5 ms·

Just when I think the Kool-aid can't get any worse, there's a new level of peak brain damage - another dispatch from the backwards bizarro world where all of th

Just when I think the Kool-aid can't get any worse, there's a new level of peak brain damage - another dispatch from the backwards bizarro world where all of the extreme benefits of global power are just taken for granted and forgotten about, with the remaining dynamics framed in terms of being liability and injustice instead. In some sense the dynamic isn't surprising as it rhymes with how the left is often shouted down for criticizing while ignoring realpolitik, and maggots are coming from that place of self-centered entitlement cranked up to 11. It's still shocking though.

rayiner 2y ago
The "brain damage" is your hope-beyond-experience view that humans from different cultures are fungible, or that they somehow become American in beliefs and attitudes the moment they step foot on U.S. soil, or that somehow culture doesn't matter to a country.
- mindslight 2y ago
  Just because you can make up multiple straw men doesn't mean that I have to believe at least one of them. The point is that the entire framing is backwards - treating "American elites" (and "spots at Harvard", for that matter) as some fixed quantity to be preserved. It ignores the overarching soft power dynamic of foreign students going back to their home country while remaining with some cultural ties to the US. If foreign students want to then settle here and start climbing the US culture ladder to perhaps become part of "America's elites", that's a whole new process! And shamelessly professing aspects of their culture that go against American values will prevent them from climbing. Or at least I guess that was the case before they could find validation in the regressive anti-American maggot club.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    I’m struggling to figure out what I said that you disagree with. You’re talking about what happens if they go back. I’m talking about what happens if they stay here. Yes, I think America is pretty great and I want an elite that will perpetuate more of the same. You don’t have to agree. Which country’s culture would you rather import?
    - mindslight 2y ago
      > Which country’s culture would you rather import? The whole point is that this framing completely misses the larger overriding dynamic - Harvard is a means to export our culture! Foreign students come to Harvard because they (/their parents) want to partake in American culture.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        Why is that the “larger overriding dynamic?” I don’t care about out there. I care about in here. And what’s more likely? That students will export, say, the quintessential American skepticism of book learning to India and China, or that students from those countries will import those societies’ excessive respect for academia to America’s elite professional class?
        mindslight 2y ago
        > I don’t care about out there. I care about in here There's your misunderstanding. Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States! And while it would be theoretically possible to untangle in here from out there, doing so would require a team of surgeons rather than a gang of butchers. As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn.
        rayiner 2y ago
        > Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States! Seems unlikely, given that the U.S. has been among the per-capita richest countries in the world for almost its entire existence, including when we almost shut down immigration completely for almost half the 20th century. But I know we don’t see eye to eye about “soft power.” > As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn. I’m talking about something more fundamental than that, which is a fundamental deference to the wisdom of the common man. To use an example, Anglo-American tradition not only gave us jury trials, but the general attitude that ordinary people are capable of understanding and resolving sophisticated disputes. The vast majority of Asians I’ve encountered in America, by contrast, have traditional asian deference for academic knowledge and academic credentials. To use another example, consider Nixon’s Checkers speech: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-nixon-the-american-people-the-checkers-speech https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-ni.... I was thinking about this today and realized that my parents wouldn’t really get the speech. They’d understand the gist, but they wouldn’t really understand it the way it was meant to be understood, because it invoked various WASP norms that are alien to them. - He mentions growing up in modest circumstances, which is valued in WASP culture but looked down upon in desi culture. - He mentions military service, which is distinctly valued in WASP culture and not valued in desi culture. - He says his wife “doesn’t have a mink coat,” but “she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.” My parents would understand this to mean he’s saying he didn’t accept illicit money to buy a mink coat. Which isn’t really what he meant—he was a private practice lawyer he could’ve afforded to legitimately buy his wife a mink coat. He was conveying that they’re not *the kind of people who wear mink coats—an appeal to WASP austerity that is alien to desi culture. The Checkers speech was, of course, meant to be understood in substance as well as subtext by the American public at large. It’s not clear to me that would be true today.

