In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values • Hacker News Board

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#71

Post by lambdaphagy » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:24 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #40

rhizome wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this should all be short-circuited by the fact that cultures are not a fixed value that can be compared for equality. Congruence, perhaps, but there are too many moving parts in culture to be able to rank them, which is an implication of solving for a single (imaginary) term.

Right. For example, there is no one "white culture". I'm white, and there are plenty of white people in my home town with whom I share little to no cultural values. Any conversation about relative values of "cultures" is probably better cast as a discussion about cultural memes (in the original Dawkins sense [1]), with the understanding that the flow of memes tend to follow social contours as clusters, and interact w…

Relative to all people living today, let alone whom have ever lived, you probably share rather a high percentage of the variation in cultural values with white people, however construed. Check out this map, for example:

http://www.iffs.se/media/1906/culturemap_may2015.jpeg

and notice how Anglos, even when separated by oceans for hundreds of years, tend to cluster in one corner of values-space.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#72

Post by s17n » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

wsxcde wrote: post #46

Let's not get bogged down by the all cultures are not equal strawman. That is not at all the key point here. Amy Wax/OP's argument is problematic because it conflates very different things using a subtly disingenuous argument. She starts off by saying something completely uncontroversial: kids from stable marriages do well in school. But she then plays on the audiences implicit biases to imply -- but not explicitly a…

The question that the article raises is, should the Amy Wax face professional repercussions for making a racist argument? I think that as a law professor, the answer is yes - she should be held accountable for incompetence in op-ed writing in the same way that a scientist should be held accountable for incompetence in conducting an experiment.

If she were a math professor or something, I would say that she had the right to her opinion.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#73

Post by rxhernandez » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

Nomentatus wrote: post #61

taylodl wrote: post #7

If 'all cultures are not equal' is a false statement then we're stating 'all cultures are equal' which I interpret as saying there is no metric by which we can measure the 'goodness' or 'effectiveness' of a culture. So let's accept the statement 'all cultures are equal' at face value: all cultures are equal and therefore there exists no metric for measuring 'goodness' or 'effectiveness.' If C(now) captures my current…

"Good and bad is in the eye of the beholder and what you value." - Now put your hand on a hot stove and say that again. Nature forces some values. (quote from apoverton but the principle, vs Hume, applies to many other comments here.)

And some people would view getting put on a hot stove as a fun and exciting thing, so no, not really.

Unsure of why I'm getting downvotes.. Are people completely unaware of the fact that some people enjoy pain?

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#74

Post by antisthenes » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:30 PM UTC

bcoates wrote: post #62

wildmusings wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to accomplish the latter is to pull the excellent down to the level of mediocrity or worse. How do you propose to raise up a culture that doesn't value creativity and hard work, for example, to the level of success of one that does. Culture is much more than what food you eat and music you listen to. This reminds me of a famous Tocqueville quote: There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equali…

Culture and society engage with one another. To take an extremely concrete example, our society takes every possible opportunity to treat young unwed mothers like absolute shit. "Raising up" the culture of people who are unsurprised that people at the peak of their fertility tend to get pregnant even in an environment where marriage is increasingly unattainable to that population is more about not going out of our wa…

I take huge issue with this statement because it tries to sneak certain statements past the reader without evidence.

How do you mean marriage is increasingly unattainable ? A marriage license costs $55. Are you alluding to something else here?

Single mothers are one of the last bastions of subsidies and welfare, especially considering how everything else has been scaled down in the recent years.

> our society takes every possible opportunity to treat young unwed mothers like absolute shit.

I have plenty of anecdata to the contrary. I'd like to hear why you think this, there must be a somewhat personal reason.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#75

Post by exelius » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:34 PM UTC

I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with the original author's thesis: not all cultures are created equal. But the author does make a critical conservative assumption by implying that economic output is a proxy for "value".

This is honestly the critical point: our culture defines how we value things. Some cultures are not bothered by things like social welfare or socialist policies because the base unit of society is considered to be the family rather than the individual. Cultures like this may value things like "familial harmony" more than "individual prosperity".

So it's obvious that someone like the original author -- who likely grew up in this "bourgeois culture" -- would attribute everything bad in society to the decline in things she holds valuable. It's part of the definition.

As a counterpoint, American culture is much better for the individual than it was 30-40 years ago for anyone who isn't a straight white male. Those people have the viewpoint that things have improved. Bourgeois values aren't meaningful to these people because they never really applied.

