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‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

theguardian.com

411–420 of 674 posts

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#411
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UCSF has a useful overview on the topic. https://diversity.ucsf.edu/resources/state-science-unconscio...

Quite biased. At least the Wikipedia page includes a Criticism section. Also, as with most psychology, the prior should be that all these studies are a result of p-hacking and publication bias (i.e. that the effect is actually noise). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit-association_test#Crit... Also pretty obvious biased cherry picking on that page. Counterexample: Women preferred 2:1 over men for STEM faculty pos…

I don't see how the provided counterexample is a counterexample. It appears to indicate unconscious bias favoring women in STEM faculty positions for hiring.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#412

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention.

> In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention.

One factor in that is America is a pretty unequal society, and problems the relatively wealthy [1] face receive disproportionate attention than those primarily confined to the less wealthy. Not saying that's the only factor, but it's definitely a major one.

Ditto with de-industrialization, which a sibling comment mentioned. The relatively wealthy gain disproportionately from it in the short term, and those who are disproportionately hurt by it are less wealthy and typically live in unfashionable areas. Predictably, their problems get relatively less attention than they probably should (esp. since the relatively wealthy have the option of hand-waving those problems away with stuff like "Pareto efficiency," etc.).

[1] I'd count software engineers and similar professionals as "relatively wealthy."

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're talking about people who routinely get murdered and harassed by police, disenfranchised, paid less ins salary, and excluded from many professional roles by default. You're of course right that the criminal justice system treats minorities very badly, and that many people are unfairly disenfranchised and excluded from many professional roles due to their past interactions with this problematic system. But that…

Why add the word "irredeemably?"

In diversity trainings I've received over the past few years, it's been emphasized that the racism of society necessarily causes me to personally be racist. No amount of awareness, care, or action on my part will erase the racial bias which (the trainings say) is embedded deep within me; the only course of action is to continually struggle against it.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#414

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

>I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. I understand your argument but I also in no way want to distract from the culpability owned by social media companies, their product designers and managers, and the people who wrote the code to implement their desires. They are ultimately guilty for the damage they have wrought on our societies. Traditional media companies may have exacerbated the…

I'm going to retort, specifically in the context of a very important issue in the US currently: the BLM movement.

Contrary to popular thought, the "liberal" media utterly failed minorities. The abuse of minorities in the US spans generations and has consistently been relegated to the margins of mainstream news. It has been typical in the US -- for decades -- for the NY Times to grant a single death in Israel front page coverage while a death of an African American at the hands of police in NYC would barely get coverage. My point is not that either is acceptable -- but rather that both are bad. Perhaps non-coverage of an incident in NY is worse because a NY paper might want to consider the atrocities happening right down the street.

The BLM movement finally came to the forefront not because of the "liberal" media but in spite of it. The BLM movement was enabled by Social Media. If Twitter did not exist, there is no reason to assume we would have made any progress.

The media overall and the liberal media have lost part of their control over the narrative (and the power that selective coverage conveys) and trying to blame things on social media. But believe this -- what we have seen in 2020 is progress. As messy and as ugly as it is, we've actually moved forward with minority rights.

Consider also how hypocritical the coverage has been. Liberal media tells us that "Silicon Valley lacks diversity". TBH it does, but you know the real problem is not SV, it is a national media controlled by four families with zero minorities on their boards and executive staff -- telling an industry with huge numbers of minorities (including many brown people in senior/CxO ranks) they lack diversity.

SV does need to get better, but saying SV is the start and end of all problems is absolutely false.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#415
post #142

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

Sometimes I wish I had a way to block Twitter from my life completely. I don't even use it, but I wish for an AdBlock-like tool that would: - block Twitter content in news articles - block links to articles with Twitter content from ever being shown to me in the first place Most news articles provide little value to my life anyway, but I don't think I've ever read an article referencing Twitter quotes that was worthw…

Twitter links on my phone never work... i will click on the link to a tweet, and then it will just say "failed to load content"

So I guess I somehow do block twitter?

