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

theguardian.com

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

#431

Post by monoideism »

standardUser wrote: post #305
monoideism wrote: post #265

This is not my experience in the US. Culture wars have invaded both work and family life. It's not a tiny minority, it's many, if not most, Americans. I feel sure most Americans have the same experience, but perhaps I'm an outlier?

I'm curious how culture wars have impacted your work and family life. I've lived most of my life in large metro areas, so from my perspective "culture wars" are mostly people in far away towns waving fists at us city folk. The actual impact on my life is minimal.

You live in a large metro area where beliefs are fairly uniform. It would be understandable if you share those beliefs that you wouldn't have any disagreements, right?

And I'm not sharing with HN the details of my family and workplace discussions, sorry. But maybe someone else here will be willing to. If you don't believe me, then that's OK, that's up to you.

Edit: I mean, the media even covers the near constant revolts of activist employees at Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase, and many other tech companies. Do you want me to find you some articles? Is this new to you?

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

#432

Post by supernova87a »

charlesu wrote: post #130
barry-cotter wrote: post #121

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…

>...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....

So, as long as you see some people of a given race and it meets some arbitrary % in your mind, that's enough, is that the argument you're making? No discrimination going on then?

This level of lack of critical thinking here is astounding, and it's sad (actually scary) that opinions like this might guide admissions policies.

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

#433

Post by frankish »

bluescrn wrote: post #203

From The Guardian, a not-insignificant player in those culture wars.

> Tim Dixon, co-founder of More in Common and co-author of the report, said that while there had been an increase in “culture war” politics in Britain, the country was far better placed to avoid further divisions than many other nations: “Both sides of a culture war rely on exaggerating the threat of the other,” he said. “Both sides want us to think that every person who is ‘on the other side’ to them has all these opposing views. The truth is many of these debates just pass most people by, because they are often based on creating false choices.The UK is actually in a better position than many countries and should be more optimistic.

It was a very sour taste in my mouth after reading this paragraph near the end and then seeing the exaggerated threats to garner donations.

> America faces an epic choice ... > ... in the coming weeks, and the results will define the country for a generation. These are perilous times. Over the last four years, much of what the Guardian holds dear has been threatened – democracy, civility, truth. > > The country is at a crossroads. The Supreme Court hangs in the balance – and with it, the future of abortion and voting rights, healthcare, climate policy and much more. Science is in a battle with conjecture and instinct to determine policy in the middle of a pandemic. At the same time, the US is reckoning with centuries of racial injustice – as the White House stokes division along racial lines. At a time like this, an independent news organization that fights for truth and holds power to account is not just optional. It is essential. > > Like many news organizations, the Guardian has been significantly impacted by the pandemic. We rely to an ever greater extent on our readers, both for the moral force to continue doing journalism at a time like this and for the financial strength to facilitate that reporting. > > We believe every one of us deserves equal access to fact-based news and analysis. We’ve decided to keep Guardian journalism free for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay. This is made possible thanks to the support we receive from readers across America in all 50 states. > > As our business model comes under even greater pressure, we’d love your help so that we can carry on our essential work. If you can, support the Guardian from as little as $1 – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

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

#434

Post by rayiner »

shadowgovt wrote: post #274
pvaldes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had to "confess" that I'm racist and promise to do better or it would have consequences for my career. So, basically inquisitor wannabees and pseudoscience cultists. Your colleague dodged a bullet. The idea that claiming that you are racist makes you not racist is totally gaga, random, and based in magical thinking, not in science. It only helps to hide in plain sight the real racists making much easier to admit…

The trainings I'm familiar with have the opposite intent: to help people who don't believe they are racists (or believe racism doesn't exist) understand the unconscious mental processes that feed into racism and the nature of structural discrimination, even when unintended.

We have been teaching people about unconscious bias for years without these theatrics.

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

#435

Post by [deleted] »

gsk22 wrote: post #375
da39a3ee wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (late 30s) am unable to talk to younger members (late 20s) of my family about science in western society because they believe that academic science is inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures, whereas I believe that there is no need to be anywhere near so cynical about academic science and that it is in fact one of the areas of society that we can be proud of. The younger members have grown u…

So in other words, it _hasn't_ invaded your family life. "Some of my family disagrees with my views" is different than "my family life has been upended/invaded".

