6 ms·

I don't think that celebration of the arts and science is a good metric of pro-intellectual culture. The US does all these things, too. It has a shorter histo

I don't think that celebration of the arts and science is a good metric of pro-intellectual culture. The US does all these things, too. It has a shorter history, though, so it has a smaller amount of cultural works (but you said celebration, anyway). I think pro-intellectual culture is one that values thoughtful questioning, including of the status quo. Opinions are required to have a good argument; dogma (religious, political, technical, or otherwise) is not acceptable. It's G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis instead of fundamentalists; it's The Federalist Papers instead of "the free market fixes all problems"; it's original Agile instead of process-Agile; it's real Hungarian notation instead of MS-docs-"Hungarian" notation.

52-6F-62 7y ago
I agree. My answer needed more qualifiers.
adventured 7y ago
> The US does all these things, too. It has a shorter history, though An important point that is being almost universally ignored here. The history of a modern, organized US is about 150 years old at this point. Anything prior to the Civil War is a baby-level of development, hopeful, maybe, could be, nation just learning how to crawl. It's rather absurd that the US is being browbeaten in this thread against cultures that have existed for many hundreds of years or more; in some cases a thousand plus years. The US has shifted from being ~80% white European-descendant culturally to being 55%-60% (in real terms, as the US has ~25 million illegal immigrants that are never net leaving, and they contribute culturally to the pool) in the span of 40x years, with a massive injection of Asian and Latin-American-Hispanic cultures since the early 1970s. With the point being, the US isn't even remotely close to being a settled, well established cultural structure. Who knows what it will or won't become in 200 more years.
- zenhack 7y ago
  Your numbers are way off: * The US is still 70+% white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... * The number of undocumented immigrants is much lower than that: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-population-study.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-pop...
  - maire 7y ago
    I believe the previous poster was talking about ethnicity and you are talking about race. Race=biology and ethnicity=culture. The census mixes the concepts of race and ethnicity. That is why if you total the census percentages in your wikipedia article they come out to 110%. Some people are double counted in two different groups in the census.
    - zenhack 7y ago
      Perhaps -- it would be easier to scruitinize if the OP cited where their numbers came from. And given that the undocumented immigrants number is still off by more than a factor of 2, to me it reads more like it's just reactionary nonsense heresay rather than having any actual basis in reality. I'm open to being wrong though. Also: * I don't see any reason to believe nobody has more than one "cultural identity." * Race is really more about culture than biology too. Maybe less so, but if for some reason you were motivated to come up with some categorization of people based on their biological ancestry, the races that we talk about wouldn't make a ton of sense. When you hear people saying that race is "socially constructed," this is what they're talking about. The Irish weren't considered white a century ago, and it's not like the change came about due to some scientific breakthrough.
      - maire 7y ago
        Yep. I was also pondering this point. I have always found the whole Hispanic / Latino question in the census confusing. What are people trying to do with this information? Why not call out other ethnic groups? The history of the Irish is a good example of how ethnic groups change and assimilate over time.
    - acjohnson55 7y ago
      Race is not really biology. At least, not in a way that isn't arbitrary. It's kind of like the concept of "music". There's no good way to put tight bounds around it, because it's ultimately a social concept.

52-6F-62 7y ago

I agree. My answer needed more qualifiers.

adventured 7y ago

> The US does all these things, too. It has a shorter history, though An important point that is being almost universally ignored here. The history of a modern, organized US is about 150 years old at this point. Anything prior to the Civil War is a baby-level of development, hopeful, maybe, could be, nation just learning how to crawl. It's rather absurd that the US is being browbeaten in this thread against cultures that have existed for many hundreds of years or more; in some cases a thousand plus years. The US has shifted from being ~80% white European-descendant culturally to being 55%-60% (in real terms, as the US has ~25 million illegal immigrants that are never net leaving, and they contribute culturally to the pool) in the span of 40x years, with a massive injection of Asian and Latin-American-Hispanic cultures since the early 1970s. With the point being, the US isn't even remotely close to being a settled, well established cultural structure. Who knows what it will or won't become in 200 more years.

zenhack 7y ago
Your numbers are way off: * The US is still 70+% white: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit... * The number of undocumented immigrants is much lower than that: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-population-study.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/us/illegal-immigrants-pop...
- maire 7y ago
  I believe the previous poster was talking about ethnicity and you are talking about race. Race=biology and ethnicity=culture. The census mixes the concepts of race and ethnicity. That is why if you total the census percentages in your wikipedia article they come out to 110%. Some people are double counted in two different groups in the census.
  - zenhack 7y ago
    Perhaps -- it would be easier to scruitinize if the OP cited where their numbers came from. And given that the undocumented immigrants number is still off by more than a factor of 2, to me it reads more like it's just reactionary nonsense heresay rather than having any actual basis in reality. I'm open to being wrong though. Also: * I don't see any reason to believe nobody has more than one "cultural identity." * Race is really more about culture than biology too. Maybe less so, but if for some reason you were motivated to come up with some categorization of people based on their biological ancestry, the races that we talk about wouldn't make a ton of sense. When you hear people saying that race is "socially constructed," this is what they're talking about. The Irish weren't considered white a century ago, and it's not like the change came about due to some scientific breakthrough.
    - maire 7y ago
      Yep. I was also pondering this point. I have always found the whole Hispanic / Latino question in the census confusing. What are people trying to do with this information? Why not call out other ethnic groups? The history of the Irish is a good example of how ethnic groups change and assimilate over time.
  - acjohnson55 7y ago
    Race is not really biology. At least, not in a way that isn't arbitrary. It's kind of like the concept of "music". There's no good way to put tight bounds around it, because it's ultimately a social concept.