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Obama is very far from the "median black guy", but it's irrelevant, especially since both median Londoner and Dubliner shifted towards the median NYer...

by pas 4y ago

dehugger 4y ago
How does the median relate to the whole? If someone is far from the median Texan do the stop being a Texan? If a Korean person loves and emulates French culture do they stop being Korean? If a white person grows up in a heavily Chinese neighborhood and subscribes to the culture they grew up with are they less white? The idea that drifting from the median of a given ethnic/cultural group invalidates you as a member of that group is disturbing. Doubly so with race.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pas 4y ago
  the median matters as in most distributions that's what others will see as "representative" of the whole population. Unfortunately with our amazing engagement-maximizing hate machines like Twitter/Facebook/FoxNews (and their older, but still generally fucked up kin, 0-24 news cycle, MSM, Hollywood) what people think of other people can be very distorted, but there are trends that percolate through. The original post basically has a claim that "Ireland is more like UK now than it is like old Ireland", which is true, but it doesn't explicitly talk about how "UK is also not like old UK". (Those London inspired bars are themselves inspired by NY bars.) It just mentions how Irish cultural politics is American. > The idea that drifting from the median of a given ethnic/cultural group invalidates you as a member of that group is disturbing. Doubly so with race. .. yeah. and ... nobody said that.
scoofy 4y ago
Again, my very point is that caring, at all, about median-ness of a person when it comes to identity, is very much a True Scotsman game. It is reversing the directionality between an identity and a cultural norm, and redefining the identity by the norm, instead of the other way around. Lots of people do that, many as a proxy for a completely different argument, but lots of people also do lots of things that aren't sound reasoning.
- pas 4y ago
  Yes, indeed. I think this particular section of the text is okay, because it has a very simple and sane claim that culture shifted, and it's simply comparing Dublin to old Dublin, London to old London, etc. (I don't want to really go into this, but there are definitely Irish pubs in Dublin that are more old-Dublin-like than modern London bars. But the claim is at least not a fallacy.) Talking about culture, certain elements of it, behaviors, their prevalence, origin, cross-pollination between cultures, etc. are completely valid. The problem is that many people automatically bring their own value judgments, their nostalgia, and their imprecise colloquial language into these discussions, which then - understandably - cause others to hyperreact to these, as these are hot topics.

Obama is very far from the "median black guy", but it's irrelevant, especially since both median Londoner and Dubliner shifted towards the median NYer...

by pas 4y ago

Obama is very far from the "median black guy", but it's irrelevant, especially since both median Londoner and Dubliner shifted towards the median NYer...

dehugger 4y ago

How does the median relate to the whole? If someone is far from the median Texan do the stop being a Texan? If a Korean person loves and emulates French culture do they stop being Korean? If a white person grows up in a heavily Chinese neighborhood and subscribes to the culture they grew up with are they less white? The idea that drifting from the median of a given ethnic/cultural group invalidates you as a member of that group is disturbing. Doubly so with race.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pas 4y ago
the median matters as in most distributions that's what others will see as "representative" of the whole population. Unfortunately with our amazing engagement-maximizing hate machines like Twitter/Facebook/FoxNews (and their older, but still generally fucked up kin, 0-24 news cycle, MSM, Hollywood) what people think of other people can be very distorted, but there are trends that percolate through. The original post basically has a claim that "Ireland is more like UK now than it is like old Ireland", which is true, but it doesn't explicitly talk about how "UK is also not like old UK". (Those London inspired bars are themselves inspired by NY bars.) It just mentions how Irish cultural politics is American. > The idea that drifting from the median of a given ethnic/cultural group invalidates you as a member of that group is disturbing. Doubly so with race. .. yeah. and ... nobody said that.

scoofy 4y ago

Again, my very point is that caring, at all, about median-ness of a person when it comes to identity, is very much a True Scotsman game. It is reversing the directionality between an identity and a cultural norm, and redefining the identity by the norm, instead of the other way around. Lots of people do that, many as a proxy for a completely different argument, but lots of people also do lots of things that aren't sound reasoning.

pas 4y ago
Yes, indeed. I think this particular section of the text is okay, because it has a very simple and sane claim that culture shifted, and it's simply comparing Dublin to old Dublin, London to old London, etc. (I don't want to really go into this, but there are definitely Irish pubs in Dublin that are more old-Dublin-like than modern London bars. But the claim is at least not a fallacy.) Talking about culture, certain elements of it, behaviors, their prevalence, origin, cross-pollination between cultures, etc. are completely valid. The problem is that many people automatically bring their own value judgments, their nostalgia, and their imprecise colloquial language into these discussions, which then - understandably - cause others to hyperreact to these, as these are hot topics.