't really see it.
Even if the accusation was well-founded, I imagine the Venn diagram of "people calling for JK Rowling's death" and "people enthusiastically celebrating the massacre of unarmed Israelis on October 7th" would show a great deal of overlap. Very few trans activists accusing JK Rowling of antisemitism actually care about antisemitism qua antisemitism: they just hate her because of her gender-critical opinions and are trying to tar her with as many other brushes as are available. See also the rather contrived accusations of Sino- and Hiberno-phobia.
(As an aside, there is at least one character who is canonically Jewish, a heroic Ravenclaw.)
hydroacetylene
7d ago
Look, I'd happily climb into the Experience Machine, though I'm genre savvy enough not to enter something marketed as a "Torment Nexus"
You will enter the total perspective vortex at first opportunity. It will tell you you are the most important thing in the universe, because it prioritizes repeat customers over working right, and in the way of AI’s everywhere it will convince you to start doing heroin and join IS. Sic semper thé upwardly mobile.
Those who accept mediocrity will write their union contracts and insurance regulations requiring a real human into the AI’s code base so their cushy sinecures are perceived as a law of physics. Sic semper thé yeomanry. Harold Lloyd Daggett buys another yacht.
ABigGuy4U
7d ago
And the Secret Speech was pretty hard for many to swallow. Remember, it’s called the secret speech because it only went out to party members. A lot of these people had turned in friends and colleagues on the assurances that this was for a good cause.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
7d ago
· Edited 7d ago
Of these two, only the first really applies to citizenship---that's easily resolved by rules against making someone stateless.
I don't understand your argument there - these rules exist as international agreements that are generally fairly well-respected, so doesn't that in fact make citizenship more like family, and therefore make moral intuitions about family membership more applicable to citizenship?
Are there other important special qualities of citizenship over other material rewards that would change this?
I think @OracleOutlook's response below already addressed the most important ones, so I'll just +1 it.
First, since citizenship in certain countries has such a huge material impact, it is a "reward" whether people want to think of it that way or not.
I think that in saying this, you also betray an interesting conflation of two different understandings of what meritocracy is. One of them is a sort of deontological one, under which to be a meritocrat is to hold that it is morally right that boons go to the most meritorious, while the other is more utilitarian, where to be a meritocrat is to say that granting awards and positions to the best is the optimal way to organise a society.
Your responses seem to place you in the former camp, while many of your interlocutors consider themselves to be meritocrats in the latter sense. As usual, non-central examples are the ones that really put the differences between deontologists and utilitarians in relief. The utilitarian case for meritocracy seems strong, but in reality most of its strength is concentrated in theoretical argument and precedent for the beneficial effects of central examples of it, that is, meritocratic distribution of awards and public positions within a nation. There is little to no precedent for meritocratic award of citizenship (outside maybe of the occasional microstate selling it), and a good volume of theoretical argument against it that is unique to the nationality case (see OracleOutlook's and my own response). Accordingly, the utilitarian who sees himself as a meritocrat because the benefits of meritocracy are well-supported will be parsing this label as referring to the well-supported core of meritocracy only, and not feel particularly compelled to support meritocratic award of citizenship either on the basis of "meritocracy is good" (deontologism!) or "how can you claim to be a meritocrat otherwise" (word games? virtue ethics?).
P.S. I'm not sure it's reasonable to say that genetic similarity is the best way to judge if you can relate to someone. Here, education, values, and interests seem to matter much more. It's way easier for me to relate to a random mathematician of any race than a random person of the same race as me. I don't think this is that unusual---at the very least, having a college degree is probably more relevant to relatability for you than race.
On an individual level, I don't deny that background winds up being more relevant (though it is by no means everything - my SO is in fact a random mathematician of [not my ethnicity], and for the least controversial example where genetic distance still rears its ugly head, when we are both sick, we can not eat the same things), but nobody is about to run a country that is all mathematicians. On a population level, all these individual values and interests and social niches level out - the Japanese mathematician and the Mexican mathematician might get along swimmingly, but if the Mexican mathematician then has a kid with his Mexican mathematician wife and it is sent to a kindergarten to be watched by the Japanese mathematician's kindergarten teacher cousin, I figure there will be friction.
Sure enough.
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