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

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

#121

Post by mistermann » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:38 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #37

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...

What hypocrisy. All they care is that she is "Politically Incorrect" -- they could not care less about the facts. Not to mention that when someone is wrong about facts you correct them, you don't fire them or ask for their condemnation. Professors are not supposed to be correct, just to probe for what's correct. In fact they should be encouraged to be boldly inquisitive and incorrect in that pursuit, and use dialog t…

> All they care is that she is "Politically Incorrect" -- they could not care less about the facts.

Remember the saying "perception is reality"? Keep that in the back of your mind, I predict it is going to become increasingly indispensable to understand events going forward in Western nations.

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

#122

Post by Blackthorn » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:38 PM UTC

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?

Black culture exists, at least in the United States, since the USA systematically destroyed any other form of heritage from black people.

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

#123

Post by anigbrowl » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:38 PM UTC

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…

Let's recall that that assertion was made in the context of a "provocative essay" (Haidt's words, not mine) in a newspaper rather than in the context of a rigorous scholarly argument. You're building a very elaborate theory on the corpse of a rather obvious straw man in Wax's original article.

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

#124

Post by cortesoft » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:39 PM UTC

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…

This is spot on; cultures don't exist in a vacuum. How much of the success of the 'bourgeois culture' of the 1950s was due to the exploitation of other cultures?

Some things are zero-sum games, or at least don't scale to everyone getting the same benefit.

I guess zero-sum is not the correct term; there ARE ways we can improve the sum total quality of life in our country and planet, but we have to really think about what it would mean as the plan scales to everyone.

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

#125

Post by mistermann » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:39 PM UTC

typomatic wrote: post #57

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...

Thanks for posting. The original article is clearly hyper-racist--how unbelievable that the only cultural tradition suited for the 21st century also just happens to be the one which you hail from--but also just weirdly certain about things that deserve no certainty.

> the only cultural tradition suited for the 21st century

Could you please quote the part of the article that makes that assertion?

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

#126

Post by icebraining » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

Brakenshire wrote: post #52

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…

Frankly, a world in which we are not confident enough to say that slavery is worse than freedom, is a dystopia. It's valid to talk about difficulties of analysis, fragmented values, fallacies, edge cases, caveats, caution etc, but we cannot and should not abdicate from judgment.

I'm not confident enough to say that slavery is objectively worse than freedom. I have no reasons that lead me to consider that an objective answer exists.

I'm still completely opposed to slavery and willing to fight it, by force if necessary.

Is that dystopic?

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

#127

Post by wsxcde » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

leepowers wrote: post #81

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…

> .... inner city blacks are incompatible with an advanced free market economy. We must have read different articles because that's not what I saw - I think you're so focused on detecting a dog whistle that you're missing the key point being raised. Values are race, gender, and class neutral. A value or system of values can be adopted by a person regardless of their race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc. Value…

"I think you're so focused on detecting a dog whistle that you're missing the key point being raised."

There is no need to detect a dogwhistle. We have an explicit statement from Wax (http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/08/amy-wax-penn-law-cultur...) where she says Anglo-Protestant cultural norms are superior. "I don't shrink from the word, 'superior,'" she said, adding, "Everyone wants to come to the countries that exemplify" these values. "Everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans."

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

#128

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:44 PM UTC

weberc2 wrote: post #63

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…

> I bet most people would claim C(now) > C(slavery) Without defending slavery, the obvious problem with your line of reasoning is that most people (implicitly most people alive today) are influenced by C(now). Even if you identify a group of values that are relatively constant across cultures (including bygone cultures), the best you can do is say "culture X better conforms to the majority values than culture Y". It'…

True, but that doesn't help. Whether or not due to influence by C(now), there are very few people currently alive who would not say that C(now) > C(slavery). Those people cannot (validly) also argue that all cultures are equal.

Worse, I'd guess that there is a liberal/conservative element here. Liberals are more likely to believe that C(now) > C(slavery); they are also more likely to believe that all cultures are equal.

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

#129

Post by zhemao » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:45 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #112

ameister14 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty sure GP means the mass emigration of Europeans to North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

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

#130

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Sep 06, 2017, 10:48 PM UTC

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…

> But the author does make a critical conservative assumption by implying that economic output is a proxy for "value".

I think she made a critical assumption that "ability to create economic output" is a proxy for "ability to lift people out of poverty". I consider that statement to be much more reasonable than its negation.