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In Defense of Amy Wax’s Defense of Bourgeois Values

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

#111

Post by icebraining »

nyolfen wrote: post #89
colanderman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

would you say there is no such thing as black culture?

Is there? Does a black person from Brazil share a culture with a black person from Sweden or from Pakistan?

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

#112

Post by djrogers »

ameister14 wrote: post #41
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…

I think the evidence of mass emigration from White European countries in the recent past does enough to prove her point wrong.

This is clearly an aside from TFA, but what are you talking about? Europe has had mass immigration recently, not emigration.

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

#113

Post by mistermann »

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…

> But she then plays on the audiences implicit biases to imply -- but not explicitly articulate -- a completely unsubstantiated racist claim: inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy.

I beg you to walk me through the logic of how reading this essay left you with the idea that "inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy"?

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

#114

Post by pamqzl »

jancsika wrote: post #70

> All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy. So for which statement is the author providing evidence? The first or the second? They are two completely different statements.

No they're not, the second is just a clarification of the sense in which the first was meant.

By comparison, take the statement "All men are not equal. Or at least, they're not equal in their ability to play football". The second statement is obviously true, the first is controversial.

Why is that so? How can all men be equal if they're so obviously unequal in just about any metric you might choose to measure them on? Because they're equal in one specific sense: that we (most of us) believe they should have equal rights.

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

#115

Post by weberc2 »

exelius wrote: post #75

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 o…

Could you clarify your argument? It sounds like you're saying something to the effect of "The author is just upset that life is better for people with different attributes than her; no one can legitimately hold her point of view". I don't think that's what you mean, but I want to give you the opportunity to clarify.

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

#116

Post by ouid »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #109
ouid wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Which is easy to measure I think this might be formally incomputable...

Well, it seems to me intuitively obvious that cultures that value education prepare children better for their economic future than cultures that don't value education. I may not be able to compute it. I may not even be able to measure it. But I think that anyone who disagrees is making a far less reasonable claim than I am making, and therefore has the burden of proof.

The problem with the computation is over what length of time you define economic future.

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

#117

Post by kelnos »

rxhernandez wrote: post #73
Nomentatus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

You make a good point that there are rarely any absolutes, but your example ends up reinforcing the parent's point: everything that "we" consider good or bad amounts to collective opinion. You can probably find a fringe group that has just about any opinion you want to dream up, but if it's rejected by the vast majority of the population, it's going to be considered "bad".

You can also examine things from other perspectives.

Darwinian, perhaps: does enjoying pain give any kind of evolutionary advantage? Maybe in a few niche areas, but overall, no, since pain is a way for our brains to signal damage, or future damage if we keep doing what we're doing. Ignoring pain up to a certain threshold can be useful, but enjoying pain to your detriment is not.

Or maybe just economic: does enjoying pain give any kind of economic advantages?

And so on...

I think it's important to acknowledge that there are no absolutes when it comes to opinion, but sometimes you just have to observe near-unanimity and go with it.

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

#118

Post by nyolfen »

icebraining wrote: post #111
nyolfen wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would you say there is no such thing as black culture?

Is there? Does a black person from Brazil share a culture with a black person from Sweden or from Pakistan?

i suppose that there is no correct answer to this, but i believe that if there are people who mutually identify in a particular way and share practices and beliefs then it can be said that they belong to a culture

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

#119

Post by icebraining »

kareemsabri wrote: post #68
apoverton wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good and bad is in the eye of the beholder and what you value. Is American culture (a loaded term because American culture is the product of numerous sub-cultures) better than all other cultures because of our economic strength? If not, then what are the objective measures that define a "good" culture. I'm very glad slavery doesn't exist, because I value equality and freedom. Yet still, I'd ask who is the authority t…

That's called moral relativism. It does't get you very far, because it is a belief system with no values, and therefore nothing to aim at. There are some tools for objectively judging morality aka "good and bad". One is the principle of universality. So an outcome is moral if you can reasonably state that you would be equally happy to be on either side of the table. Slavery generally fails this test, since most peopl…

There's nothing objective about picking and applying an arbitrary principle, though.

Also, it's not true that a moral relativist must have no values. One can have values while believing they are not objective, but closer to preferences held very strongly.

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

#120

Post by stijnh »

exelius wrote: post #75

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 o…

>Cultures like this may value things like "familial harmony" more than "individual prosperity".

In the article, it was stated that there is a relationship here. Children are much more likely to be successful in live if their parents were married.

>the author [..] would attribute everything bad in society to the decline in things she holds valuable. It's part of the definition.

No, that's just a strawman.

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