So really, we're back to where we already knew we were: globalization had winners and losers. The losers were primarily located in the western middle class (i.e. the bourgeois class).

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#76

Post by gort » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

ABCLAW wrote: post #29

>"Does that make Wax a white supremacist for saying that culture matters for poverty-related outcomes, that not all cultures are equally good for escaping poverty, and that the 1950s American “bourgeois cultural script” was particularly good for that purpose?" This is the core premise of the article, the conclusion, of course, being 'no'. Unfortunately, it does not accurately deal with the fairly clear subtext being…

> Why is 'being ruled by white Europeans' the draw to migrants over, say, the relative wealth of the west in the aggregate?

It isn't of course.

But suppose there's a country, Foobaria, and "everyone" (hyperbolically speaking) wants to migrate there. But it has notoriously bad weather. In one sense it's true to say that "everyone wants to migrate to a country with bad weather" and in another sense it isn't.

(This is the extension/intension distinction.)

She can still be wrong. And of course it's hard to see inside people's heads and know what they really meant. One can certainly wonder why she phrased it like that -- but then, I don't know what she was asked. I'm having trouble finding this interview; is there a link somewhere?

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#77

Post by adrianratnapala » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:43 PM UTC

danfolkes wrote: post #18

Here is a follow-up article written by one of the 33 members of the University of Pennsylvania Law School faculty to sign a letter criticizing Amy Wax: Don’t Care if Amy Wax Is Politically Incorrect; I Do Care that She’s Empirically Incorrect https://heterodoxacademy.org/2017/09/03/i-dont-care-if-amy-w...

If that were what this was about, it would all be a bunch of papers and op-eds discussing the evidence. And it's nice that you can link to some of that, and I wish this controversy was all just ding-dong of evidence, counter-evidence and the interpretations thereof.

But it's hard to see the linked article as anything but a fig-leaf, when the centre of the actual controversy is an attempt to sack Prof Wax, on the grounds that her arguments are morally unacceptable.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#78

Post by solotronics » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

rpiguy wrote: post #54

padseeker wrote: post #19

"Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants" Already you lost me. There are plenty of single parents out of wedlock children in very white states like West Virginia, Kentucky, etc. How is rap culture or black people responsible for the action…

This is not thinly veiled racism. What the author was ineloquently trying to point out is simple. African American's have been screwed by the system and so they have been taught not only distrust the system, but also to resent authority. Furthermore, these communities are now self-seggragating. Where at one time there was a vision/dream/fantasy that African Americans and Whites were converging toward the same destina…

how do you change a social system without modifying its values? values lead to actions leads to change etc.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#79

Post by ianbicking » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:44 PM UTC

From the article:

"Of course we are always free to dispute each other; Wax’s colleagues could certainly have written essays or a collective essay debating her claims and pointing out flaws in her reasoning, but when is it morally and professionally appropriate to issue a collective public condemnation of a colleague?

"I think such collective actions are only appropriate when colleagues have clearly and flagrantly violated their professional duties. I mean things like data fabrication or taking bribes to produce dishonest academic papers desired by a trade association."

Well, that's just your opinion man.

This is one of the key claims of this article, and it has no support. Why is a collective response inappropriate here? Why should those students and professors who disagree with Amy Wax not band together intellectually and through collective speech? Why is a collective response only appropriate when someone is clearly and vagrantly violating their professional duties? The author is making a very extreme assertion, but does it as an aside.

Re: In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

#80

Post by darawk » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 9:50 PM UTC

AdeptusAquinas wrote: post #36

darawk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to compare a country like NZ to the US in a fair and meaningful way. NZ is a small, ethnically (and therefore more importantly culturally) homogenous country. Now, it's not completely homogenous, but it is much more so than the US. Being a democracy, the policies of the country are inseparable from its culture and demographics. You say universal healthcare might stem the tide of cultural breakdown. But we c…

I'd be careful around claims about cultural identity and homogeneity. A lot of countries, like the scandinavian ones and NZ (and Australia) can look that way from the outside, but I think its a simplistic view. From our perspective, for example, apart from the obvious catastrophic partisan politics that have gripped the US, the US looks like it has a united cultural identity (e.g. a religious devotion to the founding…

Ya, it's definitely a spectrum. NZ is far from the most homogenous, and certainly there are divisions within the Nordic countries. No arguments from me there. But I think its fair to say that the US is more diverse than either of those two places, and that comes with benefits and it comes with problems. My point though is that it does have consequences, which is something that seems unfashionable to point lately.