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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

#491

Post by throwaway2245 »

reccanti wrote: post #336
throwaway2245 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't really matter whether 30% of the population supports these things or 60%. In two-party democracies, 30% and 60% are exactly the percentages that do matter. At 30% support you can expect no change - even human rights violations will scarcely be considered a relevant political issue with such a level of support. Once you hit 60% support, you can expect reform that won't be rolled back. Exactly as we have s…

It’s true that these numbers do matter when it comes to _implementing_ these laws, my argument is that it isn’t a useful barometer for the quality of the ideas. In your example, 60% of people didn’t support gay marriage in 2005. I would argue that gay marriage didn’t become a “better” idea between 2005 and 2015. It was always a good idea that provided tangible benefits to gay people, public opinion didn’t just reflec…

I agree with everything you have said and would add - 70% of the population can be wrong.

It's evident from these examples that the public can change their mind even over a relatively short period of time.

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

#492

Post by notsureaboutpg »

originalvichy wrote: post #32

I’m a person who has seen the culture war start and evolve to its current status. I knew it became about money when certain outspoken people in the movement against ”left wing” ideas started going on speaking tours and selling books. They would act as though they were intellectuals and people who had common sense. I listened to hours and hours of them talking, and an observant person saw through their act pretty quic…

I 100% agree with you but then you know one of the so-called college kids with blue hair married into my family and it's never made me tune in more to these "outrage porn" sellers than ever in my life.

I think perhaps much of their audience has real-life relationships (through work, family, etc) with one of those caricatures they make and that's probably what drives a lot of their audience.

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

#493

Post by stale2002 »

gsk22 wrote: post #489
stale2002 wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then you agree that this stuff is invading people's personal life a lot, which was the original question? Cool. You agree with me.

If you want to play that game, the original statement was: "Culture wars have invaded both work and family life." I questioned whether this was really "invading" family life - that implies that across large swathes of the American population, family/home life has been meaningfully changed. I did not question whether political discussions had increased in the public sphere, and as you mentioned, I agreed with that poi…

> family/home life has been meaningfully changed.

Ok, and I gave them descriptions for how life has changed in my response to that.

I gave examples of frequent political discourse that I've been seeing lately, especially online.

> I did not question whether political discussions had increased in the public sphere, and as you mentioned, I agreed with that point of view.

So then you agree with the factual descriptions that I laid out in my response.

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

#494

Post by renewiltord »

stale2002 wrote: post #421
jacobion wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karl Marx WAS a great economist. Is this something one is no longer allowed to say without being smeared as an extremist?

> Karl Marx WAS a great economist. He really was not. He was great at politics. He was great at taping into things that workers cared about. But his actual economics that he laid out, in Das Kapital? The actual mathmatical equations in it, and falsifiable predictions in that book? The labor theory of value? All pretty worthless. Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. It is non-sense.…

Worthless or a stepping stone? The Platonic conception of knowledge is obvious nonsense today. I am, in my epistemology, superior to Plato. But it is named Platonic though I achieved the understanding of its flaws as a teenager. And even just for the conception of this epistemology, Plato is remembered. It is not known as Wiltordian epistemology after my teenage revelations.

That's because in many things in science and knowledge, being among the first to predict things wrong in an interesting manner is valuable.

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

#495

Post by TMWNN »

croon wrote: post #123
TMWNN wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No American on that list got indicted of anything related to "Russiagate", but for unrelated procedural crimes discovered during the investigation. (You know the saying that everyone wittingly or unwittingly commits three crimes a day?) Several Russian agents were indicted for Russiagate-related things; Putin will turn his goons over to US custody any day now.

> but for unrelated procedural crimes discovered during the investigation The "unrelated" is completely false, which invalidates your entire argument. Name an American indicted for unrelated crimes and maybe I can fill in the connection. It's mostly covered in the wiki under each of their paragraphs though.

>It's mostly covered in the wiki under each of their paragraphs though.

You're hoping that people won't bother to read said Wiki, or get confused by the legalese.

Papadopoulos: Indicted for making a false statement to FBI.

Manafort and Gates: Indicted for not registering as foreign agents of Ukraine (which, you might have noticed, is sort of an enemy of Russia right now)

Flynn: Indicted for making a false statement to FBI. (Forced by lack of legal fees into pleading guilty, which later caused problems when the government tried to drop charges.)