[deleted]

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

#436

Post by rayiner »

shadowgovt wrote: post #325
rayiner wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re doing is called a motte and bailey fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy You’re defending diversity training, which nobody is attacking. We’re talking about a particular kind of rhetoric where people take personal responsibility in behalf of their race and label themselves with words that, in ordinary usage, have extremely inflammatory meanings. I’m from a “diverse background.” I…

You'd have to nail down what rhetoric you mean for me to have any response to that.

The example is in my OP: It's a session where white people acknowledge that they take personal responsibility for participating in a system of "white privilege" and admit to being "racist" and "gatekeepers of white supremacy." (That's the bailey.)

By contrast, your motte: "training on how to work with people from diverse backgrounds.

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

#437

Post by throwawaygh »

da39a3ee wrote: post #357
gsk22 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How has this so-called culture war invaded your family life?

I (late 30s) am unable to talk to younger members (late 20s) of my family about science in western society because they believe that academic science is inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures, whereas I believe that there is no need to be anywhere near so cynical about academic science and that it is in fact one of the areas of society that we can be proud of. The younger members have grown u…

"inherently corrupted by patriarchal and racist power structures" is a quite strong and specific (but I'm assuming also a bit of a strawman on your part). But "extremely misaligned incentives and pretty abusive to the foot soldiers in a way that compromises personal integrity" is a fair characterization of a lot of modern academic science. Everything about the way the system is designed incentivizes

Out of curiosity, do you have a STEM PhD? How many millions of dollars in grant money have you raised? How many 100+ citation papers have you published? Are you TT @ an R1 or are you a group lead industry research lab?

I ask because I find that the people who are most excited to defend "academic science" from these sorts of structural criticisms often don't actually have much experience working within the system they are defending. People who actually work in the system know there's plenty to critique.

We should be proud of what academic science has accomplished in the last ~70 years, but not blind to how the extremely poor treatment and high pressure put on grad students and early-career professors warps incentives, creates the conditions for abusive behavior, attracts the wrong sorts of people into management positions, etc.

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

#438

Post by tshaddox »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #289
another-dave wrote: post #56

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.

I don't think it's wise to make some guesstimates about the number of people who will be directly affected by each policy, then sort all policies by that number descending, and then expect or hope that only the top N policies on that list receive political attention.

For one thing, guesstimating the number of affected people is pretty subjective. A policy can be important to me even though it does not nominally affect me directly. Secondly, this method doesn't even attempt to weigh policies by anything else, like the magnitude of benefits/downsides, budgetary concerns, civil rights implications, etc. For instance, in my view, it's fine for a political issue involving state-sanctioned persecution or bigotry of a very small minority to share political attention with a large public health crisis.

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

#439

Post by TeMPOraL »

_jal wrote: post #135
another-dave wrote: post #56

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…

So, as in most market-driven things with negative impacts, it is more complicated than just one thing. You can think of it as a security issue. Alice wants to read the news, Bob wants to write it. Mallet wants to foster discussion of an idea of dubious worthiness to further nefarious but unstated aims. Alice is attracted to lurid, weird and scary, even though she mostly knows better, because we all are. Bob is attrac…

Don't forget about Evelyn, who makes money by exposing people to ads, and Steve, who provides a platform to do it and gets paid by Evelyn. Together, they create the primary pressure that forces stories to be attractive to the likes of Alice and Bob, and they'll more than happily enable Mallet, as long as his poison has a side effect of getting more Alices and Bobs to view stories filled with ads.

That's the problem here. Kill the advertising dependency, and Mallet will find it much harder to spread their poison.

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

#440

Post by rayiner »

shadowgovt wrote: post #324
luckylion wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting it's required to "confess that you're a racist" in a Mao-style struggle session to work with people from diverse backgrounds?

I'm definitely not. I also hold such descriptions of these trainings in high skepticism, because I've been through a similar training and had a coworker describe it as such when all the training was doing was surfacing the scientific evidence suggesting unconscious bias is a real phenomenon that people aren't aware of. The fact my colleague took it so personally says more about them, I think, than the training.

You don't have to believe the description of the session--there are screenshots in the article.
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