rayiner 2y ago

The "brain damage" is your hope-beyond-experience view that humans from different cultures are fungible, or that they somehow become American in beliefs and attitudes the moment they step foot on U.S. soil, or that somehow culture doesn't matter to a country.

mindslight 2y ago
Just because you can make up multiple straw men doesn't mean that I have to believe at least one of them. The point is that the entire framing is backwards - treating "American elites" (and "spots at Harvard", for that matter) as some fixed quantity to be preserved. It ignores the overarching soft power dynamic of foreign students going back to their home country while remaining with some cultural ties to the US. If foreign students want to then settle here and start climbing the US culture ladder to perhaps become part of "America's elites", that's a whole new process! And shamelessly professing aspects of their culture that go against American values will prevent them from climbing. Or at least I guess that was the case before they could find validation in the regressive anti-American maggot club.
- rayiner 2y ago
  I’m struggling to figure out what I said that you disagree with. You’re talking about what happens if they go back. I’m talking about what happens if they stay here. Yes, I think America is pretty great and I want an elite that will perpetuate more of the same. You don’t have to agree. Which country’s culture would you rather import?
  - mindslight 2y ago
    > Which country’s culture would you rather import? The whole point is that this framing completely misses the larger overriding dynamic - Harvard is a means to export our culture! Foreign students come to Harvard because they (/their parents) want to partake in American culture.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      Why is that the “larger overriding dynamic?” I don’t care about out there. I care about in here. And what’s more likely? That students will export, say, the quintessential American skepticism of book learning to India and China, or that students from those countries will import those societies’ excessive respect for academia to America’s elite professional class?
      - mindslight 2y ago
        > I don’t care about out there. I care about in here There's your misunderstanding. Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States! And while it would be theoretically possible to untangle in here from out there, doing so would require a team of surgeons rather than a gang of butchers. As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn.
        rayiner 2y ago
        > Our enviable lifestyles in here are largely supported by our foreign relations out there - in this context, that exporting of culture such that elites from other cultures still strive to send their kids to college in the United States! Seems unlikely, given that the U.S. has been among the per-capita richest countries in the world for almost its entire existence, including when we almost shut down immigration completely for almost half the 20th century. But I know we don’t see eye to eye about “soft power.” > As far as the specifics of culture, the example of the overemphasis on book learning is a bit rich in the context of our homegrown MBAs pathological love for living out Goodhart's law. I've certainly encountered my share of foreigners over reliant on rote memorization. The thing is as long as they stay that way, they don't get far in America - and this is obvious to their fellow students. They're not becoming members of the "elite professional class", and nobody is following their tack thinking it's a good way to learn. I’m talking about something more fundamental than that, which is a fundamental deference to the wisdom of the common man. To use an example, Anglo-American tradition not only gave us jury trials, but the general attitude that ordinary people are capable of understanding and resolving sophisticated disputes. The vast majority of Asians I’ve encountered in America, by contrast, have traditional asian deference for academic knowledge and academic credentials. To use another example, consider Nixon’s Checkers speech: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-nixon-the-american-people-the-checkers-speech https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-senator-ni.... I was thinking about this today and realized that my parents wouldn’t really get the speech. They’d understand the gist, but they wouldn’t really understand it the way it was meant to be understood, because it invoked various WASP norms that are alien to them. - He mentions growing up in modest circumstances, which is valued in WASP culture but looked down upon in desi culture. - He mentions military service, which is distinctly valued in WASP culture and not valued in desi culture. - He says his wife “doesn’t have a mink coat,” but “she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat.” My parents would understand this to mean he’s saying he didn’t accept illicit money to buy a mink coat. Which isn’t really what he meant—he was a private practice lawyer he could’ve afforded to legitimately buy his wife a mink coat. He was conveying that they’re not *the kind of people who wear mink coats—an appeal to WASP austerity that is alien to desi culture. The Checkers speech was, of course, meant to be understood in substance as well as subtext by the American public at large. It’s not clear to me that would be true today.