Pinedo (Who? Exactly): Indicted for identity fraud.

van der Zwaan: Indicted for making false statements (and not an American, anyway).

Cohen: Indicted for making false statements.

Stone: Indicted for making false statements and witness tampering.

Then we have people like Carter Page, whose name was raked over the coals for years because a FBI lawyer intentionally altered evidence (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report...) showing that far from being a Russian asset, Page had for years briefed the CIA every time he met with suspicious Russians. (Got to love how the Times describes said altering evidence as a "serious error".) You want an actual Russiagate-related indictment and guilty plea? Kevin Clinesmith, said FBI lawyer, is your man.

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

#496

Post by rayiner »

shadowgovt wrote: post #464
rayiner wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly, I don't see much distinction between teaching people about structural privilege and suggesting they admit they benefit from it. Difference of degree, perhaps, but not much. You trusted your alma mater when you were taught there; not trusting the direction it's taking now? Is it possible you're not seeing the picture the way they are?

But do you see the difference between teaching people about structural racism and having them stand up and declare "I am a racist" and "I am a gatekeeper of white supremacy?" Two things about that are outside acceptable norms:

1) Having people declare personal complicity for a general social ill; and

2) Using words that have widely-understood connotations to mean something different in order to achieve shocking rhetorical effect.

It's not just inconsistent with social norms, it's alienating to many non-white people. I don't think the well-meaning white people doing this (and almost everyone involved in this is white) really understand that we have to actually go on and try to interact normally our professors and administrators after this.

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

#497

Post by rayiner »

shadowgovt wrote: post #476
rayiner wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nothing about the article suggests that text was forced. I'm not going to trust the Free Beacon's interpretation of some out-of-context screenshots.

The statements standing alone are damning, whether forced or not. That's not how faculty and administrators should be speaking in front of students.

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

#498

Post by danans »

rayiner wrote: post #477
danans wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The event described in that article about Northwestern was voluntary, as were the statements of that Dean. Statements of that sort are meant to be acknowledgement that systemic racism is universal and perpetuates through us at the individual level, and usually in ways far more subtle than police brutality or the use of racial slurs. One of the most anti-racist things that one can do is acknowledge the racism in thems…

It doesn't matter if they were voluntary. They were hostile and cult-ish. This was a Zoom meeting attended by hundreds of students, many of them not even American and most likely unfamiliar with how academics are defining those words today. As a non-white person I would have been extremely uncomfortable sitting through that. We can talk about systemic racism and implicit bias without the theatrics and personal confes…

> They were hostile and cult-ish.

Hostile to whom? People who deny the existence of systemic and institutional racism?

> As a non-white person I would have been extremely uncomfortable sitting through that.

Why? I ask because I'm also a non-white person who has sat through just those kind of discussions. They weren't "comfortable" - no introspective discussion of racism is - but they certainly were not hostile because the participants came with charity and a desire to understand themselves and the context better.

The tone of any conversation, defined by the attitudes of those who participate, has a great deal to do with the way people experience it.

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

#499

Post by iguy »

snowwrestler wrote: post #443
JamesBarney wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm super suspicious of research like that for a couple of reasons. One it would it be impossible to publish research that came to the opposite conclusion. Imagine seeing a headline that said "replacing female and black executive leadership with old white dudes increases profit" by McKinsey. Second the magnitude of the impact seems insane. This seems larger than the difference most studies find between good leadershi…

I would expect a company with more diverse leadership to outperform, because they are able to access more talent. White men are like 35% of the U.S. population in total. So on the back of the envelope, a corporate culture that inclines toward hiring white men, also inclines against hiring from 65% of the population. That's a lot of talent available for your competitors to hire. And the numbers get even more dramatic…

> I would expect a company with more diverse leadership to outperform, because they are able to access more talent.

You implicitly assume that the performance of a leadership team is the sum of the talent of its members.

I'm sure that's important, but the more direct variable to study (somehow) would be how similar people's backgrounds are. If they are all precisely alike, then they'll miss perspectives and be blindsided. But if they are totally different, then they will struggle to communicate their assumptions, and also won't perform well.

So I'd expect honest research to show a U-shaped loss curve. Or more realistically, to have gathered cautionary tales of companies that fell apart for both of these reasons.

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

#500

Post by taxcoder »

ardy42 wrote: post #412
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #289

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…

Could you give some examples of societies that are more equal and how they are?
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