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first describes a quasi-religious ritual in which all participants ritually affirm that they are unworthy sinners, racists. Those who believe get the satisfaction of publicly proclaiming their sin, signaling their superiority over the outsiders. Those who don’t believe have their faces rubbed in the fact that other people have the power to make them lie in public about who they are and what they believe. It shows…

> The first describes a quasi-religious ritual in which all participants ritually affirm that they are unworthy sinners, racists. Why would being racist make someone an unworthy sinner? Racism is just treating others differently based on their race. It’s not weird or evil. In fact, it’s perfectly normal and even understandable. Humans have probably always separated themselves into groups. Even chimpanzees do it. I th…

> Meanwhile, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, and UVA all have affirmative action and are doing fine. Decades of supposedly different standards haven’t hurt their standing. They continue to graduate a diverse class of high achievers that are well-represented in just about every field imaginable. How does that square with your claims?

The issue is these institutions cast a way wider net for their admission pool compared to a high school.

Really, MIT gets applicants from everywhere in the world and kids will gladly relocate to Boston to attend. A high school, especially a public one, can only expect applicants from its county.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elite colleges relying on high school grades and letters of recommendation instead of objective blindly marked tests open to all is replacing one test with others. The others allow much more room for picking the right sort of person. That was the entire point of instituting holistic admission at prestige US universities, to keep out Jews. The modern drive to eliminate tests is in large part to keep out Asians. Nothin…

Standardized tests could also be considered a way for picking the right kind of person: namely, people who know that standardized tests are something to prepare for. I’ve tutored students at both elite and underperforming high schools. Students at elite schools, irrespective of their socioeconomic status, are highly aware of the importance of standardized tests. Some of the underperforming high schools don’t even adm…

> As for affirmative action being an effort to keep out Asians...have you been to Harvard’s campus? There are many, many Asian students there. In fact, nearly one in five students at Harvard are of Asian descent. The idea that elite schools are purposely excluding Asians is absurd on its face. The people pushing the idea have an axe to grind and it usually isn’t actually in the interest of Asian-Americans.

Are there any elite school (so sourcing students from the same pool of applicants) that don't include race in their admission process? Would be interesting to compare the demographics.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#418
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know those diversity sessions... They claim everyone who is white or passing as white is racist. I had to "confess" that i'm racist and promise to do better or it would have consequences for my career. Sidenote: I volunteer at a refugee center and took in a syrian family. Literally hitler, i know. A colleague got fired because he wouldn't confess and left the session. So even if that Dean said he is a racist, he's…

Even worse. If these high ranking people are so afraid for their careers that they will say these things even if they don't believe them then the few people who do believe it are indeed quite powerful.

Not necessarily. Preference falsification is a thing; it's quite possible for a organization to enforce compliance with a principle which no individual member of the organization sincerely holds. In cases of large scale preference falsification, everybody lies to fit in with everybody else, who are also lying for the same reason.

Such scenarios may be susceptible to preference cascades though, when people realize that they're actually in good company and suddenly feel free to act and say as they truly wish. When that happens, change is rapid. The personal guards of a hated dictator may switch sides overnight and execute the leader they would have killed others for the day before.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#419
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention.

> In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention. One factor in that is America is a pretty unequal society, and…

Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy?

Because I sure don't see opiate abuse or ODs as a problem disproportionately affecting the poor. Sure, it affects a lot of poor people, but it also affects a fair number of the wealthy, quite possibly in numbers greater than their proportion in the population. (It's hard to judge because every celebrity overdose will be widely reported, so availability bias might be affecting my perception.)

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#420

Reminds me of the research NPR did before closing their comments section. >In July, NPR.org recorded nearly 33 million unique users, and 491,000 comments. But those comments came from just 19,400 commenters, Montgomery said. That's 0.06 percent of users who are commenting, a number that has stayed steady through 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2016/08/17/4895169...

That pretty well matches the 90-9-1 rule: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/

I have to say that the term "lurkers" to describe the 90% who don't participate rubs me a little the wrong way. I know this point is somewhat trivial, but it has a negative connotation that seems to promote the assumption that the only "correct" way to use social media is for all to participate.

On the flip side, I wonder if everyone on social media were to comment on most items they had interest in, if it wouldn't completely drown out all of the extreme viewpoints. It may actually make social media extremely boring, as compared to the current standard. One can dream...

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